The Next to Die

“Hi, Elsie!” the studio audience cheered in unison.

“Hi, and welcome back to Common Sense!” Elsie Marshall said. “I know I’m breaking a lot of hearts out there when I tell you my Drew won’t be here today. He’s in Washington, D.C.”

There was a wave of feminine sighs and murmurs of disappointment from the studio audience. Elsie held up her hands. “But we have an unusual guest this afternoon, and you won’t want to miss what she has to tell us!”

The camera pulled back to show Elsie sitting at her desk. She wore a white dress with red piping and a sailor collar. She hadn’t yet introduced her guest: a dowdy dishwater-blonde with bad posture. She sat across from Elsie, studying the studio audience with some readable contempt and trepidation. She had on a pale, flowery dress that had gone out of style ten years ago.

Dayle barely recognized Cindy. She watched Elsie’s show on a big-screen TV in the studio’s VIP visitors’ lounge. She was still in her matronly makeup and wardrobe. She’d agreed to work late if they filmed around her for the next couple of hours.

“Today we’re talking some common sense with a real survivor,” Elsie announced. Then she turned to Cindy with a sudden, phony concern. “I understand you had an intimate, lesbian relationship with an established film star when you were only nineteen years old.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Dayle groaned. She reached for a memo pad and a pen.

“Yeah, I was nineteen,” Cindy said. She leaned toward Elsie. “But I want to make it clear that I’ve rejected the sinful lifestyle I once had.”

With a little pout, Elsie gazed into the camera. “My guest today is Cynthia Zellerback, who was drawn into drugs and the gay scene eighteen years ago. Cindy’s here to tell us her story—which included a sexual relationship with film personality Dayle Sutton….”

Elsie paused to give the studio audience a chance to gasp—and gasp they did—while she nodded emphatically. “Yes, it’s true!”

People were still murmuring when Elsie turned to Cindy. “Eventually, you tried to reject this lesbian lifestyle and lead a normal, Christian life. But even with a husband and baby, you wouldn’t ‘go straight,’ would you?”

Frowning, Cindy shook her head. “No. And if it weren’t for my drug and sexual dependencies, I don’t think— it wouldn’t have happened.”

“For the studio audience and our friends at home, Cindy,” Elsie said in a whisper. “What exactly happened?”

“I killed my husband and baby daughter,” she answered with hardly a tremor in her voice. “I was convicted, and I spent twelve years in prison….”

More gasps and murmurs from the studio audience. Dayle took notes, scribbling furiously while Cindy described the murders as if someone else had committed them. Cindy said how much she missed her husband and her two-year-old, Sunshine. She even cried a little. If only she hadn’t been doing drugs and having gay sex. She discovered the “power of God’s forgiveness” in the federal pen.

Elsie patted her shoulder, and chimed in to announce a commercial break. “When we return, we’ll talk some more common sense with Cindy about her lesbian affair with none other than Dayle Sutton. Don’t go away!”

Dayle didn’t go away. On her cellular, she phoned Dennis to let him know that she would read a brief statement for the press after Elsie’s show.

“Hi, Elsie!”

“God bless you,” Elsie chirped, coming back on and blowing a kiss to her audience. Now that everyone had Cindy Zellerback identified as a reformed drug-addicted, child-killing lesbian, Elsie didn’t waste any time linking this survivor with a certain liberal actress. After less than a minute of chitchat with the audience, she turned once again to her guest.

“Cindy, you were only nineteen when you met Dayle Sutton. That’s a young and impressionable age, isn’t it?”

Cindy shrugged. “Sure.”

“What was it like, meeting a movie star?”

“It was pretty cool,” Cindy answered. “I was in Mexico with some friends, and heard they were shooting a movie nearby. So I started hanging around the set. I even got to be in a couple of crowd scenes.”

“You also met Dayle Sutton,” Elsie said. “Tell us, Cindy, were you doing drugs at the time?”

She sighed. “Yes, I was.”

“Were a lot of people on this movie set doing drugs?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Including Dayle Sutton?”

Cindy nodded. “Sure, I guess.”

“And Dayle Sutton was married at this time, wasn’t she?”

“I think so,” Cindy replied.

“Who initiated this—gay sexual encounter?” Elsie asked, with a sour look, as if it pained her to discuss this sordid business.

“It was mostly her,” Cindy said. “I could tell before this, y’know, particular night that she was interested in me. And it was kind of exciting, because she was a movie star and all that. Plus, I heard people talk on the set about her being a lesbian….”

Dayle studied Elsie’s face, and as much as the old bitch tried, she couldn’t contain a smile.

Dayle faced the press, flanked by Dennis and Ted. About forty reporters and several cameramen gathered outside the soundstage where she was filming Waiting for the Fall for this impromptu press conference. In her “old lady” garb, she looked very sweet and matronly. Yet Dayle had modified the makeup a little so that the pretty movie star shined through. Security was tight, with guards stationed every eight feet at a roped-off section around the podium where Dayle addressed the crowd.

“I’m in the middle of making a movie right now,” Dayle announced. “Which explains why I’m dressed and made up this way. I’m sorry I won’t have time to answer questions. But I’d like to make a statement for anyone who cares to listen.” Dayle smiled at them. She needed these journalists on her side. “Actually, I’m not wearing any makeup. I’ve simply aged twenty-five years in the past hour while watching a certain ‘talk show.’”

There were some laughs and titters among the reporters, and she heard Dennis behind her chuckling—almost too enthusiastically.

Elsie’s show had ended only forty-five minutes ago. Dayle had scribbled out a brief speech. She felt a strange calm. The “scandal” was out there now, thanks to Elsie Marshall. That left Dayle with damage control, an assignment the studio brass tried to entrust to their public relations department. “It’s my ass on the line,” Dayle had told a studio bigwig over the phone. “I’ll handle this.”

They wanted to check her speech, but the only person she let read it was Dennis, whose thumbs-up gave Dayle the confidence she now needed.

“I take enormous pride in the fact that I’m on Elsie Marshall’s hate list,” Dayle announced. “Elsie had a guest on her program today, a woman named Cindy Zellerback, who murdered her husband and child thirteen years ago. Now, the widow Marshall—to my knowledge—has never had a murderer on her show—morons, yes, but not murderers.”

A few reporters laughed, but Dayle kept a straight face. “The reason Elsie put Cindy Zellerback on her show was that this particular convicted murderer claimed to have had sexual relations with me a few years before she killed her family. Ms. Zellerback’s story first came to my attention earlier this week, by way of an anonymous note from someone who seemed to have extortion in mind. I chose to ignore it. Obviously, this mudslinger turned to the widow Marshall with this story. So in her attempt to publicly humiliate me, Elsie Marshall has consorted with an extortionist and a murderer.”

Dayle shook her head and sighed. “Well, I’m a little embarrassed, but not humiliated. The story this woman told is indeed true. One night, sixteen years ago, while shooting a movie in Mexico, I went to a beach party and had too much to drink. While under the influence, I experimented with a nineteen-year-old named Cindy. The widow Marshall would like you to believe I corrupted this young woman, but I’d like to point out that I was the ripe old age