“Guess it’ll be a while ‘fore any more damned reptiles move in here like they owned the place,” he concluded.
The courthouse doors banged wide; excited citizens poured forth, veering aside from Cecil Stump. The crowd around him thinned, broke up as its members collared those emerging with the hot news. The reporter picked a target.
“Perhaps you’d care to give me a few details of the action taken by the . . . ah . . . Special Committee, sir?”
Senator Custis pursed his lips. “A session of the Town Council was called,” he said. “We’ve defined what a person is in this town—”
Stump, standing ten feet away, snorted. “Can’t touch me with no ex post factory law.”
“—and also what can be classified as vermin,” Custis went on.
Stump closed his mouth with a snap.
“Here, that s’posed to be some kind of slam at me, Custis? By God, come election time . . . ”
Above, the door opened again. A tall man in a leather jacket stepped out, stood looking down. The crowd pressed back. Senator Custis and the reporter moved aside. The newcomer came down the steps slowly. He carried Cecil Stump’s nickel-plated .44 in his hand. Standing alone, Stump watched him.
“Here,” he said. His voice carried a sudden note of strain. “Who’re you?”
The man reached the foot of the steps, raised the revolver, and cocked it with a thumb.
“I’m the new exterminator.”
THE BIG SHOW
1
Lew Jantry awoke with soft feminine arms around him, a warm body snuggled against his, perfumed hair tickling his chin.
He didn’t open his eyes at once; he was too old a trouper for that. Instead, he rapidly sorted through his recollections, orienting himself before making a move. He was in a bed, that was a starting point; and the quality of the light shining through his closed lids indicated it was full daylight—or its equivalent. That was no help: both the Jantry and Osgood bedrooms featured large east-exposure windows with fluffy curtains. He’d have to speak to Sol about that: a fellow needed a little sharper demarcation of environmental detail to avoid role-fatigue.
Lew opened one eye half a millimeter, made out the smooth curve of a shoulder, the sleek line of a bare back. Still no clue that would answer the burning question: was he in bed with his real wife, or his TV wife?
The seconds were ticking past. Jantry thought furiously, trying to summon up the memory of the circumstances under which he had turned in. Had he slept an hour, a minute, or all night? Had he been at home, in the class A Banshire Towers Apartment of a medium-rated actor, with Marta, his lawful wedded spouse? Or had he dropped off on the set, in the cardboard and plastic mock-up where he spent twelve of every twenty-four hours, with Carla, his co-star on The Osgoods? Damn! He remembered cocktails, the Bateses dropping in, late talk; but that had been a scene in Rabinowitz’s latest script of the blab-blab school—or had it? Was he thinking of the Harrises, the bores in the next apartment at the Banshire? Uh-huh, that was it. Al Harris had rattled on and on about his new two hundred channel set, with the twenty screen monitor attachment, where a sharp viewer with a good wrist could keep in touch with practically every top show simultaneously, at least well enough to hold up his end of a cultured conversation . . .
Satisfied, Lew relaxed, slid his hand casually down toward the curved hip beside him. The woman moved, twisted her head back to impale him with a sharp black eye.
“You’re ten seconds off-cue, Buster!” Carla’s sub-vocalized voice rasped in the pickup set in the bone back of his right ear. “And let’s watch those hands! This is a family-type show, and my husband Bruno is a dedicated viewer!”
* * *
Lew’s face snapped in a smile, lazy, marital, degree one, a stylized grimace that would instantly dispel all implications of lust from the minds of well-conditioned viewers. Meanwhile, he was stalling, groping for his line. Where the hell was the prompter?
“Hi, darling,” the dubber’s voice sounded in the pick-up set in the bone back of Lew’s left ear, just as the audience would hear it. “Today’s the day of the big event. Excited?” In the background, he could hear the hundred piece orchestra sliding into “Camptown Races.” He grabbed at the cue.
“Sure—but, uh, with you in the stands, rooting for him, who could lose?” he improvised, mouthing the words distinctly for the vocal stand-in to mime later.
“What who, you boob?” Carla’s voice hissed in his right ear. “I’m having a baby at two o’clock!”
“Oh, Freddy Osgood—sometimes I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world, having you all to myself!” the canned line crackled in his left ear.
“A baby?” Lew blurted, struggling to pick up the thread.
“What did you think, you schlock—a litter of kitties?” Carla snarled in his right ear.
“I didn’t know you were—I mean, that you’d—that we’d—” Lew caught himself. “Congratulations,” he ad-libbed desperately.
“We’d better hurry and get ready; we’re going water-skiing with the Poppins before we’re due at the Vitabort Center,” his left ear cooed.
“Sure,” Lew agreed, glad of the chance of escape. He threw back the blanket, caught just a glimpse of a saucy derriere before Carla squalled and yanked the sheets back up.
“Cut!” A godlike bellow rattled Lew’s occipital sutures. The wall with the window slid aside to admit the charging bulk of Hugo Fleischpultzer himself. “Jantry, you just set the industry back fifty years!” the director howled. “Whattaya mean, insulting five hundred million clean-living Americans with the sight of a bare behind first thing in the morning! It’ll take the psychan channels two weeks of intensive primetime therapy to clear out the damage you done! You’re fired! Or you would be if it wasn’t for the lousy Guild! Not that I mean anything by the word ‘lousy’!”
* * *
Carla Montez sat up, holding the covers to her chin, pointed a scarlet-nailed finger at Lew.
“I want a divorce!” she screamed. “Tell Oscar to write this louse out of the script for screening no later than Friday in the late early mid-afternoon segment!”
“Now, Carla, baby, you know that’s impossible,” Abe Katz, the makeup man soothed, reaching past Fleischpultzer’s bulk to adjust the star’s eyelashes.
“I’m sorry, Hugo,” Lew said. “I just got a little mixed up for a second. You know how it’s been since we went to nonstop sitcom: a three hour shift at home, three on the set, half my meals here, half there, barely time to scan the scripts—”
“See?” Carla shrilled. “He practically admits he prefers being with that blowsy dame he’s supposedly married to—”
“I do not—I mean Marta’s no blowsier than you are!” Lew flared. “I mean, neither one of you is blowsy! And I love being cooped up with you in this make-believe egg crate for half my life!”
“The kids!” Carla sobbed. “What will become of the kids? Joey, and little Suzie, and that new one, Irving or whatever, that we hired last week for the cousin!”
“Rusty, his air name is,” Hugo boomed. “Carla’s right, we got to think of the little ones. We don’t want to go making a broken home out of a fine American family, which it’s the favorite escape of millions, just over a little misunderstanding like this. Lew, I’ll give you one more chance—”
“Oh, no you won’t!” A furious contralto cut across the conversation. All eyes turned to the pert, green-eyed woman who had just burst onto the set. “I’ve watched my husband crawl into bed with that harpie for the last time! I’m here to scratch her eyes out!”
“Marta! No!” Lew, leaping from the bed, collided with Carla, leaping in the opposite direction. They struck the floor together, a confused mass of flailing limbs, complicated by the actress’ efforts to simultaneously escape, attack, and observe the conventions of modesty.
“Look at them—right in front of me!” Marta keened. “Lew! How could you!”
“Carla baby—watch the hairdo!” Abe Katz called.
“Quiet on the set!” Hugo’s bass roar dominated the scene. Carla came to her feet, swathed in the sheet, as Lew struggled to arrange a blanket, Navajo style, about himself.
“Now, Marta honey,” he said hastily. “Don’t leap to conclusions! It’s just that I was tuckered out from staying up late worrying about little Egbert. How is Eggie? Did he pull through the crisis OK?”
“You fiend!” Marta wailed. “Our son’s name is Augustus!”
“Ah—I was thinking of Augustus, of course.” Lew scrambled for verbal footing. “Today’s the day of the Little League tryouts, right? And—”
“Monster! You don’t know your real family from that horrible TV family of yours! It’s that nasty little midget that plays Sammy Osgood that’s the ball player! Our Augustus plays the violin!”
“Sure—I remember perfectly! And his sister, Cluster, is a whiz on the glockenspiel!”