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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 1 SUNDAY the NINTH - 9:45 PM Nelson hated the kid. Hated him from the moment Daniel
something Fowles oozed into the studio three weeks
back, tagging along behind Marsh, from Marketing, and a tall man in a gray
suit. "Mister Fowles," Marshall deferred with a flourish towards
the adult. "From the transmission franchise people. Regional! His son. Dannie," ... thinning, sandy
hair under a gray fedora, patchy beard, scrawny
chicken neck – some wire running into his ear. |
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Marsh
Marketing-man had shot the newsroom chief that look, that big advertiser look;
gestured, then, towards the smirking millenial... three silver rings through the
lobe atop the wire sprouting from his left ear, three!... and had
smiled as if apologizing in advance.
"Until
Procedures finds money for paid staff to replace Archibald, Dannie's your
assistant. Your... ahem... intern." Dannie's smirk widened at the word, another good one
long gone bad in an old world of new bad words, and the kid had removed his
fedora, tossed his head back, unearthing stringy, scraggy whiteboy
dreads that dangled over the back of his collar like rats' tails, then, like
some goddam molly-chic model off the pages of GQ opposite some swamp rant from
rats in a swamp or one of those insert cards stinking of cologne, proffered a
limp hand to Nelson, scrutinizing the studio with shifty, scurrying rodentine-eyes, telling Nelson how pleased he was to be
working for him, “sir?”, in his whiny, rat's-ass voice.
It
was the voice Nelson had come to hate most over these weeks. The whining when
he mouthed excuses for this or that failure to do what or to find who Nelson
wanted him to find - whining that dripped into what remained of the Newsroom
Editor's soul like acid oozing from a dead battery. That vinegary drone that
made Nelson look up at the clock... again!... counting down seconds until
Bobby-with-the-hair and the creepily perky Marla commenced another night's
edition of "Eleven at Eleven".
"Didn't
you tell me Bill would be arriving with Lavin's riot footage by
half-past?" Nelson reminded the kid.
"That's
what he said," Danny whined. "Man, there must be deep shit going down
out there if he's still shooting. Either that, or else the Conks laying on him
to run more of their fuckin' propaganda. Or..." the Millennial brightened,
"maybe the Turks started shooting back
at American media."
The
kid didn't so much laugh at his own joke as snort... Nelson wanted to take his
cigar and snub it out in one of Danny's icy-bright rat-eyes. Instead, he waved
towards Helen, his real assistant.
Helen was staff, though she didn't make half what Nelson made, and that wasn't a
quarter of what either of the on-air bums with hair, Bobby and Marla, took
down. Bobby was twenty-six, Marla thirty-one... already on a fast downslope, in
Nelson's estimation. One of Hoda’s disciples (but
with the vodka, not wine, that she kept in a Perrier bottle) bounced from
Buffalo and bottoming out! Nelson was fifty-six and had two more years until
the company's early retirement at half-pay provision kicked in. He knew it and
the station knew it... and so Nelson was especially attenuated to nuances sizzling
out of Corporate upstairs like bum microwaves. "Paranoia!" Marshall
had scoffed - Marshall, who was four years away, himself, denying that the
station, like so many, was getting their advertising revenue clock cleaned by
the social media. But when he'd wanted local coverage of the dues mess and Smoal Act, Nelson had been called paranoid too... and now
look at the fuckin' city: under UN mandate! Black helicopters overhead!... drones everywhere and those abominably cheerful UN
monitors in their turquoise berets, patrolling Nelson's streets.
"Fuckin'
Turks wouldn't dare," he warned Dannie off. "What's coming in off the
sat from Miami, Helen?"
Helen
was fortyish, plain and respectful... knew her place, and her job. "Long
interview with two of the doctors, footage of the parents..."
"Do
a minute on the both," Nelson decided. "And have forty more seconds
ready, just in case Bill declines to honor us with his presence."
"Chief,
all our viewers have been following Baby Claire's story for two weeks,"
Helen interrupted. "It polls way above the war on terrorism, Ukraine,
abortion, the Inquisition, drugs in City Hall, drugs to fight the plague; above
the mistresses in Oklahoma and alt-right’s stance on nuking Costa Rica... even
the Conk convention. We can't..."
Nelson
stabbed the air with his cigar. "We can't what? There's nothing there!
Same old same old. We got on the police radio somebody got killed… they think.
Riots and murder! We're still a news outfit, aren't we?" he challenged
Dannie.
The
kid nodded, suspiciously. Face like an anarchist, soul of a salaryman. If the
Conks do get in, Nelson indulged his fantasy, maybe Catfish Jack Parnell would
bring back the draft, and Dannie would be off to fuckin' San Jose… thence back
in a box!
If wishes were
cattle, Marketing would be choking on its Big Macs and shakes, its
ambulance-chasing attorneys, miracle pills the attorneys would be filing
class-action suits against next year and E-Z, greasy Transmission Tents!
If only!
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