Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

gaze returned to the television, she nearly dropped her drink.
    That face! Of course! It was Edgar’s old secretary. Frannie hadn’t laid eyes on her for at least four years. Since Beauchamp’s funeral, probably.
    What was her name, anyway? Mary Jane something. No … Mary Lou?
    The matriarch turned the sound up again. “This is Mary Ann Singleton,” chirped the young woman, “wishing you bargains galore!”
    Mary Ann Singleton.
    Maybe, thought Frannie. Just maybe …

A Daytime Face
    A FTER ALMOST TWO YEARS OF BEING A WOMAN IN television, Mary Ann Singleton was finally a woman on television.
    Her show, Bargain Matinee, attempted to update the old Dialing for Dollars afternoon movie format by offering inflation-fighting consumer tips to Bay Area viewers. This was, after all, The Eighties.
    The movies, on the other hand, were firmly grounded in The Fifties: comfy old chestnuts like Splendor in the Grass and The Secret of Santa Vittoria and today’s feature, Summertime. Movies that used to be called women’s movies in the days before ERA.
    Mary Ann’s shining hour was a five minute spot interrupting the movie at midpoint.
    The formula was fairly consistent: dented cans, factory seconds, Chinese umbrellas that made nifty lampshades, perfume you could brew at home, places you could shop for pasta, new uses for old coffee cans. Stuff that Michael persisted in calling “Hints from Heloise.”
    Mary Ann was faintly embarrassed by the homebody image this format compelled her to project, but she couldn’t deny the delicious exhilaration of the stardom it brought her. Strangers stared at her on the Muni; neighbors asked her to autograph their grocery bags at the Searchlight Market.
    Still, something was wrong, something that hadn’t been cured by becoming a Woman on Television.
    A real Woman on Television, Mary Ann felt, was a glamorous hellraiser, a feminine feminist like Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome or Sigourney Weaver in Eyewitness. A real Woman on Television was invariably an investigative reporter.
    And Mary Ann would settle for nothing less.
Immediately after the sign-off she left Studio B and hurried back to her cubbyhole without stopping in the dressing room to remove her makeup.
    It was five o’clock. She could still catch the news director before he mobilized for the evening newscast.
    There was a note on her desk: MRS. HARRISON CALLED.
    “Did you take this?” she asked an associate producer at the next desk.
    “Denny did. He’s in the snack bar.”
    Denny, another associate producer, was eating a microwaved patty melt. “Who’s Mrs. Harrison?” asked Mary Ann.
    “She said you knew her.”
    “Harrison?”
    “That’s what it sounded like. She was shitfaced.”
    “Great.”
    “She called right after your show-and-tell. Said it was ‘mosht urgent.’”
    “It’s Summertime is what it is. The drunks always call during the tearjerkers. No number, huh?”
    Denny shrugged. “She said you knew her.”
Larry Kenan, the news director, lounged back in his swivel chair, locked his fingers behind his blow-dried head, and smirked wearily at the Bo Derek poster he had pasted on the ceiling above his desk. Its inscription, also his doing, was burned indelibly on Mary Ann’s consciousness: FOR LARRY WITH LUST—NOBODY DOES IT BETTER. BO.
    “You wanna know the honest-to-God truth?” he said.
    Mary Ann waited. He was always disguising his goddamned opinion as the honest-to-God truth.
    “The honest-to-God truth is you’re a daytime face and the public doesn’t wanna see a daytime face on the six o’clock news. Period, end of sentence. I mean, hey, what can I say, lady? It ain’t pretty, but it’s the honest-to-God truth.” He tore his gaze from Bo Derek long enough to flash her his “that’s the breaks, kid” grin.
    “What about Bambi Kanetaka?”
    “What about her?”
    Mary Ann knew she had to tread softly here. “Well … she had a daytime show, and you let her do the …”
    “Bambi’s different,” glared Larry.
    I know, thought Mary Ann. She gives head on command.
    “Her GSR’s were dynamite,” added Larry, almost daring Mary Ann to continue.
    “Then test me,” said Mary Ann. “I don’t mind being …”
    “We have tested you, O.K.? We tested you two months ago and your GSR’s sucked. All right?”
    It stung more than she wanted it to. She had never really believed in Galvanic Skin Response. What could you prove for certain, anyway, by attaching electrodes to a guinea pig