Carlon / SLIPPERY PEOPLE /
Chapter One
Susan James is sitting up in bed with her arms folded while she listens to the faint whistling sound emanating from Greg’s nose. She looks at him with utter disgust—he hasn’t been on TV in five years and he hasn’t looked presentable since.
Looking over at the clock she sees that there are only five minutes left before Greg’s phone will come to life to wake him up, not that he has anything major on the docket today, unless you count tuning into reruns of Magnum PI. Why couldn’t he just go back to the way he was before his assault? Old Greg would jump at taking the meeting with Charlie Delmar that she’s been on him about, but Zen Greg stubbornly refuses.
She allows herself a smile when she thinks of Charlie. The publicist came into her life at the right time, after Greg’s great transformation, and filled a void that was left when he decided to retreat into himself in search of inner peace, whatever that is.
As a literary agent representing memoir, her relationship with Charlie started out strictly business, though she knew the publicist’s aggressive flirting wasn’t innocent. The fact is, she liked it as it had been a while since Greg has showed any real interest in her. Plus, her flirting back paid dividends; Charlie gave her the right of first refusal for any of his client’s memoirs. At the moment, he is dangling a big one in front of her, the chance to represent Tabby Sunrise. There’s only one catch, the singer has demanded a meeting with her husband and told Charlie that unless Susan can make it happen, there’s no deal.
Only a few short years from breaking through on YouTube, Tabby is selling out arenas packed with young Country music fans all over the United States. These same fans eat, sleep, and breathe everything Tabby and there’s no doubt that her memoir will go to auction to the highest bidder in the publishing world. It’s a deal that any agent would kill for, and the only person standing in the way of her getting it is fast asleep just inches away from her.
Greg lets out a particularly wheezy snore and Susan’s exasperation boils over. There are few things more disorienting than being slapped awake and Greg James finds this out the hard way immediately after his wife’s hand pulls away from his back.
"What’s that for?" Greg asks sleepily and turns around to shoot Susan a dirty look. “My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.”
His standard alarm was Slippery People, his favorite song by his favorite band. There are two types of people in this world: those who like Talking Heads and those who don’t know any better. Susan didn’t know any better. So usually, he has about three seconds to start his day off with something he loves before his wife starts complaining about it, but today he won’t even get that.
She’s sitting up in bed with her arms folded across her chest, clearly stewing about something.
"Because I’m pissed at you," Susan says, scornfully.
All Greg’s years of hard-charging investigative journalism aren’t up to the task of figuring out why his wife might be pissed at him at any given moment. His award-winning show, Catch a Creep, was a ratings darling for his former network. The show televised sting operations in which sexual predators were met by a smirking and wisecracking Greg James instead of the child they thought they’d been messaging for the past few days. He knew he made it when his catch phrase, “Let me guess, you were expecting someone else,” was parodied on Saturday Night Live.
But Greg left the show five years ago after he was brutally beaten by the predator Peter MacArthur at a home in Plantation, Florida, a town just west of Ft. Lauderdale. MacArthur was a used car salesman expecting an evening rendezvous with a thirteen-year-old girl. When Greg delivered his catchphrase after emerging from his hiding spot in the house rented for the sting, Peter charged him like a man possessed and, for lack of a better term, beat the shit out of him. It took a cameraman, the show’s producer, and one of Plantation’s finest to get MacArthur off Greg.
There was a silver lining to the vicious beating, though. The medical team that descended on him at Ft. Lauderdale’s Holy Cross Hospital found that he had both dangerously high blood pressure and cholesterol. The attending cardiologist paid Greg a visit and determined that he suffered from coronary artery disease. That led to additional tests, which revealed considerable blood vessel blockage, and as a result, Greg was scheduled for emergency bypass surgery.
During his recovery, Greg’s doctors warned that if he didn’t make big lifestyle changes and rein in his Type-A urges, he’d be right back on the OR table or, worse, the undertaker’s slab. Prior to surgery, one doctor told him that the “widow maker” could have taken him down while he was doing something as trivial as walking out to get the paper. Greg pictured his curled-up corpse at the end of the driveway, The Stamford Advocate beside him in its plastic bag, eternally out of reach. It was a good enough local newspaper, but not one worth dying for.
All this forced Greg to reevaluate the way he was living his life. He subsequently left the show mid-season, which resulted in a torched bridge with network brass. Sure, they felt bad about the beating he took, but money is money and Catch a Creep commanded some premium primetime payola. Emerging from the flames was what Susan referred to as Zen Greg.
Gone is the Type-A scandal chaser, in his place a more meditative soul, who takes time for relaxing morning runs and reconnecting with his rediscovered Catholic faith. He was certainly not the alpha male Susan fell in love with, a fact that put a little extra pepper in this morning’s assault. She also hates Zen Greg’s facial hair. He thinks the beard with a touch of grey makes him look more distinguished; Susan thinks it makes him look homeless, like a less-groomed Jerry Garcia.
"I haven’t even done anything yet," Greg protests. It’s six-thirty in the morning, and he’s already in the doghouse.
"Two words, Charlie Delmar."
"Not this again," he says, before he even set foot on the ground. If this is how Monday begins, it’s going to be a long week.
Earlier in their marriage, Greg might have been able to cram in a quickie while he and Susan both gasp-argued about being late for work, but since his great transformation Susan’s sexual spigot has been cemented in the off position. Greg actually crafted a joke for his burgeoning stand-up career that he’ll know it is time to pay his quarterly taxes when he and Susan engage in the marital embrace. For better or worse it gets a lot of laughs from the other married couples in the clubs where he performs.
He walks into the bathroom and closes the door. Susan doesn’t wait for his stream to quit before the harping begins.
"Why won’t you take a meeting with Charlie?"
Greg opens the door and pops his head out. "Because I don’t want to," he says, his mouth now foaming with toothpaste.
As a literary agent, Susan hears an almost endless stream of pitches from the publicists of famous to sort-of-famous people. Charlie Delmar mainly represents Reality TV celebrities and counts Kardashians, Real Housewives, and YouTubers among his stable of clients.
"But Charlie says it’s exactly what you’re looking for."
While recuperating from his attack and health scare, Greg began to obsess over the collateral damage his show caused; while Catch a Creep in fact did that, the families of the perpetrators were often torn apart in a very public way. Spouses and children were ostracized, and Greg feels the urge to make this right in some way, but it feels impossible. Susan has been particularly unsympathetic to how heavily this weighs on him, which is why he’s surprised to hear that her business partner, if Charlie could even be characterized as such, might have a solution.
"How would he know what I’m looking for?"
“I told him your idea for Come Together and he’s got the perfect proof of concept.”
Come Together is a TV show concept Greg crafted where he would profile people who were adopted and reunite them with their birth families.
“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” Greg says after spitting in the sink.
"Just hear him out."
"Look, I know you and Charlie have some great racket going, but the guy makes used car salesmen look good.”
"It’s just a meeting, not a marriage!" Susan protests. "He’s got time this afternoon. Can’t you just do this for me?"
Greg is out of the bathroom and in his walk-in closet, getting dressed for his morning run. It’s early March and the Connecticut winter is more lion than lamb, so he’s bundling up.
"I’m not going to waste his time or mine. Plus, I’m going into the city to do Jane’s show."
Greg and Jane Breuer worked at the same network for years, him on Catch a Creep and her on the Saturday night sketch show. Now Jane hosts an afternoon drive show on satellite radio. Yesterday her producer called asking Greg for a favor because their Monday guest cancelled at the last minute.
"What time’s the show?"
"Two," Greg says while tying his sneakers.
"Perfect, then you can meet Charlie at noon."
Old Greg used to admire Susan’s persistence. Zen Greg just wants her to take no for an answer.
"What did I tell you the last time you asked me to meet with Charlie?"
"That you’d meet him after hell froze over."
“Baby, it’s cold outside, but it ain’t that cold." Greg emerges from the closet. "How do I look?"
"Like you’re about to rob a bank."
Greg turns to evaluate himself in the full-length mirror—black tights, black turtleneck, black windbreaker, black cap, black gloves.
He looks at Susan and sings with a baritone twang, "I wear black for the poor and beaten down, livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town."
"You’re impossible."
In addition to lacking an appreciation for Talking Heads, Susan doesn’t dig Johnny Cash, the original man in black.
Her hopes of brokering a meeting dwindle considerably when Greg walks out their bedroom door. She knows Charlie’s threat to find another agent isn’t an idle one and therefore decides to change tactics.
"Greg," she calls out just as he’s about to bound down the stairs.
"What?"
"I know how you feel about Charlie. He’s loud, aggressive, and all the things you’ve stopped being. But he’s a really good business partner, so if you won’t take the meeting for you, please consider taking it for me." Susan isn’t beneath playing into her husband’s newfound Catholic guilt.
Greg, trying to remember the last time he heard the word please come out of his wife’s mouth, gives in just like that. "Fine. I’ll meet with Charlie, but no promises."
Susan smiles and even offers to make the reservation. "I’ll get you guys a table at Fresco’s on fifty-second. I know how much you loved that place when you worked in New York.”
"The things we do for love."