Business Done

One of the producers, by a motion of flexing and extending the fingers of both hands, held up before his face, was instructing Julie to look more angry, or more upset, or possibly happier, at the words of Mr. Trump.  She could not see this producer's whole image, only the left side of his face and the wrinkles of his fingers when they moved into the light, but he was a good-looking man, fair-haired with a Germanic moustache, and she was obliged to follow his direction.  Luckily, the producer, whose name was Joe, she remembered then, was crouched directly to the right of Mr. Trump's hair, which position allowed her to have moments, however artificial necessity made the moments, with both of them, simultaneously, while always remaining camera-ready.  Joe held a folded-back packet of paper in one hand and a pen, seated in the cleavage between thumb and forefinger, in the other; he also had a pencil tucked behind his ear, which made Julie laugh, until recalling the probable utilitarian value of two easily accessible writing utensils, the realization of which sobered her face for its silent camera shot.  Joe had been the nicest one to her when everyone (save the other contestants, who knew one another and could talk) was abuzz with preparation, even Mr. Trump beckoning an aide and being shown the teleplay, consulting with his two judges; she sitting alone and terribly nervous.  Joe had offered her coffee and told them all to relax, shooting would begin momentarily.  She realized somewhere, sometime since then, that being nice to the contestants was Joe's job, was what Joe was paid for.  But she loved him anyway, and she was ready to repay him, by being the best freaking contestant ever, the perfect television performer, and doing everything she was told to do.  She would never look at the camera.
         Julie saw that Joe had dropped his eyes to a clipboard and was no longer looking at her.  She immediately, as fast as blood squirts through veins, lost all confidence, like Joe had been holding her and then let her go.  A nauseating pressure ballooned in her torso and clamped down on her already tortured stomach.  This was seen by eighty or ninety million home viewers as a slight twitch of her eye and an adjustment of her blouse, maybe or maybe not the result of Mr. Trump's assault on her teammate Jessica.  She looked away from Joe, shocked at his disregard for her comfort, and glanced berserkly for some new anchor.  Trump, finished with Jessica, bit down on his lip and moved his gaze across the other four; this would be a place for a suspension of mood, for heavy, atmospheric music, for a cut to another nervous face.  The female producer next to her teammate Jay signaled to Trump, with a pistol shoot of her index and middle fingers, when to begin again.  He'd start whenever he felt like it.  With the readjustment of her blouse and the jerk of her pupils, Julie would be next, she knew she would.  He began talking at her. 
              "Julie," he said, sucking his breath in and looking analytical at her.
In the absence of Joe, she finally focused, her eyes like those of a lost pet, on Mr. Trump's eyes, which dilated strangely and gave a queer look, in apparent recognition of her discomfort.  There was no alteration in his speech that she noticed, but he seemed suddenly to take on an amused tic, a warm smile, from the knowledge of her eccentricity that came simply from looking at her.  This, oddly enough, the fact that Mr. Trump seemed to know her all of a sudden, even in such a fit of grinning pity, restored some of the comfort Joe had taken away.  He didn't know her though; he only saw in her face a spark of feeling, a spark of how the boardroom had changed her.  He was proud of himself, Trump was, proud of what he had been able to do, how his show, his success, had succeeded.  He saw in that nervous movement – not to be a dick or anything – but he saw the effect of his existence.  He saw his contestant's awkward gestures reflected in the finest mahogany tabletop he had ever seen.  Trump, despite the way his eyes narrowed and his lips dropped, had a special place reserved in his heart for women like this, for girls who were scared of him.  He almost smiled; he could handle this though, he always did.  He just needed to ask her a question and purse his lips.
              "Well, no, Mr. Trump see, I―"  Jay was interrupting her.  He was not corroborating Jessica's defense, or even preemptively assisting Julie in hers; he was wading in again for his own sake, like an eight-year-old in a talent show.  "I assumed that he wo―" she started over his voice, but he wouldn't stop.  Jay was terrified, or so he was repeating inside his own head, and also the fact that drowning people sink faster when they thrash their arms and that he probably was doing fine and was only now pushing his own head underwater.  Jay knew that television viewers worldwide thought he talked too much and at the wrong time, but he didn't really talk all that much other times.  It was just, when the cameras were there, he felt this pull inside him to talk, to keep the action going and moving.  Also, he did not use the words "like" or "um."  They just didn't work for him, you know.
              "Whoa whoa whoa."  Trump raised his arms like Caesar.  And he spoke like John Travolta.  "Slow down, Jay.  I'm talking to Julie now."  A blush of redemption spread over her chest.  She smiled good-naturedly at Mr. Trump, at once thanking him for his justice and laughing at Jay's misfortune.  She didn't dare turn her neck to glimpse his embarrassment though; her smile would have jumped from sympathetic to sadistic if even a corner of the screen caught her in the act.
              "I apologize, Mr. Trump."  Jay didn't look sorry at all.  He just leaned back in the chair, let it squeak, as if he'd forget in the next minute and interrupt Julie again.  But he was ripping himself up inside, always talking out of turn, always the guy to get hit again.  Never learns, never keeps the rebukes in his jaw long enough to remember them.  Enough to be wary the next time he opens his mouth.  Trump turned back to her and held up his neck for her to continue.  She waited a beat, glanced at Joe, who held his packet as if he were reading but was actually staring at her and waiting for her to speak, then she spoke in a measure of confident forlornness, like cutting a hanged man from a tree.
              "Well I assumed he would, let us know let his teammates know that that's, what he would be doing I, I― I just didn't, think it would turn out, so, differently from what he told us."  Just how they told her to speak, clipped staccato businesslike.  She stopped: Had she said enough?  He was still looking at her.  Silence like this, it wasn't a good sign.  She looked to Joe, but he was looking at his papers.  She exhaled loudly, hoping for closure, even emphasis maybe.  Still, he stared at her, thinking probably, more about the show than her.  Julie could see, even now, as she sat silently with her heart beating out of her chest, the way it would be on television, all pared and edited and sleek.  This moment, she thought – how could she possibly be considering something like this? – would be a few seconds, chords of tension pulled on the soundtrack, with her face, then Mr. Trump's face, locked, staring.
              Trump leaned back in his chair, then brought his elbows under his chest, hands folded up tight, to steady himself when he came back down.  "You assumed?"  He cocked his head and stared, his eyes wicked.  Trump with a capital T.
              Now Julie was going to be like Jay.  But instead of bouncing the image of drowning through the dusty corridors of her mind while her lips moved, she thought of digging, the furtive, insane catching and throwing of dirt.  She had loved it so much as a kid in her brother's sandbox, the industry of the thing.  She had imagined workmen waiting in the flanks for her to finish, watching her approvingly and always ready to take up their shovels when the moment came.  Of course, she had never needed their help; she'd thought, always at first, that she could last forever doing this, a Titan of the earth.  But it had always worn on her, and her arms always grew tired.  She had yelled under her breath, in an official sort of way, "OK.  Send in the others!" and often made a whispery walkie-talkie noise, radioing in for help.  But nobody ever came, because it was all just pretend, and she usually got up and walked off anyway.
              "Julie," Trump said.  He was feeling confident now.  He was slipping into his regular guy voice, the voice he got when he ate pizza, or when his aides suggested they order pizza, and he would name the pizza place he wanted while one of the aides leaned over the telephone with the receiver pressed between his shoulder and ear and his finger hanging, ready when you are, above the buttons.  Or when he wore a baseball cap.  He scooted the chair in calmly with his hips.  And he summarized the day, the assignment, the failing of the team, the personal problems of Jessica and Jay.  She looked at him sometimes; she looked down sadly and nodded when he talked about her; she commiserated with the others when he talked about them.  Julie scratched her face.  To the left of the camera, all the way to Trump's head, there was darkness; Joe must have gone.