Animal Husbandry Read Free Page B

possible exception of Curious George when I was four.”
    “But Curious George was a monkey, not a chimp.”
    “There’s a difference?”
    “Big difference. You ought to know that with a name like yours. And since you don’t, we should get the real Jane Goodall on the show. Fly her in from Tanzania or wherever the fuck she lives and educate you about your kin.”
    I laughed and then didn’t say anything for a moment or two until I realized that he was still waiting for me to read his memo.
    Due to the fact that Diane dislikes being touched by guests during the broadcast, please be advised that during all interviews guests will now be seated sixteen inches to Diane’s left
(
i.e., out of arm’s reach
).
    I put it down and looked at my arm. “Sixteen inches?” I said, making little inch measurements with my fingers. Then I looked at Ray. “Who touched her?”
    “All the guests touch her. They like to take her hand while they’re talking, or touch her on the arm. It makes them feel intimate, like they’re close friends. Now that she thinks she’s famous, she has this thing about everybody wanting something from her. It pisses her off.”
    “But I thought she liked that touchy stuff,” I said. Since the show had gone national, Diane had gotten more relaxed, more casual, as if the show were being taped in the back booth of a bar at closing time. She’d even taken to wearing little black turtlenecks under her jackets, making her look like a short,perky, girlishly fifty David Susskind—or David Birney. “In fact,” I said, “she’s the one who always touches first.”
    “That’s different,” Ray said. “She’s the host. It’s her show.”
    Something wasn’t adding up. I stared at Ray. “Who touched her?”
    He hesitated, then smirked. “That guy from the World Bank. Two weeks ago. And it wasn’t just her arm he was touching.”
    I laughed. I hadn’t seen the show myself because of Diane’s obsession with Kevin Costner. She had dispatched me that night to ambush him in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel while he was in town promoting his new movie and to beg him to come on the show. (“Give him a mug,” she’d said, handing me a new one from the shelf behind her desk—a black glossy cup with THE DIANE ROBERTS SHOW in serious type on one side and a color headshot of herself on the other—“and tell him how much I loved
Wyatt Earp
.”) But the next morning Carla, the associate producer, said that the World Bank segment looked like a grope fest.
    “So sixteen inches is going to make a difference?”
    “We measured,” Ray said. “Some people’s arms are longer than that, of course, but Diane seems to think that’s the minimum distance to prevent unconscious touching. She thinks anything less than that makes it too easy.”
    “And what do you think?”
    “I think it’s ridiculous. I came from news. Two years with MacNeil/Lehrer. There was none of this handling-the-talent bullshit, no Macy’s-Thanksgiving-Day-Parade-float-size egos. No chicken-neck-disguising black turtlenecks. No weighing themselves before tapings. Those guys sat there, read their stories, got up, and went home. The most I ever did was lend Jima tie when he got it caught in his typewriter an hour before airtime. And I had to force it on him.”
    He walked over to the window and stood in front of the glass. Dusk had just started to fall, and I could see the sky turning pink behind the reflection of his face.
    “Nice view,” he said, tilting his head slightly and fixing his hair using the window’s reflection. Then he checked his watch. “See you in the studio.”
    For sure.
    Ray and I talked a few times after that in the following weeks, in the elevator, at the Xerox machine, in front of the building one Friday evening after a bright winter day that felt like spring. Once, in early March, we even went around the corner to the Carnegie Deli for lunch, and on the way there Ray helped an old woman across the street. I