The Troubled Air Read Online Free Page A

of life and death.

2
    I N THE RESTAURANT, WHICH WAS SMALL AND DARK AND SMELLED OF dried cheese, O’Neill picked a table in a corner. He waited until the bartender had put their drinks on the table and gone off before he said anything. He took a quick sip of his whiskey, looked briefly at Archer, then kept his eyes down, staring at his fingers.
    “The party I went to,” he said, “wasn’t really a party. It was more of a conference. Hutt and the sponsor.” Lloyd Hutt was the president of the agency that put on University Town. “They thought it would be better if I got to you tonight.”
    Archer watched him, puzzled, but didn’t speak.
    “The program tonight,” O’Neill said officially, keeping his eyes lowered, “was well liked.”
    Archer nodded. University Town had stayed on a comfortable, even keel for more than four years now, but it was pleasant to hear that the individual show had done well.
    “And the next two scripts have gone through mimeograph and been approved,” O’Neill went on. Archer could tell he was slowly getting himself ready to say something disturbing. “But …” O’Neill picked up his glass, looked at it absently, and put it down again. “But, there’s a … a feeling that this is about the time to … make some changes, Clem.” Suddenly O’Neill began to flush. A deep plum color tided into his cheeks and forehead. Only the skin around his lips remained pale and looked surprisingly white.
    “What sort of changes, Emmet?” Archer asked.
    “Well,” O’Neill said, “the general impression is, maybe we’ve been using the same people a little too much. Too familiar, maybe. Not enough variety. The music, too. Maybe it’s a little too modern,” O’Neill said lamely.
    “Now, Emmet,” Archer said, annoyed with him, “you just said the program was fine. What’s the sense in tampering with it now?”
    “This might just be the time to do it. Not wait until it starts to slide. Keep ahead of it, in a manner of speaking. Shake it up. Not rest on our oars.”
    “Emmet,” Archer said, “did I hear you say, ‘not rest on our oars’?”
    “Yes, you did,” O’Neill said angrily. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”
    “What’re you practicing to do—make speeches to conventions of vacuum-cleaner salesmen?”
    “Cut it,” O’Neill said. He was redder than ever. “Save your jokes for the program.”
    “Look,” Archer said. “You’re embarrassed. I can tell that. You’re passing on somebody’s message and you don’t like the assignment. OK. You don’t have to be delicate with me. Let’s have it.”
    “I’m not passing on anybody’s message,” O’Neill said loudly. “I’m representing a general consensus of opinion.” His voice had the same unaccustomed rhetorical falseness in it. “We want to make some changes. What’s so damned curious about that? An agency’s entitled to improve a radio program from time to time, isn’t it? You don’t have any feeling we’re putting Holy Writ on the air every Thursday night, do you?” The flush was receding now that he was getting angrier and arguing himself into righteousness.
    “All right,” Archer said. “What changes are you thinking of? Specifically.”
    “First of all,” O’Neill said, “the music’s been getting more and more highbrow every week. We’ve got to remember that we’re working in a popular medium and our listeners like to hear a little melody once in a while and at least one resolved chord a week.”
    Archer couldn’t help smiling. “OK,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll talk to Pokorny.”
    “The feeling is,” O’Neill said slowly, “we want somebody new. Get rid of Pokorny.”
    “You want my opinion?” Archer asked.
    “Of course.”
    “Pokorny’s music is the best thing on the show.”
    “We’ve discussed it,” O’Neill said, “and we decided Pokorny is too European.”
    “What does that mean, for the love of God?” Archer demanded. “Every other writer of