Soap Opera Slaughters Read Online Free PDF Page A

normal voice. “I admit you’re way above average, love, that’s what Hilary claims, but if you really watch me every afternoon, when do you find time to work?”
    “All right, I confess! I watch at night on a VTR .”
    She rolled her eyes in pretended panic. “Omigod, you’re not a fan, you’re a fanatic! Call out Security!”
    Abandoning the badinage, I asked whether the statistic she’d cited was really true.
    “Sure is. Why do you think they give us all those boring recaps? “Roberta, did you know Mart’s having an affair with blahblahblah?’ That sort of thing.”
    “Which I’ve noticed there’s less of on ‘Riverday’ than some other shows.”
    “Uh-huh. That’s one of the reasons Ed won so many Emmies. And probably a contributing factor to our fight for audience share. It keeps slipping.” She brooded on it briefly, then waved it away as Hilary reappeared with Lara’s next scheduled interviewer.
    The latter individual was an ax-faced andiron named Jess Brass, a bony, humorless woman who serves as chief critic and gossip columnist for the New York Daily Lineup, a raggy tabloid with an unwholesomely large circulation. Her column, “Daylong Lineup,” consists of plot synopses and behind-the-scenes scandal about the soaps. Brass has a talent for stinging innuendo that places her high among the apostles of the John Simon method of criticism, which holds that viciousness is an apt substitute for percipience. She is a small, insecure woman whose narrow spirit envies and resents most of the actresses her position forces her to notice in print...which she does by mining the dungheap of her own neuroses. Her column, of course, is enormously popular. Compost always draws flies.
    The angular woman put a folded newspaper on a tabletop and sat down to interview Lara with as much enthusiasm as an intern preparing to dissect decomposing tissue. As Lara took the opposite seat, Hilary tugged my sleeve and drew me away.
    “Brass won’t begin till we leave,” she said. Nodding I followed her to the bar and ordered a Bushmill’s. I knew Hilary still was bristly from Lara’s chaffing, so I tried to establish a truce by clinking my glass against hers, but she just glared at me.
    “Well, what are you smirking about, brightness?”
    I took a sip to control my temper. “Look, Hilary, I’m attempting to maintain a diplomatic silence.”
    “Really? Then you’d better stop thinking so loud.”
    “Thoughtcrime won’t be a statutory offense till 1984.”
    If she had a comeback, for once I was spared hearing it. Suddenly ignoring me, Hilary looked across the room. Her brows drew down.
    Turning to see what was the matter, I observed Lara, still at the table, sitting with rigid back and wide-staring eyes. There was no color in her cheeks.
    Hilary hurried over. “Lara, what’s wrong?” No answer.
    The folded newspaper Jess Brass brought with her was open beneath the actress’ nose. Hilary snatched it from the columnist’s grasp.
    I peered over Hilary’s shoulder and saw a single-column, three-deck page-three headline stripped over a photograph of a good-looking man with long dark hair, pencil-line mustache and glasses.
    I read the headline and story.
POLICE IDENTIFY
    TV WRITER
    AS NUDE FALL VICTIM
    Medical examiners told police today that the naked man who fell to his death yesterday afternoon from the roof of the Manhattan studios of WBS-TV on West 53 rd Street is Edward Niven, 43, award-winning head writer of “Riverday,” a “soap opera” taped daily in the block-long broadcasting complex.
    NYPD Chief Inspector Louis Betterman said that though Niven’s office is in the same building there is no explanation why he should have been on the roof on a weekend, when “Riverday” is not in production.
    “He didn’t sign in at the security desk,” the police officer stated. “Nobody knows when he arrived, or why he avoided entering the front way.”
    No explanation has been tendered for Niven’s nakedness.