Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs Page B

room set, but the deerskin was pulled at the last moment because of the lawyers. After the show, Howard had made it clear, “This is just a Band-Aid on the situation. We’ve got to get an ethnic in here immediately.”
    “When do you think you’ll hear something?” Max asked Laurie.
    “Any day, just be patient and don’t panic.”
    “Don’t panic, don’t panic ,” Max told himself after hanging up with Laurie. “Don’t panic, don’t panic,” he said walking from empty room to empty room, having no idea what to do with himself, wishing he had a dog that he could take for a walk or a boyfriend who could reassure him that everything would be all right. He couldn’t call any of his friends because they, unlike him, were all at work. And if he went to a movie, the theater would only be filled with retirees and other unemployed losers like himself and he would only become even more depressed than he already was.
    What scared Max the most was that in his heart of hearts, he felt almost certain that neither Discovery Channel nor Lifetime—nor any other network—would hire him. The sad fact was that he was only comfortable in front of the camera. And it just didn’t seem like any camera was going to be aimed at him any time soon. “I’m heading straight for radio,” he said, hands on hips, head pressed against the living room wall.

    C
    hanges was the current it bar and restaurant in Philly. Located on Twenty-sixth and Poplar, Changes attracted an upscale, hip clientele. Bebe was to meet Eliot at the bar at eight P.M. Although she had never seen him before, he’d given her a pretty good visual description: six-foot-one, 185 pounds, salt-and-pepper hair (“Yes, a full head,” he’d laughed). She was to “look for the nervous guy at the bar wearing gray slacks and a red sweater with five or six empty martini glasses in front of him.” At least on the telephone, he had been charming.
    Bebe had tried on three different outfits before finally deciding on the new black slacks, the new black silk shell, and the coral cashmere jacket she bought two weeks ago, but hadn’t worn. Around her neck she wore an eighteen-inch fourteen-karat white gold rolo chain, at the end of which was a Diamonelle Glitter Ball slide. For earrings, she went with simple fourteen-karat white gold demi hoops. She wore a tasteful Diamonelle tennis bracelet in fourteen-karat yellow gold, but you really didn’t notice the yellow so much as the stones. But even if you did, it was perfectly okay to mix your white metals with your yellow. On the ring finger of her right hand, Bebe slipped a two-carat princess-cut Diamonelle simulated sapphire ring with two twenty-five-point channel-set trillian-cut stones on either side. But then she slipped it off, fearing that it might look like an old engagement ring she refused to return. She decided to leave her fingers ringless.
    The first thing Bebe noticed as she stepped into Changes was the beautiful arrangement of lilacs atop the bar. The vase itself was filled with clear glass marbles in water. The second thing she noticed was a man in a red sweater. He was sitting at the bar, speaking with the bartender, when the bartender suddenly caught her eye and stopped talking midsentence. The man in the red sweater tracked the bartender’s eye-line, which led him directly to Bebe.
    He stood immediately and Bebe approached him, extending her hand. He took her hand in his and gently guided her to a chair at the bar, which he pulled out for her. “You must be Bebe,” he said. “I’m Eliot, as I suppose you’ve figured out by now, unless you’re an extremely well-dressed and friendly meter maid and I forgot to put money in the meter.”
    Bebe laughed and sat on the tall stool next to Eliot, exhaling and admitting that she was “kind-of slightly sort-of nervous.”
    Eliot suggested they remedy that situation at once and asked Bebe what she would like to drink.
    “Oh, a glass of white wine, I suppose.” The