Chapter 37: The Tonight Show

Ronan got back to the apartment and caught himself grinning at nothing halfway through taking his shoes off.

Up until this afternoon he’d have told anybody who asked that he had no chance with Jane Kingsley, and he’d have meant it. What had happened in that hallway had put a hole in that.

"Who am I kidding." He said it to the room. "I don’t know the first thing about any of this. But she likes me. She’s just not going to say it out loud." He dropped onto the bed. "Nobody lets you kiss them like that and then stands there not angry about it."

He’d never been quick on this kind of thing. There’d been a girl in high school, the one everybody agreed was the best-looking in the school, and she’d liked him. She’d liked him for the better part of a year and he hadn’t picked up on any of it, not once, until his friends got tired of watching and told him outright. That was how bad he was at it.

It hadn’t cost him anything at the time. He hadn’t wanted a girlfriend then. He’d wanted to be an actor, and there’d been no room in him for both, and that had settled it.

The «Immersion System» had changed the arithmetic. With that thing in his corner the career had stopped being something he was losing at, which meant the other half of a life was suddenly back on the table. He turned the idea over and found he liked it.

He was still sitting there feeling stupid about himself when he decided to call home, and Elise came up on the laptop screen the way she always did.

She wasn’t sour with him this time. She wanted to know things — how the shoot was going, what «Castaway in Time» was like from the inside, and after about ninety seconds of that, Jane. Mostly Jane.

He kept the afternoon to himself. Nothing was settled, Jane hadn’t admitted to a thing, and he wasn’t handing his sister ammunition she’d still have in ten years.

The promo tour he did tell her.

"Watch «The Tonight Show» this week. Jane’s going on with Timmy to talk about the show, because the pilot’s airing on NBS soon."

Elise’s eyes came right up to the camera. "Wait, seriously? Your show’s going on NBS? Like, actually soon?"

"Actually soon." He couldn’t keep it flat. "So watch it. I’m good in it, by the way."

"Sure you are." She was already past it. "I care about the Jane half of this. And I’m telling you now, she’s going to carry that entire show on her back while you stand around behind her being dead weight."

He rolled his eyes at the screen.

"Just tell Mom and Dad. Couple of days and you’ll all be sitting there watching Jane Kingsley on Timmy’s couch. Don’t miss it."

"Will do."

They talked a while longer and then let each other go. He spent the rest of the evening putting the same message out to everybody else — Mr. Park, Carlo, Alberto, Julius, a few names further out than that who’d known him back when.

* * *

The days went by in a blur after that, and then the night came.

In Dallas the Tonight Show came on at 10:35, the way it always had, and the Mercer house was ready for it well before then.

There were five of them in front of the television, a decent flat-screen Sony that Jordan had bought on sale two Christmases ago. Jordan and Ayumi had the couch. Elise had the floor in front of it. Jordan’s parents had the good chairs, because they always had the good chairs — Billy, seventy-four, and Janice, sixty-nine.

Timmy came out and did what he always did first. The monologue. Then a sketch.

Billy lasted about ten minutes of it.

"Jordan." He didn’t take his eyes off the screen. "You told me our grandson was going to be on this program. I’ve been sat here the whole time and I haven’t seen the boy once."

Jordan looked at the ceiling for help and didn’t get any.

"That is not what I said, Dad. I said the woman Ronan works with is going on tonight. Jane. Not Ronan."

"And she’s going on to talk about the show he’s in." Ayumi leaned around her husband to get it in. "That’s the whole reason we’re all sitting here."

Janice didn’t seem to hold any strong opinion either way about whose face it was going to be.

"So when does she come out?"

"Any minute, Mimi." Elise didn’t turn around. "He does the monologue, then the games, then the guests. She’s next."

Jordan was still working on his parents when the show came back from the break, and then Timmy started talking and the whole room dropped it.

"Our first guest tonight, you know her." He had the card in his hand and wasn’t looking at it. "There isn’t a young man in this country who doesn’t have a picture of this woman saved somewhere he isn’t telling anybody about. No scandal, no nonsense, the cleanest thing this town has turned out in years. Please welcome Jane Kingsley!"

She came out to the band and the noise of the room. A skirt, stockings, a jacket cut close, her makeup kept light, and all of it looked like her rather than like something a stylist had won an argument about.

Billy sat forward with his mouth open.

"My word. This is the girl our grandson goes to work with?"

"Zip it, Dad."

Then Billy felt his wife looking at the side of his head, and found the remote very interesting.

"...Forget I said anything."

That got the room, even Janice, and they were all still laughing at him when Jane sat down across from Timmy.

"You look incredible, as usual." Timmy had both hands out. "Marry me. I’m serious. Say the word."

"That’s sweet." Jane didn’t miss a beat. "I’d rather hire you. Do you know anything about gardening?"

The audience went up.

They ran a few minutes on nothing much, the way that show always did, and then he leaned in on his desk and got to it.

"Let’s talk about the show. The pilot’s on Sunday night, and we want to hear it from you." He put a hand up. "Another one with Jane Kingsley carrying it? Sign me up right now."

Five people in Dallas got very quiet.

"What do you want me to say, Timmy? It’s good." Jane crossed one leg over the other. "I’ll go further than that. Anybody who sits down for that pilot on Sunday is going to like it. All of them. You can put my name on that."

"Whoa." He rocked back. "That is a big thing to promise on television."

"I’m allowed to. I was there for every day of it." She turned a little toward the audience. "«Castaway in Time» has real actors in it. Charlie Ostrander. Woody Maxwell, who’s been doing this since before I was born. And then there’s our male lead, and honestly, watching him work is something else."

Elise’s head came up off the couch cushion.

"Alright, so walk us through it." Timmy went the other way with it. "What’s the show actually about?"

"So our male lead is a soldier. Present day, ours, been deployed halfway around the world and seen everything that comes with that." She had one hand out, setting it up. "He goes into the water. And the ship that pulls him out of the water is a ship from the seventeen-thirties."

"Oh, come on."

"He comes up two hundred and eighty years before he went in, with nothing on him and no way to prove he’s anybody to anyone." She shrugged. "And I’m on that ship. I’m a girl who actually belongs to that century. That’s where it starts, and that’s all you’re getting out of me."

"Okay, that’s a hook. I’m watching that."

"You should. And this isn’t the part where I sell you something." She was smiling at him. "You’ll love it."

He laughed at her.

"I mean it. It’s the acting that’ll get you." She said it again anyway. "Our male lead most of all."

"Okay. Okay." Timmy put both hands flat on the desk. "You keep coming back to this guy and you keep not telling us anything about him." He tapped the card in front of him. "I’ve got his name right here. And I’ll be honest with you, it didn’t mean a thing to me when I read it, and it won’t mean a thing to anybody at home either. So who is he? Tell us who we’re watching on Sunday."

That got the room, and Timmy sat back and let her have it.

Nobody in the living room moved. They knew the answer already, all five of them, had known it for weeks, and none of that mattered in the slightest. What they wanted was to hear Jane Kingsley say it out loud on national television.

Elise wanted it most, and for a reason she’d never once admitted to her brother’s face. Some small piece of her had never fully believed any of it — the network, the lead, working every day beside that woman, all of it out of a brother who’d been failing at this for five years.

She was about to hear it from Jane herself.