Today Will Be Different(31)
“Is there anything likeable about your friend Bucky?” Eleanor asked.
Lester had to think about it. “He’s loyal.”
“But you can’t genuinely like him,” Eleanor said, raising Millicent’s lower lids in an attempt to give her that smiling-eye look.
“We’re devoted friends,” Lester cried. “We speak every day.”
“Does he know you mock him behind his back?”
“I mock him to his face!” Lester said gleefully.
Eleanor’s team was color-correcting, making last-minute changes and throwing in topical jokes to season one, getting animatic notes on season two, and storyboarding season three. It was high-stress and sedentary work; fourteen-hour days hunched over drawing boards, vacations canceled, out-of-town parents stood up at fancy restaurants, weddings postponed, births of babies just missed.
In the stranglehold of deadlines, a bunker mentality set in. The animators versus the idiot network executives; versus the capricious and overpaid writers; versus the incompetent and venal Hungarians.
The one bright spot in the animators’ day occurred after lunch when Lester would return from his daily phone call with Bucky and recount the highlights in delicious detail. For the next hour, a calm settled over the bullpen as the animators dissected Bucky across their light boards.
Did they love him? Hate him? They took extravagant pleasure in the debate.
If only there were some way to hear his voice!
Eleanor suggested they get the phone guy to add Lester’s line to the speakerphone in her office so the animators could pile in and listen in on him and Bucky.
“Please?” Eleanor asked Lester. “He’s all we have.”
A rush order was submitted.
Bucky didn’t disappoint.
“I’m every shade of aggravated.” Bucky at home, settling onto his daybed after an especially rich lunch. His voice was confident and strangely accent-free.
Eleanor passed a note to Lester. Why doesn’t he have a Southern accent?
Lester nodded and gave Eleanor a wink.
“Bucky,” Lester said. “The other night I started to explain to someone your philosophy on Southern accents, but all I could remember was that it defied logic.”
“Southern accents are hillbilly,” Bucky said with petulance. “Anyone with a proper education, I don’t care if he’s never stepped foot out of the South, doesn’t go around sounding like Jubilation T. Cornpone. If he does, it’s a put-on. And please, I’m in no mood to rehash the obvious. I’ve just had a knock-down, drag-out with the mail lady.”
“No kidding,” Lester said.
“As you know, I had a mailbox made for the carriage house. Last week I left a note stating that from now on, all mail addressed to Barnaby Fanning was to be delivered there. Every day it’s been empty. Today I confronted her, and she said that by law anything addressed to 2658 Coliseum had to be put in Mummy and Daddy’s box. If I wanted mail in a different box, I’d need a different address. She kindly suggested I traipse down to city hall and have the carriage house designated 2658 A. Can you imagine? Barnaby Fortune Charbonneau Fanning, 2658 A! She obviously doesn’t know.”
(This Buckyism worked its way into Looper Wash. Season two, episode twenty. Josh, the kindly and patient sheriff, refused to arrest a drifter for stealing the girls’ rock tumbler. Vivian stormed off, saying of Josh, “She obviously doesn’t know.”)
“Perhaps,” Lester said, “the post lady would have been more accommodating if you’d given her actual money for Christmas instead of re-gifted potpourri.”
“I suppose next year I could throw in some car-wash coupons,” Bucky said dryly, playing along.
“He’s addictive, this guy!” Eleanor said after they’d hung up.
February drew near. The anticipation became palpable. Not for the premiere of Looper Wash but for Mardi Gras and Bucky’s account of riding on the Khaos float. Could he possibly deliver after all the hype?
“Standing there in my white tights and sparkling shoes, my gold lamé shorts, silk mask, and hair wig—”
What’s a hair wig? someone scribbled on the whiteboard. Nobody knew.
“—tossing beads to the lowly throngs, ten-deep between me and the blue wall of Porta-Potties, entire families with their Deuce McAllister jerseys, acid-dyed shorts, and eighteen-dollar haircuts, springing up from their lawn chairs, knocking over their hibachis, heads back, mouths open like baby sparrows, fingers grabbing at the air, hoping for a lucky throw.” He paused to marinate in the memory. “I know how Lindbergh must have felt.”
Eleanor’s boyfriend, Joe, had dropped by to take her to lunch. He entered during the tail end of Bucky’s monologue and was violently shushed.
When the call ended, the room exploded in victorious whoops.
“Bucky,” Eleanor explained to Joe. “You gotta love him.”
“Do I?”
A week later, the animators were huddled in Eleanor’s office.
“Your big three-oh is coming up, Mr. Lewis,” Bucky said from the speaker. “What are our plans?”
“Eleanor is throwing me a party at her place.”
“Your boss Eleanor?” A sniff could be heard from the speaker.
“Do you have a cold coming on?” Lester asked with a wink to the busting-a-gut animators.