53
FOR SALE:
ONE SLIGHTLY USED KIDNEY.
Kathleen sounded a bit iffy at first. You could hardly blame her. Here was Laird MacAdam trying to sell her an interior design show. Believe me, Laird was hardly a guy you’d want to take decorating tips from—unless you really went for that black-walls-and-leftover-pizza look he seemed to like.
But it was the only way my plan would work. If Kathleen bought the series idea, she wouldn’t just hand over a whack of cash. She’d write a check. So I had to get her to make it out to Laird so we could pay him for the new puppet double.
That meant Bitsie had to pretend he was Laird.
With a decorating idea.
Sure, it was a bit of a stretch, but we had no other choice—unless I wanted to sell a kidney, of course.72
I knew right away Kathleen was interested. “Obsessive-Compulsive Home” was perfect for her and all those other people out there whose coat hangers have to match their bedspreads. But she was hesitating. I thought maybe she didn’t have the money, so I got Bitsie to say that normally he’d charge $5000 for a series idea, but for this weekend only he was offering it at the bargain-basement price of just $2036.42!
I really thought she was going to go for it this time, but then she said, “Laird, I’m sorry. I’m really interested in your idea but I don’t know if I can make a decision right now. I’m too distracted. I haven’t seen Telly all weekend.”
She noticed. I was so happy.
On second thought, she noticed! I was in trouble!
Kathleen was really blabbing away now. “I had a very, ahhhhh, ‘stressful’ day Friday73 so I slept a lot this weekend.
I thought maybe Telly just went to bed after me and got up before me. She’s very independent, you know. Very responsible. But now I’m starting to worry. Her bed doesn’t look slept in. I wonder if I should call the police.”
The police!!!!
I shook my head wildly, and Bitsie said, “No, no. I wouldn’t do that because…” then there was this really long pause while I scribbled down what to say next, “because I just saw Telly half an hour ago! She was staying with Zola this weekend and they came in to get some work done on Bitsie. In fact, she was the one who told me you were looking for ideas for a new series.”
Kathleen was so relieved she bought the idea on the spot.
I turned off the cell phone and smiled at Bitsie. How long since I’d done that?
72 My parents were always pretty reasonable with me, but I figured they’d draw the line at me selling my organs.
73 No kidding.