"That was fun," I said sarcastically. I laughed dryly.
"Big, big fun," Letterman said, and the audience laughed.
"Oh Jesus God, let him see you're being sarcastic and dry," my husband said.
Paul Shaffer did a go-figure with his hands in response to something Letterman asked him.
David Letterman had a tiny label affixed to his cheek (he did have freckles); the label said MAKE-UP. This was left over from an earlier joke, during his monolog, when he had returned from a commercial break with absolutely everything about him labeled. The sputtering fountain between us and the footlights was overhung with a crudely lettered arrow: DANCING WATERS.
"So then, Susan, any truth to the rumor linking that crazy thing over at your husband's network and the sort of secondary rumors?..." He looked from his index card to Shaffer. "Gee, you know, Paul, it says 'secondary rumors' here; is it OK to go ahead and call them secondary rumors? What does that mean, anyway, Paul--'secondary rumors'?"
"We in the band believe it could mean any of...really, any of hundreds of things, Dave," Shaffer said, smiling. I smiled. People laughed.
The voice of Dick came over the air into my ear: "Say yes." I imagined a wall of angles of me, the wound in Dick's head and the transmitting thing at the wound, my husband seated with his legs crossed and his arm along the back of wherever he was. "...secondary or not, about your fine comedy program moving over to that other, unnamed network?"
I cleared my throat. "Absolutely every rumor about my husband is true." The audience laughed. Letterman said, "Ha, ha." The audience laughed even harder.
"As for me," I smoothed my skirt in that way prim women do, "I know next to nothing, David, about the production or business of the show. I am a woman who acts."
"And, you know, wouldn't that look terrific emblazoned on the T-shirts of women everywhere?" Letterman asked, fingering his tiepin's label.
"And was it ever a crazy thing over at his network, Dave, from what I heard," said Reese, the NBC Sports coordinator, on my other side, in another of these chairs that seemed somehow disemboweled. Around his distinguished eyes were two little raccoon rings of soot, from his hobby's explosion.
My husband told me to prepare for direction.
"In fact," I said, "I'm not even all that talented or multifaceted an actress."
David Letterman was inviting the audience, whom he again called ladies and gentlemen (which I liked), to imagine I AM A WOMAN WHO ACTS emblazoned on a shirt.
"That's why I'm doing those commercials you're seeing all the time now," I said primly.
"Well, and now hey, I wanted to ask you about that, Susan," Letterman said. "Let's see," he rubbed his chin, "is there, maybe, any way we could indicate to the folks at home what they're commercials for without quite hitting the nail right on the head, I'm wondering."
"Sure," I smiled. "Oreo."
Letterman and the audience laughed. Paul Shaffer laughed. My husband's electric voice crackled approvingly. I could also hear Dick laughing in the background; his laugh did sound deadpan.
"That would about do it," Letterman grinned. He threw his index card out a pretend window behind us. There was a clearly false sound of breaking glass.
The man seemed utterly friendly.
My husband transmitted something I couldn't make out because Letterman had put his hands behind his head with its helmet of hair and was saying, "So then I guess why is the thing, Susan. I mean I know about the dollars, the big, big dollars over there in, ah, prime time. They scribble vague hints, allusions, really, is all, they're such big dollars, about prime-time salaries in the washroom here at NBC. They're amounts that get discussed only in low tones. Here you are," he said, "you've had, what, three fine comedy series? You've got a series that's been on now, what, three years? Four years? You've got a daughter who's done several fine films and who's currently in a series, you've got a husband who develops series...."
