The light that warned Johnny that the commercial was coming to an end so he could make it seem that they had all been talking the entire break came on, but Johnny didn’t notice. For once, they had been talking the entire break, rather than him going through his notes to prepare for the interview. Part of it was not having notes, of course, although he had them for the three people waiting in the wings. But much more importantly, he still couldn’t look away from the woman.
As the commercials ran, he tried to ask a few questions to prepare. He had been in a situation like this in the past and found that a few casual questions off the air and off the record could allow him to target what would make for the best interview when things went live. Before he got into comedy and the late-night game, he had made a name for himself in D.C. by getting things out of the politicians he could interview – the end of Representative Baxter could certainly be credited to his interview where the Congressman’s dalliances with high-end prostitutes came out, and he wouldn’t have been able to get there if they hadn’t talked about the quality of the local hotels before the interview began. Of course, that pretty much spelled the end of his political reporting since no one would have a friendly conversation with him anymore.
He’d felt like a waste of a degree at that point, as he transitioned to fluff stories about local celebrities. He had no idea that he had stumbled into his calling, and soon merged his talent for getting information and his talent for making people feel good about themselves and became the preferred contact for any D.C. area celeb looking to get some good coverage. When Guy Fieri opened a Bar and Grill near the stadium, he was there to eat wings and talk cars, becoming fast friends as they discussed Firebirds and Bel Airs. He met Mark Jenkins while the artist was working on the Storker Project, and nearly got himself arrested when he ran a bit of interference that allowed Mark to avoid the police looking to shut him down. That one was probably the key to everything else – he got a reputation for protecting artists and had kept it ever since.
The fan rapped his desk again, and he shook his head a bit to clear things. He realized he had been staring into her eyes while he was wool-gathering, and he was lucky she snapped him out of it before the show came back. The floor manager was already counting down, and the band was starting to play by the time he was fully back. Before the camera could pan back to them, Anastasia whispered, “Now Johnny, if you can’t focus better than that you’ll only be good as a boy toy, and I have bigger things in mind.” Johnny floundered for a moment trying to work out a comeback, but before he could the camera was back on them, and Anastasia was laughing at his discomfort.
Still unaware of anything beyond the stage, Johnny looked into the camera as he started his pre-interview patter. “Thank you all for sticking with us,” he said, “you will not regret it. For any of you who are just joining in, we have got a special show for you that you are going to love, and will probably cause you to seek out clips of what was before the break. Of course, the best place to find them is on the Tonight! website, which I’m sure everyone visits regularly, right?” He turned to Anastasia as the camera lights shifted, indicating it had moved from his closeup to the shot of them both. “Anastasia – beautiful name, but do you shorten it at all? Maybe Ana?”
The dark shadows from before returned, and her eyes grew cold and hard. “It’s Anastasia, every time,” she said, and Johnny felt a chill go through him. When she went dark before, it was aimed at the world, and the feeling of unease was spread between everyone watching. This time, it was concentrated on Johnny alone, and the unease was closer to terror and a feeling of complete failure. The weight of her anger at that question pushed down on him, and he could only nod and swallow the lump in his throat.
“Of course,” he said, forcing a smile. She smiled back, and the feeling left him, although simply thinking of calling her Ann, Ana, or Stacy was enough to have it stir in his mind. “Anastasia, you’ve told us that you are soon to be the supreme deity of the universe, in…”
Anastasia quickly jumped in, “68 minutes, Johnny.”
“68 minutes. Well, at least we’ll have time to get through the show,” he said as he grinned. Convenient that the deadline was after the show, rather than during, since it would be hard to spin the whole thing when nothing changes. However, as soon as he thought that, the feeling of terror crept back in again, and he asked himself if he really believed that nothing was going to occur. “We talked a bit before the break about this, but I think we need some elaboration on that. This seems to be a pretty specific timetable, but you’ve also said give or take a little bit. So where does the give or take come in?”
“That’s a great question, Johnny, but it relies on some background information we haven’t gotten to yet,” she replied, her entire demeanor shifting. Johnny had taken her as a typical celebrity, mostly concerned with her ego and promoting herself. But now, as she honed in on a topic, she seemed a lot closer to Rita in her passion for explaining things. “The fundamental answer is that everything is in position for the final failure of the Deist, and when that happens, the current era falls and the new one begins. I am confident that it is coming in about 68 minutes, as are the others who are watching along with me. The only thing that could stop it at this point would be the direct intervention of the Deist, but that in and of itself would constitute a failure under his rules, which would cause the regime change regardless. It also is incredibly unlikely, which means I am not concerned that it will happen sooner than that – no one is going to step in and stop it, so the only thing that matters is exactly what time the triggering event occurs. I believe that the Deist or your scientists would consider the margin for error to be due to quantum effects or some such.”
As Johnny attempted to parse this, he saw Anastasia smirking at him and realized that he did need a lot more background, and only had 68 minutes left to get it (60 if he only had until the end of the show). This is why he needed notes and background info, he thought. A good interview – at least a good celebrity interview – needed to be structured like a story that the audience could follow along with. No one watched a press conference with a bunch of people shouting out random questions, they waited until the journalists distilled everything into an understandable whole. He needed people watching live, so he had to do it himself. He was going to have to rely a lot more on her to direct this, or he’d end up losing a bunch of viewers.
Luckily for him, he was smooth enough to redirect this and make it work, if he did say so himself. “That makes sense,” he said, and Anastasia turned slightly away from the camera to cover almost laughing out loud. “But,” he continued, “most of our viewers won’t have gotten the background necessary for that yet, so we’ll circle back around to it later.” Anastasia had flipped her fan open and was waving it slightly as though she just wanted a small breeze. Johnny was the only one who could still get a clear look at her face, so the camera missed as she stuck her tongue out at him, which caused a few different feelings to swirl around for him. She snapped the fan back closed, and lowered it back to her chair.
“Good point,” she said. “Once we’ve laid the background you can explain everything to the people at home.” The voice was playful, and the light stayed bright, so Johnny assumed she was fine with his lie, but also wanted to torture him nicely for just a bit. It felt like a good time to move things forward and let Alison stop pacing in the wings.
“Definitely,” he told her, as he gave the hand signal that indicated the camera should focus back on him. “Before we get there, though, I know a lot of you were looking forward to some of our other guests tonight, and Tonight! would never want to disappoint. We’re going to do something a little unusual on the show here, and we’re going to bring everyone out and change this to a bit of a round table discussion.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Alison said something to Rafe, then ducked out of view. Knowing her, Johnny thought, she had a plan – if he could make it to the next commercial segment, they could probably implement it. Stretch out the intros for the guests a touch, let them all have a few words with Anastasia, and it should be enough time.
“With no further ado, then, we’re going to bring them on out. Our next guest is –” he cut off there, and pivoted as he saw who was walking towards the stage, “musician and psychedelic evangelist Rafael Costa!” Johnny had no idea why Rafe was coming up first, but that must have been what Alison had been saying to him before she disappeared. He’d normally be last, and might not even make it to the couch if Danny had gone long. Nice enough guy, sure, but he pushed a bit too hard on the wonders of psilocybin, and his music was a little too niche. The guy was here to push an album of Samba music where he played a dozen different instruments called “Samba Agogô”, although the copy he had put some hyphens in there to break up the instrument name into something more like the night club. If the guy hadn’t dated Eiza González for a while, he’d probably still be playing music and tripping down in Brazil.
Rafe crossed the stage, waving to the crowd. Johnny watched the crowd watching him and found that the vast majority kept on staring at Anastasia rather than his intro walk. There were a few out there that were able to focus on him, but they were mostly younger women who would be more likely to know who he was, or at least recognize a good display of beefcake when they saw it. Rafe reached Johnny’s desk as Johnny stood on cue, his long experience watching various gaits letting him rise at precisely the right moment to reach out and shake his hand. Rafe flashed a smile at Johnny, his handshake firm and dry, which Johnny appreciated. The musician took a few steps towards Anastasia and bowed deeply before her. She lifted her hand and held it out to him and as he rose back up, he paused long enough to gently rest her hand in his and softly kiss the knuckles. He said something in Portuguese that Johnny didn’t catch, and Anastasia answered in the same language. Rafe laughed and brushed his hair back from his face, then sat on the couch next to Anastasia. She looked over at Johnny, the camera following, and said, “You’ve got some competition over here, Johnny, if you’re still looking to play some Johnnyball later on.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said, “I’m the best there is at Johnnyball.” Anastasia gave him a cat-in-the-cream smile, as Johnny focused on Rafe. “Rafael, I’m a huge fan, and I’m so glad we’re finally able to get you on the show.”
Rafe smiled back, and said, “Please, Johnny, call me Rafe. And thank you so much for having me – it has been somewhat of a dream of mine for many years.”
“Hopefully the first of many appearances.” Johnny got the charm, now. The man oozed charisma when up close. He had the kind of magnetism that didn’t necessarily lead to legions of fans, but the fans that did end up with him would be his forever. “I know you were going to perform something from your new album here tonight, but I think we’re going to put that off ‘til your next visit if that’s OK with you?”
As Rafe began a reply, Anastasia cut in. “Tall, dark, and handsome, plus a rock star? Oh, my,” she said, as she raised the fan again and flipped it open, rapidly moving it back and forth. The cooling it created seemed to be unimportant compared to the way it directed her perfume to the two men on either side. Johnny was entranced again and needed everything he had to keep his mouth from dropping open. He hoped that he had gotten a bigger whiff than Rafe when he saw that the man was able to keep it together and reply.
“I would not say rock star, Anjo, except perhaps in a metaphorical sense.” Darkness gathered around Anastasia again, her eyes flashing red. Rafe must have understood quickly as he continued. “Anastasia, I am more a seeker of experience. Whether that be through music, mushrooms, or making love, I intend to squeeze the most out of this life. My current album is a look into the musical traditions of Brazil, as well as an exploration of some of the instruments that have been the basis of that tradition. I sought out and learned to play a number of different instruments in this pursuit, from the stringed berimbau to the agogô bells that give the album its name.”
Anastasia leaned in close to the musician, and Johnny felt a surge of jealousy. He forced it back down, making himself question why he would be jealous of a man he’d never met over a woman he’d barely met. Anastasia said, “Mmm, rock and roll is more a state of being than a musical style, so I think rock star applies.” She had collapsed the fan again, reaching out to lightly drag it across his jawline, down to his chest before stopping as it caught on his shirt. Johnny watched as Rafe tensed like the fan held an electric current, and the man’s mouth hung slightly agape as he tried to focus on Anastasia. She smiled at the reaction and said, “You’ll have to teach me more about these mushrooms a bit later. Not quite as powerful as you may have thought, but we can work on that.” Rafe could only nod, as he sank back into the couch, unable to find any words.
Johnny paused momentarily – he wanted to show Rafe flailing a bit, although he didn’t know why. He was still a TV professional, in the end, and cut it off before it went from slightly awkward to truly bad television. “We’ll let you relax for a minute there, Rafe, and bring out our next guest,” Johnny said as he quickly glanced at the wings, verifying that it was Rita waiting to cross next. If they were going to bring out the third string first, it made sense that they saved the big star for last, and he was glad that he and Alison could at least come together on that. “She is one of my favorite guests,” Johnny lied, knowing she was necessary but hating how the woman was always just a little bit smug about what she knew and what he didn’t. “I know she’s one of yours, too, so can we get a big hand for our resident science communicator, Rita Johannsen!”
Rita stepped onto the stage, 5’3” with her four-inch heels and perfectly sculpted afro, her cocoa brown skin reflecting the stage lights to make her glow radiantly. She waved to her fans as she strode across the stage, although she started to falter a bit as the cheers didn’t come. Polite applause, with the occasional bit of enthusiasm, but nothing like a normal appearance. She looked toward the couch and stumbled as she saw Anastasia looking her up and down and finding her wanting. For the first time in a decade, she felt inadequate – the mere presence of the woman attacked her personally and professionally. She felt small, ugly, and woefully misinformed about the world, and every step closer to the woman drilled that in. She hadn’t felt ugly since she was a teen fighting to be recognized for her intelligence and bullied over it to the point she accepted that there must be something wrong with her. She hadn’t felt this wrong since she had left the church as a child, when she couldn’t reconcile what they kept telling her and what she could see was true.
She wasn’t sure she could make it through, so she forced herself to look away from the woman and focus on something else. She saw Rafe, who she had been having such a great time with backstage before this whole thing went south, staring at Anastasia like she really was a Goddess, and felt a touch of righteous anger. She saw Johnny, who never wanted her on the show in the first place but recognized her as a ratings boost, looking at the woman with unbridled desire for either her or the ratings she’d bring, possibly both. She took that core of anger, put on her best smile, and kept walking.
“Darling!” Anastasia said as she got to the desk before Johnny could say a thing. She leaned forward in her chair, raising just a touch to be at the same height as Rita was, and leaned in. She kissed Rita on the cheek, and while she did, they were momentarily hidden from the cameras by Anastasia’s oversized fascinator. The kiss sent an electric surge through Rita, and she barely held on as Anastasia whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, beautiful, you’ll be fine. Stick with me, and you’ll learn a whole new world to show everyone.” Rita was shocked, both by the kiss and the words, and couldn’t come up with a thing to say as Johnny finally pulled himself together.
“Rita, great to have you back, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.” Rita looked over at Johnny, still trying to process what Anastasia was doing to her. The best she could do was nod as she tried a few calming breaths. “If anyone can figure out how to translate what Anastasia here is trying to tell us into something all our viewers can understand, it’ll be you. It certainly won’t be me,” he said with a smile, self-deprecation another tool he used to make his guests feel at ease.
Rita knew what he was doing, and was grateful for it this time. She found her voice, and said, “Anything for you and your wonderful viewers, sugar.” Anastasia had sat back down and gave her a wink with the eye that was shielded from the cameras. Rita felt sturdier, like everything had been set straight and she was once again the smartest person in the room. Anastasia was wonderful, clearly, but she needed help with the more cerebral aspects of things, and that’s where she came in. “As I’ve said before, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we’ve got one heck of an extraordinary claim on our hands here tonight, right?” She got a response from the audience for the first time, a few chuckles and some agreement, and she leaned into it. “While our lovely Anastasia here,” she gestured at the woman as she moved to the seat beside Rafe, and Anastasia nodded with a smile, “is clearly a force to be reckoned with, she’s claiming not only that there is a supreme being, but that she is about to take that role. The first is a claim we’ve previously dealt with, although the second is new to me.”
“Darling,” Anastasia said, focusing on Rita. “You are not quite there, but we’ll get it. Your current knowledge is correct enough – there are certainly things that you have wrong, but the fundamentals are mostly there. Your problem is that everything you know is about to be upended.”
“Well, that remains to be seen,” Rita replied. “That’s definitely one of those extraordinary claims.”
Anastasia’s laugh was clear and musical, and the men on the stage chuckled along with her. “Touché, lovely Rita, touché. You’ll have your evidence soon enough – about 63 minutes left.”
Johnny jumped back in, trying to regain a semblance of control. “We’re all looking forward to it, Anastasia, and I for one am confident that anything you bring to the table will be extraordinary.” Two laughs came back at that – another musical one from Anastasia, and a skeptical snort from Rita. Johnny was annoyed at her again, getting in between him and Anastasia. Time to move on to his friend and one of the biggest stars in the world, Danny Flynn. He glanced at the wings and saw Danny there, although he looked in a daze. Come on, Danny Boy, he thought. Now is not the time to fall apart.
“And our final guest of the night, one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet, star of screens both small and large, Danny Flynn!” It took him a moment to realize that Danny wasn’t moving, and the band wasn’t playing. He began to applaud, getting a lot of the audience to join in, while he tried to catch Weston’s eye to get the band to play. Weston was staring at Anastasia, which made it easy enough for Johnny to get in the sightline. As soon as he did, Winston seemed to wake up, and began to play the Oh, Danny Boy theme song, an amped-up riff on “Londonderry Air”. At the same time, Johnny saw Alison’s arm snake out from behind the curtain and give Danny a gentle push. Danny caught on quickly enough and stumbled onto the stage.
Danny looked down at his feet as he reeled across the stage, barely keeping from falling before looking around at the audience. He got the reaction he wanted, the audience eating up the gag of the drunken Danny Boy managing to stumble his way into success. He’d honed this persona for decades, since he first began to drink in high school. Being drunk was a lot more fun than drinking, he realized, and acting drunk was every bit as much fun. The person who got blind drunk was fun at parties until they passed out and became the person who was the butt of the jokes. But the person who seemed blind drunk, while having a slight buzz at the most, was the life of the party without falling into the role of the clown.
He’d become a master of faking a long pull from a bottle – drinking a touch of whiskey while blowing into the bottle worked, as those watching saw the bubbles going into the bottle and thought it was the pressure equalizing. Not as easy as it seemed, as the first few times he tried it he embarrassed himself. The first was because it was clear this little 14-year-old freshman was just pretending. No bubbles, his mouth was still closed, obvious to everyone. When he figured out the bubbles were a dead giveaway, he tried to introduce them to the bottle, and it turned out even worse. Who knew pressurizing the bottle would cause the whiskey to shoot out when he broke the seal as he lowered the bottle back down? But by the time he figured it out, he could sit in the group, pretending to drink more than everyone else, while in the end only getting a few swallows. He used it to hustle pool, win fights, and hit on girls, but he soon found it was best at getting laughs.
Everyone laughed at the drunk guy. The guy who stumbled over his own feet, who used the wrong words at the wrong time (but the right wrong words, you dig?), who truly does dance like there’s no one watching – that guy got the laughs. Ultimately, Danny wasn’t athletic, wasn’t particularly smart, wasn’t effortlessly cool, but he was funny. And he’d taken that ability to be funny to become one of the biggest stars on the planet. He was the star of the biggest comedy on TV and was about to release a remake of Brannigan which would make him into an action hero. He’d personally overseen the editing of it, and he had taken what was originally a pretty pedestrian cop movie and turned it into the funniest action film since Beverly Hills Cop. Eat your heart out, Eddie.
With the applause from the drunken stumble, he was in his element. He didn’t realize just how much of it was coming from the machine rather than the audience and spent a lot of time waving to people who were looking to get back to Anastasia. He was starting to feel it as he got next to the desk, but Johnny was on his feet, beaming and holding his arms out. Danny ran up and lifted Johnny in a bear hug, twirling him around and setting him down fast enough to hide that Johnny was a couple of inches taller than him. The guests remained seated, which threw him for a moment. He was moving to slide in next to Johhny, his usual spot in the chair instead of the couch, but Anastasia gave no indication she was moving. He wasn’t entirely sure what was going on – just looking at her was as good as actually downing a fifth of whiskey – but he recognized this was going to be about her and gave up on the chair idea. But when he looked next to her, he saw that stupid musician sitting there staring back at him. He gave the guy a look, putting as much ‘do you know who I am’ into it as he could, and Rafe replied by staring back, giving a slight shrug, and settling deeper into the couch.
The music was running out, even as Weston added in another flourish to get it to cover the seating drama. Rita looked back and forth between the two, her eyes going wide as she felt a fundamental shift going on. For a moment, she thought Danny Boy was going to try to manhandle Rafe out of the seat next to Anastasia, and that wouldn’t go well for the little man. Hell, she thought, she could probably take him now that she was having a look close up. Rafe stared back, and Rita was amazed at his fortitude, pushing back at the star on his best friend’s show. She had no idea if this was Rafe’s normal attitude, or if Anastasia was pushing him to something, but either way, she found new respect for them both.
The music had died out, and as the two men continued to stare at each other, Anastasia broke the tension. “A domination fight here, over little old me?” She batted her eyes at the statement, then swatted out at Danny’s ass with the fan, eliciting a yelp and sending him scurrying to the end of the couch. “We’ll have plenty of time for that, later,” she said, “so sit down and mind your manners.” Johnny was taken aback at this – how could she say that to him? Rafe was fine, but at best he was a minor celebrity from South America, while Danny was a bona fide star. Did she not know how any of this worked?
“Danny Flynn, everyone!” Johnny said, giving his friend a distraction to try to save face. “As the star of the biggest comedy on TV, no introduction is needed. Great to have you back, man! Please, have a seat so we can take care of what we’ve got going on here tonight, then we can discuss Brannigan and what else you have going on.”
Danny nodded, seeing an out to sit on the couch, knowing Johnny would get him moved over during a commercial break. “Love being here, as always, Johnny,” he said, trying to unleash his standard charm, and finding it harder than it had been in years. “Rita, I love your work. I have no idea what you actually do, I just love watching you do it.” Rita swallowed a retort, recognizing he was looking for something to fight against, and deciding not to give it to him. She had the distinct feeling things were about to go poorly for the man, and she was here for it.
“And Rafael, a pleasure. I hear your album is a hit on the South American alternative Latin regional rhythm airplay charts, which I’m sure makes you quite proud.” He saw that hit a nerve, as Rita rested a hand on Rafe’s shoulder to keep him from standing up. “Maybe we’ll see if Brannigan can travel to Brazil for the sequel and we can put one of them on the soundtrack.”
He turned to Anastasia, rapidly running through the various negging comments he would use in the situation. She was still turned towards Johnny, her long legs stretching in his direction, and the fascinator blocking his view of her face. She must have felt his look, as she turned to look over her shoulder, the one eye clear of her hat locking on his. He swallowed hard, all thoughts of an appropriate backhanded compliment fleeing from his head, and he could only say in a croaking voice, “Goddess.”
