Heaven’s Gate
27 Next Gen
Dinner was a success. I capped it off with banana splits and from the response, I probably could have just skipped the rest of the meal. “I’m going to talk to my director about doing a show that is all about fixing ice cream desserts. You really don’t need to cook anything else,” Reese said.
“I’m sure your director will be enthused since we don’t currently have a kitchen in the new studio,” I said. “See if you can develop a whole season without cooking.”
“Oh no! Am I going to have a job?” she asked. She looked really worried.
“Don’t worry. You’ve got great ratings. We might have to do your section remote from our kitchen here, but you will definitely be on the air,” Rose said.
“You know what we could do?” I suggested. “We could split the shows again and put Reese on as the morning show. Then we’d have the third show Armand wants.”
“Let’s table that discussion for a production meeting and not overwhelm our guests,” Rose laughed.
“You guys are awesome!” Reese said.
“Well, let’s talk a little about life here at the ranch and where you all see yourselves fitting in. So far, I’ve heard only good things,” I said.
“Well, things are changing, Brian,” April said. “The new apartment building in the village is almost finished. I’ve reserved a one-bedroom apartment and as soon as it’s ready, I’ll be moving out of the dorm at last.”
“I can certainly understand that. When Dawn moved out and Maggie moved out, you became the oldest surviving dorm resident. I’m glad you have your own space and that you will still be in the village,” I said.
“Warren and Adam were here most of the past season,” Rose said. “But they’ve also rented an apartment in the new building. I’m worried now that we are leaving the dorms completely unsupervised!” Her fake shock got everyone laughing with calls of ‘No parents!’
“Um… I guess I’m moving out, too,” TK said. That about knocked me off my feet.
“TK? What’s up?”
“Well, my sorority sisters have seen fit to elect me president for next year. I’ve moved most of my stuff over to Gamma House,” TK said. “But I still consider the ranch my home and expect I’ll be back after graduation. All I’ll need is to find two or three guys who want to share me full time. And maybe another girl.”
“Slut,” Amber said. “I don’t understand why the sisters elected you president. And I got beat as pledge mistress. I guess that means I’m staying.”
“It’s because you’re staying that you didn’t get elected. You have a job,” TK said.
“And I love it,” Amber confirmed. “I don’t want to displace Elaine, but I’d like to have my own show eventually. I have a couple ideas that I want to float by the producers.”
“The only thing standing in our way is making sure not to overextend ourselves or invest in CEN so heavily that we can’t recover if they go belly up,” I said. “How about the rest of you seniors? Guys?”
“We’ve talked a little,” Rich said. “Living here has been about like being in a fraternity, only the sorority next door is a lot closer. We like it here, especially since we put the dividers up in the dorm so we had a little more privacy. The three of us will probably have to figure out what to do after graduation, but I’m considering becoming one of TK’s sharecroppers.” That got a lot of laughs, but TK got up and kissed him.
“Senior women?” I asked.
“Amber and I both have spent a lot of time over at the Cortales house,” Judy said. “But we know we live here. Mama Lil and Papa Sly have really stepped in as kind of surrogate parents when we needed them and we really love them. But their house is not ours. We’re resident here in the dorm at least this year. I might stay put next year if I go on for my master’s in Criminal Justice. All I know for sure is that I never want to leave the ranch and our family, even if I never become a member of a casa.”
“Don’t forget, Judy, you are a member of Casa de la Tierra. I know their house is too small for the other three of you, but you have family here and we all love you.”
“Thank you, Patrón. I love you.”
“Maybe I’ll finally find a boyfriend this year,” Nancy sighed. “Pam managed. It can’t be that hard. But for right now, I’m just staying where I am. I love our dorm and I miss the sisters who have moved out.”
“Since we won’t be traveling as much next season, we can have sleepovers at my apartment,” April said. “I do miss cuddling with you.” Nancy blushed. Hmm.
“Pam?” Rose said. “You’ve been mysteriously silent.”
“I don’t want anyone to leave! I like our sorority and our neighboring fraternity. I’m trying to recruit new members,” she said.
“And what’s your success on that?” I asked.
“We’re having pledge summer,” Pam said. “So far we have Bob, Eric, Brett, Laurie, and Reese. We probably need a couple more girls to keep the guys on their toes.”
“And what have you decided to call your casa?” I asked. Reese giggled. Pam glared at her.
“Not yet,” Pam said. “I’m working on it.”
“So, can I assume you five have all pledged Pam’s little sorority/fraternity?” I laughed.
“I like it out here, Patrón,” Bob said. “I know I got invited because I was dating Pam, but I’m also employed by Designed by Leonard. I love being this close to work and want to stay with the company. Even if Pam and I don’t stay together—and we’ve talked about that possibility—I’d still like to live here. I’d like to become part of the clan.” I nodded at him. Rose pointed at Brett.
“We three have abided by the agreement for the past two years. We had a couple other members of our dating group who decided to split off and not be a part of it, but the three of us have held together. I guess it’s a little odd that we formed a dating group since we don’t usually date each other. We do a lot of other stuff together, though. We were all three involved in the theater group at SJV.”
“Hmm. What do you guys think about being part of the larger clan and staying at the ranch?”
“It seems just a little isolated,” Eric said. “I’m worried that I’ll miss part of the fun of being in college if I don’t live on campus. I know we are living in a dorm upstairs, but there’s only fourteen of us. Today. I guess there’d only be a dozen by fall. Compared to a couple hundred in a campus dormitory, it just seems light weight. I pledge to abide by the terms of the agreement because I believe in them. I’d love to keep up with you all, but I don’t think I want to live here this fall. Is it okay to still be part of the clan?”
“Of course it is,” Rose said. “We don’t exclude people because of proximity. Nikki was at Brown. Geoff, Kevin, and Robyn were in Washington for four years. Sarah was at Oberlin. Sora and Tim are down in Scottsburg. Location does not mean you aren’t part of the group.”
“That’s a real relief,” Eric said.
“For me, too,” Laurie said. “But for a different reason. I’d like to stay here at the ranch and be part of our little group. I was just afraid that when Eric went to campus, I would be sort of odd woman out and not be welcome.”
“You are more than welcome, Laurie,” I said. “In fact, I grudgingly like what Pam’s been doing recruiting you guys. I’d miss having people in the dorm.”
“We haven’t agreed to dorm crawls,” Pam whispered. I felt my face flush. “But we might.”
“Um… Reese, what is your status? Are you planning to go to school in the fall?” I asked.
“Not exactly. I plan to take some more cooking classes, but it sort of depends on what the show schedule is and whether I can work them in. My first priority is Young Cooking. And like Bob, I love the fact that I’m close to work. Or at least to other people who are going to the same job. I guess we won’t be so close to the studio in Indianapolis.”
“Will you get permission to live out here?”
“I turn eighteen in two weeks. My dad and I have talked about this a lot. I don’t know if you knew or not, but my mom died of cancer before I started school. Dad’s always put me first and I’ve learned to trust him. He suggested I stay out here for the summer and then decide if I want to live here. We’ll talk again before the fall season starts, but I’m pretty sure that I’d like to not only work here, but to be part of the clan,” Reese said.
“Let’s do this,” Rose said. “Make the most of all living here for the rest of the summer. Believe it or not, classes start at IU in just five weeks. We’ll meet in four and talk about how everyone is feeling. Take part in everything on the ranch that you can in the next month. Get to know everyone you can, not only on the ranch, but in the whole village. If you all want to stay, we’ll survey the rest of the clan and have a bonfire Labor Day weekend to officially adopt you.”
I stopped long enough in the studio Saturday morning the twenty-ninth to say happy birthday to Reese. Then Whitney and I took off. She had planned to take a bus, but I’m on vacation! She liked the comfort of my Chrysler. It had enough room in front that she could stretch her legs. The only real downside of this car was the bucket seats. I missed having my cónyuge cuddled up next to me.
We drove to St. Louis and checked into a cheap motel. It was clean and had a king-size bed. When your girlfriend is 6'3", it helps to have a big bed. We didn’t tumble right into it, though. We were early enough that we could go up in the arch. It’s pretty cool, but I had to wonder how much McDonald’s paid them.
Sunday, we got tickets to watch the Cardinals play the Blue Jays. It was fun just to watch the game and not actually have a team we cared about. I don’t even remember who won. We gorged on ballpark food and couldn’t face going out for ribs. Instead we went back and made love.
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” she whispered.
“You aren’t going to. We don’t do goodbye fucks, remember? This is just to hold us for a while until we get back together,” I said.
“It’s going to be so hard this time. I don’t know where I’ll be or for how long. I’ll be introduced to my new platoon and they’ll get an opportunity to teach me how an officer should really behave. I should get a week leave before we’re sent to our station. Or I could end up at another base for a month or three just to keep preparing to be the proud, the few. It could be a year or two before I get back home.”
“If there is any way possible, I’ll come to visit you. Just please don’t make me face you in combat someplace. You’re just going to keep getting better and stronger. I’m as good as I’ll ever be. You are my master again. I love you, Master Whitney.”
“Then lie on your back and grip your staff. I plan to beat it until it goes limp,” she grinned.
She did, but it took a couple of hours.
I dropped her at Fort Leonard Wood before noon. We got one last kiss and then she was on base and I wasn’t. I turned and headed home. I got home about seven.
There were hours of meetings about the new season. We had so much to hash out that I thought we might as well take the rest of the year off before we started actually broadcasting. The new studio was located on the south side of Indy, so if we caught it correctly, it was a little more than an hour commute each way. If we hit traffic or road construction, it could be longer. Still, spending two and a half hours commuting each day would beat the hell out of being gone four or five days a week.
Barbara was going crazy with audience development. She’d placed ads in several teen magazines as well as on campuses around Indiana. I was amazed to find out that there were fifty colleges, universities, and institutions of higher learning in Indiana. Of course, they included some pretty conservative religious schools that only had a few dozen students and some would only marginally qualify as higher learning. But still, there were four state schools—IU, Purdue, Indiana State, and Ball State. There was that other pretty major university, Notre Dame. IU/Purdue had eight joint regional campuses. The research Barbara and Sarah put together was astounding. I was getting even more data for my thesis and changed my outline again before I submitted it to Dr. Z. I wasn’t going to get it written this summer and he set an appointment for me to see him the first week of school.
Our biggest developments were the addition of two additional shows. First, we made the decision to split Young Cooking into a separate show and hit the nine o’clock timeslot with reruns following Chick Chat in the afternoon. The show would be broadcast from our studio at the ranch. We simply weren’t up to investing in a huge kitchen set at the CEN studio. And everything was there and ready to tape. We just needed a staff. That was Hannah’s problem for now.
My problem was the new show Fashion Week. It would air weekly in the half-hour timeslot following Redress. Trust Pam to come up with the concept. We were doing all our brainstorming and planning in the studio and invited everyone on the ranch to just drop in and listen or participate at any time. The whole dormitory crowd had stumbled into our meeting Thursday morning. We were getting an early start and had actually made breakfast in the studio kitchen before the meeting started. I think that drew the dorm crowd down and we just kept pumping out pancakes and bacon as everyone sat around talking. Reese bumped me out of the way and took over scrambling eggs so I could sit with a cup of coffee. And the topic was what are we going to do to satisfy the need for another weekly show.
“Why not do a show of the best and worst of fashion this week?” Pam said after a quick consultation with her brother and boyfriend.
“Keep talking,” I said. “It’s all about ideas right now.”
“Well, we’ve got Leonard, not just Heaven. Granted, we’ve all got another year of school left and a different business to run, but if we could get some resources together, we could collect material from the news and critique what people are wearing. Maybe Leonard could do some quick modifications that would make something ugly look good,” Pam said.
“I don’t know if we could impose on Leonard that much, but I like the idea,” Rose said. “Let’s put it on the board.”
By Friday night, the senior staff of Designed by Leonard had put a proposal together and presented it to the programming group. Jennifer put some marketing language to it and a slideshow that she could actually project off her computer. Courtney worked with Sandy to do some amazing things with computer graphics. The slideshow even included a quick video clip that they put together showing the concept. Leonard would be the professional consultant, but not the host of the show. Instead, Amber had been drafted as the host. Pam and Nancy would act as models for the fashions and give a counterpoint to Amber’s witty criticisms. Then Leonard would work a little magic to turn the two girls’ fashion choice into something that was truly attractive. Armand loved it.
I liked it because it was one more show we could produce in our studio with limited resources and no audience. I was beginning to like Armand and even to trust him, but I didn’t want all our eggs in one basket.
Fall term began on Monday the twenty-first. All five of the new people wanted to join the clan, but Eric still wanted to live on campus. He moved into his new dorm right after orientation on Friday. The clan approved their adoption and we set Saturday the second of September for a celebratory bonfire and adoption.
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