Heaven’s Gate
56 Just an Idea
It was hard to believe that we were already approaching a new season of our various shows. Since Labor Day wasn’t until the seventh, we were on the same schedule as kids returning to school. Except we didn’t have kids returning to school. That’s not to say none of the clan was continuing to take classes, but no one was full time. Josh began his first class toward a dPT degree. Nikki was teaching a creative writing class. Rose was debating whether or not to continue with a PhD, but was torn because she didn’t feel it was necessary for business and was impractical to get it in English Literature.
Courtney, of course, was teaching a full load, which amounted to three classes in programming online applications. I had no idea what that meant, but it had to do with the World Wide Web. We already had a pretty good presence for Hearthstone Entertainment and Courtney’s company managed our online presence as well as CEN’s. I never imagined that my courtesan who liked to have her bottom spanked—and fucked—would be such a dynamo in the computer software business. It looked like the deal for the consumer aspect of her video editing software would go through and she was going to be several times over a millionaire. And she still wanted me to play with her butt.
Sam was expanding her role as a producer and was actively shopping for another show concept. Her assistant, Leah, was taking over more of the onsite responsibility for XX/XY. Hannah was going in to IU about three times a month as an adjunct professor in several media classes. Jennifer had a staff of marketing people and they were now all officially employed by CEN. Her group was responsible for advertising and promoting the shows and for getting advertisers for commercial air time. She actually had the title of Vice President of Marketing.
Angela had been home briefly in August before taking off to begin her last year of residency. She’d aged a bit. Training to be a doctor was stressful. She still looked good naked, though!
Nikki had emerged from the Writer’s Cottage with a new book draft and started the writing teams working on new material. Mary, of course, had her work cut out for her as the producer for Young Cooking with Chef Reese. It was more work than being the kitchen manager and we had her hire an assistant immediately. Cassie often had both babies in the morning, but she took over the home schooling of our clan kids in the afternoon and Mary cared for the babies.
I continued to work with all the kids while I talked in the morning and taught them to cook. That meant that I was fixing a wider variety of things than just breakfast, so the kids could learn more than how to make bacon, eggs, and bread. We were having some pretty interesting breakfasts. After the cooking lesson, we went to the Sacred Space for exercises. Judy was my official co-teacher and led things when I was out of town.
Dani, Xan, and I all went over to the Woods’ house Friday night September 18 to celebrate George’s twenty-sixth birthday. He and Dani’s sisters had just gotten back. Bart and Sylvia were waiting for all of us with dinner ready.
“So, how’s work at the still, George?” I asked. He frowned at me.
“It’s just temporary. I’m helping out for a while before I start my PhD,” he said. “Besides, these two have decided to open a café next door. I’ll end up being down there half the time anyway.”
“Aw. Poor baby,” Dolly said. “Don’t we make it worth your time to be there?”
“Of course you do,” George smiled. “I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
“Well, you’re tall enough,” Bart laughed, “but you need to put on some weight.”
We had a fun meal, with a lot of joking and teasing. George still blushed pretty easily. Even Dani got into teasing him about maybe trading places with one of her sisters and seeing if either George or I noticed. Oh, I’d notice all right. I might not say anything though. I glanced at Debbie and waggled my eyebrows at her. She blushed.
Bart handed around glasses of his best bourbon for a toast to George’s birthday. We raised our glasses and then I took a nice sip of the liquor. I’d actually grown to like the stuff. Debbie and Dolly put their glasses down untouched.
“You girls okay?” Bart asked. “You haven’t turned down a glass since your twenty-first birthday.”
“Well…”
“You see…”
“We think…”
“We might be…”
“Well, actually, we are…”
“Pregnant.”
George, Bart, and Sylvia all choked on their drinks. I didn’t have any in my mouth and Dani was grinning at her sisters.
“Pregnant?” George squeaked.
“Well, you said you’d like to knock us both up,” Debbie said.
“We decided to give that to you for a birthday present,” Dolly added.
“But we got started a little soon this summer.”
“We’re due in March.”
“Well, George,” I said. “It looks like you get two-thirds of the still.”
Bart started laughing so hard I thought he was going to have a stroke. Sylvia patted him on the back until he settled down.
“And here we bought a house in Corazón,” Bart finally choked out.
“Oh, we still plan to live here,” Dolly said. “We want our babies to know their cousin while they’re growing up. As soon as the café is up and running independently, we’re coming back so George can finish his PhD.”
“Well, partners,” Bart said grinning at George and me. “What would you say to having a still in town?”
What I was thinking about instead was having a bakery in town. I had to admit that I was getting tired of doing the show. I’d been doing daily broadcasts for three and a half years. I won’t say it wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t cooking. I’d come across several people in the past year who were trying to get into a show like mine. Rose and I had been back to The National Show every year. We got a lot of proposals and heard a lot of pitches now that we were producing half a dozen shows for CEN and Armand had finally asked us point-blank if we would consider merging Hearthstone Entertainment with CEN. We hadn’t given him a response yet. But it was clear that our daily programming was becoming old. We needed to expand the work we were doing with more shows or CEN would be producing replacement shows for what we were broadcasting. I felt Elaine and Reese were safe. But my evening talk show was competing against some extremely popular network shows. Hell, rumor was that CBS was actually moving 60 Minutes into my timeslot on Wednesdays. Comedy Central had Craig Kilborn doing a nightly show that was funny as hell.
Leonard’s show and Heaven’s show were at risk, too. There was a fashion show on nearly every network now. Amber’s weekly comedy tour was holding its own so far. It looked like Comedy Central and HBO were both going to start up similar shows this fall. I wasn’t too worried about that. People loved to laugh and touring different clubs each week was making Amber a popular comedienne in her own right.
Samantha had recruited a young woman to do a top tunes show each week. A kind of Dick Clark show for the new generation. That was one of our strengths—young women. I thought we should move exclusively that direction. An evening talk show with a female host would go over big. Maybe we should move Elaine into that slot. Sarah, on the other hand, insisted we needed to keep a show with a strong metrosexual male as host. That was a new term that was becoming popular in the marketing world. It had something to do with a single, urban-dwelling man with lots of disposable income who took meticulous care of his appearance. As far as I could tell, it just meant a straight guy who let a gay guy dress him.
Even though he was gay, Adam played very strongly as my most frequent guest host. Sarah admitted grudgingly that young women had as deep a fascination with gay men as gay men had with Bette Midler. No matter how you looked at it, XX/XY needed a new front man. My image was wearing thin and becoming a baker was sounding more and more appealing.
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