Thank God for Motorola. The electronic arpeggio of the new Bravo ExpressTM is so much easier on the ears than the blaring "beep-beep-beep" of the old pager I was renting. I am still enjoying the newness of the new toy. It is only when I stop and fish for my calling card that I realize how much pain I am in.
I came with the broccoli. Plus somewhere around my hundred-odd kilos of weight in Pepsi®. If they pureed me, bottled me, and drank me, there'd be almost enough to go around. In hindsight, it might not have been the worst way for the weekend to come out. Merle is coordinating the catering for the convention, so we came up with the fruits and vegetables in the cube van. There are two seats in the truck, and neither of us drive. So for the fifteen-mile drive, I was wedged into a hard fifty-degree angle between Merle and the transportation chief. I have the better back, you see. It's true that I am tingling from my elbows to my ankles, and I have no sensation at all below the ankles, but I don't think anything less than the jaws of life would have gotten Merle out of the "middle seat" of the truck.
So the agent, or more specifically Dan, the agent's assistant I have been dealing with all along, is on the phone and he says, "What time is your limousine picking up Nana?" That's na-Na, stress on the second syllable, not Nan-na, a Scottish grandmother. It's one of those California names, I suppose.
I know nothing of any limousine. "What?" I inquire intelligently.
"Contract says you provide ground transportation to and from the airport at both ends," Dan says. This is news to me.
"I'll, uh, check on that," I tell Dan.
Martin has wisely chosen to stay at home. Actually, he has to stay by his phone; something about the newspaper not understanding that our ad for the convention really does have to run on Friday, not Monday. Monica, the other co-chair, is sitting at the table here happily chopping carrots for the staff lounge. Her energy and willingness to pitch in is an example to everyone, or at least, everyone with free time. I'm still busy trying to arrange a limousine. I love Monica; it's more than two days before I will decide I have to kill her.
I am monopolizing the phone in the conference room we are based in. We only have access to a few rooms right now; we won't take over the whole hotel until the next day. Our tech people have moved into the main function rooms. The bridge set is going up in the far room, while a million-watt sound system is plugging in in the central ballroom. Meanwhile, to add a touch of the surreal to the affair (a harbinger of things to come), the hotel staff are putting out chairs for an 600-seat Orthodox Jewish wedding that will easily cost half again the hundred Gs in our convention budget in the corridor outside our function rooms. They have a beautiful chupa, and in their dining room they have sprays of green and white flowers on every table; this is the room that will become our dealer's room tomorrow, with a hundred and ten hucksters selling every conceivable bit of Star Trek and media paraphernalia.
Meanwhile, Lynda the travel agent has worked her first miracle of the weekend. Air Canada provides a free limousine service for their first-class passengers. Problem solved. "How does 'free' grab ya?" I say to Martin on the phone. But he's in too bad a mood to be cheered up by me. One problem solved.
And more than solved. We can send a limousine tomorrow to pick up one of our other stars. "Door to door service" is the goal of my department; "don't lose the guest" is our minimum standard. Little did I suspect that we would exceed our ideal goal and fail our minimum standard, both at the same time.
As the bride goes past in the corridor, four or five costumers scurry into the hall to admire the dress. A couple of them take notes; they are speculating about the amount of time it took to do all that beadwork. I ponder the unlikely encounter between cultures.
Majel, of course, has no idea who I am; the only one she knows about is Christine. Canada Customs, however, only wants to deal with one person, and that has to be me. We have special VIP clearance for our main stars. I confess I'm the least bit intimidated. After all, last year I was working one of the registration tables. It's not the star thing; I've spent way too much time the past few months on the phone to Hollywood to be impressed with anybody coming from there. But Majel isn't coming from there; she is coming directly from the White House, where she helped President Clinton and Neil Armstrong celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first moon landing. That is one tough event to upstage.
Majel's flight is late. Still no sign of Christine. I am thinking now that my plan of delegating all the communications to the guest liaisons might not have been the best idea. Christine was supposed to pick up Majel's assistant over at Terminal 2, and then was supposed to come here to Terminal 1 to get Majel. There is an hour and a half between flights, and the latter is more than an hour late. It's a five minute drive between terminals. What I do not know at this time is that even though Christine was waiting right at the customs gate with a sign for Reyna, Reyna slipped right past Christine in the crowd and had already gone to the hotel. So Reyna is back at the pre-convention reception looking for Christine, and Christine is wandering Terminal 2 looking for Reyna, and I am pacing Terminal 1 looking for Christine. I can see both entrances and the entire length of the arrival level, so I am growing more and more annoyed, not knowing that Christine knows that Majel's flight is delayed. Liz is trying to calm me down with periodic hugs and comforting words, to little effect.
"Who is it you're looking for?" the agent says. I have been speaking to our contact several times over the past week, going over all the details, and he has assured me that he will be there and all I have to do is give his name. So after the eleventh or twelfth question, the agent at the counter says, "Oh, yeah, Les told us all about you, I just wanted to make sure you were the right person." Civil servant humor, I suppose. My contact shows up and escorts me into the restricted area, the zone that is technically outside the borders of the land.
What I do not know is that the airport electronics are jamming my pager. Majel's flight is ten more minutes late. So now I get to pace around in the , telling my Customs friend all my troubles and not having Liz to calm me down. Finally, at 11:25, 65 minutes after the scheduled arrival time and five minutes after the delayed arrival time shown on the monitors, Christine shows up and tells me what happened with Reyna. At least Merle is taking good care of Reyna back at the hotel.
Majel arrives. She is tired from the delayed flight. She is a little put off by my being there, since I hadn't explained things properly to Christine, but she takes it in stride. In fact, she takes everything in stride, the great professional who has done hundreds of cons; she knows the routine and she puts up with all the little things. I try to suggest Breakfast Television to her, but she is just not having any. "I have to curl my hair in the morning if I want it to look like anything," she says. "I'd have to get up at 5:00 to be ready for 8:00." It was not happening. Well, at least we have our non-screen guests to put on display.
The lady has luggage. We are the seventh stop on a seven-city tour, and everyone she met along the way pressed a book into her hands. Christine's friend Tim tries to lift the bags, and fails. He manages one, I manage the other. It's a good thing we brought two cars; Christine can only get one of the bags into her trunk. Tim later says he feels like Mr. Homm carrying the bag; this may become a new nickname for him. It's possible I will be called "Commander Riker" after the con.
So we get back to the hotel and get Majel settled in. One guest down, four to go. I'm still worried about whether Chris is going to show up on time. Little do I suspect that's the least of my problems.
"I'm not getting up at seven in the morning!" Peter had said. Theoretically, he is supposed to be getting Michael and Arne to their appointments. Apparently he's been doing the guest liaison job long enough that he gets to skip the hard parts. So of course, I am there; everyone knows me as such a morning person, right?
Informal is an understatement. Think of Breakfast Television as the Today show by way of Beavis and Butthead. It's like goofy morning radio, but with pictures. We're trying to put our best face forward, but they want silly visuals. Connie and Wendy oblige in costume; despite the differences in period, style, and wigs, the twins sound identical, making for some eerie television. Michael (that's "Archduke Michael" to his detractors) is a bit stiff with his Klingon disruptor; Arne is much smoother with his comic books and art. Steve and Mary Ellen blow us all away, sounding so beautiful that morning. This makes the gonzo interviewer uncomfortable, since he doesn't know how to make fun of them.
Kathie is up, and pissed off. She wants to get into the staff lounge at 9:00 so she can start setting up; she wants to be ready for noon. But part of the wedding party is still going on in that room; people have morning prayers or something. Bizarreness fades to inconvenience; someone says they'll get Gord to straighten things out.
We go off the air at 8:47. I've put in a day's work already. I go back to bed for a couple of hours.
Then we go to check The Room. Christine, Penny, and Penny's niece Julia come up to check out the owner's suite. We need to get up to the fifteenth floor. Nice big rooms, huge closet, balcony, spectacular view of the, well, the airport. The only problem is that there is some old food left out on the table. The melon is green, and the remnants of the eggs are evolving into a higher life form. I call housekeeping to get them to clean the room.
The media people want to interview Majel, but they brought the Super-8 camera, not the Beta. So they have to film outside. Majel is seated in a comfortable chair on a shaded patio by the pool. She puts her purse on the ground. Later, she picks it up into her lap. Not realizing, of course, that the morning had spent three hours raining. Her light California dress is now soaked with grimy water. She drops her reading glasses, and breaks them. Plus the jerk reporter started off by asking her about how she felt about the trash biography recently done about her late husband, Gene Roddenberry. She is much too professional to snap at anybody, but we know she is not really happy about things in general. Christine gets to be the one who commiserates with Majel, and I get to be the one whose fault everything is. Joy.
Things can't get worse, can they?
I suggest the next flight. Dan is not happy. Nana is not feeling well; Deep Space Nine has been going late hours every night. At my end, however, having her leave LA in the morning gets her into Toronto at 3:30 pm. We might be able to get her onstage for 5:00. The next flight gets her in around 9:00 pm; Saturday would be completely blown. I say the morning flight, Dan says he'll get back to me.
I tell Monica and Judith. Monica is very upset. David, Judith's husband, tries to say something; he's trying to get the radios organized or something. "David, I don't need to hear your voice in this room right now," Monica says. A chill descends on the room, and David retreats. One recalls that Judith and David have been in fandom since Monica was in junior high.
Martin has had it. "Tell her not to come," he says. "Tell her to send the money back." Sure, and we can just refund everybody's money and tell the hotel we didn't really mean to have a convention in the first place. Martin eventually shrugs; however he feels about things, he has the experience to know that sometimes one just trusts things to the Fates.
But Judith, who has been grouching at everybody for the past month, now summons this amazing reserve of calm. Judith, Gord, Monica, and Barb go over the big board on the wall; Judith has Post-It Notes® the same size and color as the program squares on the board. I stand in the background, not really having much useful to suggest; I really have no input into all the panels going on. I realize that this is technically an executive meeting, and I am technically not on the convention executive. I keep quiet. The convention schedule is rearranged.
And I get some more good news. (The Fates are letting the line go slack before reeling me back in for the net.) I am getting five radios, not four. Where this solves one problem, it creates another; I now have to decide who still doesn't get the radio. I am thinking that Penny gets the radio, not Marcella; this may put Patti and Marcella's noses out of joint, since they consider Nigel a bigger star than Chris.
But even better. Monica realizes I need radios for all the media guests. She says, "Do you think Registration and the Info Desk can share a radio, since they're just across the corridor from each other?" As if I'm the most unbiased person to ask. I tell her I don't know; she leans towards giving me the radio.
Patti and Marcella come into the room. I tell them, "I think I have good news, just wait a little bit."
In the next moment, Gayle storms into the room. Gayle knows how to storm. She's a big corporate macher at one of the country's major banks; she's sort of a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Sigourney Weaver. She is used to having her way. "What do you mean I don't get a radio for outside the dealer's room??" she demands of Monica. Monica begins to explain. I shoo Patti and Marcella out of the room; this is not the time to gloat about our good fortune.
But it's not Dan. This time it's the Agent, Diane herself. "We are very sorry, Mr. von Thorn, but Nana will be unable to come to the convention," Diane says. "She is very ill and is not able to travel."
Yeah, right. Like we haven't already had a thousand people through Registration. This is not the bomb, this is Hiroshima, Ground Zero. We have no convention, not really. Uncomprehending, I ask Diane to repeat the news; when she does, I realize that it can't come through me as a filter. I give the phone to Monica, and Diane explains to her.
"Tell her we want the deposit back," Martin says. "They'll have to forego all the money."
"They understand that," I explain to Martin. This thought has not occurred to him until now. In the past, we have had stars try to weasel out of contracts and keep the deposit. Martin's worldview does not include the possibility of someone sacrificing several thousand dollars to take care of a cold. He has nothing to say.
Monica hangs up and takes charge. "You stay put," Monica tells me. "Martin, go get the rest of the executive and tell them we are having an emergency meeting." I feel like the sergeant who is promoted on the battlefield after the lieutenant is shot. Not the way I wanted this particular promotion. Someone calls in on the radio; I think it's Brian from Ops. "The executive is not available at this time," Monica says. "Tell whoever it is to just handle it." The convention is a headless beast, not knowing where it's going and not knowing yet that it's already dead.
"Christine," someone says. "Do you think you could ask Majel to help us find a replacement guest for the weekend?"