Gloss

“Maybe they said Isabel? You know, Isabel, the new girl?”

“She’s an intern.”

“So?”

“Well, what were they talking about?”

“I don’t know. I just caught the tail end of it.”

“Maybe I should talk to Tom, tell him about the calls?”

“What could he do? It’s been almost a week and they haven’t called back, and you have no idea what the story is, anyway. I’m sure he has other things to deal with.”

Which was true. It was incredibly hard to get the attention of the boss, and you had to be judicious about it. Tom was a nice guy and tried to be welcoming, but his job was just too nuts. I used to think I wanted to climb the network ladder, perhaps run a show myself one day, but when I watched my supervisors, and especially the executive producers, I really started to question my career track. The stories, the guests, the competition, the overly ambitious young staffers, the hotheaded anchors, the egocentric correspondents, the late nights, the early mornings, the ratings, the marketing, the press, the promotion, the spin—it all fell on their heads, 24/7 (you can forget about a personal life), and the job security was as good as the weekly Nielsen Report. The American public could, essentially, vote you off the island on any given day, contracts be damned. We were the number one morning show, but only by a few ratings points. Should one of the other two network programs start creeping up (which they seemed to be doing), it was an invitation to a beheading.

“Let’s go see Carl,” I said. “My editor is about to bolt.”

Neither of us liked Carl, and he didn’t really like us, either. Carl was in the twilight of his career, recently fired from a big job at a different network, only to be hired by ours (word was he was golf buddies with the suits at the top). Carl had a big title for years and years over there, running one soon-to-be-canceled show after another, but the rumor was that for the past decade or so no one over there ever knew what he actually did. They said he spent so much time standing in the lobby, seeing and being seen, that everyone joked he should accept the dry cleaning deliveries so at least he would be of value.

Things didn’t change much when he came to New Day USA. He had a big, beautiful office with big beautiful paintings, but most of the time he wasn’t there; he was out in front of the building, modeling his stylish suits, which were decades too young for him, laughing loudly so everyone could see he was having a good time. He just seemed to be one of those people who kept fluffing his feathers and somehow charming the right people enough that he failed up and up.

The sad thing was, once upon a time, Carl was actually worth what they paid him. Word was that in the early days of his career, he was breaking stories right and left. He spent years covering war zones, telling stories that no one else would tell. But somewhere along the line, things changed. He started doing more and more pieces filled with style and less and less filled with substance. He was one of the first producers to mandate that every edit should be a dissolve, that more time should be spent worrying about the lighting and the correspondents’ haircuts than about the questions they were asking.

Purists didn’t like what Carl was doing, but the audience did. And as the ratings went up, so did Carl’s stature in some parts (the money parts) of the industry. In fact, a lot of people credit Carl with the softening of the network news, but I think that might be a little too generous (or malicious, depending on your view of the world).

Anyway, you might think that someone who had been around so long would want to nurture younger staffers like us, maybe try to relive his proud and productive early years, but the truth was it often felt like he resented us. Understandably. We took up his time with our petty needs when he could otherwise be schmoozing with the people who actually could impact his career and his wallet. Never married, never really appearing all that happy, he had only his job and his authority, and in the end, there was no security in that.

Word was, after years of him doing pretty much nothing, the suits in our front office had seen the light and were now trying to push him out, make room for some younger, less wrinkled, less expensive blood, and Carl was holding on for dear life, making dealings with him more uncomfortable than ever. Up front he was as charming as all get-out, but he routinely took credit for other people’s work, gossiped incessantly (well, we all did that) and, worse, liked to change our pieces just to put his fingerprints on them. In fact, he was sort of a tyrant; he enjoyed tearing producers (and especially associate producers) to shreds. He would never raise his voice, but would say things like “this makes absolutely no sense” and “who wrote this shit?” and “how did you ever get a job at a network, anyway?” Usually he was comparably easy on me, but not always; he was the first and only person ever to make me cry at work.

But he was a sucker for celebrity.

“Annie has a date with Mark Thurber tonight,” Natasha said before we even sat down.

I should have been pissed, but I knew Carl would be impressed (I was a bit impressed with myself, after all), and, more importantly, I knew that he would be nice to me in the hopes that I would return with good gossip tomorrow. And, hope of all hopes, he probably figured if a relationship took root and Mark and I became an “it” couple, he could claim us as friends, one of whom was in a very powerful place.

Carl spoke to us while simultaneously consulting his BlackBerry, periodically typing a few things, putting it down, picking it back up again, as if to remind us of his importance, acting disinterested while inquiring about how Mark and I met, where we were going, what I thought might happen.

I stifled a sneeze. Carl’s office was saturated with a musky male cologne (I could have sworn he shared it with Franklin); the scent trailed Carl wherever he went. It was so strong that some people would take the stairs if they saw him waiting for the elevator. It was weird, and made me wonder if smelling sensitivity toughens with age.

“Excuse me,” I said, and grabbed a tissue off his desk before offering up a little more information, just enough that we got the desired response.

“Did you make the changes we discussed earlier?” Carl asked, referring to his meddling with our snake piece.

“Of course.” I blew my nose.

“Then I don’t need to see it again. It’s fine. Have fun tonight.” He grabbed his remote and turned toward the monitor opposite his desk to watch the feeds of the evening news packages.

And that was that.

For now.

Dear New Day USA,

I am what some might call a news-junky. I am always very impressed with Ken’s hard-hitting interview style and just wanted to say that I wish there were more newsmen like him. His recent interview with the White House spokesman Mark Thurber was very insightful, really pounding out the truth of our administration. Do you know if Mr. Thurber is single? Can you please give him my address and phone number? I have included it below.

Robin Fayer

Orlando, Florida

CHAPTER FOUR

WE MET AT MECCA, A MIDDLE EASTERN–themed bar on the roof of the new Scheherazade Hotel, the latest hot spot in town. Normally, as a regular gal, I wouldn’t have been able to get past the red velvet rope (unless I wanted to risk waiting in the line that snaked through the lobby, leading up to a metal detector and an armed guard blocking the elevator bank). I suppose I could have shown my network news ID and claimed press privileges, which usually worked, but I was pretty sure my date’s credentials were enough to merit VIP status.

“I’m meeting Mark Thurber,” I said to the Armani-clad, steel-shouldered bouncer behind the rope. I could hear a few girls in the line behind me rustle when I said the name.

The bouncer looked at his list, asked to see my driver’s license and unhooked the latch. “Twenty-ninth floor, take a right.”

And there I went. Clop, clop, clop down the marbled hall and into the elevator.

And there he was, sitting at a small corner table, surrounded by candles and dark velvet cushions, wearing a little stubble and a dark gray shirt. I tried to take a good look at him, to take him in, in the flesh, without the studio makeup or the unreal glare of television lighting.

Sitting there, back straight, chin up, eyes searching around, Mark reminded me of the guys in high school that I had been too terrified to talk to, the thin, chiseled waspy ones that had landed at my progressive private school only after being expelled from a string of blue blood boarding schools or Upper East Side preps. He had floppy, straight brown hair, an aristocratic profile and a slightly smug countenance reminiscent of a British movie star. Totally out of my league. But then again, sometimes guys like that actually liked girls like me—thinking girls like me (with small bones, light olive skin, oversize eyes and the surgically altered residue of a prominent nose) to be somewhat exotic. Mark was trying to push down his cowlick when he looked up and saw me. He smiled (those dimples!).

“Hi,” I said as I walked over to him, grateful that the Persian carpet snuffed out the graceless clop-clop of my high-heeled shoes. “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.” I was only a few minutes late, but I hate when people aren’t punctual. It’s the producer in me—time sensitive and tightly scheduled.

“Just got here,” he said, but he was probably lying. He was already halfway through whatever it was he was drinking. “Coffee?” he said, holding up what appeared to be a tube leading to a hookah pipe.

“That’s coffee?”

“It actually is. Some strange coffee martini they make here. These are actually straws. Try it. It’s good.”

“Odd.” I sat down and took a sip. “And clever.”

Basically, the bowl was made to look like one of those Egyptian water pipes, but the proprietors had created a way to drink from them instead.

We bantered. We sipped our alcoholic coffee through straws.

It was like a lot of first dates, the kind where you talk and talk to avoid any awkward silences. Until the inevitable.

“So.”

“So.”

Silence.

“How about we order another one?” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

I was surprised to find that I wasn’t self-conscious and squirming next to a guy like him, but there I was, comfortably slouching into the pillows, gently touching Mark’s arm after he accidentally spilled a little of the drink on the table and tried to mop it up with his sleeve without my noticing. I had noticed and I thought it sweet.

He told me about working in the White House, about how every day he had to pinch himself because he couldn’t believe he was actually there, in the most powerful place on earth.

“What’s he like?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The president, silly.”

Mark laughed and said that, because I was a member of the press, he couldn’t really give me a straightforward answer. And anyway, he said, he worked more directly with the vice president. So I asked about him.

“Off the record?” He gave an exaggerated snarl and then held up our now empty hookah. “Waiter! Can we have another one?”

Hookah or no hookah, Mark did not need much lubrication to tell me that the VP was an ass. It was common knowledge that he was a screamer, a phone thrower, a man in dire need of mood stabilizers but too macho to take any. At one of his first press conferences (not that there were many), the VP took off his shoe and banged it on the podium in a manner reminiscent of a certain Soviet leader circa 1960. In fact, that was the perception—that the VP fancied the savior of America would come in the form of an iron-fisted, quasi-totalitarian, Soviet-like regime, just with a nice capitalist overtone. Since Mark was about as far as you could get from a gray, bland, perfunctory Soviet apparatchik, they didn’t really get along on a personal level. That said, the vice president was preparing to run in the next presidential election, and Mark did have issues of professional longevity to consider.

“I figure I don’t have to like him. And he doesn’t have to like me,” he said. The waiter returned and Mark leaned forward to take a sip from our refreshed bowl of caffeinated elixir. “As long as he likes what I write.”

“But do you believe in what you write? I mean, do you believe in his policies?”

“His policies are based on the polls. So there isn’t much to believe in. It’s like that with any politician.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I didn’t say I respect it.”

I sat back and crossed my arms, like a disappointed schoolteacher. “How can you live with yourself, working for something you don’t respect?”

“Oh come on, people have lived with a lot worse. Especially in Washington. You just have to learn not to personalize the political.”

“But that’s not why you got into the business, is it? Just to rub elbows with power? I mean, you could have done a lot of things, I imagine. Why work in politics if you don’t really think you’re doing some good?”

“I didn’t say we weren’t doing any good. We are doing some good.”

“Like what?” I said, and then immediately hated myself for being so argumentative.

Mark laughed. “You just can’t suppress that hard-hitting reporter inside you, huh?”

“Yeah, right,” I said, hiding the fact that I was blushing by sucking up some more of our drink. “But seriously, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I’m just curious about what it is about your work that moves you, you know, gets you out of bed in the morning?”

He fumbled with his straw. “I know it sounds clichéd, but I guess a lot of what we do is just simply better than the alternative. It’s not that anything is so great, but we could be doing a lot worse. It probably sounds like moral gymnastics or defensive reasoning, but I do believe that.” He took another sip. “At least I like to believe that I believe that,” he said, looking up from the hookah with a full dimpled grin.

“What a mental menace,” I said, citing the words Mark had infamously coined referring to the Fardish president before he was, also Mark’s words, effectively eviscerated.

He smiled again.

“You like those alliterations, don’t you?” I said.

“This is a luxurious libation, don’t you think?” he said, changing the subject with a wink.

An ambrosial aphrodisiac, I thought to myself as I lifted the straw to my mouth once again. And that, basically, is how, a couple of hours later, I wound up in the hotel suite of a People magazine certified eligible bachelor.

And that’s where he leaned forward across the plush velvet couch and gave me a soft, gentle kiss on my mouth. He had soft, full lips, warm and, oh…this is hard for me to write, even now. One doesn’t get many kisses like that behind bars.

“I should go,” I said, not really wanting to, but proud of myself for saying so.

“It’s okay,” he said, “we can just talk if you want.”

I wanted to kiss him. “It’s just, well, I don’t want to do anything stupid, and you are one of the most coveted guys in the country and I really don’t want to be another conquest and…” I went on like this for a bit too long, embarrassing myself more and more with each word. I grabbed a water bottle from the coffee table and finished it off, because if I was drinking I couldn’t talk.

Mark laughed. His eyes closed when he laughed. It was incredibly sweet.

“You know the stupid thing?” he said, sitting back into the cushions, away from me. “Because of that People article, sure I can get laid, but no woman will trust me enough to take me seriously.”

I shot him an impish grin. “Poor you.”

“No. Seriously. I really like you, Annie. And I know it sounds like a line, but I would really like to get to know you. See what happens.” He crossed his arms, giving himself an uneasy little hug. “Is that okay?”

“Okay,” I said, wanting to believe him. I told him that if we really wanted to get to know each other, he had to trust that I understood that everything he said was off the record, and that made him smile, as if there was a lot he wanted to tell me, which, of course (I later found out) there was.

We didn’t kiss again that night. We just talked and talked until the sun started to rise, and then we both fell asleep on the bed, fully dressed.

When I woke up, there were two pink peonies on my pillow. Mark was in his hotel-issued, white terry-cloth bathrobe, watching me.

“I stole them from the breakfast spread,” he said, pointing his chin at the flowers.

There was a cart with coffee and pastries at the foot of the bed. He poured me a cup and sat down next to me. I sat up to take it.

“Peonies are my favorite,” I said. “And lilacs.”

He smiled.

I smiled.

It was a little awkward again. And there was no alcohol in this brew.

“You have beautiful hair.” He gently touched my brown tangled nest.

I worried about my morning breath.

“What time is it?” I said, looking for the television remote. Found it. I turned on my show. “I have a piece on at 7:44.”

“Cool.” Mark looked at his watch. “We have thirty seconds.” He put his arm around my shoulder, giving me a quick squeeze, causing me to spill a bit of the coffee on the sheet.

It is an odd thing to watch someone watching your work, especially when it’s someone you have a crush on. And, if I could have chosen it, this certainly wasn’t the first piece I wanted Mark to see.

“Wow,” he said when the story was over and Natasha was showing Faith and Ken some of our purchases. “That was totally disgusting.”

“You don’t like snakes?”

“Remember, I work in Washington.”

I laughed. “It was pretty gross. The place smelled like a subway toilet.”

“I think I might have fainted if I got anywhere near one of those pits.”

“I did faint,” I said, quickly regretting admitting that.

“You did? From the smell?”

“No, I…I don’t really know why.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, I had gotten a disturbing call, and it kind of made me unbalanced. And maybe that, with the smell, I don’t know…”

Mark looked at me as if I was nuts. But in a sweet way. And I don’t know why, but I guess I needed to talk about it with someone, so I told him the story. About the piece, about the calls.

“Wow,” he said again. “I saw that story. I was there the day it aired, remember? It was a really nice piece, but what’s the big deal?”

“I know. But Natasha said that the second caller specifically mentioned it when calling me all sorts of horrible things.”

“Like what?”

It was too embarrassing for me to spell out how he had phrased in hideously derogatory terms that I was a weak journalist, a lazy hack, that reporting like mine was part of the problem, and that I might as well be producing Nazi propaganda and working for Leni Riefenstahl at the rate I was going. It had really hit a nerve.

“He just said stuff about the story being totally wrong and misleading, and basically blamed me for the downfall of society,” I said. “There were some threats about needing to get it right, or else.” It sounded funny when I summed it up like that. Now I wasn’t even so sure why I had gotten so upset.

“Or else?”

“Or else. I’m not really sure what.”

“Well, who do you think it could be?”

“Honestly? My best guess is that it was some whack-job viewer. We do have a few, and they do make strange phone calls from time to time. But the weird thing is that I don’t know how they would have my cell number. Unless some idiot intern forwarded the call. I suppose that could happen. But it was still upsetting.”

“And they haven’t called again?”

“No.”

“Will you let me know if they do?”

“Okay,” I said, relieved that I could talk about this with someone, that he didn’t seem to think I had overreacted.

And then we got up because I had to rush home to shower and change, and Mark, well, he had a country to help run.

Dear Faith and Ken,

I have been watching your show for over five years, but after your interview with the family of the runaway, I am turning the dial. It was completely distasteful to harass the parents in such a way. At least on Sunrise America they just spoke to the siblings.

Disdainfully,

A Disappointed Viewer

CHAPTER FIVE

EVERY WEDNESDAY AT 10:00 A.M. WE HAD our weekly staff meeting. It was usually a fairly staid affair in which we would pile into the conference room (walls decorated with the ever-present mosaic of monitors and posters from our network’s sitcoms and reality shows). We crowded around the ferry boat–sized conference table, coffee in hand, sometimes a bagel, stragglers standing in the back. Tom would read off the previous week’s ratings, usually getting overly enthusiastic if he had anything positive to say about ours, which was becoming rare. The staff would give tentative feedback (the grumbling happened out of Tom’s earshot), and then we went on to tear apart the competition:

“June and Jack looked like they were about to hit each other yesterday, did anyone notice that?”

“I know! It’s so obvious they hate each other!”

or

“How stupid was that segment on Sunrise about the toe therapy? They are really getting desperate, aren’t they?”

Of course, what no one ever said is that, as we all knew, our own Ken and Faith were so jealous of each other they wouldn’t even speak to one another unless the camera was rolling. Or that we had done a similar toe therapy segment the week before.

But the best part of the meetings was when the bookers regaled us with their latest war stories from the field. Not travel bookers, guest bookers—the people who line up all of the live talking heads you see on the shows—the Elizabeth Smarts, the families of infants who fell down wells, the best friends of the latest soldier to die (especially if the soldier had an interesting story to tell, that is, like if he were previously a famous baseball star). People loved this stuff, and that was why morning shows made more money for their respective networks than any other news program that aired. No one under the age of sixty was watching the evening newscasts anymore, and morning was the only growth market on the dial, so the pressure was on. But because morning shows fell under the news divisions, there were rules. Of gravest importance: no one was allowed to pay for interviews. But no one ever said anything about offering overnights at five-star hotels and tickets to Broadway shows. Or mind games. Most bookings were made over the phone, with our (mostly female) bookers sweet talking the intended guests into believing that by coming on our show, their lives would improve dramatically. But if the story was big enough, armies of bookers would descend upon the home of, say, some teenage girl from Arkansas who had miraculously escaped a traumatic weeklong kidnapping. Scores of New York City bookers would camp out at the Holiday Inn closest to her small, rural town, each one striving to become the family’s new best friend, convincing them that by going on her show (as opposed to the other shows), it would be therapeutic, inspiring to others, good for the girl. And fun, so much fun. Bookers had been known to take such girls shopping in the mall, out for ice cream, and give her all sorts of candy (never money!) so that she would pick, say, Sunrise America and not New Day USA for her first interview. Of course, while said girl might give one show the first interview, she would more often than not appear on all the other shows a few minutes later. Often, the cameras would be lined up outside her house, with a slightly different angle for each program. As soon as she finished talking to, say, Faith (via remote), she would be escorted a few feet to talk to, say, Sally.

Sometimes bookers were known to lie outright, claiming to be from a show they were not, telling the guest the interview was canceled or moved. Tom forbade our staff doing that and generally asked us to toe an ethical line, to make sure we could all face the mirror in the morning. And that might be why our ratings were slipping a bit. Joe Public was getting savvy, and potential guests would ask things of our bookers that we wouldn’t, but other shows sometimes would, provide.