Falling Star (27 page)

"The woman you're seeing?" Natalie inquired
coolly.

He nodded. Why did the look on her face make
him feel guilty?

She grabbed her briefcase. "I'll let you know
how it goes in New York." Then she was gone.

The office felt oddly vacant after she left.
He slapped his desk, the sound echoing in the silence.
I'm doing
the right thing
, he told himself.
WITW would be great for
her.

He slapped his desk a second time, not
thinking about WITW at all.
I'm doing the right thing.

*

Tony slouched over his Jack Daniel's at
Chadney's, the Burbank watering hole favored since time immemorial
by NBCers eager to drown the day's sorrows. He squinted in the
semidark at the muumuued, red-lipsticked Bobbi Dominguez, BD, the
local NBC news director who this Monday evening personified the
type. At that very moment she was pouring back a Long Island Iced
Tea. Tony knew that libation had something like seven kinds of
liquor in it and was taller than a glass of Kool-Aid. Either BD had
a wooden leg or she could drink the Russian army under the
table.

Just another reason to admire her, he
thought. He swizzled the ice in his glass. And he liked a woman
with hair on her chest, at least in a work context.

He stuffed a handful of popcorn in his mouth.
He and BD had a big basket of it between them on the little wooden
table. It tasted like those foam things you put in packing boxes,
only with tons of salt. He loved it.

"All right, Tony, enough already," BD
complained, sucking down the rest of her drink. He watched in
amazement as she raised a finger to order another. "So once and for
all, what's the scoop with Kelly anchoring and Natalie
reporting?"

He pretended to look reluctant to say. That
had been his MO all week, in an attempt to get BD really anxious to
get "the scoop." Apparently it was working. "BD, I'd rather not get
into it," he said. He stifled a grin by swigging the last of his
scotch. He was proud of himself. He was a real master.

"Spit it out, Scoppio."

He sighed heavily and occupied himself with
ordering another Jack Daniel's so it'd look like he was carefully
choosing his words. BD would never guess he'd been crafting this
line all week. He sighed again. "All right, BD, but only because
it's you. And I have to insist that you keep this to yourself.
It's, shall we say, personal."

BD nearly choked on an ice cube. She nodded
vigorously. Tony knew BD lived for "personal." She loved "personal"
so much she spent half her life looking for it and the other half
spreading it around.

That was why he judged her perfect for this
little assignment. If there was a queen bee in the TV-news hive, BD
was it. She knew everything and got it all right. He sniggered to
himself. At least, she
used
to get it all right.

Tony tried to look pained. He leaned across
the table confidingly. BD followed suit, her huge muumuued boobs
knocking into the popcorn basket. "Let's just say," he whispered,
"that Natalie is suffering from"—he paused dramatically—"nervous
exhaustion. And that she's better off"—he squinted, as though he
were trying to come up with exactly the right phrase—"in a less
stressful position."

BD's black eyes flew open until they looked
as big as eight balls. "Are you telling me Natalie Daniels had a
nervous breakdown?"

He winced. "The doctors say we shouldn't use
that phrase."

"The doctors?"

He tried to look mournful. "It's against
their advice that I have her on the air at all. But"—he shook his
head—"I just can't bring myself not to."

"Does Dean Drosher know about this?" BD
blurted. Then her mouth slammed shut.

Tony frowned. "What?"

"No." BD shook her head from side to side
like a dog who just got out of a bath. "I shouldn't have said
anything."

"Come on, BD. I laid myself open to
you
."

"I really shouldn't."

"Come on, BD."

She rolled her eyes, then leaned forward and
whispered, "Well, you know Drosher wants to get rid of Sally
O'Day."

Tony put a look on his face that said,
Yes, I know that
, even though this was the first he was
hearing of it.

"Well," BD went on, "I hear he's going to
audition Natalie."

Tony almost knocked over his drink.
"What?"

BD nodded sagely.

Tony was shocked. Dean Drosher, that prick
news director who had everybody thinking he walked on water? He was
thinking of hiring Princess? And Princess had called in sick that
very day, the two-timing minx. She was probably on a plane right
now.

He frowned. This was bad. He did not want her
to have another option. This had to stop.

Well, he was staring at just the woman to
stop it.

He took some time to craft a plausible line.
"I certainly would hate to lose her," he told BD, "but I could only
wish Natalie the best if she gets an opportunity in New York. I
just hope Dean Drosher doesn't get wind of her ...
difficulties."

Seconds passed while he slugged his scotch
and watched BD process that last. He could almost see the wheels
turning underneath her mop of dyed black hair. "You will keep all
this to yourself," he reiterated at one point, by way of a
test.

She nodded obediently but her gaze skittered
away.

Bingo. By tomorrow every news director in LA,
not to mention New York, would think Natalie Daniels was one live
shot away from a straitjacket.

He grinned furtively. That should limit the
incoming offers.

*

Natalie leaned into the mirror in the makeup
room at New York station WITW, scanning her heavy studio makeup for
flaws. As in every makeup room everywhere the mirror dominated the
space, running the length of the room waist-high to ceiling, its
perimeter dotted with bulbs. And here, as everywhere, the light the
bulbs cast was unforgiving, as it must be to approximate harsh
studio conditions. Natalie narrowed her eyes. She did look tired,
there was no way around it. Who wouldn't be, after a red-eye? And
was that a new line around her mouth? Sure looked like one.

"Miss Daniels." A female intern grasping a
clipboard poked her head inside the small room. "You're wanted on
set."

"I'll be right there."

The girl retreated and again Natalie stared
at her reflection. Her heart was pounding.
How can I be so
nervous? I've done this a million times.

She'd anchored a million times, for sure. But
she'd auditioned only once, and that was fourteen years ago, for
the prime-time anchor job at KXLA.

Which you got, remember? You're good at
this. Relax
.

But it was damn hard to relax when she felt
like her entire life rested on a single performance. She'd always
considered herself a clutch player, but the last months had
depleted her confidence. She shook her head vigorously and stared
down at her hands, compulsively clutching the narrow shelf that ran
beneath the mirror.
This must be what it feels like to be a
skater who's one triple axel away from Olympic gold. Or an actor
one audition away from a Broadway role.

If she nailed this audition and got this job,
her problems would be solved. At least her professional ones. She'd
be resuscitated in an even bigger job than the one she'd lost.
She'd be back on the anchor desk. She'd have to move, sure, but
what was there to keep her in LA?

A vision of Geoff rose in her mind. She
banished it. He had no qualms about sending her off; she should
have none about going.

Plus she had a strong sense of time running
out. Her contract expired in exactly 66 days. How many other
major-market anchor jobs were likely to open up during that time?
And even if they did, how many other news directors would want to
audition Natalie Daniels?

I have to get this. I simply have to get
this. It could easily be my last chance.

She closed her eyes and counted backward from
21. Lucky 21. It was a relaxation exercise, a trick she played on
herself, telling herself that when she opened her eyes she'd be
calm and ready.

Three. Two. One
. Natalie took a deep
breath.
Here goes nothing
. She forced herself out of the
makeup room and down the blue-carpeted hall to the studio.

A blond man who had
Anchor!
written
all over him walked toward her and claimed her hand in a hearty
grip. "Pleasure to meet you, Natalie," he boomed. He looked like a
star quarterback who'd given up the gridiron for TV. "Jim Fuller. I
anchor the morning show," he informed her, "and I'll join you on
the audition, if you don't mind." He grinned. Klieg lighting
reflected off his brilliant white teeth.

"I'd be delighted," Natalie said, though a
warning bell sounded in her brain. Why wasn't the male who anchored
prime time, the one she'd be working with, auditioning with her?
Wouldn't the management want to see how the two of them looked as a
team? Maybe they thought it was too early in the day to bring him
in, she told herself. After all, it was only 1 PM. He probably
didn't come in most days till 3 for the 5 o'clock news.

Jim guided her to the set, a monster anchor
desk that looked like mission control.

"When does the shuttle launch?" she joked and
Jim guffawed. She couldn't tell whether his joviality was false or
congenial.

"Which side do you like?" he asked when he
recovered.

That's considerate
, she thought. Most
anchors did have a preference. "The left, if you don't mind."

He waved an arm expansively. "Left it
is."

They switched positions and Natalie set
herself up. Fix the height of the chair, plug in the earpiece,
dress the mike. "Might I have a glass of lukewarm water?" she
asked. Her mouth felt full of cotton. An intern scurried.

A voice boomed over the studio intercom.
"Natalie, this is Dean Drosher."

The news director, whom she was surprised she
hadn't met yet. To her, the single most important man in the
building. She smiled warmly into the lens on Camera One, knowing he
was in the control booth and watching.

"We'll chat afterward," he went on. "This is
the drill. You and Jim will do the first and last segments of the
morning show. Ignore sports and weather. You've got the script and
a rundown?"

She nodded. Everything was arranged in front
of her on the anchor desk.

"We'll give you a few minutes to read
everything over," Drosher said. "By the way, you don't happen to
have a different jacket?"

She tried not to frown. Of course not. Who
walked around with more than one jacket? She'd worn red, her best
red suit, because news directors loved red on women anchors. And
because it warmed up her pale skin. She shook her head no.

Silence.

"Okay," he said eventually. "That'll have to
do. By the way, after the last section, we want to do an ad-lib
thing where Jim will ask you a few questions so you can talk about
yourself. We'll roll tape in, oh, three minutes."

Then she heard the intercom system switch
off. He was gone.

Great. Three minutes to read a totally
unfamiliar script. And what did Drosher have against red? He was
the only news director in the Western Hemisphere who didn't like
red.

The reason became clear when the crew
illuminated the anchor desk's backdrop. In big red letters—letters
that clashed wildly with the color of her jacket—were the station
call letters: WITW.

Wonderful. She'd be a huge jarring note in
the whole tableau.

"Two minutes," the floor manager announced.
The intern returned with a Styrofoam cup of water, which Natalie
eyed warily, recalling that horrendous night of the quake when
spilled water had rendered the wires unreadable.

Hastily she bent her head to skim the script,
mouthing the phrases. It was lifted from the morning newscast and
written in straight NewsSpeak, but still she found it awkward.
Normally she edited her script to fit her own speech patterns. No
chance to do that here. At least there were no weird place
names.

"One minute."

She glanced up and got another shock. The
TelePrompTer. At KXLA it was black letters on a white background.
Here it was the reverse, white letters on a black background. Yet
another unfamiliarity, along with the mission-control anchor desk
and the uncomfortable chair and the odd angles at which the crew
set the monitors.

Jim wasn't even bothering to review his
script, but then again he already had the job. He was fully
occupied checking his face in a small handheld mirror. Whoever
thought men were less vain than women had never met a male
anchor.

"Rolling tape," the floor manager
announced.

Her heart took another lurch. She knew what
that meant. The audition would be taped; then the tape would be
viewed by all the relevant layers of station management as they
made their hiring decision.

The intercom system buzzed on. "Ready?"
Drosher asked.

Her mind screamed
no!
but her head
nodded yes. She mustered her most confident smile. No, she wasn't
ready. She hadn't read the whole script and her heart was in her
throat and her palms were so moist she was leaving a wet spot on
her skirt. But she knew that in this crazy game, when you were
called upon to jump, you jumped.

So yes. She was ready.

*

Kelly stood with her real-estate agent in the
foyer of a Bel Air house that was for sale. She tapped her toe on
the floor. "What's this?"

"Limestone slab," the agent cooed, bending
down to pet it like it was a dog or something.

Kelly arched her brows. "Wasn't there
limestone someplace else, too? Lots of limestone in this
place."

"In the kitchen, yes," the woman said. She
was skinny and mid-forties and looked as if she wanted the
commission badly. She was exactly the kind of woman Kelly lived her
life not to become. "Also limestone slab on the floor, and
limestone counters."