Falling Star (3 page)

As if through a fog Natalie watched him grab
a manila folder and slap it open.
Just happened to have it
handy
, she thought dazedly. Then he tossed in her direction a
sheet of paper with those don't-lie columns under the heading
NIELSEN. But she didn't take it.

"Of course I've seen them," she managed. "But
the drop-off has a lot more to do with the stories you're putting
on the air than with how I'm anchoring."

"That's funny, Daniels." He grabbed the top
folder from another pile. "When I was news director at KBIT in
Dallas, before I came here, the stories I put on the air got us
into first place." He held up a chart and grinned broadly. "Want to
try another explanation?"

Her mind raced. There were all sorts of
reasons ratings dropped. Ratings ebbed and flowed like seawater. No
newscast stayed number one forever.

"I'm as frustrated as you are with the
numbers," she told him. "But mark my words, they'll rebound with
the quake coverage."

"Right." Now his tone was dismissive.

Natalie watched as the man who held her fate
in his hands slapped his pile of manila folders shut.

"Let's just see what happens with the
numbers, Daniels." He smiled at her. "Let's just wait and see."

Monday, June 17, 5:25 PM

Bastard!
Natalie cut her way across
the newsroom, then out through the security door, striding past the
darkened studio, hair and makeup departments. Her goal was the
ladies' room at the far end of the production wing, just before the
swinging double doors that demarcated KXLA's executive suites. It
was the only place she might get some privacy.

She pushed open the battered door with the
black-and-gold paste-on letters that led into the tiny pastel
anteroom, its lone piece of furniture a moth-bitten pink couch left
over from some long-canceled talk show. Frantically she paced the
minuscule space, her rage threatening to burst out of her like a
volcanic blast. How she'd maintained any semblance of calm in that
meeting with Tony was beyond her.

My God, he's trying to get rid of me. Just
like Miles
.

She shook her head vigorously.
No. No
Miles now. Concentrate on one bastard at a time.

All those years! Fourteen years of working
all hours, just to be drop-kicked like some worn-out pigskin? And
all those awards ... how many? She halted and tried to think. Three
Emmys, four Golden Mikes, too many Women in Journalism awards to
count. Periodic ratings domination for
The KXLA Primetime
News
, though Tony was right that hadn't been the case for some
time. But still, the suits should give her a medal! Not only had
she outlasted a parade of news directors but an army of coanchors,
too. Now she was on her fifth: a vapid Nordic stripling Tony had
imported from some Minnesota backwater. All too appropriately named
Ken, he looked straight out of Mattel.

But if there was one constant at KXLA, it was
Natalie Daniels. She was the LA. TV-news equivalent of death and
taxes. Or had been, back when she'd seemed an eternal star in
L.A.'s glittering firmament Now she felt herself falling,
plummeting back to earth from her heavenly perch.

Maybe you're out of touch. Maybe you've
gotten soft from all those years behind the anchor desk …

Her anger fled as rapidly as it had risen,
leaving her deflated like a day-old party balloon. She moved slowly
toward the mirror and splayed her hands on the narrow shelf below
the glass, vaguely aware of the diamond on her engagement ring
scratching the Formica. These days, she kept the stone turned
inside toward her palm. It seemed somehow better than removing the
ring entirely.

Miles
.

She looked up and stared into her own eyes.
Big blue pools stared back. Stranger's eyes. The eyes of someone
she'd never met. Someone named Natalie Daniels who wasn't a
television anchorwoman. Who was nobody's wife. Nobody's mother. Who
was nobody.

Tony's been around only a few months and
already he's trying to get rid of me
. She blinked as the
realization sank in. In some still-functioning part of her brain
she realized that long before today he'd spoken with the Legal
Department. Other people knew—people she passed in the halls. The
bastard had planned it.

Footsteps. Approaching from down the hall.
Natalie spun on her heels and dashed into one of the stalls,
pulling the door shut behind her with a metallic clang.

The outer door to the ladies' room groaned
open. "Natalie?"

It was Ruth.

Natalie listened, hardly breathing, as the
older woman hesitated, then slammed the door open, the hinges
protesting mightily as the door hit the wall. She could envision
thick-legged Ruth in her sensible shoes striding inside, almost
sniffing the air trying to find her, like a loyal dog.

Ruth pushed open the door to the first stall,
two down from Natalie. "I know you're in here. I saw you leave
Tony's office. Like a bat out of hell, I might add. Come on
out."

Natalie stayed put, stupidly, even though all
Ruth had to do to find her was push all the stall doors and realize
she was behind one of them. Or look down and see . . .

"Jig's up." She heard Ruth grunt as she bent
at the waist to peer under the stall doors. "Nobody else in this
joint can afford Manolo Blahnik pumps. Come on, give up the ghost
and come out."

Sheepishly Natalie slid back the latch and
walked out, eyes averted from Ruth's probing gaze. The woman didn't
miss a thing. It wasn't for nothing she was the executive producer
of a prime-time newscast, a top-level position rarely attained by a
woman.

Natalie leaned her fists on a sink, staring
down into the white porcelain. Up to her nostrils wafted the
bleachy scent of some industrial-strength bathroom cleanser. "Don't
say a thing. Just don't say a thing."

Ruth sighed. "What did that dirtbag do this
time?"

Natalie shook her head.

"What'd he do? It must've been a doozy. I
don't think I've ever seen you this upset." Ruth folded her arms
across her bosom and leaned against a sink, her flesh settling in
rolls beneath her suit du jour—a matronly royal blue polyester.
Natalie raised her head to look into Ruth's keen no-nonsense blue
eyes, shining bright with intelligence and kindness below her mop
of perennially unkempt dark blond hair.

"You're right. It was a doozy," she heard
herself say. To her surprise, Natalie felt herself wanting to tell
the story, felt the words gather in her throat like horses
straining behind the gates to begin a race. "He said he isn't
planning to pick up the option on my contract."

The words started spewing out then, careening
wildly, rolling out and over one another like a verbal wash over a
just-crested dam. "He said the ratings aren't what they should be.
He said I've lost touch and gotten soft." The tears that had been
gathering spilled out, but for once Natalie was oblivious of how
she looked, conscious only of Ruth's comforting bulk beside her,
Ruth's plump hand rubbing her back.

"Come on." Ruth was gruff. "This is bullshit.
He's not going to fire you. He needs you."

"That's not what he says."

"He's posturing. Probably wants to cut your
salary when your contract's up. Which is soon, right?"

"Early October," Natalie admitted.

"See?"

They stood for a while in silence, listening
to a mournful drip from one of the faucets. Plop. Plop. Glistening
wet drops that fell like tears onto the porcelain, then rolled down
the drain. Uselessly.

Finally Ruth shook her head. "Hell, I half
wish it were me on the hot seat. If I got cut loose I'd drive down
to Long Beach and hop on the first cruise ship I could find, bound
for who the hell cares where so long as there's a reasonable
selection of still-breathing men on board." Ruth screwed up her
face as though imagining the scene. "Not like that's so easy to
find these days."

Natalie frowned at Ruth. "What are you
saying?"

"Just that when it comes right down to it,"
Ruth continued in that same bewildering commonsense tone, "would it
be all that bad to be beached? I mean, it happened to Evie and she
went on to do something else. It happens to all of us
eventually."

"It does not!" Natalie reared back from the
sink. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"Face it, Natalie. This is TV news! The women
they're hiring to go on-air are getting younger by the nanosecond."
Ruth faced the mirror, gave herself a narrow-eyed appraisal, then
shrugged her shoulders. "What do you think Scoppio's getting at?
We're warhorses compared to the nymphets they're bringing on these
days. Doesn't matter they can barely read. Plus all they want is
T&A news and you and I do the real stuff. I'm surprised we've
lasted this long."

Natalie gaped at Ruth, not believing what
she'd just heard. Was this Ruth talking? The woman who'd produced
her newscast every weeknight for the last decade? The only other
woman on God's earth who loved the news as much as she did? Natalie
rubbed her forehead, as confused as if she'd suddenly been pitched
into a topsy-turvy, Alice-in-Wonderland world where nothing was
what it seemed to be.

"You've got money in the bank, right?" Ruth
peered at Natalie quizzically. "That's not it, is it? You can
afford to retire?"

"Retire? Ruth, I just turned forty!"

"Right. Ready for social security in TV-news
terms. At least in local. At least for a woman."

"I cannot believe I'm hearing this." Natalie
lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "Not from you."

"You don't think I'm in the same boat? You
don't think I cost Scoppio more than some smart-ass grad from
U.C.L.A.'s Writers' Program?"

"Yes, but what about—"

"Listen, pumpkin," Ruth interrupted. "You
haven't asked for it but I'm gonna give you a piece of advice." The
veteran news producer pursed her lips and gazed into the distance.
She looked wise at that moment, like a matriarchal elder who doled
out her hard-won knowledge to the younger tribal females only on
momentous occasions. "You've had a good run. Hell, a great run.
It's not only been better but it's lasted longer than it does for
most people, male or female."

She paused and the women looked at each
other.

"You don't need this crap," Ruth continued
more lightly. "Go to the beach. Do something else. Do nothing else.
Shit, I'd quit in a heartbeat if I didn't have to work for a
living."

"But wouldn't you miss it?"

"I'd miss it," Ruth allowed, "for, like, a
day. And believe me, my day will come. Now they need me to train
all these babies they're hiring. They still need people who know
how to do the work. But I'm saving my pennies, because one of these
days some shit-for-brains news director will call me into his
office and tell me he wants to take a 'fresh approach.' And I'll be
on the street."

"And you'll be all right about that?"

"Have to be. What I don't get is why you're
not."

Natalie felt Ruth fix her laser gaze on her
again. Quickly she looked down into the porcelain, but knew she
hadn't been fast enough.

"So," Ruth said quietly, "how much does this
have to do with Miles?" Natalie felt Ruth's hand on her back.
"Maybe even crusty old Ruth can figure out this is pretty tough
coming on the heels of Miles leaving."

There it was. Out. Natalie remained silent.
Despite how closely they'd worked together, cheek by jowl for
years, she'd never spoken to Ruth about Miles walking out. She
hadn't spoken to anybody. It was too private, too humiliating. But
word of his abrupt departure from the home they'd shared for a
dozen years—for a bimbo from his sitcom!—had of course made the
gossip rounds in Hollywood, and KXLA, too. And one night Ruth had
simply bent over Natalie's desk while she was gathering her things
to leave after the newscast and asked quietly if there was anything
she could do. Natalie's eyes had misted over. She'd just shaken her
head, mutely, not even able to muster the courage to look up. But
Ruth had just rubbed her back and asked her over for dinner the
next night, a Saturday. She'd already written her address on a
Post-it note, and left it on Natalie's desk with instructions that
she come at seven. Natalie had forced herself to go. But then she
surprised herself by haying a good time, laughing at Ruth's offbeat
humor, at the array of hippie-era tchotchkes that cluttered Ruth's
modest ranch-style house. She'd drunk too much chardonnay and eaten
mountains of garlic bread and fettuccine Alfredo—so much that her
stomach stuck out in a bloated mound for the next two days. It
turned out that Ruth was a terrific, though hardly
health-conscious, cook and a wonderful companion. While she gave
Natalie plenty of opportunity to talk about Miles, she never forced
it. And Natalie had stayed mum. Later she was startled to realize
she'd actually forgotten about him for a while. It was the most
relaxed she'd felt since he'd left. To this day, months later, she
was grateful.

"I can see you don't want to talk about it
now. But I'm here if you change your mind." Ruth's voice was back
to gruff. She raised her wrist to look at her watch, an oval
mother-of-pearl face on a slim gold band that looked incongruously
delicate on her fleshy wrist. "Damn, look at the hour. I've got to
go round up the reporter kidlette scripts so no major fuckups make
it on air tonight." Ruth plodded into the anteroom, then turned
around, hands on blue polyestered hips. "By the way, have you told
your agent about the Tony thing yet?"

"No. Geoff s out of the office."

Ruth nodded. "Chin up, kiddo." Then she was
gone.

Once again the ladies' room fell silent, save
for the steady drip from the faucet and the ticking of the round
white-faced clock that hung above the anteroom couch. Natalie
looked in the mirror. In the harsh fluorescent lights she saw a
tall, slim blonde in a severe black suit— a woman who, if you
didn't examine too closely, looked as if she had everything under
control.