Falling Star (31 page)

Friday, August 9, 7:32 PM

Hands on hips, Geoff stared out the
floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse office. The Century City
tower that housed Dewey, Climer and its identical twin were notable
landmarks on LA's west side: two glass skyscrapers in opposing
triangular shapes jutting into the blue, blue California sky. His
view faced north, and at 7:30 on an August evening the setting sun
turned the windows of the twin tower a flaming shade of gold. The
sight dazzled, but on this occasion failed to move him.

He rubbed his forehead, where a headache had
begun a low-grade throb. Natalie, Natalie, Natalie. What in the
world was he going to do with her? Where was he going to place her?
Her contract expired in seven weeks and there was no offer in
sight.

In truth he wasn't surprised that she'd been
rejected by WITW. It'd been a long shot, even with Rhett
Pemberley's help. It was a long shot getting any anchor job, let
alone a prime-time slot in the nation's number one media market.
And the woman Dean Drosher did hire, Tina Boone? Well . . . Geoff
would sign her as a client in a heartbeat. She had real star
potential.

Geoff returned to his desk and punched a few
computer keys to pull up notes from that day's conversations with
LA news directors. At Channel 8 the news director had said his only
opening was in the morning and Natalie was too expensive. In that
time slot, much less critical to the bottom line than prime time,
the most he could pay was about a seventh of Natalie's KXLA salary.
She might take it, Geoff knew, but it was dangerous. Stations liked
to try out fresh faces in the morning and on weekends before
promoting them to weeknight prime time. Once Channel 8 found a
fresh face, and they would, they'd bounce Natalie.

It irked him that most local TV-news
management considered a 40-year-old woman too old to move up. A
40-year-old man, no. But the most typical anchor pairing was an
older man with a younger woman, the same bias as in Hollywood
movies: 50-year-old male stars with love interests half their
age.

He scrolled through the rest of his notes.
Nothing at Channel 10: they were the one shop in town whose talent
was firmly entrenched. And despite numerous attempts he'd never
connected with BD, Bobbi Dominguez, at the NBC-owned station. He
was beginning to think she was dodging him, though he couldn't
imagine why. Then there was the weird call with Channel 6. Geoff
had gotten nowhere. The news director had hemmed and hawed.

What did he have against Natalie?
Methodically Geoff shut down his computer files for the night. The
usual? Her age?
That
the guy would be loath to spell
out.

He simply had to cast his net wider, Geoff
decided, though it was a struggle to introduce an "older" woman in
a market where she wasn't known. News directors liked youth or
familiarity. Nevertheless, he would dig in smaller markets. He'd
already gone through the top 20: nothing. So now on to 21 through
30. Maybe Natalie would like San Diego. Or Portland.

Geoff consulted his watch. 7:50. He should
hustle. He had 8:15 reservation to dine with Janet and her mother.
To discuss─he still couldn't believe it─colors.

Colors?
Yes, Janet had told him, in
all seriousness, they had to decide not only on colors for the
wedding but colors for the home.

Colors? He shook his head. He had an
important client in serious professional trouble but was going to
spend hours discussing colors. An evening during which, he already
knew, he'd do a great deal of nodding. And after which he'd pick up
the bill.

Colors. Which of his old mates in Sydney
would believe that? He rubbed his temples, where his headache was
intensifying. Suddenly the lyrics from the old Broadway show tune
"If They Could See Me Now" raced across his mind. "That little gang
of mine," he sang under his breath, ambling to his tiny fridge for
a cold beer. Aussie aspirin.

He twisted off the top and put the bottle to
his mouth, letting the beer run down his throat.
I'm eating
fancy chow and drinking fancy wine.
He chuckled. He could
hardly be expected to give up
all
things Australian.

*

Natalie sat at her KXLA computer sipping
morning coffee and glaring at an item on the
Hollywood
Insider
's website.

BOONE INKS WITW DEAL

Tina Boone, morning anchor at Syracuse
station WNNC, has signed a low six-figure deal with New York
powerhouse WITW to coanchor the 5, 6 and 11 PM newscasts. The
25-year-old Boone, only four years in the business, will replace
outgoing veteran Sally O'Day, who is ending a phenomenal 30-year
tenure at the Sunshine-owned station. News Director Dean Drosher
predicts that Boone will append to the all-important 18- to
35-year-old demographic. "We're delighted to bring Tina on board.
She'll bring our news department a wonderful mix of youthful
enthusiasm and hard-core broadcast experience."

"Hard-core experience." Natalie snorted.
Right. Four whole years. Apparently Dean Drosher was nothing more
than a young preppy version of Tony Scoppio: he certainly thought
along the same convoluted lines. Did these men have a secret club
or what? A treehouse somewhere where they traded information on
which women were in and which out? They could get old and fat and
fart their way to kingdom come but the women all had to meet some
standard the men came up with.

Natalie rose abruptly.
It hasn't changed
from when Evie hit 45 and couldn't get another TV job after
KXLA.
Only this time
I'm
Evie
. She began to pace
her minuscule office, every inch as familiar as her own home.
Probably more so. She knew the origin of every stain on the gray
industrial carpet; she could name the mishap that had caused every
blemish on the yellow walls. Her hand reached out to touch a jagged
hairline crack, a memento of the Northridge quake. She'd anchored
nonstop for nineteen hours that January day, winning an Emmy for
her efforts.

But these days she was as likely to split the
atom as get another anchor job. And Scoppio had made her feel
guilty for even wanting one.
You don't want to get down in the
muck. You don't want to get your hands dirty. You want to waltz in
here at six . . .

True. Every word. Natalie returned to her
desk and punched a few computer keys. That was what was so goddamn
irritating!

And now she had only half an hour to do
research before heading out with Julio for a full day of shooting.
She'd mapped out an aggressive program because anything less felt
like shirking. No way would she do that with Tony's accusations
ringing in her brain.

Her package that night was on environmental
problems at a Superfund site outside Los Angeles. She did a quick
web search and was instantly rewarded with forty hits. Information
at her fingertips. That was easier than eighteen years ago. She
began printing pages to read in the van while Julio drove to the
first location, then conducted a quick search of the LA station web
sites. She'd heard another local station had done a Superfund piece
the prior night but didn't know which one.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Only ten minutes
left. Nothing.

Damn. Couldn't find it.

Julio poked his head in her office doorway,
broadcast camera dangling from his right hand. "Ready?"

"Yup." Too late now. She stuffed a
spiral-bound reporter's notebook and an Aquafina bottle into her
briefcase, then hoisted its strap onto her shoulder, where it dug
into her skin. The other night she'd been surprised to see a welt
there. "Let's go. I just have to stop by the printer to pick up
something on our way out."

*

It took just one pissed-off instant for Kelly
to drop her usual care and punch her index finger way too hard into
the PAUSE button on the betatape machine, wreaking havoc on the
chocolate-brown nail polish that bitch of a manicurist had painted
on less than 24 hours before. Damn! She jammed her body back into
the hard steel spine of Edit Bay 4's chair and nibbled angrily at
the nail's jagged edge. Another sixteen dollars down the drain,
unless she could force herself back to that crappy minimall and
listen to that woman whine about her nonexistent love life while
she grudged out a repair.

Kelly swiveled around to face the computer
screen head-on. She had a ton of work to do, thanks to that relic
Ruth Sperry. Talk about good news and bad news! Rico had convinced
Scoppio to let her host a one-hour prime-time special called
Kids in Danger
, which would air on all seven—count 'em,
seven!—TV stations Sunshine Broadcasting owned, including the one
in New York. So she'd get a ton of exposure and on a hot topic,
too: kids and guns. The special would make heavy use of the school
hostage incident, and she already knew how fabulous she looked in
those stand-ups.

But the bad news was that Scoppio had
assigned Ruth to executive produce, so for the next month Kelly was
big-time under the old battle-ax's thumb.

All of a sudden the door opened and hallway
light poured in. "How're you doing?" Ruth asked.

"Just dandy," Kelly snarled.

Ruth narrowed her eyes. "You're almost done
logging the dubs we got from CNN?"

"Hardly! There's nine hours' worth."

Ruth just smiled. Kelly wanted to smack her.
She's loving this,
Kelly thought.
She asks for a ton of
video from CNN, because of its sharing arrangement with KXLA, even
though she knows it takes an eternity to log one hour of video, let
alone nine.

"Have you come across CNN's video of the
school shootout yet?" Ruth asked.

"Not yet."

"Log it carefully when you do. I only scanned
it briefly but it looked like pretty powerful stuff. And be sure to
return all the tapes to me when you're done." Ruth started to back
out, but that didn't stop her from still blabbing. "I've made extra
dubs but I don't want to lose a frame. We've got an hour of prime
time to fill."

Blah, blah, blah. Finally Ruth left, and
Kelly scanned the CNN dubs till she found the one with the
shootout. She stuck it on the bottom of the pile. She'd log it
last, just to serve Ruth right.

She was irritated now, irritated and, she had
to admit, kind of worried. No one had seen her with that
flashlight, no one! But still, part of her wished the whole thing
had just gone away. Now, as much as she wanted to host this
special, it still meant that she'd have to relive the damn thing
day in and day out. Somehow it gave her the willies.

Damn that Ruth Sperry for upsetting her.
Kelly didn't deserve that kind of treatment.

*

Natalie stood in Dewey, Climer's elegant,
wood-paneled reception area, nursing a glass of champagne and
wishing desperately that she hadn't come to Geoff and Janet's
engagement party. She knew only a few people and had zero desire to
mingle. Ruth, whom she'd strong-armed into coming along, stood a
few feet away, dressed with typical flamboyance in a turquoise
pantsuit with a yellow-and-lime-green scarf tied jauntily around
her neck. Natalie could overhear her telling one of the senior
partners a ribald story about midnight and a six-pack. All six
patrician feet of the man looked completely entranced.

Natalie sipped her champagne. She should be
careful how much she drank. She had to do a live shot later that
night and already could feel a flush rising on her cheeks. Around
her on the Oriental carpets a few dozen people stood in clusters,
their voices low, their bearing elegant, and, apart from Ruth,
their clothing muted. Geoff's fellow attorneys, most of them, with
a few on-air clients sprinkled in. No sign yet of the guests of
honor. Natalie caught the eye of a fellow female reporter and
raised her glass in greeting. The woman grinned and reciprocated,
then instantly went back to chatting with the fortyish man next to
her. She was on the hunt, clearly.

More power to her
. Natalie fidgeted
with the slippery stem of her crystal champagne flute.
She's
willing to be in the fray
.

"Don't worry. No one will ever suspect," Ruth
murmured, sidling up alongside her.

Natalie started. "Suspect what?" She tried to
make her voice casual.

"That you couldn't get a date. Bringing your
50-year-old female executive producer with you is a fabulous
cover."

Natalie sipped her champagne, relieved.
"Thanks for coming with me, Ruth."

"My pleasure." Ruth snatched a tandoori kabob
from a passing tray. "Nice spread. So have you met this Janet
gal?"

Natalie shook her head. "No."

"What do you know about her?"

Natalie could feel Ruth's eyes on her face.
"Oh, not much." She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. "That
she's a teacher. First grade, I believe. Her dad's a cardiologist.
She grew up in San Marino and lives in Pasadena now, I think."

Ruth narrowed her eyes. "Don't tell me. Her
dad's in the Jonathan Club and her mom's big-time on the charity
circuit."

"How did you knew that?" Natalie was amazed.
"It was at some Jonathan Club function that Geoff met her,
actually."

"I'll bet she does the Junior League thing,
too." Ruth fell silent, finishing her kabob. She wiped her lips
with a cocktail napkin, smearing it with bright pink lipstick. "I'm
surprised you haven't met her. Does Geoff talk about her much?"

"Not really." That was a big part of the
shock. Geoff had dated Janet on and off for a few years—Natalie had
known that—but she'd had no indication that Geoff was really
serious about the woman.

"Well, I'd say it's a perfect illustration of
the Duck Mating Theory." Ruth winked at the senior partner, who was
gaily raising his champagne flute to her from across the reception
area.