Her Name Will Be Faith (6 page)

"Er... I guess I'll leave it
just now. I'll call him sometime. It's not
important,"
she smiled.

Ed Kowicz, Managing Editor of
Profiles,
peered at her. "You don't look
so
good. That a bruise?"

Ed had hawkish eyes, and could
see the discoloration even through
the
pancake make-up she had applied. "I walked into a door."

"Happens all the time,"
he agreed. "You ready to take on Connors?"

"Of course I am. Are we supposed to
wrestle?"

"He's something of a lady
killer, I hear. But he knows his job. He's
also an expert on tropical storms, I believe. And the
hurricane season
down south has just
opened. Could be an angle."

"Why, yes," Jo agreed.
Like everyone who holidayed in Florida or the
Bahamas she was always happy to talk about hurricanes. But not everyone
holidayed in Florida or the Bahamas.
"Do you reckon anyone in New
York is interested in
hurricanes?"

"Why not, after Gloria's
near miss? Anyway, everyone is interested in
hurricanes, even if they don't ever expect to be
hit by one. Besides, we
don't only sell
Profiles
in New York, you know. It's a good
angle. But
don't let him snow you."

"Let me tell you
something," Jo said. "Right this minute there isn't a
man in the world could snow me, Ed. Not even
you."

Manhattan shimmered. Even on the
shaded side of the street heat bounced
off the walls and up from the sidewalk. A few sensible
matrons held
parasols over their heads,
but even they mopped their faces and gasped
for
breath. Traffic fumes hung in the streets without a whisper of breeze
to shift them, and the sunny side of the street
was almost deserted as
pedestrians avoided the blistering solar rays.

Jo stumbled as she walked down
Fifth Avenue, and tugged impatiently
to free the heel of her sandal from the melted tar on the
sidewalk, then
sighed
with relief as she passed through the doors into the air-conditioned
cool of the NABS building. She had
never been here before; she had
interviewed a good many TV personalities, but always in
hotel lobbies
or at
their homes. Now she was shown into a small waiting room and left
to herself for some fifteen
minutes, which did not improve her mood. But
finally Richard Connors appeared.

If he was flattered to have been
selected for a prestigious interview, he
didn't show it. Nor did he help matters by his opening
remark: "Now,
what can I do for you,
Miss… er...?"

Jo felt herself bristling, but
controlled the retort on the tip of her tongue,
smiled sweetly, and said, "My name is
Josephine Donnelly, Mr Connors,
and I would like you to talk about yourself." With
which request she
thought
he would be happy to comply; she'd met this type before, smooth,
suave, sophisticated, too damned
good-looking for real, and boy, was he
arrogant. "Do you mind if I tape our conversation?"
She produced a
small recorder from her
purse.

"As a matter of fact I
do," Connors said. "I find those things terribly
inhibiting. Can't you make notes to assist your
memory?"

It was an awful let down, after
watching the handsome, charming face
on TV. She managed a crooked smile as she put the gadget
back and
withdrew a
notebook instead. "You're quite sure this won't paralyze you
as well?"

His head jerked up; he really
looked at her for the first time, and slowly
his mouth widened into an apologetic smile.
"Of course not. I'm sorry if
I sounded rude. I guess my mind just wasn't in gear. So..."
he leaned
back in his chair. "What
about me do you wish to know?"

Another act, she decided, as
though he had just pressed an 'on with
the charm' button, and again had to suppress her
irritation with his
artificiality.
Not that she wasn't used to it. Most interviewees were stiff
and artificial at first – it
was her job to break through that barrier and reach the real person – but
she hadn't expected it of Richard Connors.
"You've come to NABS from WJQT in Miami, right? Have
you always
lived there?" A usual
type of opening question.

"No. I was born in San
Francisco. My father was a pharmacist there."

"What made you move to Florida?"

"I answered the advert for a
weatherman, got the job. Simple as that."

"I really meant, what made
you go in for forecasting? I..." she bit
her lip, because he was grinning again. No doubt it
had been suggested
to him before that,
with his looks and background, he could have done
much better for himself. "I would say you were an athlete, once upon
a
time."

This time his grin was more
genuine, and even a trifle cynical. "I
played football, once upon a time. But never up to draft
standard. And a guy has to major in something. I was always interested in TV
– since
I was a
kid in short pants. And also an older cousin of mine was dead
keen on sailing – and
therefore weather. He'd take me out sometimes as crew – dead boring
slopping about waiting for wind, but he was always
looking at the sky and forecasting
what was coming... and I guess I got
involved myself." He paused to grin at her doubting
smile. "Being a
forecaster
gets to be quite fun, you know. There are a lot of spin-offs,
like doing commentaries from
helicopters and getting involved in local
organizations: you'd be surprised how many people in this
country are really interested in the weather, even if they don't talk about it
all the
time as they
do in England. You get to meet a hell of a lot of interesting
folk."

"And presumably forecasting is a rung on the
ladder up," she suggested.

Another grin. "To becoming a
TV personality? You'd better believe
it.
I don't intend to stay in forecasting forever."

She realized she had found the
real Richard Connors, a man just trying
to work his way into his true place in society, the same
as anyone else.
She
made notes on his college football career, his first job interviews, and
his varied progress before moving
into the world of television. But when
she came to his personal life, his mood suddenly changed.
"I shouldn't
think that will
interest anyone," he said.

"You couldn't be more
wrong," she protested. "That's what it's all
about."

He glanced at her ring finger.
"Sorry, Mrs Donnelly. My private life
stays
private."

They stared at each other, and she
realized that he meant what he said.
Which left her projected article in tatters. She might as
well get up and
leave
and scrap the idea right now. Then she remembered what Ed had
told her. "Then talk to me
about the job," she said. "Weather forecasting.
And hurricanes," she added.

He frowned at her.
"Hurricanes? You interested in hurricanes?"

"Sure I am. My parents-in-law
have a holiday home in Eleuthera."

"Is that a fact? Say, would
you really like to see how it all works?"

"Yes, I would." She followed him down
endless corridors, past open office doors where typewriters rattled, computers
bleeped, and coffee dispensers were in constant use.

"Would you like a coffee?" he asked.

"Not right now,
thanks." She had never tasted anything drinkable
from one of those machines.

The studio was like any other television center,
somewhat bare except
for the various
backdrops against which Richard would stand while
making his forecasts, and a large and elaborate
desk behind which he sat
as each
program commenced, and dominated by the three cameras,
presently
unattended.

The control room was far more
interesting. Richard introduced her to
the news and weather program director, who, even now, was
sitting
gazing
through a soundproof glass wall at three rows of screens showing
various pictures, from newsreels
and interviews to plain tuning screens.
The unit in front of his chair was solid with dials,
knobs and switches,
microphones and
telephones.

"This is where all the
mistakes are made," Richard said solemnly. "As
when the anchorman introduces the
President's state visit to France and
you're
shown a college quarterback haring down the pitch."

"Or the met man is left
pressing his control button for his next chart
and absolutely nothing happens," the director cut in, laughing.

Richard's office, on the other
hand, was a relaxed place of comfortable
furniture, just untidy enough, with piles of paper and
reports scattered
about,
to look lived in. He showed Jo to a very comfortable armchair,
seated himself behind his desk,
introduced and dismissed his pretty
secretary
– she had been filing – and then smiled at her. "Now?"

"Well, tell me something
about your job. How do you forecast
weather?"

"You observe," he said.
"There is really nothing much more to it than
that. Anyone can forecast weather,
and as I'm sure you know, most people
do, constantly. However, the accuracy of the forecast
does depend on the
number
of observations you can get hold of, which rather puts looking
out of the window every morning at
the bottom of the list. It also depends
on the interpretation you put on what you see and learn;
that last part
can be
pure experience, but it helps if you've been taught something
about meteorology. For instance,
a hundred years ago it was difficult to forecast the weather more than
twenty-four hours ahead, because then it
really was a matter of how much you could see from your
window, and
relating
that to your barometer. The barometer is one of the most
important of weather forecasting
instruments, providing, that is..." he
grinned.
"That it's an accurate barometer."

"Why is a barometer so important?"

"Because it records the atmospheric pressure
around you."

"But why is pressure
important? I thought we were all under pressure?
About 15 lbs per square inch of our bodies. Correct?"

"Correct. But that isn't to
say pressure is uniform all over the world.
Or even all over the state. The variations, thought of in
terms of pressure
per
square inch of the human body, may not amount to much, although i
f you think about it, just before
a storm, for instance, when it's all hot
and
muggy, everyone feels out of sorts. That's caused simply by a lowering
of the pressure. The important thing, from a
meteorologist's point of view,
is
that pressure controls the flow of wind. Wind flows from high-pressure
areas to low-pressure areas, or down the pressure
gradients, as we call
them, just as
water runs downhill. Actually, winds flow
round
centers of
pressure, but always downhill. In the northern
hemisphere, it does so
in an
anti-clockwise direction if it's a low-pressure system, a depression,
and a clockwise direction if it's a high-pressure
cell, an anti-cyclone.
South of the
equator, the reverse obtains. But a glance at the isobar lines always tells you
the direction of the wind, and just about how
strong."

"What's an isobar?"

"Very simply, it is a line
drawn, as a result of reported barometric
observations, through all the places on the earth's
surface which have the
same pressure at the same time. This is the most important duty of a
weather observer, reporting quickly and accurately on
the exact conditions
wherever he is. In
addition to recording the actual cloud formations
and precipitations and temperature, all of which
are necessary to the
forecaster, he
will record the barometric pressure. Here in the States we use inches, but in
the rest of the world pressure is recorded in millibars.
Then, when all those observations are received, the
forecaster – or
nowadays, the
computer – joins all the lines of equal pressure together,
making
up what we call a synoptic chart."