13
B
y the time I got to Mike’s dressing room, he was gone. And he wasn’t at Craft Services or in the men’s room—I checked. He hadn’t gone to the other floors or the archives, or to Elaine’s for a ridiculously early drink.
I finally tracked him down at a shoe-shine stand near the IBS building.
When he saw me, he gave me the most expectant, innocent look a human could muster. I wanted to throttle him, but the shoe guy would have been witness to my crime.
“May I help you?”
I launched into him without preamble. “You said you would banter.”
“No.” He lifted a finger in protest. “
You
said I would banter.”
“And you agreed! I distinctly recall you saying that you’d do it once you were on air.”
“I said I would talk about the headlines,” he corrected. “And I did.”
“Barely!”
“I said I would anchor a news show. That’s what my contract calls for. That’s what I’m going to do.”
And here I’d gotten the man
mangoes
. “Mike,” I said. “You can’t just go out there and give monosyllabic answers and talk about natural disasters.”
“You sure about that, fangirl? ’Cause I think I just did.”
“Colleen had to carry the entire show.”
I tried appealing to his vanity. “Is that really what you want? The media saying stuff about how you’re a sidekick to Colleen Peck?”
For a second, he almost seemed to listen. But then the placid smile was back. “I think you sealed my reputation the second you forced me onto your insipid show, don’t you?”
I choked on all the words I wanted to say to him.
“Anyway,” he continued, “what are you doing here? You need to go back to your office and wait for the phone call from Jimmy Carter. You know: Jimmy Carter, ‘Sexual Predator.’ ”
He actually made air quotes. My hands tightened into fists at my sides.
“Now, go away. I’m busy.” He waved me off and returned to checking the headlines on his cell.
The shoe guy gave me a sympathetic shrug.
I walked away as quickly as I could, eyes and throat both burning.
Somehow, I made it through the rest of the day. The call from Jimmy Carter’s people was actually not so bad. They hadn’t seen the show themselves—natch—and were merely responding to reports about what had happened. And, you know, the YouTube video, which I notified Legal to have zapped as soon as possible. Legal, in turn, warned me that any zappage would be of course temporary, and that probably the best fix for the whole matter was to make sure the writers on IBS’s nightly talk show included a joke about it to diffuse the situation.
Much harder to stomach were the phone calls from the elderly audience of
Daybreak
who’d been appalled, frankly
appalled
, to see our thirty-ninth president falsely vilified on our show. We put up a correction on the IBS website and promised to run another one at the beginning of tomorrow’s show.
I had a stern talking-to with the entire staff about paying attention to chyrons.
Lenny offered to take the blame for the mishap and tender his resignation. I told him if he left, I’d have a nervous breakdown, and to pass the bourbon.
Colleen had already gone home for the day. To be honest, I was relieved. I didn’t see any way of facing her after she’d so accurately predicted the outcome of my conversation with Mike.
I had no way of controlling my on-air talent. My last-ditch effort to save this show had been an utter miscalculation. I wasn’t sure if I could save
Daybreak
now. Maybe what they’d said was right about me: Maybe I wasn’t qualified for this job. Maybe I would fail, just as Colleen had predicted. Maybe they had been right, back at
Good Morning, New Jersey
, to pick blue-chip Chip instead of blue-plate me. All this time, I’d thought if I could just stick with it a little longer, just show them exactly what I could do, I could make it happen.
Well, I showed them. And what ended up happening was a disastrous show in which I managed to call a former leader of the free world a rapist.
Later, after I sent most of the staff home early, I sat in my office and waited around for Jerry’s call. Couldn’t wait to hear his take on the situation. Maybe he’d tell me that if I’d bothered to take a few more broadcasting courses, I’d know how to work something as simple as a chyron graphic. Maybe he’d tell me that he would have thought someone in the role of executive producer would be able to manage her staff better. Maybe he would gloat over how he’d warned me about hiring Mike Pomeroy.
Or maybe he’d skip all that for something short and sweet like:
You’re fired
.
But Jerry didn’t call, and as I sat there, staring at the phone and waiting for the summons that would seal my doom, I began to wonder why it was that he wasn’t calling. I mean, I’d half expected him to ring even if the show had gone well. After all, I’d just debuted Mike Pomeroy on morning television.
Maybe he’d slept through it all? But even if he had, surely he’d heard about it. If IBS Legal knew about the Carter situation, Jerry must have heard. Right?
After another half an hour of fretting, I realized there was no way I’d make it if I just sat and waited for the ax to fall. So I picked up the phone and called Jerry’s office.
His secretary told me he’d been out today.
He still had to have heard about our screwup. Which meant he didn’t even think we were important enough to deal with right away. Fabulous.
No point me sitting around here. It was obvious that no one, from our host to our executives to the guy responsible for wiping the damn chyrons, gave a shit about the show. What was I doing spending the entire night in my office?
There were surely better things to be doing. I could think of at least one.
Adam answered the door as soon as I knocked. It was a risk, coming to his place unannounced. I knew that. He might not be home. Or worse, he might be home, but entertaining some blond regatta-attending goddess. That would really cap the evening off.
But instead he was standing there, looking at me, dressed in a pair of jeans and a faded Yale T-shirt.
“Did you see it?” I asked miserably.
He looked at Colleen’s too-big suit. “It wasn’t that bad. It—”
Adam had watched the show! I threw myself into his arms and kissed him.
“Uh, hi.” He backed us both into his apartment and kicked the door shut.
“You know what?” I said. “On second thought, I
don’t
want to talk about it.” I kissed him again.
“Sounds like a plan,” Adam murmured.
We stumbled into his apartment, still locked at the lips, and I reflected on how high my Manhattan rent was and how ridiculously long it had been since I’d been in my own shoebox of an apartment. Adam, it seemed, had better taste in real estate than I. Or possibly more money to burn on rent. Maybe both, come to think of it. At any rate, his place boasted an actual view. It was of the street beyond and a glimpse of skyline, but it was still much nicer than my brick wall and alleyway.
“Last night …,” I began, as he was nibbling on my neck.
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you how much I like your place.”
“Oh.” He started fumbling with the buttons on my top. “Well, you’re free to admire it as much as you want now. Shall we start the tour with the bedroom?”
“Awfully confident, aren’t you?”
He grinned at me. “You just tackled me at the front door. I didn’t think you dropped by for a game of Scrabble.”
“True.” I slid my hands underneath his tee. He did the same under Colleen’s blazer.
My BlackBerry began buzzing in my pocket. We both froze, but when I started to pull away, he tightened one hand on my waist, then reached the other into my pocket.
“I should probably take that.”
He held it away from me. “Waiting on any life-and-death sources?”
“Um …”
“How about relatives in the hospital?”
“No, but—”
“And I assume you already talked to Jimmy Carter?”
“Not as such, but I did speak to—” I lunged for it, but Adam was way taller.
“If it’s Pomeroy calling to apologize, I say make the bastard wait.” Adam strode over to his fridge and tossed the BlackBerry inside.
“Adam!” I cried.
“We’ve been interrupted twice now,” he said, drawing me back into his arms. “That’s plenty at this stage of the game.”
“But what if something happens?” I looked over his shoulder at the stainless steel box currently chilling my phone.
“Then you’ll miss it.” He went back to the buttons on my shirt. “And then someone else will cover the World’s Biggest Pumpkin.”
“See, that’s not fair,” I said, helping him slide first Colleen’s blazer, then Colleen’s blouse, off my shoulders. “You work at a magazine show. You do one fifteen-minute story every two months.”
“Oh boy,” Adam said, and swept me off my feet. “Here you go again.”
But I wasn’t done protesting my point, even as he carried me toward his bedroom. “We’re doing fifteen stories a day, none more than three minutes.”
“Watch your head,” he said, as we crossed the threshold.
I ducked to avoid the doorjamb. “Three and a half if it’s the president or if there are nude photos. Four if we have both.”
“Is that your follow-up to the Carter revelation?”
I gave him a playful smack as he deposited me on his bed. “Watch it, buddy.”
“I told you,” said Adam. He landed on top of me. “I did. I got up at six
A.M
. and I watched your show.” He took off his shirt. My mouth went dry.
“What, you saying I owe you now?” I unhooked my bra.
He rolled on top of me, grinning. “Whatever works.”
“Mmm …” Except, before we got too involved, there was one thing I absolutely had to know. “Hey, Adam?”
“Yeah?” His jeans hit the floor.
“How reliable is your alarm clock?”
Much, much later, when I was scrubbed clean and dressed in one of my sharpest suits, I still couldn’t shake off the glow of the previous night. Yesterday might have begun disastrously, but Adam had provided a very sweet finish to the day.
I sat in the control room, trying to keep my focus on the show—such as it was, since Mike hadn’t loosened up any from yesterday. But at least we weren’t delivering insults to world leaders today.
Except I couldn’t seem to keep my mind off the soft kiss Adam had given me just before I stole out of his bed in the wee hours and practically skipped home—learning something about New York City as I did so. The whole “City That Never Sleeps” thing is a lie. When you’re out in the middle of the night, the streets are silent and empty. No one’s around to witness the undeniable bounce in your step after you leave the apartment of your brand-new lover and float home on a delicious cloud of memories from the night before.
“Hey,” whispered Lenny. “What’s going on with you this morning?”
“Huh?” I snapped out of my reverie. “I mean, nothing.”
He smirked. “Surrrre.”
“Oh, you’re nuts,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes. “It’s just been a long night.”
“Due to … ?”
I filtered through the breaking news stories I’d scrambled to get coverage for when I’d finally left Adam’s place. There was the new fire out West, the one they were blaming on the work of a serial arsonist. “I put together that whole piece on the arsonist.…”
“Riiiiight. That took what? Half an hour?”
I fixed him with a look. “Leave me alone.”
“Fine.” He held up his hands in surrender.
Just then, one of the producers, Dave, came in, a worried look plastered on his face.
“
Good Morning America
got the mother of the arsonist,” he announced.
I shot out of my seat. “Oh,
ass
! I didn’t even think of that. Well, I didn’t even hear about the whole thing until two
A.M
.—”
Lenny gave me a look, his suspicions aroused anew.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s see if the arsonist has a girlfriend. Damn it. Let’s see quickly. We only have footage and commentary.…”
They stood there for a second.
“Guys,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Story. Make it happen.”
“But, we’re supposed to be doing the thing on garden tools—,” Sasha said.
“Arsonist,” I said firmly. It was a story I was sure Mike Pomeroy could get behind.
Unfortunately, the arsonist was a loner, his dad was nowhere to be found, and his college roommate was booked on
Today
. Drat. We’d been scooped.
The realization took some of the bloom out of my cheeks, but I wasn’t done in yet. My copy was good, the arson expert I’d dug up had solid credentials, we’d gotten some great footage of the fire and the damage, and I had Mike Pomeroy doing the interview. He was ten times more interesting than some guy who hadn’t seen his college roommate since he’d dropped out freshman year.
The mother, of course, was going to beat us both.
“It’s a sad statement on humanity,” Mike said as we walked together toward our lunch meeting, “that the public is more interested in rubbernecking the woman who ‘created the monster’ than in trying to understand the pathology or the devastation it caused.”
“I’m with you there,” I said. “But people want to be reassured that their own little tyke won’t grow it up to do something like this. They want to look the mom in the eyes and wonder what it is she did wrong.”
“Apparently nothing,” said Mike. “She didn’t have any baby pictures of him playing with matches. They just wanted to watch her cry on national television. And the bozos over at
Good Morning America
were more than happy to milk that for all it’s worth.” He sneered. “And you wonder why I have no respect for your vaunted
bantering
.”
“Okay,” I said as we turned the corner. “Forget bantering. I’m taking you out today because I thought we could talk about maybe doing a profile. We’re doing a piece on Daniel Boulud—”
“Does it end with me in the kitchen making profiteroles?” Mike asked dryly.
“No.”
He gave me a look.
“Braised lamb?” I offered.