Savage News Page 4

  “To start with, it is about an eighth of an inch longer on one side than on the other. Is that meant as a statement?”

  “A statement?” Natalie repeated, flustered.

  Bibb nodded. “Do we think it is uneven or do we think we’re tilting our head?”

  “We’re talking about my hair?” Natalie asked, just for clarification.

  Bibb sighed. “Please understand, I am on your side. You may think this doesn’t matter but it does. It will have a direct bearing on your ratings. You can’t be cavalier about it.”

  “I’m not cavalier about my hair. Not at all,” Natalie protested. Bibb looked toward the door and as she motioned, Natalie could feel someone enter behind her.

  “Hal, join us. We were just talking about Natalie’s hair,” Bibb said as Hal took a seat and scooted close to Natalie.

  “It’s one of your best features,” Hal said, looking like he was dangerously close to touching it again. “So full-bodied.”

  “True, but there’s just so much of it,” Bibb said. “I’m thinking The Treatment.”

  “Great idea.” Hal agreed as he inched his chair a smidge closer to Natalie.

  “It’s a chemical straightener that will do wonders reducing the volume.” Bibb smiled warmly-ish. “I’ll give you the name of a place. It’s six hundred dollars but so worth it. You won’t believe the difference it will make.”

  Natalie became aware of a tingling in her arm and realized she’d pushed herself so deeply into the corner of the chair to get away from Hal that her forearm had gone numb.

  “Okay,” Natalie said noncommittally, thinking there was no way she was spending six hundred dollars on hair chemicals. “Well, thanks, then,” she added and, assuming the meeting was over, made to get up and away from both of them.

  “It is not just your hair,” Bibb said, sending Natalie back into the chair. “It is, well—” Bibb paused. “It’s you. I worry you’re a little too outside the lines.” Bibb tilted her head. “What are you? What’s your thing?”

  Natalie frowned, speechless.

  “See even you aren’t sure. That’s a problem,” Bibb said.

  “What should I be?” Natalie asked, genuinely uncertain.

  “We need you to be very authentic,” Bibb said.

  “Viewers love authenticity,” Hal said, nodding enthusiastically.

  Were they serious? Authenticity, like relatability, was one of those words news managers loved to throw around without bothering to assign it a meaning. “So you’re saying I should be more myself on air? Show more personality?” Natalie asked, trying to sound open-minded.

  “No!” Hal shook his head violently with a look that said, Eeek! Not that! Anything but you!

  “More authentic,” Bibb repeated, as if it were a tonal language. “Develop something you’re known for, a texture and personality that is uniquely your own. A character. To make viewers want to know you and know about you.”

  What about the news? Isn’t the point that viewers want to know about the news? Natalie wondered but managed not to say.

  “Look at the reporters in the front row at the White House,” Bibb went on. “One looks handsomely intellectual, someone you’d love to sit next to at a dinner. Another is dapper with well-coordinated pocket squares and ties, like he’d be fun at a cocktail party. Even the curly-haired girl—it’s a terrible look, but you recognize her instantly. She’s that neighbor you can leave the dog with when you go out of town. Bring her back a dish towel or pot holder, something small.”

  “So I need to develop a thing.” Natalie was trying to play along. “What about a pair—?”

  “No glasses,” Hal cut in, apparently reading her mind.

  “No glasses on a woman over twenty-five ever,” Bibb added with finality.

  Hal looked at Bibb, with earnest concern. “Did you mention the, ah, you know?” As Hal spoke, he did a circling motion near one eye.

  “Oh yes,” Bibb said. Looking pained, she leaned forward. “Natalie, are you aware you have on only one set of eyelashes? Did you forget to do the other eye?”

  In all the rush she’d forgotten. “No, the other one fell off,” she said, embarrassed, reaching up to peel the remaining lash off her eye.

  “I see. Well, we can’t have reporters looking like one-eyed raccoons—”

  “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed reporter is king,” Hal intoned enthusiastically.

  “Please, Hal.” Bibb shot him a dismissive look and, turning back to Natalie, assumed a patient smile. “All right, I’d like this to be productive. Natalie, the truth is that in this business, hardworking women are a dime a dozen. Especially at your stage of the game.” Bibb said this with an intonation that meant only one thing: your age. As in, over thirty. She continued, “Frankly, talented men are the rarity. They are prized. So in order to stand out as a woman in the news business, you have to display something special.” Bibb paused to smile in sympathetic understanding. “That means you need to consider what is special about you.”

  Natalie began mentally flipping through her résumé with a creeping awareness of how irrelevant all the actual items—class president, valedictorian, magna cum laude, twelve years in news trenches, eight hurricanes, five celebrity trials, Emmy winner—would sound to her present judge and jury. To win in this court of law, she’d need more Sparkle! Vivacity! Enthusiasm!

  “The thing that most sets me apart is that I do all my own reporting,” she offered. “And I’m good at developing sources, winning their trust.”

  “Winning the source’s trust?” Bibb repeated. Then tried in a different, more patient tone, “Natalie, you should know that last night our ratings were worse than both CNN and HLN. And the morning show?” Hal shook his head mournfully, and Bibb waved the thought away as if it were secondhand cigar smoke. “The parent company wants the Chief to increase profits ten percent over last year. And he’s counting on us to deliver at least those numbers. The better we do, the happier everyone is. So.”

  “So?” Natalie asked, warily.

  “The question you need to ask yourself, the question the Chief will be asking, is do you appeal to our key viewers? Do you have what the Demo wants?”

  “The Demo?” Natalie hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  “The Demo,” Hal repeated reverentially.

  “Men ages eighteen to thirty-five.” Bibb said it as if “Men, Ages Eighteen to Thirty-five” was a mantra she whispered to herself during quiet moments and every night before bed.

  Natalie became aware that she was grinding her teeth. Of course she knew who made up the Demo. It was the hallowed demographic, so desirable because it was said to be the hardest for advertisers to reach and hold. Earlier in her career she’d asked her first boss, Len, “Why not just focus on the viewers who actually want news instead of chasing after boys who don’t?”

  In response he’d shrugged and said, “In news that’s what we call a Zen koan.”

  That was eight years ago. Since then, she’d accepted that her career was going to be run on the rules of dysfunctional dating and had stopped being incredulous about anything, even the price of water at the airport.

  “Natalie, let’s look at this a different way. How did you get here?” Bibb stood up from her desk and walked across the office toward a mirror in a carved-teak frame and got busy adjusting the starched collar of her blouse. “In life there are two kinds of people,” she began, and from her tone Natalie half expected her to pull out the human anatomy charts she’d seen in her eighth grade health class. “There are those who rise to the top easily because they have an ineffable quality that makes other people want to work with them, even do their work for them. And then there’s the second kind of people.” Bibb paused for effect. “Those who have to make their own way to the top. They have to do more with less, relentlessly keep their eye on the ball, never let up. They have to wo
rk harder than the others to get to the same place and that might not be fair but that is how it is. We call the two groups—”

  “Men and women?” Natalie said, unable to stop herself.

  A painful silence fell over the room, then Hal barked out a laugh. After a beat Bibb joined him.

  “Very cute, Natalie,” Bibb said. “But this is serious. I call them elevator people and stairs people.”

  “I see,” Natalie replied, aware that she was supposed to say something.

  “You are a stairs person,” Bibb said.

  “It’s because you’re such a go-getter. You’re so smart,” Hal said, smiling cheerily.

  “And we need to see those qualities on display,” Bibb added.

  Natalie had no idea how to respond and was grateful to be saved by Bibb’s intercom, which now buzzed with a call.

  “We’ll keep working on this.” Bibb gave her gold stickpin an adjustment, then turned and headed to the other side of her elephant-footed desk. The intercom buzzed again. Bibb took a deep breath and, picking up the phone, said with exaggerated drama, “Andrea, tell me you’ve got a location. You...what? Oh. Oh my... I am sorry. I knew your father was ill but I had no idea...hospice. I see. You poor thing.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and hissed at Hal, “It’s Andrea, with Ryan. Her father is dying.” Bibb’s expression was filled with alarm. Hand still covering the mouthpiece, she scowled. “I mean, really. Is she going to leave us hanging now? The timing couldn’t be worse.”

  Hal returned her frown. “Just explain that to her. She’ll understand.”

  “People are so difficult,” Bibb sighed, then took her hand from the phone and said, “Of course you need to be with your father, Andrea. You need to do what is right for him. But don’t forget, the question is also, what is right for you?”

  Natalie felt like she was having a flashback, hearing echoes from less than two years earlier, her father fading quickly.

  “After all the work you’ve put in, it would be a shame if your career went off the rails right now,” her boss on the Daybreak desk had said, all sympathy. “But it’s your call. Do what’s best for you. Just let us know what you decide by 5 p.m. please.”

  She’d told herself her dad would wait for her. She was covering a major hurricane and she knew that of all people, he’d get it. After all, he’d missed her sixteenth birthday and her graduation, all the while insisting she had to understand because he was pursuing a whistleblower with cold feet.

  “Dad, I just have to be reliable, do what they need,” she’d told him over the phone. “But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I understand, honey,” he’d said. “Stay where you are. What would we do if you were here? You’d just be sitting next to an old man, driving your mother crazy.” His voice was thin and weak but she could hear it swell with pride. “Watching you on TV is the best medicine. It gives me peace to know you’re going to be on the North Lawn soon. Here, talk to Cronkite.” And Natalie had laughed as she heard the panting of her father’s dog fill the line.

  Her mother’s voice interrupted, her tone hushed. “He’s fading fast, Natalie. You should come home. Your sister is spending a lot of time here with the baby.”

  “But Dad just said—”

  A long pause. Then the formal tone, knife-edged with disapproval. “Well. It’s your choice, of course. Let us know what you decide.”

  There had been so many similar dialogues with other people over the years, so many missed dinner-and-a-movies, missed friend’s weddings, Thanksgivings, New Year’s Eves. Not as intense, but always played in the same tune. It felt like a form of emotional jujitsu, using the dedication and ambition that had gotten her that far against her.

  Andrea was holding out a long time with Bibb, not giving in to the pressure, Natalie noted with admiration and a pang of shame. She had caved every time. Even at the very end.

  “I’ll see you on Friday,” was the last thing she’d told her dad, and it had turned out to be a lie. She hadn’t meant it to be. He’d held on, her mother told her, two days longer than anyone thought he could, waiting for her. But not long enough for Hurricane Leon to spell itself out so she could get there.

  Don’t give in, Natalie wanted to shout to Andrea. Go be with your dad. Nothing they promise or threaten is as important.

  But she knew it wasn’t entirely true. You gave in, she chided herself, and look where you are. Right where you wanted to be.

  Or almost. Temporarily.

  “Of course we’ll need to know as soon as possible so we can have someone take over for you,” Bibb was saying into the phone. “Don’t worry, it will be someone wonderful, someone just as good as you.” Bibb was playing the we-can-replace-you card. That was the closer; it always worked. “What...!” Bibb chirped, sounding delighted. “You think so? You’re a trooper! Absolutely, we can do that.” Bibb was now magnanimous. “One or two more days here with Ryan and then off you go to see Dad. I bet they can even wait to start the morphine. What difference can a day here or there really make?”

  Bibb hung up, closed her eyes, and sighed. “I bought us a few days anyway. Managing people is so draining.” She rubbed her temples and looked back and forth between Hal and Natalie. “Andrea’s been working with Ryan all week. Who does she think will write his live shots for him if she leaves?”

  “She’s probably just emotional, not thinking clearly,” Hal said as if the problem was that Andrea’s father was dying. Or that Andrea cared that her father was dying.

  “Can’t Ryan handle his own live shots?” Natalie asked, unable to bite back the words. It was one thing to have a producer show him the way, but if the guy couldn’t speak without someone dictating every word, maybe he was in the wrong line of work?

  “Have you met Ryan McGreavy?” Bibb asked.

  “I only know him by reputation. And his, ah, Eat Me investigation,” Natalie said judiciously.

  “If you know him, you’ll understand,” Bibb told her. “Ryan is a work in progress. He is teeming, bursting with potential. But he needs a little—I was going to say grooming but that’s the wrong word in his case.” To Natalie’s horror, Bibb tittered.

  Hal joined her. “Ryan has great hair.”

  “For someone like Ryan, we’re happy to hire producers to write their scripts and conduct their research. Do all the hustly-bustly stuff,” Bibb said. “And it works very well, as long as they stick to their lines as written.”

  I suppose for a guy who’s eaten pig sac, putting other people’s words in his mouth must feel like child’s play. “So you’re saying Ryan is an elevator person,” Natalie stated more than asked.

  “Exactly,” Bibb said with pride, like a teacher whose slowest pupil finally learned to read. “I’m glad you understand, because we feel Ryan could make a wonderful reporter at the White House.”

  For a moment Natalie stopped breathing, as her mind raced. Ryan. It was true. They were grooming I-Eat-Balls McGreavy for the White House job. Her White House job.

  “Surely you’re not surprised. Ryan has politics in his blood,” Bibb went on. “You understand your assignment is only temporary.” She smiled. “Of course none of this is set in stone. The Chief is in town tomorrow. He’s holding an impromptu town hall, to reassure staff about his plans for the network. You should be ready to wow him. At the very least, I’d suggest getting a blowout.”

  This time, Natalie understood, she was being dismissed. Absently, she promised to blow out her hair, thanked Bibb, and in a daze she stood and headed for the door, all the while hearing the words Ryan McGreavy, White House correspondent echo in her head.

  “Wait, take these!” Bibb called out, forcing her to circle back and take the glossy magazines out of Hal’s outstretched hands. As she headed down the hall, mind racing, she heard echoes of all the other “helpful advice” she’d gotten over the course of her career from women in ne
ws management. From women who were just trying to be honest or just trying to be helpful or just thought you might want to know. She wondered if it was like this in other businesses. Or at other networks. What ever happened to sisterhood?

  She stalked past the stairs and punched the down button on the elevator. Stairs person, she fumed. Then realizing that she was still clutching the magazines she looked around for a recycling can and, not seeing one, shoved them in the trash.

  Bibb was in for a surprise. Natalie Savage was not going away. She’d stayed and covered Hurricane Leon and she would stay and cover the White House, too. Permanently.

  Although, seeing her reflection in the elevator door, she decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a blowout.

  3

  A Suite of One’s Own

  Despite the promise of its name, the Executive Comfort Inn where ATN was putting Natalie up—“Temporarily,” the woman in HR had stressed—was anything but. It was adorned with plaid drapes and a painting of a sad cowboy who looked like he was going to shoot himself. All the furniture sloped slightly toward the floor as though it had been designed by a team of sadists to ensure she could never relax. At night, Natalie kept waking up in a twisted position halfway off the bed with her forearms aching from bracing against the slope.

  On the bright side, it was spacious enough to include a “living room” with a “breakfast bar,” which is where she’d eaten her dinner to-go while watching—no, torturing herself with—online clips of Ryan McGreavy’s Eat Me investigation. Her reaction careened between hilarity and horror as she watched the weekly ritual of degradation. Witness McGreavy’s determination as he polishes off a liter of rat-tailed maggots with a shot of horse semen! Enjoy McGreavy’s smoldering gaze as he and his inexplicably wet eight-pack race through the jungle and trip into a slick of rhino dung! Admire McGreavy’s craftiness as he sneaks his hidden camera into the producers’ tent, capturing proof the competition is staged. Such commitment to the truth! Such bravery in holding power to account! What a tribute to the virtue of a free press.