“I think we might have something interesting for you,” he said. “I assume you’ve been following our little situation with the evening news.”
Anne nodded. The month before, another network had gone after one of the weekend anchors. That had set a domino effect in motion, a flurry of telephone calls from agents, and secret lunches that nonetheless made it into the gossip columns, and speculation about who would end up where. In the most radical scenario, a dozen jobs were in play: on the evening news, the prime-time magazines, and the network morning shows that preceded Morning Talk.
“We may have a spot at one of the prime-time magazine shows,” he said, his face blank.
Anne’s expression did not change. She breathed in slowly through her nose, trying hard not to blink. It was something Charles Brady had taught her, and she heard his voice going through her head: Don’t smile so much, Anne, look them in the eyes and don’t move a muscle.
“May have,” she said.
“There are stronger candidates,” he said. “You don’t really have the background for it. No news experience. No reporting in the field. It would be a pretty broad jump.”
“I can do it,” she said.
“I think you can, too. You have a touch, in the interviews, and now that we’re doing all these celebrity pieces, all these Hollywood people …” He shrugged. “We have more than enough guys fighting over the other stuff.” He picked up a pen and balanced it in the crook of his index finger. “They won’t make it easy for you, you know. Don’t expect a warm welcome.”
“May have,” she repeated.
“There are some others in the running. This isn’t really the obvious next step for you. What would you say is the obvious place for you to go next?”
She watched the pen seesaw back and forth over his finger and didn’t say a word.
He continued. “The morning show, right? Move you from the affiliate to the network? That’s where the smart money is right now.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“I want you to think about this. We’re going to be making a decision very quickly. It’s a very tough game up here, I’m not going to kid you. You’ll have my full support, but it’s different rules up here.” He waved toward the bank of offices on his right. “Competitive doesn’t begin to describe it. So you need to think about whether you want to do it, whether you have the, the …” He paused, put down the pen.
“The cojones,” she said.
He laughed, and a second later she laughed, too. “And I don’t want to get jerked around. I don’t want a whisper of this in the press.” He stood up and began to walk her out.
“Lovely ring,” he said.
She lifted her left hand into the light. “A gift, from a friend.” She remembered the last thing Keith Enright was famous for, she remembered him brushing against her in the hallway of her old apartment, asking for a dance. “From my fiancé,” she said.
“You know, the first year of a job like this takes everything you have. The job will have to come first. Your family, your friends—you won’t have much left over for them.”
“I’m ready,” she said. Jenn was in high school. Bill had said he could wait.
They shook hands at the door. “Charlie was right about you,” Keith said.
“Charlie has taught me a lot.”
“Uncle Charlie taught me everything I know,” he said. “Well, almost everything.”
She was back in her office by three. She marched into Charles Brady’s office and closed the door behind her.
“I have to talk to you. Now.”
He grinned. “Been somewhere interesting?”
“You know where I was!”
“Oh, tell me. I want to hear you say it. I want to hear everything.”
“Don’t tease me.”
He began to hum.
“What song is that?”
“You don’t recognize it?” he said. He hummed another bar. “Up to the highest height. It’s from Mary Poppins. Don’t you watch Mary Poppins with that lovely daughter of yours?”
“Jenn is fifteen, Charlie.”
“Sweet fifteen.”
“You have to tell me what’s going on.”
“What’s going on with what?”
“Come on. I know you know every little thing that happens up there.”
“Sit down, dear. Get yourself a glass of water. Collect yourself.” He waited. “That’s better. What’s happening is that you’re being offered a remarkable opportunity. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“It’s got to be more complicated than that.”
“Dear, it’s always more complicated than that. You have a big brain. You figure it out.” He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “Tell me.”
“Well,” Anne said, “for starters, if they wanted me for this job, they didn’t have to call me up there. And certainly Keith Enright didn’t have to see me personally. I mean, all they needed to do is have one of the producers call Trip.”
“Good start,” he said.
“I mean, everyone knows how the receptionists gossip. It’s going to be all over the building by five P.M.”
“Too true.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“You tell me, dear.”
“He’s sending a message to someone. To, I don’t know, to whom? Wait, I’ll figure this out.… Oh. I see.”
“Spell it out for me, dear.”
She laid out her theory, outlining who was jockeying for what at IBC’s morning show, how Keith was sending a signal that certain people could easily be replaced.
“Very good,” he said. “And?”
“He waved to someone at the end of the hall, but I couldn’t tell who it was.”
“Well, what’s at the end of the hall?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been up there. You tell me.”
He shook his head.
“Damn you,” she said. She reached for his telephone directory and flipped through the pages, lining up names with their office numbers, figuring out who had the corner at the far end from Keith and working her way down from there. “Oh. I get it. So, so …”
“Continue.”
“He’s sending a message to the staff at the magazine show, too. About how he wants to fill the empty slot, assuming there is one. That he’ll fill it with someone like me, instead of … instead of someone like them, some guy in a trench coat who can’t stop talking about how he was shot at in Vietnam.”
“And why would he do that?”
“So … so … help me out here.”
“Oh no, it’s much more fun this way.”
“To reassure them?” she asked. “So a certain reporter doesn’t jump networks. Oh. Wow, it’s so obvious now. He was just using me!”
“Everyone is always just using everyone else. That’s the gasoline that department runs on.”
“I don’t know how you stood it for all those years.”
“Au contraire, they were the best years of my life.”
“Ugh, it hurts my head to have to think this way.”
“If you take this job, you’ll have to think this way twenty-four hours a day. Talent is only the tip of the iceberg. All the rest of it, the seven-eighths below water, is pure politicking. And that’s just the people who are on your own team. Imagine all the fun and games when you add three other networks to the mix, everyone gunning for the same big interviews. You realize who you’ll be up against. Those are women who came up the hard way. They’ll stick a knife in you on Monday, send you flowers on Tuesday, twist the knife on Wednesday, take you to lunch on Thursday. Lesson number two: The more vicious they are, the more charming you must be. Keep going.”
“If they bring me in …”
Charles Brady shook his head.
“When they bring me in …”
He nodded.
“When they bring me in,” said Anne, “it will look like I was handpicked b
y Keith Enright. And I’m so much not the obvious candidate. So if it works, he looks like a genius. And if it doesn’t work, then, then … that’s the part I can’t figure out. How long will I have to prove myself?”
“Through November. If it doesn’t work, you’re a movable piece again. He can leverage you in some other way. Keith Enright always needs a movable piece. Lesson number three: Have a longterm strategy. Would you like some advice? Tell Trip to take it easy in the contract negotiations. You can play hardball next year if things go well. Right now you’re low man on the totem pole. It’s not a bad idea to go in letting the big boys think they can push you around a little bit. Let them feel safe around you. Talk to them about their children, their precious children, every one of which is, of course, beautiful, brilliant, destined for greatness. Lesson number four: There is no such thing as too much flattery. Even the most cynical reporter is a fool for the right kind of flattery. I’m going to miss you, dear. Don’t forget to come down and visit every once in a while.”
“And you,” Anne said. “They’ll replace me with … who?”
He shrugged.
“You already have someone picked out, don’t you.”
“You’ll be a hard act to follow. But the show must go on. Don’t worry about me.” He opened a desk drawer and got out a bottle of single-malt Scotch. “Let’s celebrate.” He laid two sterling-silver shot glasses on his blotter.
They spent the next hour getting tipsy on warm whiskey. “I’m proud of you,” he said as they put on their coats. “Proud as can be.” They said their good-nights.
“Hey,” Anne said. “I forgot to ask. What’s lesson number one?”
“Lesson number one. But you already know it. Watch your back.”
June was a flurry of phone calls, everyone’s summer rearranged at the last minute. Most weeks Anne would be stuck in the city Mondays through Fridays, her planned vacation weeks eaten up getting ready for the new show. Neely and Lyon were ripping out the kitchen and all the bathrooms of the Malibu house and had rented a place in East Hampton for the duration of the construction work. It was agreed that Jenn would stay with Neely and Lyon for all of July and commute back and forth with Anne in August.
Jenn arrived just before the holiday weekend. Judd picked her up at the Jitney.
“That’s all you brought?” he asked. “Just the one duffel bag?”
She shrugged. “I’ll shop.”
Neely took her into town the next week. They bought sandals, and beaded silver jewelry, and long patterned skirts, and a dozen T-shirts in different shades of purple and blue.
“I can’t believe all this hippie stuff is back,” Neely said. “And I can’t believe your mother let you put all those holes in your ear.”
“I didn’t ask her,” Jenn said. She felt for the little silver hoops. “Can we stop at the drugstore? I want to buy some hair stuff.”
“We have plenty at the house,” Neely said.
“I need to put in some streaks,” Jenn said. “It’s already July, and I haven’t been in the sun at all.”
“You’re going to do it yourself?” Neely said. “Why would you do it yourself?”
“I always do it myself.”
“And it comes out all right?”
“It looks just like the sun did it. I’ve been doing it forever. You’re not going to tell my mother, are you? She thinks it’s natural.”
“I don’t tell Anne anything,” Neely said. This stepmother business was turning out to be fun. “Hey, why don’t we go to the salon and get you some foils? My treat.”
“Really? You mean it?”
“Sure. I’ll get a pedicure and a manicure while we’re there.” It was high season, and they didn’t have appointments, but Neely knew they would find a way to squeeze her in. East Hampton was becoming just like Beverly Hills. They spent several hours at the salon, Neely nodding yes to every service the staff offered. They emerged waxed, buffed, and polished.
“I love it!” Jenn said. “Thank you.”
“You look better as a blonde,” Neely said. “You’ll come to my guy in Santa Monica the next time you’re out.”
Their last stop was to a store that sold beachwear. Jenn tried on a white string bikini.
“Wow,” Neely said. “You’re so skinny. Who knew what was under those baggy T-shirts.”
“I’m just trying it on for fun. I can’t. My mother would kill me.”
“So don’t tell her,” Neely said. “You can be twenty-eight as many times as you want, but you’re only fifteen once.” They picked up six bikinis and two conservative tank suits for Southampton.
When they got home, Lyon was on the phone to the coast. With the time difference, there were still several hours of work to be done. Judd was up in his room with his computer. Dylan was still at the beach.
“Looks like it’s girls’ night out,” Neely said.
They drove on back roads to an old laundry that had been converted into a restaurant. Neely ordered a bottle of Cabernet. “And two glasses,” she said.
“Of course,” the waiter said.
“Do you go out to eat much? In New York?” Neely asked.
“Not really. Mostly we order in. Or have salad bar.” The wine made it easy to talk, and Jenn found herself talking about all sorts of things she never told her mother: about her friends, about school, about boys.
“And there was this one party,” she said. “Oh my God. You aren’t going to tell my father about this, are you?”
Neely lifted her right hand. “I swear. Are you kidding? Us girls have to stick together.”
Jenn went on. Neely pretended to be shocked in all the right places.
Anne would die, Neely thought. “So, I gotta say this. You and your friends—you use condoms, right?” Even in the candlelight, she could see Jenn was blushing. “Dylan has a little stash in the second drawer of the table next to his bed. And a bigger one in an old guitar case in his closet. Don’t say I told you. But take whatever you want. He won’t notice.”
“It isn’t like that,” Jenn said.
“It isn’t? You mean. Oh.”
“It isn’t like that, either. I’m just waiting for the right guy. Is that too old-fashioned? We do, we do other things. You know. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I feel so dorky!”
“I think it’s sweet.”
“I’m the only one, of all my friends.” She was waiting for Dylan. But he still treated her like such a kid. He had taken her to a party a few nights before, then made her go home with one of his friends when it got late and the drugs came out. “Little sister,” he called her, after the Elvis Presley song. But still, to be around him for an entire month, to see him every day: Glorious, she thought. That was her new favorite word.
“You want to hear something really shocking?” Neely said. She was on her third glass of wine. “I was a virgin when I married Mel. Can you imagine? Me? So believe me when I tell you there’s plenty of time. Don’t let men push you around. ’Cause they always will, if you let them. Men always want to be on top, even when they’re on the bottom, if you know what I mean.”
“Not really,” said Jenn.
“You will. Okay, enough sex talk. You started thinking about college yet?”
“I’m only a sophomore.”
“I bet you can get in anywhere you want from that fancy school of yours.”
“I don’t want to go to college.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“I can’t believe I said that. I’ve never told anyone. But I don’t want to go. I’m playing along, I went to all the meetings at school and everything. If you tell my parents, they’ll kill me.”
“You bet they would. I bet your mother has some place all picked out for you already.”
“She wants me to go to Harvard, like she did.”
“La-di-da. And your father?”
“Whatever my mother wants, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. So what do you want to do instead?”
?
??I want to be a model. I know it sounds crazy, I know everyone says it, but I can do it. I’ve had these pictures taken, by a professional photographer, he said they were good enough to show to a magazine. But then my mother found out and she had a fit and I had to tell him no. People are always stopping me in the street, asking me if I’m a model, and I don’t just mean guys trying to pick me up, but people who really know. When I go shopping with my friend Alice, her family is loaded, you wouldn’t believe how much money she spends on clothes, and the sales clerks are always asking me. And they know, they really know. But my mother says I have to wait. And we went to this party downtown, all these models were there, and they didn’t look any better than me. And it’s so unfair. Some of them are even younger than me, you know, but my mother is just so, just such a …”
A bitch, Neely thought. “So old-fashioned.”
“Exactly! She just doesn’t get it. What does she think, I’m going to go to college and start modeling when I’m twenty-one? Twenty-one is too late. Twenty-one is old. Seventeen is pretty old, too, to be getting started, but my mother says I have to wait till I graduate. Some of these girls, they’re my age, and you wouldn’t believe how much money they make.”
“Money is nice.”
“It isn’t just the money. It’s my dream. I think about it all the time. I could be … glorious.”
“Well then, what’s stopping you?”
“I told you. I’m not allowed.”
“Oh, please,” Neely said. “You’re waiting for permission? Let me tell you something. No one ever gives you permission. If you want something bad enough, you’ll just do it. You can’t worry about what other people think.”
“You don’t know what my mother is like.”
“Darling, I know exactly what your mother is like. I know her better than you do. You think she asked her mother for permission when she left Lawrenceville and came to New York? Her mother forbade it. Her mother practically disowned her. But she did it anyway, she got on that train and came to New York with no friends, almost no money, not a fucking clue. You know why? It was her dream, and no one was going to stop her. And you think I asked anyone for permission when I dropped out of high school? I forged my father’s signature on the papers and got on that bus before anyone found out. Because that was my dream. Because I knew. I knew what I wanted.”