fished my cell phone out of my purse by pulling the cord for my earpiece. The ringer had been in the ‘off’ position since last night and I had forgotten to switch it back. Six messages. I plugged the phone into the charger on my desk. Nausea roiled up inside me. It didn’t help that I’d swallowed a bunch of vitamins on an empty stomach. I ripped apart the cranberry scone, picked out a few berries and lined them up while I thought about my next move. ‘Give me a sec to figure out how to handle this disaster.’
‘I’m here waiting.’ She leaned back in her chair with her arms across her chest. Abby was a very pretty woman who, at forty-two, looked young for her age with her straight hair and creamy Asian skin. She was head researcher on the show, and during live broadcasts always sat off-camera five feet from our anchor Joe Goodman. On the console in front of her were thousands of index cards with any fact and figure a pompous newsman could want in an instant: type of armoured tank most commonly used in the Iraq War, number of passengers killed on Pan Am flight 103 and biographies of important historical figures like Kato Kaelin and Robert Kardashian.
I rattled off some options. ‘I could just apologize to Goodman right now before he comes charging in here. Preemptive action is always good.’ Deep breath. ‘I could listen to my messages to see if that Boudreaux lawyer bothered to give me a head’s up that his client was talking to another network. He only promised me the interview on Friday. No wonder he didn’t return my calls over the weekend.’ I moved the piles of broadcast tapes to create some space on my desk and they slid on the floor like a mudslide.
‘I thought the interview was yours.’ Abby was trying to help. ‘Really I did, especially after your charm offensive trip last week – I thought you’d nailed it down. Goodman’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Check your messages first so you sound on the ball, even though …’
‘Even though what?’ Even though I had lost the biggest ‘get’ of the year to a perky blonde: Kathy Seebright, America’s official cutie-pie. As insiders, we knew her as the woman with the sugary smile who would chomp a man’s testicles off and spit them in his face. ‘Why did I tell Goodman on Friday that we had a done deal? I should have known it doesn’t count till the tape is rolling.’ Even Abby didn’t know I’d left work early on Friday to take my daughter to her ballet class. They’d probably assumed I was out greasing the wheels for the interview.
Sometimes sexy women like to act stupid because it helps them get exactly what they want. Theresa Boudreaux was one of those types: a bodacious waffle-house waitress with a devilish streak. Unfortunately for a certain high-ranking elected leader, she had the wits to go to RadioShack and buy herself a nine-dollar phone-recording device. She then used it to tape her dirty phone calls with US Congressman Huey Hartley, a powerful, sanctimonious, married-for-thirty-years politician from the solidly red state of Mississippi. When network news anchors lose interviews like this one, they get mean and scary. That’s why producers call them anchor monsters, whether they just lost an interview or not. They’re scary people even when they’re trying to be nice. But no one was being nice to me that day.
For a moment, I thought I’d be fired. In my defence, I really thought we had it. I grabbed my cell phone.
Message number four was in fact Theresa Boudreaux’s lawyer calling at ten last night. What a sleazebag. Just after the Seebright interview was in the can, he thought he should tell me that things had changed.
Jamie. It’s Leon Rosenberg. Thank you again for the flowers on Friday. My wife thought they were beautiful. Uh, we need to discuss some changes in the plan. Theresa Boudreaux has had some concerns. Call me at home tonight. You have all my numbers.
I dialled Leon at work, fury raging inside. His irritating assistant Sunny answered. She never knew where he was, didn’t know how to reach him, but always put me on hold to ‘see’. I waited two full minutes.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Whitfield. I’m not sure where he is right now, so I can’t connect you. Is there a message?’
‘Yes. Could you please write this down verbatim: “I heard about Seebright. Fuck you very much. From Jamie Whitfield.”’
‘I don’t think it’s appropriate to write that down.’
‘Mr Rosenberg won’t be surprised. He’ll think it’s appropriate given the situation. Please pass it along.’ I hung up.
‘That’ll get his attention.’ Charles Worthington gave a nod of approval as he strode into my office, found a place on my couch and grabbed a newspaper. Charles was a fellow producer who did all the investigative work on the show. A thirty-five-year-old fair-skinned African American, he grew up as part of the black Creole elite in Louisiana. He was short, thin and always immaculately dressed. Charles spoke in a soothing voice, with a discreet Southern drawl. We’d worked together for ten years, growing up in the business side by side. I often referred to him as my office husband, even though he was gay.
The phone rang thirty seconds later.
‘Yes, Leon.’
‘Jamie. Really. That’s so rude; she’s just my secretary, and she’s all shook up now. And very embarrassed.’
‘RUDE? RUDE? Why don’t you try unethical? Unprofessional? Fraudulent?’ Charles leapt from the couch with two fists clenched, giving me the rah-rah sign. ‘You said we had a done deal. How many letters did I write that little sex vixen client of yours? How many times did I bring big Anchorman Goodman to try out her soggy pancakes? What’d you do, grant the interview to Kathy Seebright at ABS and shoot the Theresa Boudreaux No Excuses jeans ad the same day? And, why did she go with a woman anchor anyway? Doesn’t fit the bill.’ Vixens like Theresa always go for the male anchors who can’t concentrate on the proper follow-up question because they’re discreetly rearranging the bulge in their pants.
‘Jamie, try to calm down. It’s just television. At the last minute, Theresa decided that Kathy would lob easier questions in the interview. She got scared about your guy. He does have a reputation for going for the jugular.’
‘And I’m sure it was all her decision, Leon. You had no input whatsoever.’ I rolled my eyes at Abby and Charles.
‘Now look,’ said Leon. ‘I promise I’m going to make this up to you. I’ve got some O.J. Simpson sealed court documents that would blow the roof off that little network of yours and I can sure …’
I hung up on him.
‘What was his excuse?’ asked Charles.
‘Same thing every time we lose one to her: “Seebright seems so much sweeter than Joe Goodman.”’
How had I let this interview slip through my fingers when we had it solidly in the bag? Why hadn’t I taken extra steps to secure her? And why were we doing this interview in the first place? Just because Hartley was a controversial, pro-family politician with four children? Did his prurient behaviour deserve all this media coverage? Absolutely.
Hartley wasn’t a deeply entrenched Christian conservative, but his ferocious anti-homosexual, pro-family oratory singled him out as one of the most outspoken Southern politicians. About eighty pounds overweight and six feet four inches tall, he usually walked around the lectern to speak so he could tower over the audience, rattling his fist in the air as his jowls jiggled. His grey moustache and goatee highlighted his enormous mouth and protruding lower lip. He had crystal-blue eyes and a perpetually sweaty bald spot that reflected the camera lights. He helped win the 2004 elections for Mississippi and the White House by supporting the drive to put the anti-gay-marriage referendums on ballots in twenty-four states. That White House strategy brought all the mega-church crowds out in their Greyhounds and was a major factor in the triumph of the Republican Party. Now he’d already jumped on the anti-gay bandwagon again for 2008: lobbying to put the ancient anti-sodomy laws on the ballots in the thirty-odd states where they weren’t already on the books.
I tried to accept the magnitude of my screw-up before I walked into executive producer Erik James’s office. That way, I wouldn’t argue. Arguing was never a good idea when Erik was angry. He was behind his