Gloss. Jennifer Oko

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СКАЧАТЬ story is, anyway. I’m sure he has other things to deal with.”

      Which was true. It was incredibly hard to get the attention of the boss, and you had to be judicious about it. Tom was a nice guy and tried to be welcoming, but his job was just too nuts. I used to think I wanted to climb the network ladder, perhaps run a show myself one day, but when I watched my supervisors, and especially the executive producers, I really started to question my career track. The stories, the guests, the competition, the overly ambitious young staffers, the hotheaded anchors, the egocentric correspondents, the late nights, the early mornings, the ratings, the marketing, the press, the promotion, the spin—it all fell on their heads, 24/7 (you can forget about a personal life), and the job security was as good as the weekly Nielsen Report. The American public could, essentially, vote you off the island on any given day, contracts be damned. We were the number one morning show, but only by a few ratings points. Should one of the other two network programs start creeping up (which they seemed to be doing), it was an invitation to a beheading.

      “Let’s go see Carl,” I said. “My editor is about to bolt.”

      Neither of us liked Carl, and he didn’t really like us, either. Carl was in the twilight of his career, recently fired from a big job at a different network, only to be hired by ours (word was he was golf buddies with the suits at the top). Carl had a big title for years and years over there, running one soon-to-be-canceled show after another, but the rumor was that for the past decade or so no one over there ever knew what he actually did. They said he spent so much time standing in the lobby, seeing and being seen, that everyone joked he should accept the dry cleaning deliveries so at least he would be of value.

      Things didn’t change much when he came to New Day USA. He had a big, beautiful office with big beautiful paintings, but most of the time he wasn’t there; he was out in front of the building, modeling his stylish suits, which were decades too young for him, laughing loudly so everyone could see he was having a good time. He just seemed to be one of those people who kept fluffing his feathers and somehow charming the right people enough that he failed up and up.

      The sad thing was, once upon a time, Carl was actually worth what they paid him. Word was that in the early days of his career, he was breaking stories right and left. He spent years covering war zones, telling stories that no one else would tell. But somewhere along the line, things changed. He started doing more and more pieces filled with style and less and less filled with substance. He was one of the first producers to mandate that every edit should be a dissolve, that more time should be spent worrying about the lighting and the correspondents’ haircuts than about the questions they were asking.

      Purists didn’t like what Carl was doing, but the audience did. And as the ratings went up, so did Carl’s stature in some parts (the money parts) of the industry. In fact, a lot of people credit Carl with the softening of the network news, but I think that might be a little too generous (or malicious, depending on your view of the world).

      Anyway, you might think that someone who had been around so long would want to nurture younger staffers like us, maybe try to relive his proud and productive early years, but the truth was it often felt like he resented us. Understandably. We took up his time with our petty needs when he could otherwise be schmoozing with the people who actually could impact his career and his wallet. Never married, never really appearing all that happy, he had only his job and his authority, and in the end, there was no security in that.

      Word was, after years of him doing pretty much nothing, the suits in our front office had seen the light and were now trying to push him out, make room for some younger, less wrinkled, less expensive blood, and Carl was holding on for dear life, making dealings with him more uncomfortable than ever. Up front he was as charming as all get-out, but he routinely took credit for other people’s work, gossiped incessantly (well, we all did that) and, worse, liked to change our pieces just to put his fingerprints on them. In fact, he was sort of a tyrant; he enjoyed tearing producers (and especially associate producers) to shreds. He would never raise his voice, but would say things like “this makes absolutely no sense” and “who wrote this shit?” and “how did you ever get a job at a network, anyway?” Usually he was comparably easy on me, but not always; he was the first and only person ever to make me cry at work.

      But he was a sucker for celebrity.

      “Annie has a date with Mark Thurber tonight,” Natasha said before we even sat down.

      I should have been pissed, but I knew Carl would be impressed (I was a bit impressed with myself, after all), and, more importantly, I knew that he would be nice to me in the hopes that I would return with good gossip tomorrow. And, hope of all hopes, he probably figured if a relationship took root and Mark and I became an “it” couple, he could claim us as friends, one of whom was in a very powerful place.

      Carl spoke to us while simultaneously consulting his BlackBerry, periodically typing a few things, putting it down, picking it back up again, as if to remind us of his importance, acting disinterested while inquiring about how Mark and I met, where we were going, what I thought might happen.

      I stifled a sneeze. Carl’s office was saturated with a musky male cologne (I could have sworn he shared it with Franklin); the scent trailed Carl wherever he went. It was so strong that some people would take the stairs if they saw him waiting for the elevator. It was weird, and made me wonder if smelling sensitivity toughens with age.

      “Excuse me,” I said, and grabbed a tissue off his desk before offering up a little more information, just enough that we got the desired response.

      “Did you make the changes we discussed earlier?” Carl asked, referring to his meddling with our snake piece.

      “Of course.” I blew my nose.

      “Then I don’t need to see it again. It’s fine. Have fun tonight.” He grabbed his remote and turned toward the monitor opposite his desk to watch the feeds of the evening news packages.

      And that was that.

      For now.

      Dear New Day USA,

      I am what some might call a news-junky. I am always very impressed with Ken’s hard-hitting interview style and just wanted to say that I wish there were more newsmen like him. His recent interview with the White House spokesman Mark Thurber was very insightful, really pounding out the truth of our administration. Do you know if Mr. Thurber is single? Can you please give him my address and phone number? I have included it below.

      Robin Fayer

       Orlando, Florida

      CHAPTER FOUR

      WE MET AT MECCA, A MIDDLE EASTERN–themed bar on the roof of the new Scheherazade Hotel, the latest hot spot in town. Normally, as a regular gal, I wouldn’t have been able to get past the red velvet rope (unless I wanted to risk waiting in the line that snaked through the lobby, leading up to a metal detector and an armed guard blocking the elevator bank). I suppose I could have shown my network news ID and claimed press privileges, which usually worked, but I was pretty sure my date’s credentials were enough to merit VIP status.

      “I’m meeting Mark Thurber,” I said to the Armani-clad, steel-shouldered bouncer behind the rope. I could hear a few girls in the line behind me rustle when I said the name.

      The bouncer looked at his list, asked to see my driver’s license and unhooked the latch. “Twenty-ninth floor, take a right.”

      And there I went. Clop, clop, clop down the marbled hall and into the elevator.

      And СКАЧАТЬ