Morning Glory Read online

“Hold on,” said Adam. “I’m not the one who looks down on you, remember? Your show serves the needs of its audience. So does mine. So does the nightly news. If all news shows were the same, why would we need so many?”

  I bit my lip. Did he have to sound so damn reasonable while I was in the middle of my rant?

  “Yeah, Mike thinks it’s all bullshit. Mike—who, I might add, you literally hunted down to force him on your show. Did you think he was dying to go back on air and do pieces about how your hamster might be giving you salmonella?”

  Wow, Adam. From a compliment to a punch in three short sentences. Impressive. Good thing he’d softened me up for that blow, otherwise I might not even have felt it, given the day I’d had.

  “Salmonella,” I said slowly, “is a very serious health concern. There are over forty thousand cases of it diagnosed each year. I’m sorry if you or Mike think it’s a waste of your time.”

  Adam sighed. “Becky, come on. You just need to have a little perspective here. Give it some time.…”

  Time? That was rich. “I don’t have time,” I said, blinking my eyes to wick away my traitorous tears. “This is the only chance I’m ever going to have to do this job.” And I’d already lost it. I’d already lost it. But I was still the only one who knew that.

  “That’s not true,” Adam insisted.

  And how could I tell Adam? I could trust him not to gossip about me to IBS—it wasn’t that. But I couldn’t bear to admit to him that I’d failed. How would I ever convince myself I was good enough for him then?

  I shook my head. “You don’t get it. How can you? They hired me to be incompetent.”

  “You’re not incompetent.”

  Oh, yes I was. If only Adam knew. No—if only there were a way to keep him from ever knowing. “I’ve got to make this work,” I said, more to myself than to him. “I’ve got to. I’ll do it over my dead body if I have to.”

  Adam’s expression took on some of the wary characteristics I’d seen on the faces of the people back at the office. Had I really gone around the bend? Was the crazy showing on my face now?

  Of course. I was standing on a public street railing—at Adam, of all people. Adam, who’d never been anything but kind to me. Adam, who was exactly who he said he was, who did respect the work I was doing. Who, moreover, respected me, whether or not I was the executive producer at Daybreak. Or anywhere.

  I sighed, walked over to him, and placed a kiss on his nose. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to blow up at you, too.”

  He looked at me, sympathetic, but not pitying. “Bloody Marys with brunch?”

  I nodded. “Definitely.”

  There was something magic in the Bloody Mary. Either that, or spending time with Adam was far more restorative than I’d thought, even when we kept all our clothes on. Because by the end of brunch, I had started feeling a little bit like my old self again. The girl who could fire Paul McVee. The girl who could drag Mike Pomeroy onto Daybreak like a big game hunter with a trophy.

  Maybe I would go down, but I’d go down swinging.

  When we returned to the IBS building, I went straight to Jerry’s office. His assistant, possibly wondering if I’d gone postal, tried to head me off at the pass.

  “Um, you don’t have an appointment—” She jumped in front of me.

  I stood my ground. “I’m from Jersey and I have a pepper spray key chain. Now step aside.”

  “Coke or Diet Coke?” she asked meekly.

  I blew past her and burst into Jerry’s office. Jerry was sitting at his desk, doing paperwork. He didn’t even look up as I entered.

  “What now?” he asked, bored. “Going to bust a cap in my ass?”

  “What if I get the ratings up?” I said, a little too breathless for my taste, but it got the point across.

  Now Jerry lifted his head. And he didn’t look happy.

  “We have six weeks,” I went on. “What if we move the needle enough?”

  “You won’t,” he said, and returned to his work.

  “You don’t know that.”

  Jerry sighed and laid down his pen. “Becky …”

  I drew closer to the desk. “There must be some number we can hit that would give us a shot. An extra six months, something.”

  “Well sure,” said Jerry, in a tone that suggested there must also be some chance that the office furniture would suddenly get up and dance the tango. “If you got something absurd. Over a 1.5—”

  “Done.” I smacked the desktop and turned on my heel. “I have your word,” I said as I headed for the door. “If the ratings go up more than three quarters of a point, we get more time.”

  “Won’t happen!” Jerry called after me.

  I paused at the door. “We’ll see about that,” I said. And as long as I was going to be making demands … “Oh, and by the way. Your girlfriend, Lisa? Get her a dictionary and stick her on someone else’s show. She’s killing me.”

  If we were out, his little bit on the side was going to need a new job anyway. So might as well get her used to the idea now.

  And then I breezed out. I had a lot of work to do.

  By the next morning, I had everything in place. It helped that the Daybreak staff was terrified of me again. But I didn’t care. If I had to work from a place of fear to get these people in line, then so be it.

  I was going to give them a potent illustration of my new management style this morning.

  “There you are,” Lenny said when I arrived at the studio, slightly windswept but ready for action. “Where have you been?”

  I crossed the room and grabbed the schedule off the desk. “We’re changing some things.”

  “We are?” he asked. “Should I be worried?”

  I turned to Merv. “Is Ernie in place?”

  Merv checked the feed from the remote. “Um, I’m not really sure what I’m looking at.…”

  Now Lenny did look concerned. “Ernie’s supposed to be interviewing people as they come off the roller coaster—”

  “No,” I said firmly. “Not anymore he’s not.”

  Ernie, bless his simple, good-natured heart, had been pretty sanguine about my idea. Then again, I hadn’t given him much of an opportunity to say no.

  “Merv,” I said, “the camera’s remote-operated. Why don’t you widen out a little.”

  Merv and Lenny exchanged glances, then the director did as he was told.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lenny said, and crossed himself. His faith, I was learning, was a mysterious and fluid thing.

  Ernie was no longer standing in front of the roller coaster. He was strapped inside.

  “It’s called picking up the game, people,” I said, as everyone in the studio turned to look at me. “From now on, every story we do will be undeniable. We may not be the Today show, or Good Morning America, or whatever that show on CBS is called—”

  Oh, God. Was I losing it again? No matter. It was too late, and maybe what we needed was a little lunacy. What was the line I was looking for? Oh, yeah: I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.

  “We will work harder, we will be more aggressive, and we will do it now.”

  Lenny looked on in horror. “Are you going to—”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going to sing. Now”—I pointed at the screen—“make sure the audio’s working.”

  Merv obeyed. Lenny shook his head. “So what? So he has a heart attack we’ll be able to capture every heart-rending scream?”

  Exactly. I pressed the button to turn on the speaker to Ernie’s intercom. “Ernie? Feeling okay?”

  He smiled at the camera and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “See?” I said. “He’s happy.”

  “Dumb people are often happy,” Lenny replied, frowning deeply.

  “Lucky them,” I said. “Now let’s go.”

  On set, Colleen began introducing Ernie’s segment. “Thrill seekers have something to look forward to this summer as Six Flags unveils a brand-new roller coaster. The Manhan
dler is the fastest coaster in the United States, with speeds of up to a hundred and thirty miles an hour and a ninety-five-degree angle of descent.”

  Lenny gave me a dubious glance. Just offscreen, Mike sat at his news desk, arms folded, his expression far more than dubious. Closer to “disgusted.”

  Colleen was still talking. “Today, our own Ernie Appleby is getting a sneak peek at this amazing new ride. Isn’t that right, Ernie?”

  The monitors all switched to Ernie on the coaster. His legs dangled out of the bottom of the harness, his pants awkwardly hiked up, revealing pasty, surprisingly hairless calves.

  Also, mismatched socks. I turned my eyes heavenward, then realized, remembering Ernie’s fan base, that they’d probably find that endearing as well.

  “Yes, it’s exciting,” Ernie was saying. “We’ve strapped the camera to our seat so that now, courtesy of Daybreak, you’re about to see, along with me, exactly what this ride is like!” In the background, you could hear the steady chug-chug-chug as the car was pulled up the first hill. “So far,” he said, looking around, “it’s quite a beautiful ride. I’ve got an amazing view from up here. All blue sky except for a few cumulus clouds …”

  In the control room, a few people snickered. Leave it to Ernie to work a weather report into a story about a roller coaster. What was next, a statement about the windchill factor?

  “I’m heading for the first loop now!” he called.

  “Good luck, Ernie,” Colleen said.

  The coaster car continued chugging, the sound growing faster and higher as Ernie reached the crest. Puffy white cumulus clouds framed his face. He looked like a Renaissance cherub. Well, if Raphael had ever painted one strapped to a vinyl roller coaster seat.

  “This is so exhilarating!” Ernie was saying. “This is—”

  The chugging stopped. The camera pulled tight on Ernie’s face. Screams started up in the background as Ernie’s smile vanished, replaced by a look of stark terror.

  “Oh my God,” he cried. “Ohmygodohmygod.”

  “Yeah, no,” Lenny said to me. “It’s a great idea.”

  According to the diagram I’d seen of the Manhandler, Ernie should be falling into his first of three barrel rolls by now.

  “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—,” Ernie screamed.

  Merv dived toward the mute button. “Got it.”

  But Ernie was apparently still screaming his head off on-screen. We watched him twist around the loops, his hair flying up and down, his jowls flapping in the g-force as he spun. It was incredible. It was stunning.

  I hoped people were seeing this. Otherwise, it was entirely possible I’d just killed my meteorologist on a whim.

  “Has he stopped cussing?” I asked Merv. He turned on internal audio. “Mommy!” Ernie was crying. “Mommy! Help me!”

  I laughed. “Okay, you gotta put that one on.”

  “You got it.” Merv flipped the switch.

  A few moments later, the ride was done. We watched Ernie, chest heaving, eyes wide and watery, pull around the final corner of the coaster and back to the loading zone. His hair was blown off his face, his cheeks and nose were pink.

  “Ernie?” Colleen asked nervously. “How you doing?”

  A huge smile broke out on the meteorologist’s face. “Can I go again?”

  16

  Everyone was riding high that afternoon. Everyone, that was, except Mike.

  He stormed off after the broadcast, sat in stony silence during our lunch meeting, then cornered me afterward at the Craft Services corridor.

  “How is this journalism?” he cried. I was surprised he wasn’t shaking his fist at me. “What are you going to do to him next? Plant electrodes on his balls?”

  “To what end?” I asked calmly, as if I were genuinely curious.

  This only infuriated him more. Good. “You know, I actually feel sorry for that animatronic puppet asshole.”

  “Don’t waste your pity,” I shot back. “Ernie’s thrilled. We’ve got eighty thousand hits on YouTube already. And”—a fact that was much more important to me—“a bump in the minute-to-minutes. He’s a superstar.”

  “He’s a clown,” Mike corrected.

  “Lighten up.” I surveyed the muffin selection. Pretty picked over, by this point. The only ones left were bran. And no Danishes. Darn.

  “You know what I’ve noticed?” Mike leaned in, voice lowered. “People only say ‘lighten up’ when they’ve got their fist up your ass.”

  Really? IBS execs basically had their fists up mine, but I hadn’t heard anything of the sort. I turned to face him. “I hate to break this to you, Mike, but the fact is, the nation—no, the world—has debated news versus entertainment for years.” I slapped a muffin on my plate. “Guess what? Your side lost.”

  “You’re wrong.” For once, Mike looked as angry as I felt. “People are smart. They want information, not junk—which is all you want to give them.” He picked up a glazed donut and waved it in my face. “Junk! Sugar, sugar, and more sugar.”

  I picked up my muffin. “What do you want them to do?” I shoved my muffin at him. “Eat bran all day? Fiber, fiber, fiber?”

  We shook our foodstuffs in each other’s faces for a moment more, until we were interrupted by Lenny. He cleared his throat and reached past us for an apple. “This is an awesome work environment,” he said.

  I put down my muffin and took a deep breath, hoping to bring my status down from lunatic to merely stressed. “We have to get ratings, Mike. We have to, or we can have a lot of high-minded ideals and not be on the air.” Didn’t he remember what that was like? Not being on the air? Not doing any news at all, no matter how silly or petty some of it might seem? Wasn’t this better than nothing?

  Why couldn’t I make him see that?

  I stepped even closer to him. “This show might go down, Mike, but not because I’m not trying my hardest. Do you hear me? I don’t care what you do anymore, but I am not giving up.”

  “And then, when he started screaming?” Anna giggled and took another sip of her chardonnay. I’d invited her over to my postage-stamp apartment for a girls’ night in. “Man, that was brilliant. I don’t know how you got around him cussing like that.”

  “Apparently the amount of time between the F and the muted K was so long, the IBS lawyers classified it as separate and distinct utterances.” I reached for the bottle balanced precariously on the edge of my storage chest–cum–coffee table and poured its last few drops into my glass.

  “We must have watched it five times at work. Classic Becky Fuller.”

  Classic? I raised my eyebrows. I’d never strapped Harold the Hip-Hop Meteorologist into a roller coaster at Good Morning, New Jersey. Though maybe if I had, he would have stopped rapping. Perhaps I should suggest it to Anna.

  “How is work?” I asked her instead.

  “Fine.” Anna shrugged. “Chip’s sort of in-the-box about things. And we did have to explain to him where New Providence was last week. He thought we were talking about Rhode Island.”

  I groaned. “Didn’t he think to bring a map with him when he took the job?”

  “Guy’s not from Jersey,” said Anna. “He’ll catch up. Sometime.”

  “Sometime before you leave?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Why, Becky? You hiring?”

  “I wish I were!” It would be great to have Anna back on my team. Just talking to her over a bottle of wine was doing wonders for my mood. But even if I did manage to buy the show an extra few months to improve ratings, there’s no way I’d have the ability to buy it a new producer.

  Anna rose from the couch and walked two steps to the far wall. “Becks, I’m going to level with you. Your apartment would fit in my driveway.”

  “My apartment would fit in the car I had to sell to afford it,” I replied. “This is not news. What kind of news show employee are you?” I shook the wine bottle, upside down, over my glass.

  “Clearly not one doing my investigative best,” she replied. “I haven’t
grilled you about this Adam guy yet.”

  “Adam,” I said, “is dreamy.”

  She hopped back on the couch. “Go on!”

  “And sweet. And smart. And supportive.”

  “Adam,” she said, “is imaginary.”

  I laughed. “Actually, you know when I realized I really liked him?”

  She leaned in, eyes alight. There was nothing Anna Garcia liked more than a good romance. It’s why she had so many of them. “When?”

  “When he answered his BlackBerry in the middle of our first date.”

  She blinked in disbelief. “He what?”

  “I know!” I grinned. “I realized then we were perfect for each other.”

  “So he’s as crazy as you, is what you’re saying.” Anna polished off her glass.

  I stared into the bottom of mine, thinking of what I had planned for tomorrow. “No, honey. No one’s quite as crazy as me.”

  . . .

  Early the next morning, I was staked out in front of a ritzy apartment building on Central Park West. My sources told me that this target—a hot hip-hop artist sure to drive up ratings—tended to sleep in late. I drank an entire large coffee while waiting, but then started to worry that this wasn’t such a great idea. Maybe he’d prefer if I went for vitamin water?

  I watched folks go in and out of the building, and each time, my hopes rose, but it was never him. Finally, when I’d almost given up and gone in search of a bathroom—large coffee, remember?—I saw my prey exit his building and head for a waiting black Cadillac Escalade.

  I raced to intercept him. “Excuse me!” I called, then froze. Should I call him by his real name? His stage name? What was appropriate here?

  The man in question turned and gave me a deadpan glare. For some reason, the only thing I could think of was how this dude had been in prison. What was it with me and stalking folks who carried firearms?

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said quickly to my target. “I’m a big, big fan.”

  “You.”

  “Oh yeah.” I snapped my fingers and started to sing. I have to admit, I’m not much of a rapper.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one,” he said, his tone flat.