The Ghost of Greenwich Village

by Lorna Graham

  She disembarked the subway at Thirty-fourth Street, still amazed at how different Midtown was from the Village. In the Village, locals meandered, strolled, ambled at best. Here everyone marched smartly in military precision, as if taking orders from some unseen general. You there! Knees up! Look alive! And you! Watch the hot dog vendor. Keep up, you in the purple sweater. All together now: Around the tourists! Around the tourists!

  The gleaming, forum-like entrance to the network loomed. Enormous double doors swung open and Eve stepped inside the glistening marble foyer. A series of full-length color portraits of the network’s anchors and correspondents hung from the two-story ceiling. The men all wore gray or blue blazers, the women red or yellow. The men folded their arms across their chests like aging white rap stars; the women clasped their hands behind their backs in the manner of Degas ballerinas. Bliss Jones’s banner hung in the center, slightly in front of the others’. Blinding teeth and reassurance radiated from the gently fluttering canvas.

  Eve showed her ID to the guard and, after tiptoeing her way up five flights of cigarette-butt-strewn back stairs, found her way to Mark’s office. The door was open, and as she walked in, several people simultaneously swiveled in her direction and stopped talking.

  “Ah,” said Mark, waving her in. “Well, here we go. Everyone, this is Eve. Eve, these are the writers.” They looked at her with frank curiosity as Mark introduced them, one by one. First came Archie Meyers, graying, scruffy, and somewhat distracted, who appeared to come with a copy of The New York Times surgically attached under his arm. He’d worked at the show for fifteen years and his expertise was politics; he’d interviewed each of the last three presidents (or at least their top aides). Next came Quirine Veselier. She was French, though she’d lived in the U.S. for fifteen years. She still had a bit of an accent and was darkly gamine in a simple but perfectly cut dove gray blouse and wide-legged trousers. She handled most of the segments on social issues and the environment, about which she maintained Americans were “frighteningly ignorant.” To her left stood blond, green-eyed Steve Andrews, who had the look of a college quarterback crossed with a down pillow. He handled sports segments and anything to do with cars or power tools. Last to be introduced was Russell Washington, his pate black and glossy as an eight ball. He held himself with great dignity but possessed a twitchy mouth that looked capable of unleashing a wicked string of bons mots. He and Mark had no journalistic “niche”; they handled, as needed, any topic that came up.

  The team of office-chair superheroes, each armed with his or her unique skill, made for an impressive tableau. Eve imagined brilliantly colored capes blowing from behind their shoulder blades, to go with the glimmer in their eyes that said, “Don’t you worry. We’ve got it covered.” Everyone made polite small talk for a few minutes, but much to Eve’s relief, no one mentioned the bouillabaisse.

  “Where’s Cassandra?” asked Mark.

  “Late again,” said Quirine, rolling her eyes. “Perhaps she had an audition.”

  “Okay, guys. Back to the salt mines,” said Mark. As the gang filed out, he asked Eve to sit. “So. You took the back stairs?” She nodded. “Glad you know how to follow directions. So, first up, HR has given me some paperwork for you to fill out and—”

  There was some noise in the hallway. The door swung open and a woman appeared. She was in her late fifties, Eve thought, with highly styled dark hair with a shock of steel at each temple and red-framed glasses. She seemed to be finishing up a conversation with the other writers.

  “… up to you to hold down the fort in my absence, everyone. I know you’re up to it.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her and took a step toward Mark. “Just wanted to make the rounds before I leave for the retreat. There’s talk of some of us going out to L.A. afterward, so I may be away longer than we discussed. I’ll let you know from the road. I have some notes about May sweeps to give you, too.”

  Mark rose from his seat. “I, um, thought you were already gone.” He accepted the papers she handed him, shuffling through them slowly as if stalling. “But these are great. Thank you.”

  The woman swept her eyes over Eve. “Who’s your friend?”

  Mark cleared his throat. “This is Eve Weldon. Eve, this is Orla Knock.” Eve started to stand up as well but the woman’s eyes snapped back to Mark’s face and Eve sank back down.

  “I thought we talked about this,” said Orla.

  “I know we did. But I tried Samantha Peters and Michael Kramer like you asked and they’re both doing vacation relief at CNN. Their schedules may free up in a couple of weeks, though. I’ll keep checking in with them.”

  “There has to be somebody else.”

  It was humiliating to be discussed like this, her future being bandied about like a fuzzy green tennis ball, but Eve couldn’t think what she could possibly add to this conversation.

  “There isn’t,” said Mark. “Not on such short notice anyway. Plus, I was thinking. If we don’t bring Eve back, isn’t it tantamount to admitting that it was the writing department’s fault, when really the blame should fall on Katrine for not coming in and not getting a replacement? The producer is responsible for the props, not the writer.”

  “This is the case you’ll make if anyone asks?” Orla lowered her glasses down her nose and looked hard at Mark.

  “I already spoke to Franka and she agreed. I’m sorry, like I said, I thought you were gone or I would have cleared it with you first.”

  “Fine. But this is on your head, Mark. You’re taking total responsibility for—Eve, was it?—and her work, you understand? I don’t want any calls from Giles while I’m holding hands with other managers and chanting Eastern self-help phrases.”

  Mark swallowed. “I understand. Eve will be my responsibility. Totally.”

  Orla’s cellphone went off. She frowned down at it. “I have to take this. Good luck, one and all.” She nodded briefly at no one in particular and was gone.

  “Shit.” Mark closed his eyes and pressed his palms to his temples.

  “You okay?”

  “No. Yeah. Fuck.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Well, if it’s not obvious, you need to do a good job today. Really good. She’ll be watching the show tomorrow from wherever she is with an eagle eye and her finger poised over the speed-dial button.” Eve chewed a fingernail, chagrined to find the stakes of the day exponentially heightened. “I guess you get the picture,” continued Mark. “As you can probably tell, Orla wanted to nix you outright. But the food producer really was to blame, ultimately. So now she’s been fired.”

  Eve stared at him, deeply uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, well, it’s dog-eat-dog around here and our department can’t afford to go down another head. If we do the show with six writers for even just a few days, they’ll wonder why we can’t do it that way forever.” Mark took a sip from his water bottle. “Look, aside from making Bliss Jones vomit, you did all right. And it seemed like a waste that I showed you how to do everything only to cut you loose. You learn pretty fast. So what I figure is, we go from here, and by the time Orla gets back, you’ll have some decent segments behind you.” He handed her the HR papers. “Okay, they’re going to set up a computer account and a phone line for you today, and though I doubt it, it’s possible that people may be calling you for a quote.”

  Now, this was exciting. Not only was she going to be a member of a bona fide news organization, she was going to be in the news. “Really?” she asked, trying not to let her voice betray her excitement. “They’ll want to know about me? Like for a story about ‘new faces in the news’ or something?”

  Mark looked incredulous. “Have you ever seen a piece like that anywhere? Think before you answer.”

  “Well, not per se …”

  “But you do read the papers.”

  “Of course.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Her mind raced. What had she seen on the stands?
“You know, I enjoy The Observer and …” She trailed off.

  “No, not the pink paper with the drawings. Real newspapers: the Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Daily News, Newsday?”

  She said nothing.

  “So why are you here?”

  Eve thought of Highball and Donald and almost said, “To support my growing number of dependents.” But she didn’t. “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you want to be a journalist if you have no interest in journalism?” This apparently wasn’t the time to admit she’d never been particularly interested in being a journalist. Mostly, she’d been giving thought to what she didn’t want to do. “Look,” said Mark. “To do this job, you’re going to have to read everything, understand? You have to know not just what’s going on but what people are saying is going on. Two different things. You have to understand the mood of the country—how people are feeling about everything from stay-at-home dads to rendition—so you can bring it to whatever you write. That’s the way you connect with viewers and get them interested in the show and, more important, make Bliss and Hap look smart and well-read and funny and interesting and down-to-earth and … you get the idea.” His phone rang; he glanced at it but didn’t pick up.

  “Okay,” breathed Eve, thinking the writers deserved their capes.

  “Look, your take on bouillabaisse was smart. But what you did with soup? You have to be able to do that with overmedicated children, cap and trade, the latest Hollywood ‘It Girl’—everything.”

  “Cap and tray?”

  “Cap and trade. Emissions? Hello?”

  No more being ignorant, Eve resolved. She never wanted to see that look on Mark’s, or anybody else’s, face again. “Right, right. Of course.” She’d look up what exchanging hats had to do with pollution at the earliest opportunity.

  “Now, to become Queen of the Zeitgeist … here.” Mark handed Eve a three-page memo on Smell the Coffee stationery.

  Writers:

  In addition to your usual reading (the Times, the News, the Washington and New York Posts, Newsday), please make an effort to include the following every day, including Sundays:

  The Boston Globe

  The Miami Herald

  The Philadelphia Inquirer

  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  Minneapolis Star Tribune

  Chicago Sun-Times

  Chicago Tribune

  The Plain Dealer

  The Dallas Morning News

  San Francisco Chronicle

  Los Angeles Times

  Also, weekly and/or monthly:

  Time

  Newsweek

  Reader’s Digest

  Vanity Fair

  US News and World Report

  People

  Redbook

  Ladies’ Home Journal

  Woman’s Own

  Sports Illustrated

  GQ

  Esquire

  (The only title not on the list was The New Yorker, which of course was the only one Eve had read.)

  In addition, please use Nexis to review daily transcripts from the following:

  The Oprah Winfrey Show

  Larry King Live

  The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

  Late Night with David Letterman

  Charlie Rose

  The Open Mind

  Also—please make sure you have read at least seven of the New York Times bestsellers and seen five of the top ten box office movies on any given week.

  Orla’s rather loopy scrawl was at the bottom. Eve got lost in the letters, which morphed from “Orla” to “Or else.” But it didn’t sound too bad, really. Kind of like being paid to read. The Daily News probably couldn’t touch Louisa May Alcott, but still. “Okay,” she began. “But why are we reading the Minneapolis Star Tribune?”

  Mark raised an ironic eyebrow. “Because Smell the Coffee is not a New York show.”

  “What do you mean? We’re in New York.”

  “That’s only an accident of real estate,” said Mark, starting to stack some folders on his desk. “We try not to acknowledge New. York too much because it turns off the viewers. The rest of the country has issues with us. They think we’re a bunch of snooty, pseudo-intellectual, nebbishy Woody Allen types. Not that they would use the word ‘nebbishy.’ ”

  Eve swiveled in her chair as she considered this. It rang true, unfortunately. Certainly, Ohioans made their fair share of New York jokes.

  “Anyway,” Mark said. “Can I take it you haven’t read the papers the last couple of days?”

  “Yes.”

  Mark sighed and leafed through a stack of tabloids and broadsheets. Each had the same story on its cover, about how police were flummoxed by the Stiletto. Mark directed Eve’s attention to a sticky note peeking out from an inside page of the Daily News. The headline read, Morning Show in a Stew Over Bad Fish Dish.

  “They don’t know your part in this whole thing, but this reporter might call around, sniffing for the scoop,” he said.

  “What do I say?”

  “Absolutely nothing. You never say anything to the press.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. We have a two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year spokeswoman for that.”

  Eve squinted. Mark had made such a big deal about the cause of journalism. The staff of Smell the Coffee was out to uncover stories; it didn’t seem fair that they should hamper the efforts of other journalists trying to do the same thing.

  “So, okay. Let’s get you started,” he said. “Now, know this up front. For the near future, you’re only going to do non-news segments, all right? Yes, it’s the ‘fluff’—entertainment, crafts, how-to, maybe some medical stories, but only ‘conditions,’ not ‘diseases’—and you’re only going to write for Hap. That’s the way it is with new people, so you just sort of have to suck it up. Kevin, the guy who was fired the other day, couldn’t seem to grasp that. He was always pressing for hard news and wanting to write for Bliss before he was ready.” Mark paused for a moment before continuing. “Bliss is … Bliss. It’ll be a while before you’ll be ready for her. If ever.” Eve nodded. The truth was, she was relieved. Why had this Kevin insisted on stepping into the line of fire? She was perfectly happy to duck it.

  “Does Bliss do all the hard news stories?” Eve asked.

  “No, but most of them. On this show, she wears the pants. And she can spot a flaw in an interview a mile away. That’s why people work here for a long time before even trying to write for her. If you’ve left a stone unturned, or there’s a lack of logic in the progression of your questions, she’ll alert Giles—that’s the executive producer—right on the set during a commercial break. And he’ll go straight to Orla Knock, or if she’s not here, me. As you can imagine, that’s an experience we want to avoid.”

  Mark launched into more of the basics. Her schedule: in at 3 p.m. for the production meeting, during which that morning’s show would be postmortemed and the next day’s bookings would be discussed. Then she’d get her assignment, read the research, talk to the guests, and write the intro. The day ended whenever it ended, there was no way of knowing. Segments could fall through, guests often had to be rebooked, news could break—there were any number of reasons why she might have to stay late. It would “probably” never be more than an eleven-hour day, Mark offered cheerfully. Eve felt disappointed; it would be difficult to socialize on this schedule, which entailed working five of every seven nights.

  Mark then detailed the heart of the job: the pre-interview. This was the interview, by phone, with the guest booked on the next morning’s show. The point of the “pre” was to avoid wasting precious network airtime. Since most segments—even important ones featuring high-ranking public officials—lasted only three or four minutes, they had to be highly choreographed. To this end, the writers spoke to the guests in advance to discover which questions provoked interesting answers and which led down dry holes.

  The American public had very little patience, especially i
n the morning, Mark explained, so the pre-interview was also something of a spy game. The writer was to discern not just the guest’s views on the topic at hand, but other things as well: Were they an old hand at live television or a terrified first-timer? Did they talk in paragraphs or were they hopelessly disjointed? Were they accomplished at delivering pithy “sound bites” or did they ramble? The anchors had to know.

  “Doesn’t sound too hard,” Eve said slowly, willing it to be true.

  “In theory, it isn’t,” said Mark. “Of course, since any given segment might have as many as five guests, and since on any given day, you might have two or three segments to write …” Eve tried but failed to keep the smile on her face. “Don’t freak out,” he said. “Today you’ve only got one segment, one guest. The research is all right here.” He handed her a thick folder. “Don’t make me regret this, okay?”

  In the hallway, Russell and Quirine leaned against the wall, deep in conversation.

  “Eve, right?” asked Quirine. Her tone was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Eve nodded. “Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, we thought you should know that some people around here might address you as …” She dropped her voice. “B.B.”

  Russell elbowed Quirine in a way that indicated they were good friends. “C’mon now. Don’t lay it on the girl so fast.”

  Quirine shushed him. “I’m just saying. What if she hears it and she doesn’t know what they mean? Forewarned is forearmed, no?” Quirine looked up and down the passage, then leaned into Eve and said, “Cybil, one of the PAs, dubbed you the ‘Bouillabaisse Bimbo’ at the morning meeting. And some of the others are calling you the ‘Bouillabaisse Bitch’ because of Katrine. I heard that from Tanya.”