Good Sam

by Dete Meserve

  I smiled. “Couldn’t have been better.”

  “Then I’m glad,” he said softly. “I’m happy we’re together again, Kate.”

  I looked away, uncomfortable under his soft gaze.

  “We make a great team,” he continued.

  I handed him the agreement. “Look, I need you to sign this agreement saying your interview is exclusive to this network for the next seven days.”

  He riffled through the pages. “Pretty tall order, don’t you think?”

  “It’s just giving me what you already promised.”

  He grinned. “Must be important to you, then.”

  I nodded, not wanting to acknowledge just how important it was.

  “If I’m going to do you a favor, you’ll have to do one for me.” He took my hand in his. “Have dinner with me tonight. You don’t have to, of course, if you still hate me.”

  That was the problem. I didn’t hate him right then. I felt admiration and curiosity, a mixture of the familiar and the wholly new.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said quietly.

  “I’ll send a car to pick you up at seven thirty.” He flashed me his trademark southern-boy smile. “Normally I’d have my attorneys review this before I sign it, but I’m trusting you.”

  He pulled a pen from inside his jacket and dashed off his signature. “Starting tonight I hope you’ll start trusting me too.”

  We finished editing the package for the network at 2:28, two minutes before the deadline to load it on the satellite uplink. It was entirely my fault that we’d cut it so close. The network had committed ninety seconds to the story in the evening news, which meant we had to take a Cuisinart to the interview and chop it down to its very core. The result was a package that felt like a here’s-a-lot-of-stuff piece to me, filled with facts but very little context. To the utter chagrin of the producing and editing team, I pressed to redo it. The final package was better, but how much story can you tell in ninety seconds?

  When it aired on the network at six o’clock eastern time—three o’clock in Los Angeles—a few of the newsroom staff gathered around one of the monitors and applauded. It was a heady experience, one I’ll never forget, but there was little time to celebrate because we still had to produce a special that would air in a few hours. After we’d wrestled with the ninety-second segment, it should have felt luxurious to have twelve minutes to tell the story, but even that didn’t feel like enough. Time is funny that way.

  The network and Channel Eleven exploited the special in every way possible. Not only were they promoting it seemingly every other minute on the air, but the network also had bought ads all over the Internet touting the interview.

  “He gave away one million dollars in a few days’ time,” the announcer’s voice boomed in the commercials. “Tonight TBC brings you an exclusive interview with Good Sam. Find out who he is and the surprising reason he’s giving away so much money. Exclusively on TBC.”

  “It’s got Emmy written all over it,” Josh said when he saw the final product.

  Humility aside, I had to agree that it was my best work to date. But although I could take credit for the writing and reporting aspects, it was the story itself that made it great television. How many news stories do we see about someone anonymously and generously helping others? Truth was, we’re more likely to see stories about husbands murdering their wives, politicians suspected of killing their interns, and children being abducted than stories about generosity and good.

  “Ratings will go through the roof,” Josh predicted.

  I floated on a cloud all the way to the town car Jack had sent for me. But as I got into the car, something was gnawing at me. I had the definite feeling I’d forgotten something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. With a pang of guilt, I realized I’d never called Eric. If he’d switched on the TV or gone online at all, he already knew I hadn’t been mugged by Good Sam and I’d gotten the interview I wanted. Still, he’d gone out of his way to watch out for me, and I’d repaid him by ignoring him.

  I pulled my cell phone from my purse and started to dial his number then ended the call. He was sure to ask about Jack’s claim to be my fiancé, and I wasn’t ready to explain all of it, especially when I didn’t understand it myself.

  The next thing I knew, the car stopped in front of Toscana, a quiet restaurant in the heart of Beverly Hills. It’s not a place where news reporters like me eat often, because the tariff is steep for even the simplest cuisine. A bowl of tomato soup is fifteen dollars. A cheese plate is twenty-one.

  It looked busy. Something like thirty people were gathered on the sidewalk outside the door, waiting for tables. Jack always knew how to pick the new, hot places to eat.

  As soon as I stepped out of the car, I knew something was wrong. Like a swarm of bees, everyone on the sidewalk headed in my direction. Some flashes went off, blinding me momentarily. Paparazzi. I froze. Had they mistaken me for Jennifer Lawrence or some other celebrity? I could only hope.

  A petite redhead shoved a microphone in front of my face. “What can you tell us about Good Sam?”

  Then everyone started talking at once, and the space between them and me became narrower and narrower as many of them pushed to get in closer.

  “What is your relationship with Good Sam?” someone shouted. “Is it true Jack Hansen is running for governor?”

  The flashes were coming so frequently and from so many different angles that I felt like I was under a manic strobe light.

  I didn’t know what to do. Even if I had answers to their questions, I was pretty sure I couldn’t have put together a coherent sentence. I also was beginning to worry about my physical safety as the circle crushed in around me. I’ve always had a touch of claustrophobia, and my anxiety mounted as I realized there wasn’t a clear escape route.

  I should have felt a kinship with the reporters who besieged me. I know how hard they have to work to get a story. But theirs was an alien world to me. Even the most chaotic crime scene paled in comparison to the jostling and maneuvering occurring on this ten square feet of sidewalk.

  I took a step toward the door to see what they’d do. Even as they continued to shout questions at me, they moved along in step with me.

  Then the redhead stepped in front of me, barring my way to the door. “One of the talk-radio shows is claiming that Jack Hansen was your husband. Is this true?”

  I found my tongue. “Jack Hansen and I were never married.”

  I should have kept my mouth shut, because my response sent the crowd of reporters into an immediate uproar, slinging questions at me, only louder.

  A strong hand gripped my arm. I pulled away, angry that someone had the audacity to grab me. Then I saw it was Jack pulling me from behind the circle of reporters. He stepped toward me and headed into the crowd, cutting a swathe through the swarm of reporters, straight to the door of the restaurant.

  “That’s Jack Hansen,” someone shouted. The flashes started going off again. The restaurant door flung open, and the second we stepped inside, it was swiftly closed, shutting the noise outside.

  Every eye in the restaurant turned to look at us.

  “This was a bad idea. When I made the reservation, I never imagined we would cause such a scene,” Jack said, then guided me through the restaurant into the kitchen and out the back door, where his limo was waiting for us. We barely had gotten in when the driver gunned the motor and sped down the narrow alley.

  Jack touched his hand to my face and angled it toward him. Before I knew it, he was kissing me. This wasn’t the exploring kiss of a new lover but the demanding kiss of a lover who already knew what he wanted. So many emotions ricocheted through me that I couldn’t sort them out. Relief from the paparazzi. Surprise. Familiarity. Excitement.

  His kiss deepened and became more urgent as his hands roamed the length of my torso, grazing my breasts.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, breaking the kiss and pulling away.

  He looked like I’d slapped him. “What do
you mean?”

  “I can’t go through with this. Not the way you want me to.”

  He leaned back in his seat, ran his fingers over his lips. “Did I misread something, Kate? Because I could’ve sworn during the interview, and afterward too, that there was a spark between us. Like before.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go to dinner together.” I didn’t want to admit that I’d been giving him mixed signals.

  “You owe me this.”

  “I owe you?”

  He swallowed hard. “You talk about me cheating on you. But how about what you did to me? You walked out on me, left me to tell our friends and family—at our engagement party—that we weren’t getting married. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”

  I could imagine how embarrassed he had felt. And when I walked out on him ten minutes into our engagement party, I reveled in doing to him what he’d done to me. Sometimes anger has a way of short-circuiting one’s brain.

  Now, looking at him, I felt a deep remorse for the first time. They say revenge is sweet, but if that’s true, it’s only temporary. At some point you must realize that your revenge has made you no less culpable than the person who did you wrong in the first place.

  “You owe me another chance,” he said, “not only for deserting me in front of our friends like that but also for what I did for you today.”

  “What you did for me today?”

  “Our interview will catapult you to the top of the news business. Where you belong. You’ll be able to exploit this to get whatever you want.”

  I crossed my arms. “No one forced you to do the interview.”

  “No, but I stood up for you, Kate. When your boss tried to make me do the interview with another reporter, I refused to do it with anyone but you. That’s got to count for something.”

  I couldn’t argue, because for once what he said was true.

  “That’s why I did it, you know…to help you,” he said softly.

  My eyes narrowed. “You admitted to being Good Sam to help me?”

  “In a way,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons I gave away the money too.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “I have to admit it was in the back of my mind while I was giving it away—that someday I’d tell you about it and you’d see I’m not such a bad guy after all. And it worked. You came looking for me. I liked that.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that you gave away a million dollars to strangers just so you could get my attention?”

  He combed his fingers through his hair. “You’re taking it all too literally, Kate. But I think a part of me was hoping to get your attention, yes.”

  A question can be as lethal as a weapon. It can insinuate, humiliate, aggravate, and, yes, illuminate. That’s why I continued to question him so sharply. “So all that stuff about giving anonymously…that was just posturing?”

  He shook his head and straightened. “Of course not.” He raked his fingers through his freshly clipped hair. “Why are you doing this? Why do we end up fighting when all I want is to get back together?”

  I looked down at my hands. An awkward silence fell between us. I wanted to get out of the car and escape the tension, but what would that accomplish? At the same time, I couldn’t continue like this, picking at old wounds.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel and have dinner like we planned,” he said quietly. “We won’t talk about the past. We’ll celebrate the Good Sam interview, and that’s all.” Then he added, “And if you want, I’ll try—really try—not to kiss you again tonight.”

  Room-service food at the Biltmore is better than what they serve at most full-service restaurants. Jack ordered lavishly, asking them to prepare items that clearly weren’t on the regular menu—my favorite dishes, like mango chicken, Thai barbecued beef, and pad woon sen.

  We stuck to our promise and talked about everything but our past relationship. He told me about the work he’d been doing as a member of the board of directors of the American Red Cross. We laughed about how his golf game had worsened after he’d followed some advice from Tiger Woods. He asked me how it felt to be on the Bummer Beat and surprised me by naming many of the stories I’d covered in the past month.

  “I made a special effort to watch for you on TV when I was in town,” he said softly.

  By the time I turned to leave at ten, my head was spinning—from the smooth merlot he’d ordered that I’d drunk like water and from spending the evening with him again. Being with Jack was like watching fireworks—surprising, thrilling, commanding my attention, but leaving me ultimately breathless and exhausted.

  As I was about to leave, he pressed a single, warm kiss to my lips. His mouth lingered close to mine for a long moment, as if he were debating what to do next. In the haze of the moment, I wouldn’t have minded if he had continued to kiss me; I would’ve liked to stay in his arms a while longer. I hated myself for that.

  “I’m keeping my promise,” he said, then pressed a chaste kiss on my forehead. “You’ll see you can trust me again.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke up in a world I hardly recognized. As I flipped the channels on the TV, nearly every talk show was buzzing about my interview with Good Sam. Even though they couldn’t interview Jack because of our exclusive arrangement with him, they showed clips from the interview and dissected his philosophy with political and economic pundits. The LA Times even weighed in, publishing an editorial on the opinion page titled, “What We Can Learn From Good Sam.”

  By the time I got into work that morning, I felt completely overwhelmed. My desk looked like a paper plant had exploded around it. Hundreds of people had sent e-mails to Good Sam’s attention, and the overnight staff had simply printed them out and placed them all on my desk.

  “Last night’s exclusive interview with Good Sam,” David said in the assignment meeting, “got us the highest ratings in the station’s history for that time period.” After the cheers and applause died down, he went on. “Thanks to excellent work by Kate, who got us the interview every station in town—and every major network, I should add—wanted.”

  Everyone turned to look at me, all of them smiling. Everyone except Susan. Her face lacked any expression, and I wondered whether she’d finally made her peace with the Good Sam story.

  “Couldn’t have done it without Alex,” I said.

  Alex grinned. Internships at any major television news operation are always fast-paced and demanding, but few interns get the chance to work on a story as big as Good Sam.

  “We’re going to air an encore presentation of the interview again Thursday night,” David said. “In the meantime this thing is big. I want team coverage on it. Alex, tell them about the Santa Monica call.”

  “A businessman in Santa Monica called to say he’s started a Good Sam Club,” Alex said, clearly excited to be participating in the assignment meeting. “The club will follow Jack Hansen’s philosophy and give anonymously.”

  “Has he got any members?” Ted asked.

  “He claims he’s already got forty members and their first Good Sam deed was to leave four hundred dollars in the mailbox of a young family who badly needed a new set of tires.”

  “He’s probably not the only one starting a club like this,” David said. “Susan, find out if there are any other Good Sam clubs sprouting up in Southern California.”

  Susan nodded her head a fraction of an inch and looked straight at me. I detected a flash of something in her eyes. Was it too much to hope for reconciliation? Then she snapped her eyes back to her notepad.

  “Charles, get reactions to Good Sam,” David continued. “Interview a waitress, a kindergarten teacher, a hotel maid, a laundry worker, a postman, that kind of thing. Find out what they think about what he’s said. Kate, we’re going to want you to put together a follow-up story on Good Sam. See if you can get him to talk to some of the people he’s helped. Find out their reaction to learning his identity. And get him to tell them why he
chose to help them. Guys, this is going to be fantastic television. Highly rated, award-winning television.”

  When the meeting was over, a few of us stood, eager to dig into our assignments.

  “Excuse me,” Susan shouted. Everyone turned to look at her and quickly grew quiet. “Are we all going to avoid the elephant in the room. I mean, are we?” She looked around and scanned the faces of the reporters around her. “If no one else is going to say it, I will,” she continued. “Some of the talk-radio shows and tabloids are saying that our Good Sam reporter is Jack Hansen’s fiancée. If this is true, it compromises the integrity of this news organization and everyone in this room. So what I want to know is, is it true?”

  David answered before I could. “You answered your own question. Look who’s reporting it—trashy tabloids and talk-radio shows. Since when do they get the story right?”

  “Yeah, well, one of those trashy tabloids—as you call them—printed a photograph of our reporter getting cozy with Jack Hansen in Las Vegas.”

  I remembered a photograph being taken by a friend of Jack’s when we went on our trip to Las Vegas, but the guy was an investment banker, not a tabloid photographer. Had he sold it to them?

  My face heated up, and I began to flush. Would everyone else see that as an automatic sign of guilt?

  “Your silence isn’t answering the question, Kate,” Susan demanded. “I think we all deserve to know.”

  I looked to David for help—or at least some clue for handling the situation—but he glanced away and rubbed his ear. I was on my own.

  “Jack Hansen and I were engaged,” I said. A few of the reporters groaned. Charles threw his pencil at the table; and everyone started talking at once.

  “But…” I raised my voice, trying to be heard over the din. “But that was six months ago. We’re no longer involved.”

  “So your dinner with him last night at a romantic little restaurant in Beverly Hills and later at the Biltmore Hotel was strictly business?” Susan said with complete disdain. “Keith and Brian were talking about that on their radio show this morning too.”