Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  [“TV News Producer Michael Cochran arrives with beautiful wife, Cassy,” the caption read in the Inquiring Eye. “While Alexandra and Michael were both at WWKK in New York, rumors linked them at play while Cassy was at work at rival station WST.”]

  At ten a black stretch limousine swept under the lights of Capitol Hill Hospital, out of which stepped another very tall, dark-haired but graying man in his late sixties or so. “Congressman Waring,” one reporter yelled out as the former congressman helped his wife out of the car, “will your daughter getting shot alter your view on gun control?”

  “Mrs. Waring,” another voice rang out, “how do you feel?”

  “Will you take Alexandra back to Kansas?” someone else asked.

  [“Alexandra’s parents arrive from Kansas,” the Inquiring Eye caption said. “While Mrs. Waring sat at her daughter’s bedside, the nine-term former congressman drew cheers from the crowd by calling for a health care reform bill at an impromptu press conference.”]

  At midnight Alexandra’s attending physician, Dr. Kenneth Ranhanjian, told The Network he didn’t give a damn about their ratings and went outside to officially announce that Alexandra Waring was going to be absolutely fine and everybody had to go home now so the patients of Capitol Hill Hospital could get some sleep.

  The following evening Alexandra was sitting up in bed, giving an exclusive interview to Clark Smith in New York via satellite. She was looking remarkably well for a woman who had undergone shooting, shock and surgery within the last thirty hours. She was subdued, yes, but whatever energy she lacked was made up for by the radiance of her eyes against the dark blue-gray satin dressing gown she wore.

  What viewers did not see was that the dressing gown was actually cut in several places and then tucked and pinned everywhere to cover the intricate workings of tape, plaster, gauze and slings that covered her wound and lashed her arm in place up over her chest. They did not see the makeup kit on the windowsill. They did not see Will Rafferty standing to the side of the camera, listening into his headset; Gordon Strenn and Michael Cochran standing guard at the door; Nurse Badaglia, frowning, standing between Gordon and Michael with her arms folded; Cassy Cochran crouching at the end of the bed, holding the arch of Alexandra’s foot in her hand as if to anchor her to the bed; nor did they see the young man standing by the window, aiming a microwave antenna at the TV van down in the parking lot.

  Viewers did see Alexandra and hear her say she was fine and hoping to be released in a few days, and they heard her say how, from the bottom of her heart, she wished to thank everyone for their cards and flowers and, most of all, for their prayers—and they saw her wink at them, saying that evidently they had worked.

  Viewers did not hear Cassy Cochran whisper, “She’s fading”; they did not hear or see Will cup his hand around the mouthpiece to talk into his headset; and they did not see Nurse Badaglia move toward the bed. All they knew was that Clark suddenly said good-bye to her and Alexandra was gone. Had they been able to continue watching, viewers would have seen Alexandra’s eyes starting to flutter and Cassy Cochran and Nurse Badaglia reaching her at the same time on opposite sides of the bed.

  “Darn it, I told you,” Nurse Badaglia said, pulling Alexandra’s face toward her with one hand and pushing the button to lower the bed with the other. “Hold the back of her head, Mrs. Cochran—that’s it.”

  “Is she all right?” Gordon whispered from behind the nurse.

  “Of course she is,” Nurse Badaglia said. “Aren’t you, Lois Lane? Hmmm? Still with us?” Under her breath, “I don’t know how she lasted this long without a painkiller.”

  “Needed a clear head,” Alexandra murmured, eyes closed.

  The following morning, at headquarters in New York City, the chairman of The Network was throwing a fit. “Why can’t she be featured every night?” he demanded, swatting the glass out of the hand of the president of the news division. (The glass went flying, spilling Alka-Seltzer all over the place and landing with a soft thump on the plush carpet.)

  “Because Clark won’t work with her.”

  The chairman looked at him. “Clark? Clark? That nutcase? What the hell does he know?”

  “His contract gives him control over the evening news—we can’t afford to buyout his contract—we don’t have a replacement for him even if we could,” the president said, reciting the familiar facts while pressing the top of his stomach.

  “And the guy shoots Alexandra!” the chairman yelled, shaking his fist at the heavens.

  “The chairman is upset,” the executive vice-president of News said the following day, starting the meeting with the vice-presidents of the news division.

  “The chairman is bullshit,” the president of The Network News said, offering a more accurate picture of the situation. “He wants Waring reporting every weeknight and he wants her to anchor the summer showcase in documentary.”

  “The chairman’s in her pants,” the vice-president of public affairs whispered to the man seated next to him, “that’s what Clark told me.”

  “Consider the source,” the vice-president of news coverage whispered back. “If Clark could hold its head, he’d fuck a snake.”

  “What’s that?” the president said. “What are you two whispering about down there?”

  “I was saying I think our problem is with Clark and not with Alexandra,” the vice-president of news coverage said.

  “What Clark says goes and he says N-O no on Waring,” said Clark Smith’s former college roommate who was now executive producer of the evening news. “As a matter of fact, he thinks she should be terminated altogether.”

  “Leave it to him to want to kill her for being shot,” the executive vice-president said, rolling his eyes.

  The president looked to the vice-president of administration. “What year of Cluck Head Clark’s contract are we in, anyway?”

  “Four.”

  “So we’re up to…?”

  “Four million three hundred thousand dollars,” the vice-president of administration said. “It will cost us thirty-one million to break it at this point.”

  “Waring’s current salary is two hundred thousand,” the executive vice-president said. He picked up a copy of the report that had been circulated to everyone around the table. “Everybody read this?” The men murmured yesses.

  It was the latest MARKET, AUDIENCE AND RATINGS RESEARCH report The Network always swore it did not use in connection with the news division.

  In our test groups [the report that was not supposed to exist said] the reporter maintaining the highest consistent ranking is Alexandra Waring. As shown on the following charts, Waring leads all of the correspondents in three crucial areas: likability, believability and clarity.

  *VERY STRONG RATINGS POTENTIAL *

  “Her age is a problem,” the president said. “She’s only—what? Thirty?”

  “Exactly!” the executive producer of evening news said. “No experience, no credibility—”

  “She’s got plenty of experience and plenty of credibility—but not national,” the executive vice-president said.

  “Except what she’s done for us this past year,” the vice-president of news coverage said.

  “Which has been very good,” the president said.

  “Which has been excellent,” the executive vice-president said.

  “And she did get that national press corps citation,” the vice-president of public affairs thought to mention.

  “That still doesn’t give her years of network experience!” the executive producer of the evening news insisted, pounding the table. “I don’t know how you can even mention that—that girl’s name in the same breath with Clark Smith!”

  “Oh, cram Clark Smith,” the executive vice-president said. “Look, it’s no secret—we all know our vastly experienced anchorman vastly sucks as an anchorman, the evening news is in the cellar and Waring’s the first thing we’ve had in three years that the public has been even remotely interested in.”

>   The room fell silent as everyone thought about this.

  “Are you aware,” a voice finally said from way down at the other end of the table, “that Waring’s contract expires at the end of the month?”

  “Who’s that?” the president whispered behind his hand to his executive vice-president.

  “Burnem, legal department,” the executive vice-president whispered back. And then, in his normal speaking voice, he said, “Yeah, we know, Burnem.”

  “And that Waring has expressed no interest in renewing it?” Burnem continued.

  “Yeah, we knew that, Burnem,” the executive vice-president said impatiently. “But that was before.”

  “No, sir,” Burnem said, “that was this morning.”

  Word got around fast that Alexandra Waring was playing hard to get. In a company where security was someone in the lobby demanding to see an I.D., employees at The Network were at first only amused at the idea that the same lovely young woman who had always made it a point to say “please” and “thank you” to everyone was now, they said, holding management by certain members of their anatomies without the slightest apology. But then, as the days went by and there was no word of a contract renewal, employees began to wonder if the rumors management had issued were true, that Alexandra was making outrageous demands.

  However, even if this were so, there was a good deal of evidence piling up to indicate that maybe an outrageous contract could be in order. So many flowers had been sent to Alexandra by fans that by the time The Network finished redistributing them they had brightened the rooms of every hospital, health clinic and nursing home over a forty-mile radius. And then there was the Inquiring Eye’s fascination with Alexandra—three issues in a row now—a tabloid honor usually reserved only for those with TV shows in the Nielsen top twenty.

  And then there was her mail. The get-well cards, letters and mailgrams addressed to Alexandra at the hospital were at first rerouted to the Washington Bureau, but the mail already flooding in there—in combination with the mail being trucked down from headquarters in New York—started choking the corridors and spilling down the fire stairs, and finally a moving van had to be brought in to haul the whole “Dear Alexandra” Operation to a warehouse in Virginia.

  “One hundred sixteen thousand five hundred ninety-two and counting,” the assistant to the president of the news division reported to his boss.

  The president, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand, made a sound implying that he might die right there on the spot.

  “Want the breakdown, get-well cards to letters?” the assistant asked him, glancing down at the clipboard in his hand. “Religious theme? Humor? Obscene suggestion? They’re feeding the demos into the computer as they go.”

  The president waved his assistant away, took a swig of Maalox out of the bottle sitting on his desk, uncovered the phone and said, “Sorry, John, someone just came in with a bulletin on the Persian Gulf. Where were we?”

  “You were saying, six hundred fifty thousand, co-anchor weekend news, four documentaries a year,” John Mohrbacher, Alexandra’s agent, said, “and I was telling you how sorry I am that you don’t seem to be able to hear me—for the last time, Alexandra doesn’t want to stay at The Network.”

  “Well, where the hell does she think she’s going to work if she doesn’t work here?” the president demanded.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” Mohrbacher said. “And nor do I have to. You have no option on her.” He sighed then. “Look, my client has done her best to leave gracefully. She warned you six months ago, damn near died for you, put your news in first place and gave Clark an exclusive interview, what more do you want?”

  “She’s still under contract to us.”

  “For two more weeks.”

  “She’s not leaving!” the president screamed.

  “Oh, she’s leaving!” Mohrbacher screamed back.

  Silence.

  John Mohrbacher cleared his throat and said, quietly, “You keep calling me and I keep telling you all I can tell you—Alexandra is not renewing her contract with you, Alexandra is not interested in negotiating with you, Alexandra only wishes to thank you for the year’s experience you have given her. Do you hear me? Alexandra’s not coming back. She told you that six months ago after Clark blocked her from the evening news, she is telling you again now.”

  The president slammed his elbow on his desk and then clutched it, wincing like mad. Then he turned his chair and knocked the Maalox over with the same elbow. “Stop jerking me around, Mohrbacher,” he growled, yanking open a drawer, searching for something to stop the expanding puddle of pink all over his desk.

  “I am not jerking you around, I am telling you the truth,” John Mohrbacher said, sounding tired.

  “No one’s going to do better than our offer, you know that,” the president said, trying the set of drawers on the other side of the desk. “Fuck!” he yelled as the pink stuff dripped down onto his crotch.

  “Look,” Mohrbacher said, “don’t waste your time. It’s over. We warned you six months ago and you did absolutely nothing.”

  The president—standing now, situation Maalox hopeless—was staring out his office window, thinking. Suddenly he regripped the phone, bent over slightly and hissed, “Seven hundred fifty thousand and that’s as high as I go.”

  As negotiations allegedly continued, speculation about Alexandra Waring ran high through the television news industry as a whole. Most of her peers thought she was doing what many of themselves had done in recent years—simply following her agent’s instructions and holding out for more money. And who could blame her if that was what she was doing? Any network that was dumb enough to pay four million three to Cluck Head Clark Smith deserved to start a Million Dollar Correspondents Club, didn’t they?

  Another industry theory was that Alexandra didn’t want to work in network news at all anymore and was vying to return to the small pond of local news as the biggest fish of them all. And as word spread about how many visits one of the local news biggies in the number one market—New York City—was making to Georgetown to see Alexandra in her recuperation—Cassy Cochran, general station manager of WST—the theory started to gain currency. And then when the Times business section reported rumors that WST might become a superstation in 1989, distributed nationally through a cooperative cable system, about sixty percent of the industry then believed Alexandra was about to move to WST as an anchor.

  “So are you discussing plans for Alexandra’s work at WST?” a reporter asked Cassy Cochran one Friday afternoon as she stepped out of a chauffeured car in front of Alexandra’s condominium.

  “Am I what?” Cassy asked, laughing, brushing back a strand of hair from her forehead. She was very photogenic, Cassy Cochran, a beauty, still, in her forties, with blue eyes that still out-dazzled the lines around them. Though she very much dressed the part of sophisticated New Yorker, she wore her genuinely blond hair up, casually, in a way vaguely reminiscent of the early seventies. It suited her.

  The reporter followed Cassy back around to the end of the car where the driver was standing. “Alexandra’s coming to work for you, isn’t she? At WST in New York?” he persisted, watching as the driver opened the trunk.

  “Take those two first, Gil,” Cassy said to the driver, “and tell Gordon they need to go straight into the freezer.”

  “Those two” were stacks of square white cartons tied up in string. They looked as though they might contain frozen dinners or something. Also in the trunk were five grocery bags, a basket of flowers, some video cassettes and two large bags from Saks Fifth Avenue.

  “Would you like some grapes?” Cassy asked the reporter, breaking off a small bunch from the top of one bag. “Here,” she said, pushing them into his hand, “and I’ve got some oatmeal cookies here somewhere too. You must get hungry out here.”

  “Uh,” the reporter said.

  “I’d invite you in,” Cassy said, looking at him back over her shoulder, “but we promised th
e doctors no visitors until next week. The excitement,” she added, straightening up and slipping some cookies in the reporter’s coat pocket. “This kind of injury can cause permanent nerve damage in her arm and so we have to take every precaution. Oh, here,” she added, “take a V8. Sorry I don’t have any straws.”

  “So she is coming to work for you,” the reporter said.

  “I wish she was,” Cassy said, smiling. “But I’m afraid I’m here only as a friend. I just flew down today to do the shopping,” she said, reaching for the flowers and video cassettes. “And check in with the nurse—check the patient’s aesthetic environment and entertainment, too. Give me your card,” she said then, juggling the video cassettes to hold her hand out to him. “I’ll see what I can do about Alexandra talking to you next week.”

  The reporter dutifully chronicled this exchange in his paper, along with the small scoop that, according to the videotapes he saw, Alexandra’s idea of entertainment was “World War II with Walter Cronkite.”

  A small percentage of the industry, a bit on the negative side as both a general rule and favorite pastime, was convinced that Waring was looking to bump a certain prominent network newswoman out of her job. As soon as the network of the newswoman in question denied the story, this of course then became a very popular theory. In fact, a reporter caught Alexandra’s mother coming out of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to ask her about it.

  “Does Alexandra want to follow in her footsteps?” Mrs. Waring said, repeating the reporter’s euphemistic way of asking if Alexandra was after that prominent newswoman’s job. Mrs. Waring shook her head slightly. “I’m afraid Alexandra would sooner freeze in a snowstorm than follow in anyone’s footsteps. She’s been that way since she was a little girl.”

  So—” the reporter started to say.

  “So if I were you,” Mrs. Waring said, taking hold of the reporter’s arm and speaking confidentially (the First Lady of the Farm Belt—as Mrs. Waring had been called in her Washington days—was very comfortable around the press), “I wouldn’t waste much time looking at the beaten track—I’d be looking at the wide-open spaces.”