Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  Boy was she good.

  When Alexandra walked into a room at West End, people came alive. Heads snapped to attention; people sat or stood a little straighter; women checked their hair; men touched at their ties or, in the absence of one (which was more often the case in the news group), ran their hands once over their shaven or unshaven chins; and most everyone would smile—except the shy ones, whose faces would freeze a little, color spreading through their cheeks.

  Alexandra’s eyes would sweep the room quickly, assessing the situation, much like one who has joined a chess game in progress, and invariably—and Langley had seen her do it so many times he knew he was not imagining it—by the time she left she would have gotten what she wanted, though few would have realized that she had arrived with any premeditated motive. She was so damn good at it and carried so many possible mixed motives at any given moment that Langley still couldn’t anticipate the direction from which she would make her approach—or sometimes even figure out where the approach was leading until it was too late.

  Yesterday had been a perfect example. It had been raining heavily all morning—the skies dark outside, the pools of water gathering in the square below—and everybody who could had stayed at West End to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The cafeteria was a very pleasant place. It had a vaulted ceiling that rose up through the third floor of Darenbrook I to the skylights in the roof; the walls were pale yellow with all kinds of jazzy, cheerful art prints hanging in all colors of frames; the fourth wall, overlooking the square, was all glass; the floor was covered with a muted, brick-colored tile; and all the tables and chairs were made of wood. More than one person, on such dark rainy days, would say they didn’t know why, but eating in there reminded them of eating dinner in the kitchen as a child.

  Jack was in L.A. on magazine business, and Cassy invited Langley to lunch with three new players at DBS News: Senior News Editor Dan Shelstein, a balding man of about fifty-five; News Producer Kelly Harris, an energetic redhead in her late thirties; and Studio Unit Manager Bozzy Gould, a compact guy about forty or so, built like a marine—with a haircut like one, too—but with a beautiful, smoke-colored complexion.

  They were sitting there, lingering over coffee and tea, accustomed to the din and chatter from having so many Darenbrook Communications employees around them, when a sudden hush fell over the room. Dan Shelstein noticed it first, cocking his head and looking around to see what was happening. It was the same kind of hush that falls when people in a restaurant become aware of someone coughing but aren’t sure if the person is in trouble choking or not. Only no one was coughing or choking; it was just Alexandra making one of her entrances. And yesterday—when they had been running some official looking (but utterly fake) studio tests so that one of Rookie’s important sponsors could oooh and ahhh over Alexandra—she had been looking particularly stunning.

  “Now that’s what I want to be when I grow up,” Kelly said, watching Alexandra, “devastating in black.”

  Yes, she was, Langley had to admit. She was in a very simple, sleek little black dress with a high neck and long sleeves. The dress hit her right above her knee, curved up over her hips, and fitted well over her bust and across her shoulders. Her hair—quite nearly black itself—was pulled straight back, secured with a large black bow, and except for some large silver earrings and one thin silver bracelet, she was otherwise unadorned. Eyes blazing blue against the black, she smiled and nodded to several people as she wound her way through the tables toward them, taking almost every eye in the place with her. Dan and Bozzy were scrambling to their feet; Langley was much slower, but he did offer her his seat.

  “No, thanks,” she said, touching his arm. “Please sit, I just wanted to see what fruit they have up here.”

  Warning, the alarm in Langley’s head said, she’s going to ask for fresh fruit deliveries to the newsroom.

  Everyone sat down again and Alexandra stood there, her hand resting on Langley’s shoulder. (He resented her doing that for a number of reasons. One, he didn’t like being touched. Two, it felt like a dare. And, three, he didn’t like the others at the table to assume, as he knew they were, that Alexandra had an easy familiarity with him, the president of DBS.)

  Alexandra looked at Bozzy. “Things went rather well this morning, don’t you think?”

  Warning, the alarm in Langley’s head said, she’s going to bring up expanding the area for the news sets in the studio again.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” Bozzy said, looking over at Cassy. “It’s a good crew—and Kyle’s great.”

  Alexandra looked at Dan. “And I have to tell you, Dan, I scarcely recognized the newsroom last night. Chaos is turning to organized chaos. Kyle might live to talk about this experience, thanks to you.”

  Warning, the alarm in Langley’s head said, she’s going to press for that extra news editor again.

  Cassy smiled and said, “Kelly—”

  “Oh, and you,” Alexandra said, turning to smile at Kelly, “Dr. Kessler is absolutely wild about you.”

  No, she’s angling toward “borrowing” another technician from someone else’s payroll.

  To Cassy, Alexandra said, “Did you know that he would like to run a test with BINS, thanks to Kelly?”

  “Uh-oh, sounds expensive. And Cassy’s got that poker face again. That’s trouble—they’re in this together. Whatever it is, she wants it too but doesn’t want to pay for it.

  “What’s Bins?” Langley said.

  “British International News Service,” Cassy said. “It’s an overseas stringer operation.”

  Aha! Langley thought.

  “Actually, it’s part of Lord Hargrave’s group,” Alexandra said, taking her hand away from Langley’s shoulder. To Dan, “Langley is going to have the miniseries group working out of the Hargrave studios in London—”

  “Yes, I do seem to detect the air of coincidence,” Langley said, turning to look up at Alexandra. This was unbelievable. They hadn’t even built the domestic network and Alexandra was already pushing for international tests? And he didn’t have the slightest doubt that somehow Gordon’s trip to London had something to do with this. “Expanding internationally, are you?” he asked her. He pointed a finger at her. ‘Just let me know when I should transfer Gordon’s salary to your budget.”

  Alexandra’s eyes went to Cassy.

  “It’s just a test, Langley,” Cassy said. “Langley—”

  He stopped staring at Alexandra to look at her.

  “It’s nothing but a test,” Cassy said. “And we’re just looking into it—but the Moscow summit is going to be over Memorial Day weekend, and it would seem a little funny if on our very first broadcast we didn’t have a live report from what could be one of the biggest events in American history.”

  “We certainly have the capacity to tie in with BINS or somebody,” Kelly said.

  “Tell Langley what you told me this morning,” Alexandra said.

  “What? Oh, just that I’m amazed at what you’ve got here,” Kelly said to him. “You have the best setup I’ve ever seen. I told Alexandra that someone really thought through the whole electronics division.” She paused, smiling a little. “Alexandra said you engineered the whole thing. Getting Dr. Kessler and all.”

  The next thing Langley knew, by the time Alexandra left the cafeteria (without even looking at the fruit, mind you), he had been talked into approving a satellite test with BINS—and promising that he’d get the test costs charged to the R&D department of Darenbrook Electronic Retrieval Systems, Inc.

  Well, at least Alexandra was an equal-opportunity manipulator, he’d give her that. She used everybody. In fact she played all of them off one another in such complicated ways that sometimes it took awhile to track it all back to her. Even the idea of moving the debut of DBS News up to Memorial Day to cash in on all the publicity about her had had a whole other agenda attached to it, and Langley later realized that Kyle’s “sudden” idea had actually been a very carefully orchestrated plot by Guess Who and he
r executive and senior producers to get Langley’s and Jackson’s wholehearted approval behind the effort. (That was another infuriating thing about Alexandra. She knew Jack well enough now to know that he couldn’t resist any dramatic idea like this—Go on the air three months early!—particularly if he thought he had helped to brainstorm it.)

  But that wasn’t the end of the plot, because right now, this very second, Cassy was sitting in his office, unveiling the other agenda that had been attached to it—the hidden one. Now that their revised schedule to meet the Memorial Day debut was set in motion, now that Rookie Haskell had signed sponsors for the summer months—in other words, now that it was too late to back out of launching “DBS News America Tonight with Alexandra Waring” early—Cassy said, since they would be generating income three months ahead of budget, Alexandra wanted to know if it was okay if she hired three full-time DBS field correspondents with the extra money.

  “What extra money?” Langley yelled.

  “Early money, then,” Cassy said calmly, sitting there with an open notebook in her lap, looking at him over a pair of half glasses on her nose. “We’ll be three months ahead of budget and, Langley, I have to tell you, I agree with Alexandra and Kyle, I’m sure we can make up the difference before the end of the year.”

  “We are not going to be ahead of budget because we’re going to have our operational expenses three months early too,” he said. “And how the heck are you going to make up the money before the end of the year, may I ask?”

  “We’re going to use the correspondents to work on some specials,” Cassy said.

  “And over what network are you proposing to air these specials?” Langley asked. “Come on, Cass, I hate to sound like Jack on this one, but you are running the news division, not the network.” She smiled slightly and inwardly Langley groaned. He did not feel like getting into the issue of how—at the moment—hers was the only division that had any programming to put on the network. Nor did he feel like being reminded that she was directly or indirectly responsible for over fifty percent of the indies who had signed with them as DBS affiliates. He shook his head, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. “Cassy, I’m sorry, but no,” he said. “I can’t let you overrun with any more immediate expenditures right now.”

  How he hated to say this to her! Forget Mata Hari downstairs—he trusted Cassy and, if circumstances were different, he’d think nothing of giving her more slack, trusting that she would—as she had said she could—still come out on budget by the end of the year.

  (But what choice did he have? What else could he say—”Hey, Cass, guess what? Know that paycheck you and the others get? The money that paid for those cameras? The editing consoles, pencils, electricity? Yeah? Well, it’s stolen. All of it. Yeah. Jack and I stole it from the miniseries and if we’re not careful Old Hardhead in London’s going to walk off with the whole project. How much? Oh, we’re only short about forty-three million right now. So now do you understand why I have to say no? That every additional dollar you get out of me is going to force me to steal more money from another division?”)

  “I’m sorry, Cassy,” he said, “but I’m afraid we just can’t do it right now.”

  “Langley,” Cassy said, slipping her glasses off and lowering them to her lap, “listen to me.”

  Langley sighed, taking off his own glasses to rub his eyes. This was not going to be good. As beautiful and as gracious as he found Cassy to be, he had quickly learned to recognize when she was about to deliver some sort of discreet (and surely distressing) ultimatum from a certain young anchorwoman they all knew.

  “If you check Alexandra’s contract,” Cassy said, “you’ll find a clause pertaining to the gross advertising revenues from her newscasts—”

  “No,” Langley moaned, slumping over his desk.

  He knew what Cassy was about to say and it was moments like this that made him want to tell Jack to either give him back the electronics group or go screw himself, he was leaving Darenbrook Communications. This was it—the limit. The absolute limit. Never had Langley had to deal with such convoluted, screwball financing on a new division as this. Never had he been associated with such a convoluted mess masquerading as a new venture. But then Langley had never had to move sixty and seventy and maybe eighty million dollars’ worth of the company around like some kind of weird Knock-Hockey game, all because Jackson had fallen for some girl with pretty eyes!

  But Langley had to remind himself (while slumped over his desk, eyes closed, not caring what Cassy thought) how much he needed a television network for the IMS, the Interactive Media System that had been (and still was) his pet project in the electronics division. IMS was an extraordinary system of programs that combined computers, video, graphics and sound on optical discs in such a way as to allow a user to command the computer to follow the path of his own curiosity and imagination. “Show me what this video of men walking on the moon would look like if each astronaut weighed five thousand pounds more

  …Let me see a close-up of what their footprints would look like

  …Tell me how many songs there are that have the word ‘moon’ in them… Show me the music for ‘Moon River’… List for me all the different recordings of ‘Moon River’… Play me ‘Moon River’ as sung by Andy Williams and show me the astronauts landing on the moon in 1969 at the same time.”

  While other companies were concentrating on the institutional uses of such technology, Langley wanted to pursue the commercial outlet, envisioning the day they could offer an Interactive Media special over commercial television. While Dr. Kessler had no doubts that such a program would be possible within five years, the endeavor was enormously expensive and Jackson had made it clear to Langley that, if he wanted to pursue this avenue, then he had to build the avenue, starting with a profitable commercial television network.

  Only Jack hadn’t told him he was going to make such a mess out of the whole operation! Jack hadn’t told him he was going to make some changes in Langley’s very methodical five-year plan for DBS—changes like moving up the news division a year and doubling its budget, pushing sports back eight months, robbing the miniseries blind, hiring a talk show hostess who was lost or dead in Mexico somewhere, canceling the game show and putting the whole soap opera idea on ice… Oh, yes, one could say that Jackson had made a few changes that had altered the stability of Langley’s venture a bit.

  And now that Langley had told Cassy no, he would not approve the funds for Alexandra to hire three field correspondents, he realized that Alexandra could do it anyway. Because Alexandra’s contract guaranteed that for any “additional” news programming she did—meaning anything that hadn’t been set in the budget—a percentage of the gross ad revenues from that additional programming automatically became discretionary production funds for her to allocate as she wished. And since Alexandra’s contract said she went on the air in September, that meant all her newscasts for June, July and August fell into that classification of “additional” news programming and, hence, Ms. Waring did indeed have “extra” money in her production budget to spend as she wished.

  Ho hum, just another lovely day at Darenbrook Communications.

  Langley sat up. “I know, I know,” he said to Cassy, holding a hand up. “Thank you for reminding me about Alexandra’s contract.” He let his hand fall on his desk with a thump. “So why bother asking me? She’ll do whatever she wants anyway.”

  “We are asking you,” Cassy said, sounding a trifle annoyed, “because we are all working on the same side, Langley. And not only that—we all work for you.”

  Langley shrugged, not feeling like getting into an argument with Cassy about whether Alexandra really worked for or with anybody.

  “Langley,” Cassy said, waiting for him to look at her. “I know you well enough to know that something’s wrong.” She paused, frowning slightly and touching at her earring. She lowered her hand to her lap and sighed. “I don’t know what could be wrong with the financing of this network already, but I’m tr
usting that you’ll tell me if there is something seriously wrong, so that I can have a fighting chance to do something about it on my end—for my group, for our people.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say.

  She looked at him for a long moment and then sighed again. “Look,” she said, standing up, “I can get Alexandra to back down on this one. I’m going to suggest she hang on to those discretionary funds for a while, until we’re more sure of the direction we’ll be moving in this year. But, Langley—listen to me—I can’t say I’ll be able to do this again. I’ve got enough of my own stuff to work out with Alexandra on the format of the newscast, and I just can’t waste my influence with her by trying to screen I-don’t-know-what from you.”

  Langley got up too. “We’re a bit short on cash, that’s all. And I need you to stick to your budget as best you can for the time being.” He paused. “That’s it. That’s all.” He walked around his desk, taking her eyes with him. Glancing at her, “What?”

  Still she only looked at him.

  “What?” he repeated.

  Cassy looked first one way and then the other, then back at Langley, drawing a hand up to her hip. “Langley, who do you think you’re talking to? I’ve seen your budget for DBS. I’ve seen the production allocations on that budget—” She threw her arms out then. “How in Sam Hill could you be short on cash? You’ve got more padding in that budget than the Flight Deck in Bellevue.”

  “Forget I said anything, Cassy,” he said, taking her arm. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your office. I’ve got to—”

  She wasn’t going anywhere. “Forget you said anything?”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “Cassy, look,” he said, sticking one hand in his pants pocket and gesturing with the other. “You know better than this. You know this is a private corporation, and that the numbers you see are not always… Well, you know. We have many different parts of the company to balance out, and sometimes our cash flow slows in one area when it’s in the best interest of our tax situation to do so.”