“I love this great country,” Fluke boomed. “That’s why I’m jumping into this race with both boots. You all probably remember me as Sam Stockton, may he rest in peace, and then as the World’s Most Successful Man. And if you see fit to elect me president, I’ll make America the Most Successful Country. Yee-haw!”
The crowd cheered.
“I have Six Secrets of Success that I’m ready to share with all of you. Listen up! Number one: you’ve got to think positive to grow rich!”
“Wait a second, isn’t that a book?” Charlie asked. “By Napoleon Hill, I think?”
“Napoleon,” Laurie repeated. “Bad omen.”
“With my winning formula, in a few months we’ll pay down the national deficient!” Fluke said.
“He means deficit,” said Charlie.
“Number two: maintain strong values, like traditional marriage and families. When I’m president, we’ll bring down the divorce rate. Divorce will have the same stigmata as drunk driving.”
“Stigmata?” I said.
“Just like what Mothers for Drunk Driving did to save lives, we’ll do to save marriages.”
Laurie snorted. “He means Mothers Against Drunk Driving.”
“Number three: total self-awareness. Because the secret to your success is already inside of you. As your president, I’ll show you how to bring it out.”
“What next?” Laurie asked. “Promising to give everyone courage and a heart?”
“If you love this country, let’s make it the Home of the Brave again!” Fluke said, with a fist raise. “Let there be a Bronco in every backyard!” With that he threw a leg over his horse, saddled back up, and rode off.
Laurie hit the mute button. “Well, that was fun. Now back to planet Earth. I give it twenty-four hours till he drops out.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Having him in the race would be entertaining. It would shake up politics as usual. Give new meaning to the horse race. Think of it!”
Charlie wasn’t laughing. He narrowed his eyes at the TV. “Hmm,” was all he said.
Chapter 6
Hair and Makeup
The brisk snip of the scissors was snapping next to my ear, but the chair was swiveled around so I couldn’t see what Angie, FAIR’s top stylist, was doing. I’d been sitting for so long my feet had fallen asleep.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Almost done,” she said. “Wait till you see this new cut and ya new culah!”
“What ‘culah’ is it exactly?” I asked, hoping Angie didn’t mind my poking fun at her Bronx accent. I was nervous. She hadn’t let me take a peek during the hour and a half she’d spent painting dollops of bleach up and down my mousy brown strands, then letting them marinate in tin foil before washing out the dye in the sink.
“Ya blond, baby. Much blonder. I threw in lots of chunky highlights. Benji will love it!” Angie had been at Good Morning America for years, until Benji convinced her to come to FAIR six months ago for the launch. “Ya got sooo much hair here. God bless. It’s thicker than Stephanopoulos’s,” she marveled. “Now we gotta make this mop pop. Benji wants all you talent to have great hay-yer.” Hair was so important that Angie gave it two syllables. “That should be our motto,” she said, “FAIR: The Best Hay-yer in News!”
“Powerful,” I told her, then went back to chewing my lip, praying that Angie-from-the-Block’s own big hair was no harbinger of what I was about to have on my head, and wondering why Benji had ordered this makeover for me now, when I’d already been on the air for six months. It seemed a little late. “Can I see it?”
“Not yet. Let me blow it out so you can get the full effect.” She turned on the blow-dryer, its deafening buzz roaring in my ear. “You hear about that new business reporter who’s fucking one of the Third Floor?” Angie shouted, using the shorthand term we all used to refer to every executive under Benji, all of whom were housed on the third floor.
“What?” I shouted back, though I’d heard her. I just had a hard time believing that one of the Third Floor would be bedding a new reporter.
“Believe it!” she yelled—and I had to admit, the hair and makeup artists at every TV station always had the juiciest and most reliable gossip. “The guy’s apparently an animal in bed.” Angie made a growling noise.
“Eewww,” I responded, trying to imagine which of the Third Floor was most tigerlike, but they all blurred into one big bureaucratic blob.
“Oh, yeah,” Angie went on, “they do it in his office!”
“No way,” I said, unable to imagine any of the corporate types having sex in his office, or anywhere for that matter. They were all so buttoned up, I imagined them showering in their business suits. “Where are you getting your information?”
“I never reveal a source. I’m extremely discreet,” she yelled. “So you want to be an anchor?” Angie asked, switching gears again.
“Um, yeah, sure,” I said softly and nonchalantly, not wanting to admit to Angie how much I hoped for that someday.
“Well, a little birdie thinks that could be in the cards,” she said coyly.
“Really?” I asked, connecting with her eyes in the mirror. “Who’s that?”
“Just word on the street.” Angie turned off the dryer, and the din died down. “All right, ya ready to see ya new ‘do’?”
“I guess so,” I said, clutching the side of the chair as she twirled it around. And when it stopped, I gasped. There in the mirror was a beautiful, stylish prom queen with smooth, shiny blond hair bouncing down her shoulder blades. It took me a second to recognize the glamour girl as me.
“Oh, my God,” I said, getting up and moving closer to the mirror, checking for an optical illusion.
“Gawr-geous, right?” Angie smacked her hairbrush with satisfaction.
“Amanda, is that you?” I asked my reflection. I looked so different. So much better. I was suddenly part of the pretty-girl posse from high school, one of the cheerleaders who knew how to use a flat iron. Gone was the wavy brown mess that swelled on my head like a chia pet in any drop of humidity. I couldn’t wait to show Charlie. I felt bad that the poor guy had been enduring the old Amanda all this time.
“Thank you, Angie!” I said, grabbing her shoulders in gratitude.
“Hold on, Blondie, ya not done yet. Head down the hall. Jess is waiting for ya in makeup.”
“I do my own makeup,” I told her. “I don’t really need Jess.”
“Yeah, well, Benji wants to see what you’ll look like with the Jess treatment.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, casting my eyes sideways at her, skeptical as to whether Angie had actually talked to Benji or was making this all up as a power play.
“He wants to see how some reporters look with hair and makeup, that’s all,” she said. “Stop fighting it.”
Heading down the hallway, I thought I’d figured it out—maybe I’d be tagging my reports in the studio sometimes, rather than in the field. Even that would be super exciting. Being any part of Benji’s vision was thrilling. I walked through the next curtain, behind which stood a stunning black woman with flawless skin and warm caramel eyes. Her space was like a Broadway dressing room; a leather chair faced a massive vanity mirror framed by bright bulbous lights. On the counter was an open makeup case filled with bottles of sparkly potions designed to make the skin glitter. Jess sat me down, then with a flourish snapped open a black cape and draped it over me as though I were part of a magic trick that would make Amanda disappear.
“Ah!” Jess shrieked, her makeup brush suspended in midair. “What are those?! Sugar, you have caterpillars for eyebrows. I have got to do some surgery.” She grabbed her tweezers and commenced a surgical strike.
“Ow!” I yelped.
For the next few painful minutes, Jess plucked and pulled at my brows, yanking them out by the clump. When satisfied with the pruning, s
he ran her thumbs gently over my lids as if to dissolve the pain portion of her performance and prepare her subject for the next act. I watched Jess pick up a thin brush with bristles the size of a candle’s flame, then dip it in a pot of sparkly purple powder.
“Close, please,” she instructed, dusting the eye shadow gently across my lids. Just as I was relaxing into her spalike treatment, I heard the sound of a loud generator turn on and my eyes sprang open in time to catch Jess holding a black cord like a tiny garden hose. She began spraying a fine beige mist over my cheeks and forehead. I shut my eyes tight again, imagining all the time Michelangelo could have saved if he’d had one of these contraptions in the Sistine Chapel.
“Now let that dry,” Jess said, grabbing another thin brush and dipping it in a gooey pot of pink, then painting my lips with gobs of gloss. “To make them plump and peachy,” she explained. It felt like I’d taken a big bite of a heavily frosted cupcake without a napkin handy.
“Head up. Look down. But don’t close,” Jess said, and while I contemplated the pat-your-head-rub-your-stomach nature of that instruction, she reached again for the tweezers and began affixing fluttery false lashes, dipped in glue, onto my eyelids one at a time. I tried not to blink, though I had the sensation of butterflies alighting on my lids.
“Bangin’!” Jess proclaimed with a final flourish of her makeup wand.
I opened my eyes and looked into the mirror. Amanda hadn’t disappeared—to the contrary, she’d come alive, in full Technicolor. In the space of twenty-five minutes, I morphed from mere mortal to sexy siren. I turned my head left and then right, marveling at my sudden bone structure. “I have cheekbones,” I said.
“You do now,” Jess said, reaching around to pat her own shoulder.
“You’re a miracle worker! I wish I had somewhere fancy to go all dolled up like this,” I told her, getting up from the chair to leave.
“Wait!” Jess said. “Let me see your legs.”
“Heh?”
“Viewers are going to see your legs on set,” she said. “They need to look good.”
“I’m not on set much,” I told her.
“You never know,” she said casually. “In this business you gotta be ready for anything.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, deciding against sharing my previous pants mishap.
Jess bent down and pulled up my pant leg. “Oh, man,” she said. “Your legs are like a ghost’s.”
I was about to tell her that a ghost doesn’t have legs when she pushed me back into her chair and hiked my pants above my knees. “Benji does not like white legs! We have to bronze those babies up.”
Jess poured a different, darker liquid into her magic spray machine, then bent over and began shellacking my calves up one side and down the other. In seconds, my sallow skin turned golden brown. I gotta remember this contraption before my next beach trip!
“Give that five minutes to dry and you’re good to go,” Jess said. “Now get upstairs, girl! You can’t be late for Benji.”
Man, Benji’s sure taking an active role at every level of the network. You’d think he’d have more pressing things to worry about than the color of my legs under my pants. His attention to detail is amazing—no wonder he’s such a success story. I pranced down the hallway toward the elevator with a new spring in my step, or maybe it was a swagger. Anyone could pop out of the greenroom on the left and I’d be ready. Chris Hemsworth? Ryan Reynolds? Bring ’em on. This must be what beautiful women feel like—as though doors will swing open and opportunities will fall in their laps. I held my head higher, the old weight lifted, my new blond highlights bouncing buoyantly. Look at me! It’s impossible to catch me from a bad angle.
“Amanda?” It was Emily Galen, the unusually timid field producer I’d worked with on a few pieces, walking down the hallway toward me with wide eyes and her mouth agape.
“Yes, it’s me. The stylists went to town, I know.” I smiled, basking in her gaze.
“I just can’t believe how . . . well . . . great you look,” she blinked at my face, unable to turn away, making me feel naked despite the mask of makeup.
Wait a second. Was it that incredible that I looked so good? I felt a blush sweep my face. “Yup, it’s amazing what these hair and makeup magicians can do,” I said. “Spinning hay into gold.”
“No! No. It’s not that,” Emily said, trying to backpedal. “I was just wondering why you’re in hair and makeup? Are you shooting something?” She whispered the last part. Even though Emily had left ABC months ago, her paranoia lingered. Like most network producers, she still carried the dog-eat-dog terror of someone stabbing her in the back, stealing her idea, or taking her job. But unlike the effect it had on Laurie, the Lord of the Flies news world didn’t make Emily more assertive, it made her scared of her own shadow.
“I think Benji just wanted to give me a little make-over,” I told her. “He’s very engaged with his correspondents.”
“Oh, he must have big plans for you.” Emily looked over her shoulder. “Benji is a genius. I’m sure he’ll want to grow you.” She leaned closer and whispered, “I hear he’s having problems with the morning show. You should tell him you want to be the host of that.”
I felt almost sorry for Emily and her naïveté. No one goes from reporter at Newschannel 13 to national morning show anchor in the space of six months. It took Suzy Berenson years of top-ten market reporting before she got her big break at The Morning Show on BNN.
“Thanks for the tip,” I told Emily, crossing my fingers as if her suggestion were rooted in reality. “I’ll keep you posted.”
• • •
“Hey you! Come on in,” Benji called. “Wait. Let me check you out.” Benji stood in the threshold of his office, arms crossed, taking in the sight of the new me, head to toe. “Wow. You look terrific. I knew we had something to work with in there.”
I tried not to wince at his unvarnished assessment.
“You’ve got great hair,” he noted. “Great hair makes for great TV. How many extensions did they put in there?”
“Extensions? Hair extensions?” I asked, touching my own head to see if Angie had snuck some in without my knowing. “None . . . I think . . .”
“Whoa! That’s all your hair? Jesus! You win! That’s amazing. Who did you?”
“Did me? Oh, did my hair? Angie. And Jess did the makeup,” I said, suddenly self-conscious to have Benji eyeballing me so intensely.
“They’re the best. You know I stole Angie from ABC, right? She’ll have you looking as good as Kelly Ripa soon,” he said, as though it were perfectly fine to say someone wasn’t as pretty as someone else. “Oh, word of warning, do not go to Roberta. Have you met him?”
“You mean, the tall Asian . . . Cher impersonator . . . person?”
“Yeah, that’s him, though on Tuesdays he’s Beyoncé. Stunning, right?”
“Oh, yes, very striking.”
“I mean, hot,” Benji said, moving his hand back and forth fast like he’d felt an open flame. “Unfortunately, he can’t do makeup to save his life, which is very weird for a dude who pretends to be a chick, right?”
“Um, yeah.”
“I was psyched to find Roberta,” Benji went on. “FAIR’s got to have at least one bi-curious, homoflexible drag queen on staff. I mean, it’s perfect, really. But do NOT let him touch your face.”
Benji sat down and patted the couch. “So let’s talk about how everything is going.”
“Let’s,” I agreed.
“Your pieces in the field have been terrific. But I have a problem and I’m thinking you can help.”
“Of course,” I said, hoping against hope that Emily and Angie might have been right and this might be about anchoring the morning show, though it was more likely Benji needed me to swap offices with someone or something.
“So I’m having issues with the morning sho
w. I need to retool it and rebrand it. What do you think of the name Wake Up, USA! Great, right? It’s with an exclamation point,” he exclaimed, “which I think will really set it apart.”
“Oh, yes, great,” I said, realizing how little I knew about TV and how much Benji had to teach me since I would have called that cheesy.
Benji took a deep breath and pressed his lips together like he was about to deliver some very bad news. “The show has not been working. It hasn’t taken off like I’d hoped. None of the anchor teams I’ve tried are gelling.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to smile.
“Yeah, it sucks. I mean some of these pairs should work together, they really should. I got Rob Lahr from CBS. Super guy. Great on TV. Also a bit of an asshole. Handsome as hell. Oh, and he’s straight. You know how hard that combo is to find on TV? I mean, men in makeup? Most of the time you just want to punch them in their pretty lips.”
I smiled at Benji’s own pretty lips, a perfect flesh color that department store makeup counter clerks were always trying to recreate by mixing pinks and browns on their personal palettes. Someone should patent Benji’s lip color, I thought. Media Maven Mauve, maybe.
“Now, occasionally you get a male anchor who’s a real man you’d want to have a beer with, but it’s rare. Anyway, Rob Lahr’s got it. But he’s not clicking with any of the women. I tried a bunch. You know Kerry Shaw?”
“Yes, of course. Came from WABC?”
“Yup. Fantastic prompter reader. The best I’ve ever seen. But dumb. Heaven help her if that prompter goes down. If you asked her, ‘Kerry, what was that story about you were just reading?’ She’d say, ‘What story?’ So that didn’t work. Then I tried Margot Hamilton. I don’t know if you’ve met her. I found her in Seattle. She’s gorgeous. Black hair, green eyes. She looks like a fucking Disney princess. She really wants the slot. Anyway, I’ve tried those two together for the past couple of months. I thought it would be Lois Lane and Clark Kent . . . and . . . ppppbhhh.” Benji put his tongue between his lips and made a farting sound. “Nothing’s working. I couldn’t figure out why, so I focus-grouped a couple of their shows and people haaated them.” He shook his head in disgust.
Amanda Wakes Up Page 6