“Thank you so much, Meg! I don’t know what I would have worn if left to my own devices.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” she said, shuddering slightly. “But no worries, now you will look smashing.” Meg blew me an air kiss and swished out the door.
• • •
Pushing aside a half-eaten sandwich, I pulled my keyboard toward me and typed in the secret code Melissa had provided to watch air checks of FAIR’s morning show. To be honest, I’d tried to tune in before but always switched right over to Suzy Berenson. She was a tough habit to break. I hit play. Cue the cheerful morning music.
“Good Wednesday morning to all of you,” Margot Hamilton began in her sweet singsong. I stared at her perfectly symmetrical features, flawless skin, and raven hair. A perfect Snow White. She even looked good in HD. “I’m Margot Hamilton. Thank you so much for spending your valuable time with us this morning. We appreciate it.”
“And I’m Rob Lahr. Our top story this morning . . .”
I hit pause and stared at her coanchor, Rob Lahr, the chiseled anchorman with coiffed chestnut-colored hair and lapis blue eyes. Upon googling him, I’d discovered he had a penchant for dating starlets. A trove of online photos captured him at various galas, an arm around a different babe at every one.
Rob and Margot were sitting next to each other on a sofa, but they didn’t seem to be in the same room or zip code for that matter. They each read into their own camera. Why wasn’t the director taking a wide two-shot? That would certainly give the show a warmer feel. On my notepad under “Suggestions,” I wrote down “more two-shots” and “more cross talk needed.”
“Wait until you hear this next story,” Margot said before dropping her voice to the grave register. “There is an apartment complex in Cleveland where one brave veteran cannot hang his U.S. Marine Corps flag.” Margot tried to look outraged, but mostly she just looked pretty.
“Let’s unpack this, Margot,” Rob continued, not looking at her. “See, the managers at this condo association say this veteran has to take down his flag that he’s flown every day since returning from Iraq, because it doesn’t comply with building code. The veteran says he’s tried to call the condo association but no response.”
I hit pause. Arguments with a condo board were the kinds of stories I tracked for “5 on Your Side” in Roanoke: small local stories that made a big impact on a few people. I’d make a couple of phone calls, poke around the condo office with a camera, and bingo, that flag was back up. I could do this in my sleep. I hit play again.
“Now, let’s look at all sides of this flag flap,” Margot suggested. “You could say that rules are rules,” she went on. “And of course, rules are rules. But you could also say this is the kind of political correctness run amok that just makes you shake your head.” She shook her head.
“You could also say that it’s a slippery slope,” Rob added. “And if the condo association let him fly his flag, then they might have to let somebody fly their Tea Party flag, and somebody else fly their gay pride flag—”
“And what if somebody has an ISIS flag?” Margot interjected. “I mean, where does it stop?”
“Now, from the get-go,” Rob said, “this Marine has said he’s just trying to honor military service and he’s not asking for special treatment.” At that, I snorted out loud. For years Laurie claimed that anytime anyone used the term “special treatment,” it was code for oral sex, as in “the governor demanded special treatment from the mayor,” or “the warden doesn’t believe prisoners should get special treatment.” I stared at Rob Lahr’s mouth for a second, then shook my head to clear the connotation.
“We want to know what you think about this,” Rob said. “Email us and we’ll read your comments later. Right back after this commercial.”
“That’s great, guys!” a woman’s voice boomed over loudspeakers in the studio, and I realized I wasn’t watching an air check but the in-house feed, which was even better. I could see what they did during commercials. “When we’re back from break, let’s do the ‘women nagging’ talking point,” the loudspeaker voice said.
“Roger that,” Rob said, shuffling a couple of papers on the coffee table in front of him. Margot smoothed her perfect hair.
“You guys ready?” I heard one of the crew ask. “In five, four, three . . .”
“Welcome back,” Rob said, grinning a big TV grin. “We have an interesting new study to unpack this morning. Listen up, all you husbands out there. The University of Cincinnati just released research that found nagging from your wife is just as toxic to a marriage as infidelity! Finally, men have some hard research to back up our belief that we should be left alone in our man caves.”
Oh, brother, I sighed. Nothing like a little sexism with your cornflakes. I waited for Margot to shoot down the premise.
“That’s ridiculous,” Margot started. “What about the wife’s point of view? Do you really think asking your husband to pick up his dirty socks is as bad in a marriage as cheating on him? Do you? Do you really think that?” She was staring at Rob as she badgered him for an answer. It sounded like Margot was actually nagging Rob. Wait, is this a bit they’re doing? I couldn’t tell. Neither one was smiling. Maybe they’re about to do something clever here. I waited for it . . . and . . . nope.
“I assure you,” she went on, smiling sweetly now, “my husband would much rather I tell him to mow the lawn than I start having an affair!”
Something told me that Margot’s husband, a wildly wealthy hedge fund manager, hadn’t mowed a lawn in a couple of decades.
“You sure about that?” Rob muttered under his breath. My eyes widened. Oh, I get it. He doesn’t like her. That’s why this all feels painfully awkward. I clicked the off button. Benji is so right—this show desperately needs some personality. “More fun, some laughs,” I wrote down. This, I thought, will be easy.
Chapter 8
Chemistry Test
“So, this is all a big secret, right?” Angie shouted over the hair dryer.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Don’t let Margot know ya doing this,” she shouted. “It’d break that poor girl’s heart. God bless.”
“Shhhhh!” I tried.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Ya secret’s safe with me. So ya married?” Angie yelled.
“No,” I said, nervously tapping my feet on the footrest of her chair. The chemistry test with Rob was in half an hour and I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t like taking tests, chemistry or otherwise, with no notes, no prep, no nothing.
“Ya got a boyfriend?”
“I do.”
“Is he in the biz?” she asked, tugging hard at my damp hair.
“No, he’s an associate professor of history at NYU.”
“A smarty-pants, huh? Ya met Rob yet?”
“Not yet,” I said softly, trying to set an example for Angie to turn it down. For all I knew Rob was getting makeup in the next stall.
“Stay away from him,” she warned.
“Oh?” I asked, connecting with her eyes in the mirror.
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s a big pussy hound. Ya read The Inside Scoop last week? Says he was spotted ‘canoodling’ with that girl, oh, what’s her name? She was in that movie. You know who I’m talking about, right? Blond. Big boobs.”
“Sorry, that doesn’t narrow it down,” I said, reaching into my bag to check my phone, half expecting to learn the chemistry test was cancelled. Or maybe that I had dreamt it.
“Don’t matter. It’ll be someone new next week. Love-em-leave-em Lahr, they call him. He’s a contagious bachelor.”
“I think you mean chronic.”
“I mean the kind that gets under ya skin and stays there, like a bad rash. Be careful.”
My hands were tingling as I approached the studio, partly from nerves and partly from the pile of dresses draped over my le
ft arm, cutting off my circulation. Meg insisted I bring them all, in every possible color, so the director could decide what looked best on camera.
I was ten minutes early but I wanted to steal a peek at the studio, to see where I would sit and which camera I would look at, before the producer showed up. I pushed open the black swinging door with the Studio A sign, expecting it to be dark and empty, but I was wrong and a half dozen heads spun in my direction. Shit! There were Margot and Rob sitting on the sofa. I froze as the door slammed behind me.
A balding guy in his fifties, dressed in stonewashed jeans and an ill-fitting bright blue sweatshirt, raced over from the side of the stage to body block me from moving any farther, dramatically putting his first finger to his lips, silently shushing me as though he were Charlie Chaplin. I took three steps back into the darkness and looked around, trying to figure out how to reopen the door quietly and get the hell out of there without disrupting whatever this was.
The set seemed much smaller in real life than it did on screen. The sofa was a semicircle of beige, the walls a bright red, blue, or purple, depending, it appeared, on the subject matter. I hadn’t noticed when I’d watched on the computer that the saturation levels morphed from muted to supercharged from sentence to sentence.
I stood in the wings, torn now between wanting to flee and wanting to watch what was happening, and hoping the unlit area made me invisible. One, two, three, four, five . . . I counted the cameras, my palms getting moist. Three big cameras were on heavy bases with wheels. Another camera was on the end of a crane, floating overhead for a bird’s-eye view, and the fifth camera was balanced on the shoulder of one of the crew, shooting what looked like an array of desserts on a table, away from the main set, for a food segment. I looked at all the crew guys, particularly the one behind Camera 1, with his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and a paperback book propped open under his viewfinder. I couldn’t tell whether he was reading or sleeping.
Around the studio were a half dozen monitors, huge flat-screen TVs projecting the on-set action in real time. One was divided into four screens showing what Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and BNN were broadcasting at that very moment. Then I spotted the teleprompters hidden in the cameras and felt a lump forming in my throat. This might be a good time to mention to someone that I’m not really proficient at prompter reading. I filled in on the anchor desk in Roanoke a couple of times but that was different. That wasn’t national. That wasn’t a Benji Diggs production with millions of people watching.
“That’s a wrap, guys,” came that woman’s voice over the loudspeakers. “Great job. I’ll talk to Benji and let you know what’s next.”
“We’re clear!” the mime in the sweatshirt shouted to the sedated crew.
I knew that was my cue to exit before I was forced to explain what I was doing there, but as I turned to slink out I heard my name.
“Amanda!” Margot was zipping up to me, her heels clicking against the floor. “Hey! I’ve been wanting to meet you,” she said.
I stood paralyzed, staring at her beautiful face, at her pert features and beautiful green eyes, and all I could think was Benji was right—it was a crime that she sucked on TV.
“Oh, my gosh, your packages are sooo great!” she gushed. “I loved that one you did on the ostrich farm where they were pecking at you. We used that on the show. Sooo cute!”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, trying to back away before she noticed I was holding a week’s worth of dresses in my arms.
“And that story you did on the death penalty. Gosh, such a sad story,” she said, putting her hand to her chest to comfort herself. “Oh, my gosh.”
“Yes, yes,” I agreed. “Very sad.”
“I mean, I don’t know how you do it, how you keep it together out there. Being in the field must be sooo tough. I know I couldn’t do it.” She stopped then, like maybe she was looking for a real response.
“Um, I guess, you know, I try to remove myself from the emotion and just think of it as a good story and stick to the facts.”
“So what are you doing here? Taping an on-set intro for one of your stories?”
“Um, yeah, I think so . . .” I said, feeling as guilty as a mistress invited to dinner by her lover’s wife. “What are you all doing in here? You end at nine usually, right?”
“Oh, yeah, usually. Benji just wanted us to do a couple of practice runs. He’s rebranding the show, new name, new slogan. You know, trying to build the audience. I mean everything’s going really, really well,” she nodded at me with enthusiasm, “but it never hurts to try to get more viewers. Benji’s really excited about our show.”
“He is?”
“Oh, shoot, I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ve got to get a gel manicure before lunch! Let’s grab coffee next week,” she said, squeezing my free arm then heading for the studio door.
I stood disoriented, looking around again, then spotted the mime ambling in my direction. “You must be Amanda,” he said. “I’m Larry, the floor director. Sorry I ambushed you over there.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted,” I said. “No one told me you all were shooting something.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve noticed they don’t clue everyone in around here,” he said, nodding toward the door through which Margot had just exited, then he leaned closer. “I understand you’re doing a chemistry test today. Come, let me introduce you to this motley crew.”
Larry led me toward a crop of cameramen scattered around one end of the studio. “Hey, guys,” he said to get their attention, “I want to introduce you to Amanda. She’s our next chemistry test.” Next chemistry test? I looked to the guys’ faces for clues as to how many of these they’d done, but they looked indifferent, like they’d rather be at home rewatching Caddyshack.
“So, that’s Jeremy behind Camera One,” Larry said, pointing to the sleepy guy with the baseball cap and the book, who gave me a somnolent nod.
“And that’s Rocco behind Camera Two there. That’ll be your camera, so you’ll have to be extra nice to him.” A sixtyish, super-skinny guy with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail offered up a grin. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I gotcha covered.”
“Over there, that’s Casanova on Camera Three,” Larry said, gesturing to a cute, twentysomething black guy with his hair pulled into a man bun. “He’s our resident heartbreaker. He can’t help it, that’s his real name.” At that, Casanova gave a courtly bow in my direction. I reflexively bowed back.
“And this here is Anthony Panzullo on the handheld.” A jolly looking, round-faced, midforties, mustachioed guy gave me a quick nod before tucking back into his egg and cheese on a bulky roll.
“Panzullo doesn’t like to get too much exercise, so try not to move too much,” Rocco said, not to me but to the guys, causing them to guffaw.
“Why, I oughta!” Panzullo countered in a Three Stooges voice.
“Oh, a wise guy, eh?” Rocco responded.
I looked around the big room, overwhelmed and anxious. “How many guys work on the show?” I asked Larry, trying to make small talk.
“About half.” Larry smiled, eliciting groans from the crew.
“So what do I need to know, other than never slam open the studio door in the middle of a show?”
“Well, let’s see,” Larry said. “You should follow me for all your time cues. You know the hand signals, right? You know what this means?” he asked, circling his first finger around and around near his head.
“You’re crazy?” I ventured.
“Ha! No, it means wrap it up in thirty seconds. You know what this means?” he asked, making a fist and shaking it sideways.
“You’re gonna punch someone?”
“Maybe!” he laughed. “No, it means you’ve got fifteen seconds to a hard break. That means the commercial is going to cut you off so wrap fast. Got it?”
“I guess so,” I said, feeling my
throat tighten again.
“You’re gonna fit in fine around here, I can tell. Remember, just have fun with it. Morning shows can be fun,” he said without further explanation.
“Don’t listen to anything he says,” a deep voice advised from my right. Rob Lahr waltzed up next to Larry and slung an arm over his shoulder, then pretended to punch Larry in the gut with his other hand. “Larry’s like my work wife, the way he nags me to keep the desk clean.”
“You should be so lucky,” Larry chided.
“Ah, touché,” Rob said.
“Be careful of this guy, Amanda,” Larry said.
“Nothing to fear here. I’m a big pussycat.” Rob flashed me a smile. “You ready to do this? I’m gonna hit the head for a second. Don’t worry, this’ll be a blast.” Rob turned his right hand into a gun and cocked his finger in my direction with a clicking noise, then strode out of the studio without looking back.
I tried not to roll my eyes. What a frat boy. I knew dozens of those guys in college. Big-man-on-campus types, too handsome for their own good and accustomed to getting their way with women. Such a cliché.
“Amanda? There you are.” A woman, around my age, pretty, with long dark hair, light-brown skin, and a serious navy blue suit, was approaching. “Hi! I’m Fatima. I’m the executive producer on the show. I’ll be in the control room for your test today. I see you’ve met some of the crew. Any questions?”
“Well”—I didn’t want to admit I had a million—“just how does it work?”
“Oh, here,” she said, handing me a couple of articles. “Basically you and Rob will talk about some stories in the news. I found a flag story out of South Carolina for you two to discuss. It’s really just to see you two interacting together.”
“Oh, the story about the Marine who was fighting the condo association? I saw that . . . I mean, I read about that one,” I said quickly, realizing she might not appreciate me spying on Rob and Margot.
“No, no, I found a better one,” Fatima said. “This is about a Confederate flag at a condo.”
Amanda Wakes Up Page 8