by Devan Sipher
There was only one person to ask: Mike. After apologizing for calling so late, I launched into my tale of woe.
“A year ago,” he said, “I hired one of the top marketing firms in the city to help me do a survey of what men and women look for in a mate.” I wasn’t even remotely interested in his survey. “What my research showed—which was quoted on Oprah—was that for men, the number-one concern was looks and the next was personality. For women, number one was financial success—”
“Meaning?” I asked, cutting him off.
“You need to date less-attractive women or start earning more money.”
Chapter Twelve
Buzzkill
I dreamt I was getting married at Nobu.
I stood beneath a canopy of sashimi in front of a geriatric rabbi in an Elvis outfit, and a lobster salad sculpture of a giant koi. Beside me was my bride, but I couldn’t see her face. She was hidden by a veil of newsprint. As I was about to say “I do,” the waiter handed me a bill for the event and said my credit card had been denied. The bride screeched, and the rabbi beseeched the crowd, “If there is anyone present who can afford to marry this woman, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
I bolted up in bed. I needed a raise.
I had never asked for one before. In fact, I didn’t know if anyone at The Paper ever had. Newspapers aren’t like banks. Your byline is your only bonus. I had always accepted that being underpaid and overworked was the natural order of things. Suddenly, I could see a future that included a bedroom. And stemware. It was like Mike had thrown open a damask curtain revealing an intoxicating new vista.
Feeling invigorated, I went for a short run and then charged uptown to work through lightly falling snow. When assigned to elevator B, I queued up with a sense of purpose and entitlement. I knew writers in the Entertainment section making double my salary. I wasn’t going to ask for double, but I sure as hell was going to ask for my fair share.
Assuming I ever got upstairs. Elevator B was MIA.
Joe Mariano, a business columnist, was standing beside me. “If I wanted an extra half-hour commute, I’d move to Westchester,” he said.
As if on cue, the errant but energy-efficient elevator arrived and whisked us upward. There was a newly installed digital screen where floor numbers could be displayed—could be but were not. When the doors opened, I poked out my head and scooted down the hall. I could hear Joe ask in his native Brooklyn patois: “Does anyone know what friggin’ floor we’re on?”
Moments later I was at my desk, but Renée was not at hers.
“Have you seen Renée?” I asked Tony.
“Target at twelve o’clock,” he said without taking his eyes off his monitor.
Renée was in a glass conference room with Tucker Prescott, the head of the Lifestyles department. That was unusual. They had what I considered a unique working relationship: He barely tolerated her existence, and she pretended not to notice, which seemed to be working for them. Implicitly, interactions were kept to a minimum.
“I want to talk to her about a raise,” I confided in Tony, testing his reaction.
“Good luck with that,” he said, still glued to his computer screen. “They just announced layoffs.”
“Who? When? Where?” I stuttered.
“I’m just reporting it as I’m reading it,” Tony said.
My stomach churned as I quickly logged on. “Did they send out an e-mail?”
“Fat chance,” Tony said. “I’m reading Gawker.”
Gawker, the gossipy Web site devoted to all things snarky and sleazy in the media industry, was the best source of in-house news. When a music critic ripped the toupee off a copy editor and had to be restrained by a security guard, Gawker had the story with video before the rumor had circulated past the third floor.
I found it disappointing that people didn’t have a greater sense of loyalty to The Paper. But at times like this, I was also grateful.
According to Gawker, unnamed sources at The Paper predicted the imminent elimination of 150 news staff jobs, which was roughly equivalent to recent announced cuts at the L.A. Times and the Washington Post. As if that was consolation.
With all the newspapers pulling back, it would be nearly impossible to find a job if I was laid off. I knew I shouldn’t assume that I would be. In fact, there was no proof that anyone would be. Gawker often got things wrong. Fact-checking was not their forte. I needed to find out if other news sites were carrying the story. My phone rang, and I distractedly answered while scanning CNN’s home page.
“This is Emily from the Today Show.”
I freaked out. The Today Show’s standards were much higher than Gawker’s. What did they know that I didn’t?
“I have Roxanne Goldman on the line for you.” False alarm. Roxanne was a segment producer whose Malibu wedding was the last weekend in February. I had a preliminary interview scheduled with her at two p.m.
“I need to take a rain check on our appointment,” Roxanne said. I guess I had an interview scheduled. It was the third time she had canceled on me. Either she was a diva or she was getting cold feet about doing an article. She was marrying an Israeli gymnast she met while on assignment at the Athens Olympics. I had heard about her wedding from a publicist, and I was concerned the publicist wanted the piece more than she did.
“Do you want to do it later in the day?” I asked.
“I was thinking later in the week,” she countered. It was Friday.
“Unless you want to do something this weekend, we’re talking about next week,” I said.
“Even better. Would you mind doing it in the evening?”
Of course I’d mind. “How about six on Monday?” I considered six p.m. a compromise.
“Let’s do nine on Tuesday. Oops, that’s Lauer on the other line. E-mail me if there’s a problem.”
It never ceased to surprise me how many women assumed their wedding was the most important event in everyone’s life. Fortunately for Roxanne, it didn’t behoove me to take an adversarial tone with a bride. A publicist was another story, and this one’s client chose the wrong morning to piss me off.
I looked up the phone number for Brooke Brenner, the PR agent who’d been pitching me Roxanne’s wedding for months. It was an LA area code. I wondered if it was too early to call, but by then I had worked up a head of steam and figured I’d just leave a curt voice mail. My attention was diverted by the sight of Renée angrily gesticulating in the conference room, and I was caught off guard when Brooke answered the phone groggily. I sheepishly identified myself, and she immediately perked up.
“We’re so excited about the article,” she gushed.
“Well, that’s not exactly how it’s coming across,” I said, deliberating if I should apologize for waking her or stick to playing the ticked-off reporter. I noticed Tucker seemed to be successfully placating Renée.
“What do you mean?” Brooke asked breathily. I pictured her batting her eyes at me. Not that I knew what her eyes even looked like, since we had spoken only on the phone. But she had a sexy voice with a disarming giggle. I was losing my focus.
“Roxanne’s canceled on me three times, and she seems to think it’s my job to work round the clock to accommodate her,” I said, worried that I was coming off as peevish. “If we’re having this much trouble scheduling the first interview, it makes me uneasy about getting the others in. Which is why I wanted to let you know that if she cancels again, I’m going to have to kill the piece.”
“That is not going to happen,” Brooke assured me. “I am so sorry you’ve been inconvenienced.” Her soothing, apologetic tone made me feel like a jerk. “Roxanne’s just been so busy with work and the wedding. But that is so not your problem. By the way, I loved your column last week. I cried.”
“Really?” I asked. Flattery will get you everywhere.
“I had to get a Kleenex. Did he really show up at the airport and stop her from getting on the plane?”
“With a bouquet of wildflowers
,” I threw in.
“You didn’t mention the wildflowers in the piece.”
“It got cut,” I said, still a little sore about the subject. Captain Al had extracted a pound of flesh for agreeing to leave my lede intact.
“Why don’t I ever meet men like that?” Brooke asked. I made note of the fact she was single. Just being a thorough journalist.
“Roxanne will be available at whatever time works best for you. Just send me an e-mail, and I’ll arrange it.”
I glimpsed Renée and Tucker getting up from the conference room table. Renée didn’t look happy. So much for Gawker making things up. Whatever was going on was real. And seemed really bad.
“Can’t wait to see your next column,” Brooke said before hanging up. At this point, I was just hoping there would be a next column.
Renée emerged briskly from the conference room, her jaw clenched and her lips pursed. Though that was always how she looked after a conversation with Tucker.
He ambled out behind her. Standing over six foot four, Tucker Prescott had the kind of regal profile that belonged on Mount Rushmore. His weather-beaten, athletic frame resulted from years of mountain biking (and varsity lacrosse at Dartmouth). He was the bad sheep from a good Boston family, having traded in his docksiders for Birkenstocks after college, when he traveled through South America as one of the youngest foreign correspondents in The Paper’s history. He had risen steadily over the past twenty years through a mix of political finesse and emotional indifference.
Renée once described talking to him as akin to bathing in motor oil: “It’s not necessarily going to hurt you, but it’s not going to help much either.”
To his credit, under his guidance Lifestyles had become one of the most profitable departments, leading to the resentment of hard-news sections that were less popular with readers and the advertisers who covet them. In retaliation, Tucker was the whipping boy of weekly managerial meetings. He was openly treated with disdain and disinterest. Which was pretty much how he treated Renée.
If Lifestyles was the black sheep of the newspaper, Weddings was the black sheep of Lifestyles. Though everything we did was under Tucker’s aegis, it was rare for him to read our pages. Tony and I once had a bet over who could go the longest without being acknowledged by Tucker. The rules were we had to say “Good morning” or some other salutation every time we saw him. Tony won after twenty-one days, when Tucker asked me to pass him a hand towel in the bathroom.
True to form, Tucker didn’t stop to chitchat after his meeting with Renée, and Renée was also silent as she plopped herself down at her desk and started reviewing page layouts. Tony and I convened at her cubicle in supplication, modern-day Oliver Twists beseeching her for a morsel of information.
“Take those lost-puppy expressions off your faces,” she said, still focused on the layouts. “I got nothing for you.”
“Did Tucker say there would be cuts in our department?” Tony asked. He was worried about supporting his children. I was worried about ever having any.
“No,” Renée answered.
“Did he say there wouldn’t be cuts?” was my follow-up, which received the same monosyllabic response.
Alison made her midmorning entrance. As she took off her wet parka, she said, “I heard Google is buying The Paper.”
“Gawker predicted Murdoch,” Tony lobbed.
Renée rocketed to her feet. “Gawker is a gossip rag,” she said. “This is a newspaper. We stick to facts.”
“No offense, Renée,” said Tony, “but the fact is we saw you arguing with Tucker. We know something is up.”
Renée scowled before declaring, “Tucker is disappointed in our ‘Interweb’ efforts.” The terminology was Tucker’s. We were never quite sure if he was being ironic or ignorant. “He suggested we start posting wedding breaking-news stories.”
“Is there such a thing?” Alison asked. It was an impudent question, but a good one.
“He wants us generating more traffic to the Web site.” Renée read from her notepad. “He wants more sticky eyeballs.”
“I think my kids made those for Halloween,” Tony said.
He chuckled. Renée didn’t.
“Tucker wants us to start a blog with five-hundred- to eight-hundred-word entries posted a minimum of twice daily.”
“Starting when?” Tony asked, no longer laughing.
“As soon as we figure out what the hell we’re going to fill a blog with. He wants a proposal next week.”
“Will we get paid?” was my primary question. Renée gazed at me over the top of her glasses with a look one would give a brain-damaged child.
More work. No extra money. And diminished job security. So far the day was a career trifecta. My unborn children called out to me, begging not to be raised in a studio apartment.
The snow was coming down harder outside the building’s thin glass walls as Renée planted herself back into her chair, signaling us that class was dismissed. “Is any of this negotiable?” I asked. I had started the day determined to ask for a raise, and I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try.
“That depends,” Renée replied.
“On what?”
“On whether you believe Gawker got their story right.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Better Man
Manhattan is never quite as majestic as during a snowstorm. Skyscrapers melt into soft focus behind swirling white powder that blankets the empty canyons of the traffic grid with car-high snowdrifts. The pristine accumulation makes the city seem cleaner and gentler.
Unless you’re a bride.
In which case, each flake mocks and scorns. Amy was handling it better than many. No tears. No tirades. Just a complete emotional breakdown.
Her florist, Fabio, flagged me down as I emerged from the elevator on the sixty-fifth floor of Rockefeller Center, warning me there was more than one kind of turbulence at the Top of the Rock.
“The confetti’s here, but the cake is not,” Fabio informed me sotto voce, immediately slipping me his business card. “Her dress is locked in a warehouse in Queens, and her sister’s been trapped in the Chicago airport for twenty-four hours. It’s no wonder the poor girl is losing it.”
I was already feeling pressured to deliver a killer piece in the hope of protecting my job. A stressed-out bride made for nervous bridesmaids, and nervous bridesmaids gave lousy quotes. It was going to be a long night. Who was I kidding? It was always a long night.
“She’s just staring out the window,” Fabio reported as he led me down a terrazzo-tiled hallway of glass-and-rosewood columns. “At one point she was counting snowflakes. The bridegroom is beside himself, and the best man, well, don’t get me started on the best man.” Fabio seemed to relish the opportunity to be a news source, but I suspected what he really wanted was to get his name in The Paper. “Did I give you my card yet?”
He pushed open a heavy paneled door, revealing Mike in a shawl-collared tuxedo, pacing a plushly carpeted room with a hangdog mien. Beside him was a largish tuxedoed man with thinning blond hair who had one hand on Mike’s shoulder and a champagne glass in the other.
Mike seemed genuinely happy to see me and unexpectedly hugged me, which was both endearing and discomforting. It’s hard to maintain objective distance while being embraced. As a journalist, I like to think there’s an invisible shield surrounding me. I clearly watch too much Cartoon Network.
“This is Brody,” Mike said, gesturing to the man beside him, “the best man.”
“If I’m the best man, then why are you the one she’s marrying?” Brody said with a loud laugh, then downed his champagne in a single gulp and deposited the empty glass on an ebony credenza before vigorously shaking my hand.
Mike smiled halfheartedly. “I’m worried about Amy,” he said to me. “I’ve never seen her like this. She just shut down. She won’t even talk to me.”
“Well, better get used to that part,” Brody chortled.
“She wants to talk to you,” Mik
e said, looking my direction.
“Me?” I looked behind me to see if someone was standing there. No one was.
“Do you mind?”
Amy was sitting in a curvy Art Deco suite straight out of a 1930s Hollywood film. I pictured a dozen aproned chorines attending to her and breaking into a Gershwin song as the snowflakes spiraled outside the panoramic windows.
“I’m not getting married,” she announced, wrenching me out of musical-comedy land into melodrama.
“You’re the easiest person to tell,” she continued without looking at me. Bereft of her bridal gown, she was wearing a loose-fitting print dress over black leggings, with her arms folded tightly across her chest. “You’re a reporter, so you can report it to everyone else.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Wrangling runaway brides was not part of my job description.
“Every bride gets nervous,” I said, grasping for something impartial but helpful.
“I’m not nervous. I’m making a rational decision.”
If I tried to change her mind, I’d be violating a journalism commandment: Thou shalt not interfere. It was imperative to only observe and never participate in an event being reported. On the other hand, if I didn’t do something fast, there wouldn’t be anything to observe. Not only would all the hours spent interviewing her and Mike be wasted, but I would be left empty-handed. Wedding or no wedding, I still had an article due and a job potentially on the line.
I had only one experience with a story falling through. It was three years back, when a bridegroom walked down the aisle and then kept on walking—out the side door of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The priest ran after him and so did half the congregation, including the bride’s Sicilian grandmother, who threw her back out throwing her cane at the bridegroom’s Land Rover. While Nana was rushed to Victory Memorial, I made an emergency visit of my own to the marriage bureau at City Hall, where couples go for quickie weddings of minimal pomp and dubious circumstance. I interviewed a Ukrainian masseuse marrying her octogenarian landlord, and two eighteen-year-old high-school dropouts who were expecting their first child (shortly after their ceremony). Out of desperation, I chose to write about the teenagers, because they at least brought flowers. The Ukrainian brought her boyfriend.