The chair that had come with the sad desk periodically emitted a deep sigh and Natalie had started to think of it as a sort of mood chair. For hours she’d been dialing doctors, searching videos, scrounging for anything that might help fill in details about the First Lady’s history of migraines—and kept coming up empty. Sigh, said the chair. Sigh, Natalie agreed.
When she’d called the White House press office, she’d been told, condescendingly, that any questions about FLOTUS’s health should be directed to FLOTUS’s press office. When she reached FLOTUS’s press office, she was told, equally condescendingly, “The First Lady’s health is a private matter. We can’t discuss it.”
“But Adam Majors discussed her migraines in the briefing,” Natalie had replied. “It’s public information. I’m just looking for a little background.”
“We can’t help you here. I suggest you reach out to the president’s press office.”
“I just spoke with them and they referred me to you.”
“Tell them I referred you back to them.” The line went dead.
Sigh, said the chair. Sigh, Natalie echoed.
The rest of her research was equally frustrating. Considering that Anita Ramirez Crusoe was constantly in the public eye, there was a surprising lack of detailed information about her—and not just about her health. Descriptions of the First Lady’s early life in Venezuela were so banal they read like tourism brochures.
FLOTUS had grown up in Maracaibo, a coastal city near Venezuela’s northern border with Colombia. As everyone knew, she’d been Miss Venezuela in her late teens and come to America on an engineering scholarship in her midtwenties. Her father was a judge. Her mother, once a bookkeeper, had become some kind of activist. Both her parents had opposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and served a brief stint in prison for speaking out against him. American campaign reporters had descended on her hometown during the primary and though they’d unearthed kindergarten teachers and the owners of local panaderías searching for any whiff of scandal about young Anita Ramirez, they’d found none.
FLOTUS herself had never mentioned headaches in any interview, or any ailments at all. The only instance Natalie could find of FLOTUS discussing her own health was in a two-year-old video from a small summertime campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In front of a group of fifty or so women at a rec center, she’d made a joke about wearing a turtleneck in summer, explaining she’d just had a worrisome mole removed from her neck. There was nothing in any way relevant to migraines, apart from the fact that researching them was giving Natalie the beginnings of a migraine herself.
Now she stared at the script, what little she’d written.
IT’S A HEADACHE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE... FIRST LADY ANITA CRUSOE—REPORTEDLY DOWN WITH A MIGRAINE... AND SKIPPING TONIGHT’S SUMMIT SOIREE... WILL LATIN AMERICAN LEADERS TAKE HER ABSENCE AS A SNUB?
At the end of the line, the cursor was blinking angrily, waiting for Natalie to come up with something—anything—Urgent and Now to wow the bosses and get her home for the night.
The chair sighed. Natalie moved her eyes back to the television monitors just in time to see Nelly Jones lean in intently and ask the camera, “Is there trouble in the First Marriage? What’s the real reason the First Lady’s a no-show to tonight’s state dinner?”
Before Nelly could toss to one of the boxes of pundits, music blared and a JUST IN graphic rolled across the screen. Ryan popped up, announcing that he had a statement from White House Communications Director Adam Majors, and Natalie’s stomach coiled into a tight knot. Ryan had snared the White House’s most senior press wrangler as a top source.
On TV, Ryan began reading. “President Crusoe will not take sides in a he-said-she-said. No doubt both sides have reason to be upset. No doubt both parties bear some blame. The Crusoe administration will not put its finger on the scales of justice.” Ryan looked up at the camera and explained that Rigo Lystra has every right to stay at the Colombian embassy until Venezuela drops these “unproven charges.” Embellishing, he added, “The White House is taking a stand for letting the truth come out. We are at ground zero of a fight for freedom.”
Natalie’s hands tightened into fists. Ryan’s self-importance was bad but his unquestioning embrace of the White House’s line of absurdity was infuriating. Was he really going to pretend that Crusoe’s team was keeping its hands to itself when clearly it had its fingers up justice’s skirt? It sounded like they’d gotten to at least third base.
In a way this is Andrea’s fault, she thought angrily. She has to know better if Ryan doesn’t. And speaking of producers, where the hell is Matt? Shouldn’t he be landing some ONLY ON ATN tips for me?
Her phone buzzed.
MOM: Do you know this new reporter, Ryan? He’s very good.
MOM: He seems to be very well informed. I hear he’s from an important family. And so handsome!
MOM: Maybe he’s single? You could bring him to the wedding. Women go with younger men all the time these days.
“I’m going to kill someone,” Natalie muttered.
Natalie jumped when a female voice at her shoulder said, “This is a joke? About killing. You do not mean to do a killing?”
Natalie turned to find the Asian camerawoman who’d narrowly escaped a mauling by Handsy Hal before the town hall standing behind her desk.
“It is a joke. I’m not planning on doing any killing,” Natalie said, hoping whoever this was would leave her alone.
“I see,” the woman said, extending her hand. “I am Dasha, camerawoman.”
In black jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, black ankle boots, and a navy-and-white check scarf wrapped several times around her neck, she looked more like a guerilla fighter styled by Benetton than a camerawoman. She had unusually high cheekbones, a broad face, flaxen-toned skin, dark hair pulled severely back into a pony tail, and slate-gray phoenix eyes that were now scanning the room as if by instinct. She held out her hand.
“Great. You two met,” Matt said, appearing out of nowhere like the ghost of Christmas Unwanted. Looking at Natalie, he explained, “She’s our new camerawoman, most recently posted in Kabul where she shot for BBC and Sky News for the last decade and a half.” Then he added in a whisper, “She’s from Kazakhstan.”
Dasha gave a curt shake of her head. “Not Afghanistan since ’09. Yemen, then Damascus. Tripoli for nine months. I was embedded with Alawite forces fighting ISIS in Raqqa the last five months. I have gotten every crew out safely, not many people can say this.” She paused to let that sink in.
Natalie was searching for an impressive sounding reply—“I once helped an obese man get airlifted out of his house without him missing a turn on Xbox” was the best she had to offer—when Matt pointed insistently at the TV behind them. “Check out McGreasy.”
Natalie spun around to see Ryan McGreavy live outside the Colombian embassy with a First On ATN banner running above the Breaking News banner.
“Thank you, Nelly, I’m about to bring you an exclusive, only-see-it-here interview that no other network has. Just us. Exclusively.” A graphic reading ONLY ON ATN rolled across the screen and then shattered into a million little pieces over Star Wars-sounding music.
“Huh, do you think it’s an exclusive?” Matt said. None of them looked away from the screen.
“I’m here to bring you the first interview with Rigo Lystra from inside the embassy.”
Holy shit, Natalie thought. How the hell did he land this?
A still photo of Rigo Lystra appeared at the corner of the screen next to a symbol for a phone.
Into the camera Ryan said, “Folks, we’re on the phone now with Rigo Lystra, who is holed up inside the embassy behind me. ¡Rigo! ¿Estás bien, amigo?” Ryan winked into the camera. “For everyone at home, I’m asking, are you okay, my friend.”
A young man’s voice came over the line. “I’m okay! Let’s speak Englis
h, my friend. I’m so grateful to the United States of America for letting me keep my freedom. This is all baloney. I did nothing wrong and you will know it. Justice will win.”
“We believe you,” Ryan said. “And we’re sorry you are going through this.”
We do? We are?
“I think this McGreavy does not use your word ‘we’ correctly,” Dasha said and Natalie wanted to hug her.
“Man, we want to know,” Ryan continued on behalf of all of them. “What’s it like up there? How you doing?”
Rigo began describing the hospitality of the wonderful embassy staff.
Natalie turned to Matt. “How did he get this interview?”
“Oh, grasshopper, you must understand, for a man who is willing to do anything, there are always many doors open,” Matt said.
“Or for a correspondent with an ace producer,” Natalie shot back.
Matt was unmoved. “Don’t look to me. Look at you,” he said, gesturing to her body. “I want to get my news from a girl who looks like she takes her style cues from the Shapeless and Rumpled Catalog, said no one ever.” Matt’s eyes got hard. “You have to look like someone worth listening to in order to get the attention of people worth talking to. No one is going to spill high-quality dirt to someone who won’t be able to get it in front of an audience.”
Dasha made a clicking noise with her tongue and frowned at Matt. “Do not listen to him.” The camerawoman’s eyes focused on the television with an expression Natalie would not have wanted turned on herself. “You will do better. I hate the fake bozos. Matthew, what do we know of Greasy?”
“Not Greasy, Mc—” Matt cut himself off. “Anyway, that’s mine. I want credit if you use it. And I prefer Matt to Matthew, Matthew is the name...” His voice trailed off under Dasha’s stare.
On screen now, McGreasy was telling a story about Rigo’s love of basketball and how successful he’d been with his brackets three years running.
Around the room, computers began emitting a high-pitched beep. Soon the whole newsroom was chirping with the sound of an urgent AP news bulletin:
URGENT
Washington, DC—First Lady photographed with Colombian strongman Carlos Lystra. A photograph appearing on gossip site TMZ shows First Lady Anita Crusoe, laughing with Colombia’s president before the summit dinner.
Natalie’s chair sighed as her mind began to race down Worst Case Scenario lane.
What about her migraine? Had there even been one? The story she’d spent all day chasing was gone—poof—just like that.
Taking with it her VOP.
And her career.
At least you didn’t spend six hundred dollars on your hair, her mind offered up as a consolation prize.
Her chair gave a sigh bordering on a moan as she leaned forward, pulling up the photograph to study it. There was BamBam standing with his arms stretched out wide, as though the photo was snapped right in the middle of a funny story, with the First Lady seated on an upholstered chair smiling up at him. She had her hair pulled up, was wearing a long-sleeved navy sheath, and her head was thrown back as if she was delighted by his wonderful joke.
“Flirty FLOTUS Digs the Dictator,” Matt said, studying the photo on Natalie’s monitor. “Or better! Dick-Tator. It’s a Dicki-leaks dump!” He launched into a smug laugh.
“This is not funny,” Dasha said to Matt, then turned to Natalie. “Often people joke to cover up with laughter the sadness inside of them.”
“This is bullshit,” Matt said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call the White House and see what Adam Majors has to say about this.”
“It’s weird,” Natalie mused mostly to herself. The setup, the photo. None of it made sense. Was the migraine a lie?
In the back of her mind, Natalie felt a familiar prick, the prick of instinct that told her there was something more here. Try harder, her first boss used to say. He’d also insisted she had an antenna for The Story and over the years she’d learned to trust it.
She zoomed in to study the picture more closely, as though it were one of those images in a kids’ magazine where you have to circle the incongruities—a book hanging in midair, a clock with the numbers backward, a tiger in a baby carriage, a mole on the First Lady’s neck.
A mole on the First Lady’s neck!
Quickly she opened her internet browser and pulled up photos of the First Lady and felt her heart beat faster. “Dasha, can you look at this picture? Do you see something on the First Lady’s neck?” Natalie asked, trying to keep her voice level, not let her excitement get out of hand. Because the First Lady was in profile, her neck—and the mole—were easy to see.
Matt crowded in uninvited. “It’s a mole. A beauty mark,” he said. “Why?”
Dasha nodded. “Matthew is not wrong,” she agreed.
Natalie beamed at them. “She had that mole removed two years ago,” she told them. “During the campaign.”
Matt looked at her skeptically. “How you know that?”
Natalie’s chair sighed, but she was ebullient. She pulled up the video from the Wisconsin women’s event she’d been watching earlier and hit Play. There was FLOTUS apologizing for wearing a turtleneck in August, explaining she’d just had a mole removed from her neck.
“There!” she said. “You see?”
Matt was staring at the screen. “It could be a different mole.”
Natalie wanted to scream. Instead she opened a new window and Googled videos of the First Lady from the campaign. The first thing that came up was a People magazine cover shoot. She was in a red blouse, with a mole clearly visible on the right side of her neck.
“See right there?” Natalie said, pointing at the First Lady’s neck. “A mole.”
Then she found the most recent video of the First Lady, a Today Show appearance about allergies. “There!” Natalie said, freezing the video when FLOTUS was in profile. No mole. It was gone.
Now she pointed at the photo TMZ had just released. “She had that mole removed two years ago.” She turned to grin at Matt and Dasha. “That means this photo is either old or doctored.”
“Shit, that’s amazing.” Matt said as Natalie eyed him to make sure there wasn’t a but coming.
“What did the White House say?” she asked.
“No response. Which means something’s up,” he said, pulling his phone out. “And now I am going to produce the hell out of this piece. Let’s get you on air.”
Natalie glanced at the television where Ryan, looking a little flustered, was wrapping his interview with Rigo. Already other stations had gone wall-to-wall FLOTUS.
My turn, Natalie thought. My chance.
8
The Rights of Management
Despite the breaking news on air—a panel of pundits in boxes engaged in a shoutfest over FLOTUS’s photograph with BamBam—the wattle of What Girls didn’t seem to be doing anything more than ignoring Matt and researching the calories in toothpaste. “I had no idea it could make you fat but GMA did a whole segment on it,” one of them announced.
Fifteen minutes earlier Matt had marched over to the desk, declaring he was going to personally track down an executive producer and get Natalie on the air pronto. That had been long enough for her to fix her hair and freshen up her makeup. Now she was getting restless.
After checking her eyelashes one last time, Natalie put down the mirror and walked over to the desk. “I still don’t get it.” One of the What Girls who had been squinting at Matt shifted the squint to her. “A mole? Who else is reporting that? Does, like, the New York Times or, um, Beltway have it?”
Natalie frowned and looked at Matt who looked back at her with an expression of humility she wouldn’t have guessed he possessed. “You try,” he said. “I am completely defeated,” and walked off, leaving Natalie on her own.
With a deep breath, she steeled herself and explain
ed, no. No one else was reporting the mole. “We have it first,” she said, flooding her voice with enthusiasm.
The What Girl frowned, unmoved. “I don’t understand. If no one else is reporting it, how do you know it’s true?”
Patience, must exercise patience, she told herself.
“Because I’ve confirmed it myself. With my own eyes.” Natalie inhaled again and tried for an approach with less logic. “Can you help me get it on air before the other networks do?”
The What Girl stared at Natalie like she’d just asked to open the airplane exit door at thirty-thousand feet. “I’m sorry but no,” the What Girl said, clearly not sorry at all. “I’m under orders not to bother the show with anything unless I’m one hundred percent sure we have something reportable. I can’t confirm what you say unless a trusted news organization is reporting it. Otherwise, how would I know it’s right?”
Natalie felt like she’d tripped into an alternate universe. In What World, following the crowd, playing catch-up, was the winner’s move; new information was Bad and something to be scorned if not outright avoided.
Not What World, she thought. WhatTheFuck World would be more apt.
Was she going to be reduced to tweeting Drudge about the mole?
There had to be a better way. There had to be someone she could appeal to.
Like a fairy godmother, a man’s voice rang out from her left. “Hey, lady! You’re here late.”
A fairy godmother she’d been anxious to avoid—until now. Even without looking in his direction, Natalie could feel Hal smiling at her admiringly. “I don’t think I ever noticed how fit you are!” he went on. “Seeing you from a distance just now I realized you must go to the gym a lot?”
He really just said that. Surely Bibb, somebody, has told him it is not okay to talk to—
Focus, she told herself. Bibb. Hal talks to Bibb all the time.
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