“You can probably guess that he runs an art gallery.”
I had never seen anything like it before. The living room seemed to vibrate with energy, with pieces that ran the gamut from an Italian tapestry to a little boy’s painting of a boat.
I followed him into the kitchen, where he opened the floor-to-ceiling window. “Our dining room awaits,” he said, motioning outside.
A fire escape.
Stepping onto the steel platform hovering eighty feet above the sidewalk in the warm summer air immediately reminded me of the balcony scene in West Side Story or the fire escapes across the courtyard in Rear Window.
From this oasis in the city, we could hear everything: the leaves rustling in the wind, glasses clinking and laughter floating up from a nearby restaurant, and people murmuring as they walked on the street below. The rumbling city I thought I knew suddenly had a hushed, magical quality. Even the honking cars in the distance sounded like they might be the strains of some kind of otherworldly music.
“Wow” was the only word I could manage.
Scott pulled out a narrow runner rug tucked under the window and rolled it out on the steel-grate floor.
“These are the best seats in the house,” he said, gesturing to the carpeted floor.
We sat on the carpet, opened up the pizza box, and dug into heaven. He was right about it being one of the titans of pizza. Every bite was a punch of flavor. While we inhaled it, Scott told me about the next season of his show, which would have him heading out across the globe again next month. On camera, he was smart, funny even, and he was surprisingly the same in real life.
“What’s left to cover?” I said, digging into a second slice. “You’ve already dodged Taliban bullets in Afghanistan, scuba dived in the Red Sea, and wasn’t that you who did a live shot from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco?”
“With permission,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not like one of those daredevils who snuck up there last month with GoPros and got in trouble.”
“That didn’t make your stomach churn having to report from so high up there?”
“Probably the best view anywhere. If you remember, we got those impossible shots of all those whales breaching. That’s why I love what we get to do every day. Showing people what the world looks like.”
“What’s next then?”
“One of the things on the list is to rappel down Mystery Falls in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s pitch dark, and we’re going to need close to two thousand feet of rope rigged at just the right angles. Plus, handheld flashes and flash guns. But I want viewers to feel the scale of it. From inside these caves, every sound—every sight—seems larger than life.”
“That seems like a huge adrenaline rush. Today’s story was on the opposite end of the scale.”
“It is. But a lot of what we reporters do is report on the flaws, the unfairness, the bad decisions. Anyone watching TV news might think all we humans do is make mistakes. But this story is a chance to show that’s not all there is.”
“What’s curious to me is that they’re giving to everyone. They’re not deciding who’s worthy or not. They’re just giving to complete and total strangers.”
He leaned back against the balcony railing. “When I covered Hurricane Irma in the Florida Keys, people rallied together for complete strangers too. They opened their homes, brought meals, helped track down prescriptions. Donated thousands of items. Maybe this is a little like that?”
“We often see people help out in disasters and catastrophes. But many of the people they’re giving to aren’t in any crisis at all. I can’t figure out their endgame.”
“A skeptic. I get that. Especially given how many stories of manipulation we cover every day. But they told the 134th Street tenants ‘You’re all connected.’ What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know.” I set down my pizza slice. “Is this all just a way to get attention or attract millions of followers? You know, like a cell phone or cable company wanting to ‘connect’ us through their services. Or is this a legit group, trying to bring our attention to something important? Something we just can’t grasp yet.”
He handed me a bottle of water. “And which do you hope is true?”
I was surprised by his question. Journalists cover what is. Not what we hope it to be. “I want to believe there’s something good behind all of it. Even though that puts me in a club of one at ANC.”
“I’d like to join your club,” he said. Then he flashed that smile of his, the one that drew in millions of viewers each week, but here it made me feel like he saw the best in me.
“Why? We’re probably only going to get our hopes dashed and find out this is just some scam. Who would possibly think there’s something good behind all of it?”
“I would.”
I smiled. “Because you’re an eternal optimist, or just crazy?”
“Crazy, of course.” He took a quick swig of water. “And because of something that happened to me a few years ago.” He looked out over the darkening skyline, gathering his thoughts. His voice was quiet, reflective. “I was on a skiing trip in Colorado with my cousins and had gotten way ahead of them on this one really rough trail. We shouldn’t have been out there then—it was practically a whiteout. The next thing I knew, I had flipped over a mogul and was thrown so far I was partially buried in a huge snowdrift. I got the wind knocked out of me and couldn’t move. I panicked because I was pretty sure no one would be out there in those conditions. Suddenly a man comes up and pulls me out. Then my cousins called out to me, and when I turned around, the guy was gone. He’d completely disappeared. My family was in the press the next day offering a reward to whoever it was that saved my life that day, but he never came forward. I’ve always wondered who he was.”
He surprised me. I had been holding my breath, thinking his curiosity about this story was motivated by ambition. I’d even considered that he had initially offered to help because he was curious about Senator Bradley’s daughter. But his story made me realize his interest was genuine. Made me think it might be safe to tell him mine.
“When I was little, I thought the whole world was like that,” I said. “People doing almost magical things for other people. My mom died in a car crash when I was five, but what I remember about it was the three guys who came to her rescue. They never identified themselves—even after reporters searched for them—but my dad always talked about how they tried to rescue her. How grateful he was that they tried. Even though I’d lost my mom, the world still had a kind of magic to it. Neighbors would come over or invite us to dinner. Friends came over with books and treats. Some of my dad’s staff took me to a theme park one time, to the beach another. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I realized that the world isn’t like that. Most people aren’t like that.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” he said, softly. “Maybe we’re both lucky to have crossed paths with the few people who have the altruism gene, a talent for helping others.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Or maybe we all have a little bit within ourselves, waiting for the right experience to spark it into action.”