When I returned a few minutes later, Rebecca was marking up the script. Her eye flicked to the tea I slid in front of her, but she didn’t look up. She was in the zone. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Thirty seconds!” Hank shouted. He turned to me. “It’s you again, huh?”
“Is it okay if I stay and watch?”
He shrugged. “You know the drill.”
Rebecca straightened her papers, nodded at whatever Eliza was saying in her earpiece, tucked her phone and her tea beneath the desk. After the cold open (“Tonight, on Frontline,” Rebecca’s previously recorded voice narrated) and the slick theme music, Rebecca followed Hank’s gesture to Camera One. “Good evening,” she said. “We begin tonight in the Caribbean, where Tropical Storm Lyle has officially become Hurricane Lyle. The storm is predicted to hit the Carolinas next week, and millions of Americans could be affected. For the latest we turn to our meteorologist—”
Rebecca had many things in common with Terrance, the substitute anchor: a warm facial expression that merged curiosity and concern, a beautiful low voice, an easy chemistry with the reporters in the field. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Rebecca. That hadn’t been remotely true when Terrance was anchoring.
“I can’t figure it out,” I said to Jamie, later that same night.
“Ah,” Jamie said. “Everyone remembers their first time.”
“But I watched Terrance that night. Remember, you were there.”
“Terrance is Terrance. Rebecca is a star. And the first time you’re up close and personal with someone like that—that’s special.”
“You make it sound like I just lost my virginity.”
“It’s an appropriate metaphor.”
I squeezed the wedged lime into the narrow neck of my Corona. “Well, it was much more exciting than losing my actual virginity, let me tell you.”
Jamie laughed, and I felt a ripple of uncertainty. Why did I say that? It sounded flirty, and I hadn’t intended flirty. We were at the bar with our colleagues, the Friday night ritual to ease the transition from week to weekend. For the workaholics who thrived at KCN, the cadences of normal life could be difficult. Some dealt with it by working all weekend. Others dealt with it by drinking and going out too much. And then there was Jamie, the rare producer who maintained a semi-normal life, and his psychological health, in addition to his career.
It was like Jamie’s wick burned slower than everyone else’s. He accepted the imperfection of the work we did, which didn’t make him love it any less. I had read once that the South was the only part of America that understood tragedy, because it was the only part of the country to experience defeat in war. This was grandiose, I knew, to leap from a calm voice in a Midtown bar to the sweep of history. But after a beer or two, my thoughts tended toward the grandiose. So did Jamie’s. That was part of the reason I liked him so much.
“What about you?” I said. “The first time you met Rebecca. What was it like?”
He held up a finger. “Let me ask you a question. Tonight, when you were watching. Who did you want to be? Rebecca, behind the anchor desk? Or Eliza, in the control room?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “Eliza.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. A gut feeling. Eliza’s job seems more interesting. And harder, in a way.”
“But you were saying that you couldn’t take your eyes off Rebecca. That she had something that made her different from Terrance. Better than him.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But whatever that thing is, I know I don’t have it.”
Jamie snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”
“Hey,” I said. “You could at least pretend to disagree.”
“You know what a producer can do? She can take mediocre talent and make it good. She can take good talent and make it very good. But she can’t take good talent and make it great.”
“You mean stars are born, not made?”
“Sort of,” he said. “Mostly my point is that a producer has to know his or her limits. Self-awareness. That’s what separates us from the talent. That ineffable thing you were talking about—you know what I think it is? Delusion.”
I laughed. “This is Rebecca you’re talking about.”
“I mean it in the kindest possible way,” Jamie said. “If you think you’re special and chosen, if you deliver the news believing that you possess some unique authority, guess what? It looks great on camera. People buy it.” Jamie shrugged. “But you and I, we know what we don’t have. We’re too honest with ourselves to feel like we deserve the spotlight.”
“Because no one deserves the spotlight?”
“Precisely.” Jamie lifted his beer in salute.
“This Socratic method of yours,” I said. “Is this how you haze all the new assistants?”
Jamie looked around the bar, at the tables covered in beer and nachos, at our colleagues gossiping energetically despite the dark circles beneath their eyes. “You see these people? Two or three years from now, most of them won’t be here,” Jamie said. “But I have a feeling you’re in this for the long haul.”
Chapter Three
on a saturday morning in November, sitting in the kitchen with coffee and the news, I heard the front door open.
“Hello?” a voice called from the other room. “Anyone home?”
“Mrs. Bradley?” I called back. In the foyer stood Anne, and a second woman. Anne was wearing leather driving shoes, a field jacket, and a silk scarf. The other woman was wearing a wrap dress, a trench coat, and kitten heels. Both of them had perfect blond bobs. I was in yoga pants and a threadbare T-shirt, my unwashed hair in a ponytail.
“I see what you mean,” the second woman said to Anne, with a frown.
For a moment, I thought she was talking about me. Then she started walking the perimeter of the living room, craning her neck to look at the ceiling, running a hand along the mantelpiece. “Great bones,” she said. “Southern exposure.”
“It just seems a shame to have this place sitting so empty,” Anne said. “Oh, Violet, let me introduce you to our decorator.”
The decorator had a practiced smile and a firm handshake. She also had a chipless peach manicure and expertly applied makeup. Her whole look was impeccable, in the way of someone whose livelihood depends on aesthetics.
“So what are you thinking?” Anne said, trailing the decorator from the living room to the kitchen. The decorator nodded as she took in the marble countertops, the white cabinets, the six-burner range. “Kitchen’s in great shape,” she said. “This place must have been renovated a few years ago. New lighting, some open shelving and glass doors, and it’ll look fabulous.”
She sniffed, then peered into the sink, where a cast-iron skillet was soaking. “Do you cook?” she said to me.
“A little,” I said. I’d bought pots and pans from the thrift store, and had been teaching myself with cookbooks borrowed from the library. It was the cheapest way to eat, and I liked the transformation of it, how the lowliest ingredients could become luxurious with time and effort.