Riverside Park. Laura Wormer Van
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“Ah, there you are,” the housekeeper said from the doorway. “You’re usually gone by now.”
Nothing like feeling unwelcome in your own home. Cassy knew the housekeeper was anxious for her to leave so she could turn all the TVs in the house on to begin her daily regime. Oh, for the days of Rosanne! When someone arrived who was interested in the house and the family in it!
Cassy’s plan to slip unobtrusively into the DBS News conference room had clearly failed; whatever discussion had been taking place stopped dead the moment she came through the door. She took the only seat left at the long conference table, which was at the other end from where their SeniorVice President and Executive Producer of DBS News, Will Rafferty, was presiding. She felt self-conscious with all of these eyes on her because they belonged to younger people, many of whom made their careers in front of the camera, which is to say they were trained to view their appearance critically and tended to do the same with everyone else.
Alexandra Waring was there, of course, the symbolic head of the news division and around whom it had largely been built. Alexandra recently celebrated her four-thousandth on-air hour for DBS News and, at forty-one, was, Cassy thought, even better looking than when they had launched the network. Maturity suited her. Alexandra had exquisite blue-gray eyes (which all five children of Congressman Waring, the longtime Kansas politician, had), high cheekbones, a full mouth and nearly black hair that had only recently begun to show an occasional gray hair. She also had a brilliant smile that was said to be able to generate ratings by itself.
Alexandra was fiercely bright and well-liked at the network, if not somewhat adored. She was demanding but fair and anyone who was trying their best usually found favor with her. A few people had come and gone very quickly at DBS News because it became quickly evident who fit in and who did not. If someone understood what Alexandra and Will were trying to do he or she would do fine; if he or she disagreed with their direction and had no constructive alternative to offer, he or she soon wanted out. (The chill factor could be unbearable.)
Many of their key players in the news group had been with DBS since the beginning, when there had only been DBS News America Tonight with Alexandra Waring, Monday through Friday, for one hour at nine.
Sitting next to Alexandra was half of the anchor team for DBS’s new 6:00–7:00 a.m. national news hour, Emmett Phelps. He was formerly a professor of law at USC and looked every inch the part, only younger. He was in his middle forties, had a nice head of hair, insisted on wearing horn-rimmed glasses and, regardless of the climate or season, a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. Emmett was well-spoken and deliberate in his speech; he had the gift of being able to concisely summarize the complicated details of news stories that broadcast news could not stop to explain.
Across the table from Emmett was his more outgoing and outspoken coanchor, Sally Harrington, whose edge it was part of Emmett’s job to smooth while Sally’s was to make Emmett have one. She was almost thirty-five and possessed elocution no voice coach could ever teach. Sally was very pretty, with blue eyes and light brown hair streaked with blond. She had formerly served as a special producer for Alexandra, but also belonged to the Writers’ Guild because she could write almost as well as (some said better than) her boss, the latter of whom notoriously believed a newscast was only as good as the writing behind it.
The jury was still largely out on Sally and Emmett and DBS News America This Morning but the November sweeps had been promising. Their biggest hurdle was making viewers want to forego their local news to tune in to DBS before the Big Three network morning shows began at 7:00 a.m., which meant DBS Morning going great lengths to cut back and forth to their affiliates to update local weather and traffic. Sally and Emmett had very high TVQs (the TV quotient of that ineffable “something” that made television viewers want to watch them), and while their ratings were slightly higher than anticipated it was still anyone’s guess what would happen after the novelty of the news hour had worn off.
There were several other on-air talents and producers in this meeting. With the nightly news, the morning news, the half-hour daily newscast they produced for INS in the United Kingdom, the two magazine shows, the Internet newscast and the new podcast programming, the weekly meeting was an attempt to get the whole team on the same page of Alexandra and Will’s playbook.
Cassy smiled at the expectant faces around the table who were evidently waiting for her to say something. “Good morning. I apologize for being late.”
Instantly there were groans and people started throwing dollar bills down on the table, all except for Will Rafferty, who was picking out quarters from his change and shooting them down the table to Sally Harrington.
“You always win, Sally,” Emmett grumbled, thumbing through his wallet. He took out a dollar bill and dropped it in front of her. He looked at Cassy. “I bet that your first words would be ‘Sorry I’m late.’”
“You’ll never make it in curling,” Sally told Will, lunging to catch a rolling quarter.
Alexandra was making change for a five from the pile of singles. “I bet you’d say, ‘And what earthshaking events have I missed?’”
“I bet, ‘Hi, everybody,’” the meteorologist said, pushing a small pile of bills down from his end of the table. “I could have sworn that’s what you always say.”
The producer for the morning news leaned over the table to look down at Cassy. “I guess you’re really not a ‘Hey’ kind of person.”
“You thought Cassy would come in and say, ‘Hey’?” Will said incredulously.
“Better than what he thought,” the producer said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the twenty-two-year-old they’d hired straight out of Rochester Institute of Technology for the podcast. The producer laughed. “He said, ‘Yo.’”
“‘Yo?’” Will repeated. He frowned at the young man. “You thought the president of DBS Television would come in here and say, ‘Yo’? ” Everybody laughed.
The RIT rookie looked to Cassy. “Isn’t that what your generation used to say?”
“Thank you for the compliment,” Cassy said. “But I’m afraid my generation said, ‘Peace’—” she flashed the peace sign “‘ Love’ she made an L with her right hand “—and ‘Woodstock.’” She put two peace signs together to make a W.
“This goes straight into the Feed the Starving Interns Fund,” Sally announced, raking the pile of cash into her lap.
Sally was big on helping certain interns get by because she herself had once been a starving one. She shared something with Cassy on that score. Both of them had grown up, as Sally called it, “without money.” (Sally was always quick to explain that “without money” denoted someone in a temporary phase with prospects for the future, as opposed to someone stuck in a permanent economic status that made them “poor.”) Both Cassy and Sally had lost their fathers as children and both had put themselves through college. But where Cassy’s fears about her future had led her to the altar with Michael, Sally, as younger women seemed to do these days, simply flung herself into the universe and made ends meet until she could support herself as a journalist.
Cassy had come to admire Sally Harrington a great deal. But Sally also kept Cassy in a perpetual state of anxiety since the younger woman was forever careening from one crisis to the next. Sally was one of those people who was addicted to the adrenaline rush, who felt most alive when the air was fraught with risk and urgency. While it had made her a star at DBS News—enhancing her ability to jump right into the fast track of breaking news—the same trait had also very nearly killed her. (Her last escapade had necessitated significant plastic surgery.) Sitting behind the anchor desk, however, seemed to be somewhat calming her down. That and being engaged to Alexandra Waring’s older brother, a solid, reliable man who in nature was as different from Sally as earth is from wind.
The labyrinth of romance and nepotism in the Darenbrook media empire was vast and at times troubling. (She should talk!) Most dedicated people in mass communications tended