Firefly Lane (30 page)

She got to her feet. "I gotta get back to Manhattan. You know the news. It never sleeps."

Johnny put down his beer and got to his feet, moving toward her. "You do it for me, Tully. Cover the world."

It sounded sad, the way he said it; she didn't know if what she heard was regret for himself or sadness for her.

She forced herself to smile. "I will."

Two weeks after Tully got home from Seattle, a storm dumped snow on Manhattan, stopping the vibrant city in its tracks. For a few hours, at least. The ever-present traffic vanished almost immediately; pristine white snow blanketed the streets and sidewalks, turned Central Park into a winter wonderland.

Still Tully made it to work at four
A.M
. In her freezing walk-up apartment, with the radiator rattling and ice collecting on her paper-thin antique windows, she dressed in tights, black velour stirrup pants, snow boots, and two sweaters. Covering it all with a navy-blue wool coat and gray mittens, she braved the elements, angling her body against the wind as she made her way up the street. Snow obscured her vision and stung her cheeks. She didn't care; she loved her job so much she'd do anything to get there early.

Inside the lobby, she stamped the snow off her boots, signed in, and went upstairs. Almost instantly she could tell that much of the staff had called in sick. Only a skeleton crew remained.

At her desk, she immediately went to work on the story she'd been assigned yesterday. She was doing research on the spotted owl controversy in the Northwest. Determined to put a local's "spin" on the story, she was busily reading everything she could find—Senate subcommittee reports, environmental findings, economic statistics on logging, the fecundity of old growth forests.

"You're working hard."

Tully looked up sharply. She'd been so lost in her reading that she hadn't heard anyone approach her desk.

And this wasn't just anyone.

Edna Guber, dressed in her signature black gabardine pantsuit, stood there, one hip pushed slightly out, smoking a cigarette. Sharp gray eyes stared out from beneath an Anna Wintour razor cut of blue-black bangs. Edna was famous in the news business, one of those women who'd clawed her way to the top in a time when others of her sex hadn't been able to come in the front door unless they had secretarial skills. Edna—only the single name was ever used or needed—reportedly had a Rolodex filled with the home numbers of everyone from Fidel Castro to Clint Eastwood. There was no interview she couldn't get and nowhere on earth she wouldn't go to find what she wanted.

"Cat got your tongue?" she said, exhaling smoke.

Tully jumped to her feet. "I'm sorry, Edna. Ms. Guber. Ma'am."

"I hate it when people call me ma'am. It makes me feel old. Do you think I'm old?"

"No, m—"

"Good. How did you get here? The cabs and buses are for shit today."

"I walked."

"Name?"

"Tully Hart. Tallulah."

Edna's gaze narrowed. She looked Tully up and down steadily. "Follow me." She spun on her black boot heel and marched down the hallway, toward the office in the corner of the building.

Holy cow
.

Tully's heart was pounding. She'd never been invited into this office, never even met Maury Stein, the big kahuna on the morning show.

The office was huge, with two walls of windows. Falling snow turned everything outside gray and white and eerie. From this vantage point, it felt vaguely like standing inside a snow globe, looking out.

"This one will do," Edna said, cocking her head toward Tully.

Maury looked up from his work. He barely glanced at Tully, then nodded. "Fine."

Edna left the office.

Tully stood there, confused. Then she heard Edna say, "Are you epileptic? Comatose?"

Tully followed her out into the hallway.

"Do you have a pen and paper?"

"Yes."

"I don't need an answer, just do as I ask and do it quickly."

Tully fumbled into her pocket for a pen and found some paper on a nearby desk. "I'm ready."

"First off, I want a detailed report on the upcoming election in Nicaragua. You do know what's going on there?"

"Certainly," she lied.

"I want to know everything about the Sandinistas, Bush's Nicaraguan policy, the blockade, the people who live there. I want to know when Violeta Chamorro lost her virginity. And you've got twelve days to get it done."

"Yes—" She stopped herself from saying ma'am just in time.

Edna came to a stop at Tully's desk. "You've got a passport?"

"Yes. They made me apply for one when they hired me."

"Of course. We'll be leaving on the sixteenth. Before we go—"

"We?"

"Why the hell do you think I'm talking to you? Do you have a problem with this?"

"No. No problem. Thank you. I really—"

"We'll need immunizations; get a doctor here to take care of us and the crew. Then you can start setting up advance interview meetings. Got it?" She looked down at her watch. "It's one o'clock. Brief me on Friday morning at, say, five
A.M
.?"

"I'll get started right now. And thank you, Edna."

"Don't thank me, Hart. Just do your job—and do it better than anyone else could."

"I'm on it." Tully went to her desk and picked up the phone. Before she'd even finished punching in the number, Edna was gone.

"Hello?" Kate said groggily.

Tully looked at the clock. It was nine. That meant it was six in Seattle. "Oops. I did it again. Sorry."

"Your goddaughter doesn't sleep. She's a freak of nature. Can I call you back in a few hours?"

"Actually, I'm calling to talk to Johnny."

"Johnny?" In the silence that preceded the question, Tully heard a baby start to cry.

"Edna Guber is sending me to Nicaragua. I want to ask him some background questions."

"Just a second." Kate handed the phone off; there was a sound like wax paper being balled up and a flurry of whispers, then Johnny came on the line.

"Hey, Tully, good for you. Edna's a legend."

"This is my big break, Johnny, and I don't want to screw up. I thought I'd start by picking your brain."

"I haven't slept in a month, so I don't know how much good I'll be, but I'll do what I can." He paused. "You know it's dangerous down there. A real powder keg. People are dying."

"You sound worried about me."

"Of course I am. Now, let's start with the relevant history. In 1960 or '61, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, was founded . . ."

Tully wrote as fast as she could.

For just under two weeks Tully worked her ass off. Eighteen, twenty hours a day she was reading, writing, making phone calls, setting up meetings. In the few rare hours when she wasn't working or trying to sleep, she went to the kind of stores she'd never frequented before—camping stores, military supply outlets, and the like. She bought pocketknives and netted safari hats and hiking boots. Everything and anything she could think of. If they were in the jungle and Edna wanted a damn fly swatter, Tully was going to produce it.

By the time they actually left, she was nervous. At the airport, Edna, wearing a pair of razor-pressed linen pants and a white cotton blouse, took one look at Tully's multipocketed khaki jungle attire and burst out laughing.

For the endless hours of their flights, through Dallas and Mexico City and finally onto a small plane in Managua, Edna fired questions at Tully.

The plane landed in what looked to Tully like a backyard. Men—boys, really—in camouflaged clothing stood on the perimeter, holding rifles. Children came out of the jungle to play in the air kicked up by the propellers. The dichotomy of the image was something Tully knew she'd always remember, but from the moment she got out of the plane until she reboarded the flight for home five days later, she had precious little time to think about imagery.

Edna was a mover.

They hiked through guerrilla-infested jungles, listening to the shrieking of howler monkeys, swatting mosquitoes, and floating up alligator-lined rivers. Sometimes they were blindfolded, sometimes they could see. Deep in the jungle, while Edna taped her interview with
el jefe,
the general in charge, Tully talked to the troops.

The trip opened her eyes to a world she'd never seen before; more than that, it showed her who she was. The fear, the adrenaline rush, the story; it turned her on like nothing ever had before.

Later, when the story was done and she and Edna were back in their hotel in Mexico City sitting on the balcony outside Edna's room, having straight shots of tequila, Tully said, "I can't thank you enough, Edna."

Edna took another straight shot and leaned back in her chair. The night was quiet. It was the first time they hadn't heard gunfire in days.

"You did well, kid."

Tully's pride welled to almost painful proportions. "Thank you. I learned more from you in the past few weeks than I learned in four years of college."

"So, maybe you want to go on my next assignment."

"Anywhere, anytime."

"I'm interviewing Nelson Mandela."

"Count me in."

Edna turned to her. The sticky-looking orange glow from the bare outdoor bulb highlighted her wrinkles, caused bags under her eyes. In this light she looked ten years older than usual, and tired; maybe a little drunk. "Have you got a boyfriend?"

"With my work schedule?" Tully laughed and poured herself another shot. "Hardly."

"Yeah," Edna said. "The story of my life."

"Do you regret it?" Tully asked. If they hadn't been drinking she never would have asked such a personal question, but tequila had blurred the lines between them for just this moment in time. Tully could pretend they were colleagues instead of icon/newbie. "Making this your life, I mean?"

"There's a price, that's for sure. For my generation, at least, you couldn't do this job and be married. You could get married—I did; three times—but you couldn't stay married. And forget about kids. When a story broke, I needed to be there, period. It could have been my kid's wedding day and I'd have left. So I've lived by myself." She looked at Tully. "And I've loved it. Every damn second. If I end up dying in a nursing home alone, who gives a shit? I was where I wanted to be every second of my life, and I did something that mattered."

Tully felt as if she were being baptized into the religion she'd always believed in. "Amen to that."

"So, what do you know about South Africa?"

CHAPTER TWENTY

The first twelve months of motherhood was a riptide of cold dark water that all too often sucked Kate under.

It was embarrassing how ill-equipped she turned out to be for this blessed event that had been her secret girlhood dream. So embarrassing, in fact, that she told no one how overwhelmed she sometimes felt. When asked, she smiled brightly and said motherhood was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was even true.

Yet sometimes it wasn't.

The truth was that her gorgeous, pale-skinned, dark-haired, brown-eyed daughter was more than a handful. From the moment she came home Marah was sick. Ear infections followed each other like cars on a train; just when one ended, another began. Colic caused her to cry in-consolably for hours at a time. Kate had lost count of the times she'd found herself in the living room in the middle of the night, holding her red-faced, shrieking daughter and quietly crying herself.

Marah would be a year old in three days and she had yet to sleep through the night. Four hours was her record so far. Thus, in the past twelve months, Kate hadn't slept through the night. Johnny always offered to get up. In the beginning he'd even gone so far as to throw back the covers, but Kate had always stopped him. It wasn't that she wanted to play the martyr, although she often felt like one.

Johnny had a job; it was that simple. Kate had given up her career to be a mom. Thus, getting up in the night was her job. At first she'd done it willingly, then at least with a smile. Lately, though, when Marah let out her first wail at eleven o'clock, Kate found herself praying for strength.

There were other problems, too. First off, her looks had gone to hell. She was pretty sure this was yet another ripple in the no-sleep pool. No amount of makeup or moisturizer helped. Her skin, always pale, was J. P. Patches white lately, except for the shadows under her eyes, which were a lovely shade of brown. She'd lost all of her baby weight except for ten pounds, but when you were five-foot-three, ten pounds was two sizes. She hadn't worn anything but sweats in almost a year.

She needed to start on an exercise program. Last week she'd found her old Jane Fonda workout tapes, a leotard, and leg warmers. Now all she had to do was hit play and get going.

"Today's the day," she said aloud as she carried her daughter back to bed and gently tucked her in beneath the expensive pink and white cashmere blanket that had been a gift from Tully. Luxuriously soft, it had become the thing Marah chose to sleep with. No matter what toys or blankets Kate offered, Tully's was the one. "Try to sleep till seven o'clock. Mommy could use it."

Yawning, Kate went back to bed and snuggled up to her husband.

He kissed her lips, lingering as if maybe he wanted to start something, and then he murmured, "You're so beautiful."

She opened her eyes, staring blearily at him. "Okay, who is she? Guilt is the only reason you'd say I was beautiful at this godforsaken hour."

"Are you kidding? With your mood swings lately it's like having three wives. The last thing I want is another woman."

"But sex would be nice."

"Sex would be nice. It's funny you brought that up."

"Funny ha ha, or funny I-can't-remember-the-last-time-we-made-love?"

"Funny that you're getting lucky this weekend."

"Yeah, how's that?"

"I've already talked to your mom. She's taking Marah after the birthday party and you and I are going to have a romantic night in downtown Seattle."

"What if I can't fit into any of my nice clothes?"

"Believe me, I have no problem with nudity. We can order room service instead of going out. Although you're the only one who thinks you haven't lost the weight. Try on something. I think you'll be surprised."