Ghosts of Manhattan (33 page)

“Jesus Christ,” says Paul. “Get me somebody from Airbus.”

All of Samantha's senses are devoted to the absorption of events and none to calculating the passage of time. Then she remembers to tap a text message to the associate lawyer assisting her on the two cases she's currently working. She's a litigator and new partner at Davis Polk. She had budgeted ninety minutes for the interview at UBS and now clears more room on her schedule.

A faxed page is handed to Mueller who hands it to the woman who is speaking with the husband of the attendant. Mueller turns to Paul. “You better screen this guy yourself.”

Paul walks around the desk and down the aisle to the woman and takes her phone. He crouches over the paper with the phone to his ear.

Three seconds later he drops the paper from his left hand and raises that arm, clenched fist with extended thumb.

Mueller is standing with arms folded in front of him as though he's surveying it all from a much greater distance, a faraway hill over a battle fought in preindustrial times when no weapon can reach him. “Jesus, this is TV gold.” Only Samantha hears him. She looks at him, then back to the room.

The room has a heartbeat. The newspeople are having a different experience than the people to whom they are speaking. Under pressure, there's a shorthand between them, everyone must perform and no mistakes can be made, and it's when they're at their best and love their job the most.

Paul sprints up the short aisle, around the corner, and back to his place. He presses the same button in front of him. “Ken, we have a voicemail recording from a flight attendant to her husband in the last seconds of the flight while it was going down. Tease the recording, we'll have it in one minute.”

Ken responds on air like a nickel in a jukebox. Samantha can't believe how smooth. He emphasizes the husband-wife relationship and their last words on earth.

The production reminds her of the image of a duck on water. On the surface, calm and beautiful while beneath the surface the bony, orange legs are thrashing like mad.

The pace, intensity, the spoken and unspoken teamwork to make a product with instant gratification. Millions of people not only watch it, they depend on it.

Samantha has the feeling people get when they find what they think they're supposed to do. Whether the feeling is real or rationalized, it's the idea that their whole life has been a practice for this calling.

Ken Grant continues. “I must warn you that in a few seconds we will play the recording of a voice message from Sarah Friar, a flight attendant on Air France Flight 477, to her husband, David Friar, in the final seconds of the flight. This recording is tragic and horrifying and you may want to turn down the volume or leave the room.”

No viewer will move and Ken knows it. The screen cuts to a photo of Sarah Friar from her Facebook page and the lower third of the screen reads “Final Words of AF 477 Flight Attendant.”

David, it's me. If you're there pick up. I want to talk to you.
[pause]
Something's wrong here, on the flight. It might be nothing. But it might be bad. I went to deliver coffee to the cockpit. They were . . . confused in there. Some sort of fight, argument. They ordered me out right away and I couldn't tell what they were fighting about. Now the plane is flying funny and I have a bad feeling. We're only a few minutes out but we're over water.

The recording goes silent for a few seconds.

Oh, God! David, there was a thud. Something banged against the cabin door. I'm on the flight crew phone outside the cockpit. It sounded like a body ran against the cabin door from the inside.

There is a beep as the message ends and a mechanical voice says “Next message.”

David, please get this! We're not at altitude but we're standing at sharp angles to the deck. The passengers are starting to realize something is way off.

There is a crack of hard plastic on hard plastic and many voices jump on top of each other but no words can be understood, only that there is fear and distress.

David!
[She is yelling now, over yells in the background that are constant and more panicked.]
The plane jolted. We're too low. We're getting . . . I think we're getting lower, it's hard to tell looking out. Mark, can you reach the captain? Try knocking on the door.

A “No” comes through more clearly than the screams.

David, I love you, I love you, I love you. Kiss our little babies for me. You kiss them, you love them. Take care of them. Help them remember me.

There are seven seconds of quiet. Nothing from Sarah, just the dull screams from the cabin around her. Sometimes a voice rises then falls back into the rest but words are never intelligible. The seven seconds feel much longer than that. There is the sound of a catch of breath near the phone then all noise cuts out. There is no sound of a crash, no explosion. Just silence.

Ken Grant holds the silence. He knows that silence propels the mind of the viewer. Cut off from sensory input, the mind is forced to become metaphorical, to conjure the scene for itself which is more powerful than to be provided the scene. The absence of noise from the television set creates a vacuum, the bodies of the viewers sucked toward the screen and the strange quiet, no longer propped up by Ken's voice.

Ken lets it run on for ten seconds. The control room is silent and unmoving. “David, are you there?”

“I am.” The voice is a whisper.

“Thank you for sharing this with us. Our deepest sympathies. This is a terrible tragedy.”

No reply.

“How are you holding up?”

“I'm not.”

“I want to tell the viewers that you contacted us with this tape. Can you tell our viewers why you did that?”

“I want a full investigation into what happened. I want the media to make sure there is a full and open investigation.”

Ken ends the interview.

“My God,” says Paul.

“I have a spokesman from Airbus.”

The hum returns to the control room and Paul is yelling orders again.

Mueller remembers Samantha is standing next to him. “Let's take a walk.”

They exit the metal door and turn right to a conference room with a window out to the newsroom. Mueller opens the door and walks in. There is an oval table that seats eight and Mueller waves her to a chair. She pulls it back from the table to face him. He sits first but not because she waited for him. He raises his arms to say, Look around you.

This is her third interview with UBS News. Mueller is president of the news division and the last hurdle. She reminds herself of all the men in power she's dealt with and impressed as a lawyer. She's handled depositions of Fortune 500 CEOs and litigated cases in front of juries for billion-­dollar settlements. She's only thirty-four, but she's been excelling in powerful circles for years already.

She has just told her senior partner that she's considering a move out of the law. He's still mounting an argument as to why a move to journalism is a mistake and waste of her talents. As gifted a litigator as he is, Samantha knows she'll be immune to his protests. She loves the law but hates her life as a lawyer.

“I remember you from
Latch Key
years ago. I was too old for that show but my niece loved it. How old were you then?” asks Mueller.

She was a child actor from the age of eighteen months. First baby commercials, most of the time playing with dolls and toys. Then toddler clothes. At seven years old came her break—Sally, the seven-year-old daughter with attitude to a single, working mother of two daughters on the show
Latch Key.
Samantha had a deep voice that was so incongruous with her little body that the writers of the show used this voice as a tool in most episodes.
Latch Key
ran six seasons in prime time, made her famous, made her money, and made sure she was homeschooled by her real-life mom until she was thirteen, when Samantha insisted on a break from acting to attend an actual school for a while. “I was seven in the first season and it ran for six seasons.”

Humans form lasting memories as early as three years old. Samantha didn't have the opportunity to remember getting her SAG membership card. Clearly it wasn't her idea. Nor was it about her at all. It was about the nineteen-year-old girl who was waiting tables in Santa Monica and taking acting lessons who had given birth to Samantha and who then had the idea that her baby could be a child actor when she saw what a pretty face her baby had. And the nineteen-year-old former waitress turned stage mom was right. With enough force and will and compulsion, she was right.

When Samantha was a child, her face was rounder and people called her very cute. In her last seasons of
Latch Key
her bones started to show up as the flesh melted away. Bones in her cheeks and jaw made her face seem longer and less girly, bones in her shoulders and hips pushed aside her youth and prepared for the transition from child actor to real actor. Her mother controlled her exercise and her nutrition, brought in a special breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Samantha ate with her mother by the set and not the other actors so that her mother could critique the acting skills and weight gain of the others.

Her mother didn't complain about the bulimia in her twelve-year-old daughter until Samantha's weight dropped below what was attractive on screen and the show's director asked if Samantha was sick. But by that point the disease was caught. The years of psychological damage had taken hold. Her mother could find equal success in mentioning to a person with diarrhea that he ought not to crap so much.

“Any acting after that?”

“Just some smaller stuff, commercials mostly. By the time you become a teenager, you need to decide whether or not you're all in. I wasn't.” Samantha takes a breath. She didn't expect to be nervous for this interview.

By seventeen, Samantha had left acting and gone to college. From college it was law school. Three more years to prove she was more than a child actor. With each year, her relationship with her mother was more estranged.

Her first seventeen years in acting were about her mother. The next seventeen years in law were a reaction to her mother. This is her first choice driven neither by her mother nor by the damage her mother inflicted.

“Columbia Law. Impressive.” Mueller smiles. “Partner at Davis Polk?”

She nods.

He leans back in his chair, interlocks his fingers, and rests his joined hands on his belly. “Samantha, why are you here?”

She knew this was coming. Lots of lawyers turn to journalism but most don't turn their backs on a successful law career in order to take an entry-level news job. But this question had been asked and answered by herself. “I want this job and I'll be great at it.”

“You're a partner at Davis Polk. You're probably making a million bucks a year. In a few years, maybe two million. For a first-year news correspondent at UBS, I can maybe pay you six figures, barely. And that's if I think we're going to use you a lot.” He pauses. “That's a big salary change. How are you going to pay your bills?”

“I'll manage.” She has no family money, modest savings since she only just made partner, and a mortgage on a new apartment that is too big for a hundred-thousand-dollar salary. “Let me worry about that. All I'm asking is that you make a bet on me. A small bet.”

“I've seen your tape,” says Mueller. With TV broadcasting, it doesn't matter much where a person's degree is from. It's the resume tape.

Samantha paid a thousand bucks to a cameraman who is an old friend from L.A. to shoot her doing a fake news story. She scripted a hurricane disaster site and got herself in the mode of delivering closing arguments and appealed to the viewers of her tape to relate to the plight of the victims in the way she would appeal to the jury to award damages. “I'd appreciate your advice. What did you think?”

“It's rough as hell but there's something there.” Mueller knew after watching it the first time that he wanted to hire her. She has that intangible star quality. You never know what makes it come across. You just know it when you see it.

He wants her and he'll pay more than a hundred grand if he has to. His mind was made up by the end of the initial handshake, as it is in all his interviews.

Mueller's manner changes as his internal timer for the meeting has gone off. “Anything else?”

“No, thank you. If I have any questions I'll email your assistant.”

“Great.” He stands and they shake hands. “I'll walk you out of the newsroom.” He leads her through the hive and to the security guards.

“Thank you.” They have another handshake which is an awkward one because neither feels it is necessary or is sure it will happen until Samantha decides it will just be easier to get it over with and she sticks her hand out.

He walks back toward the control room.

She takes the escalator back up to ground level and steps outside into the heavy, wet July air. She decides she wants a drink to celebrate and contemplate whatever the hell just happened in there. Whether it leads to a job or not, it was a moment. It was a step toward change. Real change to make her life happy again.

Heavy drinking is the one thing about a lawyer's life that sits well with her. As is too often the case, it will be drinks alone. Sometimes to blow off steam or after a good verdict she'll get drinks with the legal team. But if it's something personal to celebrate, she has no one to go to.

I want this job, she thinks. Litigation to broadcast journalism is a proven path. If it isn't UBS, it'll be someplace else. I won't stop.

She cabs to the Time Warner building, walks past the statue of the fat man and up the escalator to Stone Rose. It's 4:30 p.m.

A waiter comes right over wearing a starched white button-down shirt and black pants. He's deciding whether or not to flirt.