Morning Glory (8 page)

“What now?” I asked.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Mike, gesturing at the screen. “Like that briefcase. What the hell do I have in there? Special anchorman papers?”

“We’ve been over this
eight
times,” I said, as the editor yawned and pressed “ESC.”

“Plus, I’m on my way to nowhere,” Mike said. “There’s not even a door on that side. I look like a jackass.”

“No one is going to look that hard,” said the editor, but Mike shut him up with a single stone-cold glance. “Sorry, sir.”

“You know,” I said, “whoever gave you promo approval was smoking crack.”

Mike shrugged. “I was mopping the floor with Peter Jennings at the time. I could have gotten hookers and eight-balls written into my contract if I wanted.”

“And you settled for champagne mangoes?” I replied. “Sucker.”

The editor started again.

“Okay, this one you’ll like,” I said. A shot popped up of Mike sitting at the anchor desk as the voice-over extolled his legendary status.

“You wrote this copy, right, fangirl?” said Mike.

I ignored him.

“Soon,” said the voice-over, “he’ll be bringing his experience to morning television.” The shot switched to one of Mike walking purposefully
into
the IBS building.

I gave him a triumphant look. “See? This time there’s a door.”

The voice-over went on. “Let Mike Pomeroy show you the world over your first cup of coffee.”

And … 
Daybreak
. Sparkle, sparkle.

I turned to him, smiling expectantly.

Mike groaned. “ ‘Your first cup of coffee’? Do we really have to mention that? Why don’t we just say, ‘Watch Mike Pomeroy before you take your morning dump’?”

The editor snickered. I nearly growled.

 9 

A
fter finally hammering out a promo the great Mike Pomeroy could live with, I trudged back to my office. What had I gotten myself into? Maybe after he figured I was sufficiently punished for forcing him into the job, he’d settle down. I hoped I hadn’t made a huge mistake with this guy.

I was so lost in my own thoughts, I almost ran into Adam Bennett, who was waiting for me outside my office. Today, he looked a little spruced up. At least, his shirt was tucked in.

“Hey there,” he said, grinning. “Just came to offer my condolences on hiring the third-worst person in the world.”

I mustered a smile and hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Yeah, well, you may have had a point there.”

“Everyone upstairs is wondering what you’re thinking.”

I opened the door to my office and he followed me inside. “Everyone upstairs is still talking about this show? Good, my evil plan is working.”

He chuckled.

“Meant to ask you,” I said, dropping my files onto my desk, “who are the first two worst people in the world?”

“Kim Jong II and Angela Lansbury,” said Adam, in all seriousness. “She knows what she did.”

“So,” I said. “You worked with Mike at
Nightly News
?”

He nodded. “Worst year of my life. I lost twelve pounds.”

Yikes. The guy did not need to lose any pounds: He was pretty much perfect as he was. I watched him check out my office, taking in the bare walls and the piles of paper. I wondered what he had in his office. Golfing trophies, perhaps? Or was he more of a basketball type?

“The entire time we worked together,” he said, “the only thing Mike ever called me was Señor Dipshit.”

“Harsh.” I laughed. “Sorry, that’s not funny. It’s terrible.” And hilarious.

“So now,” said Adam, “is an excellent time for you to take up drinking. I came by to tell you that sometimes, after work, a few of us go to Schiller’s. You know … downtown?”

I didn’t, but then, I was a newbie to the island.

“So if you’re ever around …” He let it hang in the air.

“Oh, great,” I said. “I don’t go out all that much but—”

I saw Lenny lurking outside my office door.

“Uh …” I amended my speech in response to the encouraging look on Adam’s face. “But if I’m walking by, I’ll stop in and say hi.”

“Great!” Adam beamed. “Tomorrow night? Around eight?”

“Oh. Great. Sounds good.”

Adam left, leaving me to contemplate my lack of interior design. Maybe I should get a few photos or something in here. A plant, perhaps? A plastic one, given the lack of sunlight?

Lenny passed by again, this time carrying a copy of our most recent schedule. “Not too bad. You finally nailed down Mike’s promo, and you got asked out on a date. Things are looking up.”

“What?” I said. “He didn’t ask me on a date.”

“He did,” said Lenny. “I heard him on my way in.”

“What? No. He just mentioned he might be somewhere and … believe me, I know when I’m being asked on a date, and that was not it.”

“Believe me,” said Lenny, “I’m a guy. I know the strategy. It was soft serve, yeah, but it was still there.”

“Oh, please,” I scoffed.

“Okay, we’ll see what happens after you go there tomorrow.”

I looked at Lenny. He looked at me.

“Because you
are
going there tomorrow.”

I narrowed my eyes at Lenny. He narrowed his eyes at me.

Then I shook my head. It was silly. And impossible. I grabbed a notebook off the desk and flipped through it, searching for a subject to switch to. Except that my mind was racing. After all, he didn’t need to come all the way down here to tell me Mike Pomeroy was a jerk. I’d figured that out all on my own.

At lunchtime, I met two of my producers at a streetside café down the block from IBS to go over some stories. Sasha, the animal lover, was pitching something on palm oil and how its production was endangering orangutans. A promising story, to be sure, but we needed a hook to make it work for the morning show audience.

“See if you can find a nearby zoo with an orangutan breeding program,” I said. “People like baby monkeys. We’ll get one on set.”

“Orangutans are apes, not monkeys,” snipped Sasha.

“Maybe we can get one to poop on Mike Pomeroy,” said Tracy, the other producer. She was still bruised by his disparaging comments at our last morning meeting over her fashion week coverage. Though I have to admit, I’d had to hide my snicker when he’d said the last time he cared about the design of a vest was when he was wearing it as body armor in Iraq.

“Work with that,” I said to Sasha, then took a bite of my salad. It was a beautiful, sunny day on the streets of New York City, and I was planning a news show with my staff. Issues with Mike and the budget aside, this was still a dream job. As long as I could drum up some more interest in the show, I’d be golden. I turned a page in my notebook and anchored it down with the corner of my plate. Eating outside had its perks, but the last thing I needed was for our news stories to be blown across Madison Avenue.

“Okay, Tracy,” I said. “In the fashion segments, I think it’s important to interpret runway trends for our viewers.”

“We already adjust to their budgets,” she said.

“Yeah, but we need to think about more than that. We need to focus our stories on things they’d actually wear. The average woman is not six feet tall and a size zero.”

But Tracy had stopped listening. Sasha, also, seemed other wise occupied. I followed their gazes and saw Adam Bennett crossing the street toward the IBS building.

“Man, he’s cute,” said Tracy.

“I went to Yale with him,” said Sasha.

“You did not!” Tracy practically squealed.

Sasha raised her eyebrows. “Everyone there was madly in love with him, too. Including me.”

“Okay, guys,” I said, waving my hands in front of their faces. “Can we—”

“Tell me more,” Tracy begged Sasha.

“I want to talk about this leggings piece,” I tried. “Colleen said that under no circumstances would she put them on her body—”

“His dad was the editor of
Newsweek
,” said Sasha, “so naturally all the journos sucked up to him. And his mom’s family is rich as hell. They own Tupperware or something.”

I sat back, surprised. I barely owned a
piece
of Tupperware.

“He rowed crew when Yale won the national championship—,” Sasha was saying.

Just then, Adam spotted me at the café and waved. I waved back, hoping he couldn’t see my blush from across the street.
Are your ears burning, Adam?

Sasha and Tracy slowly looked from him to me. “You … know him?” said Tracy.

“Yes,” I said. Well, apparently not as well as Sasha did, but yes. So the whole untucked shirt thing was in fact a prep school slacker affectation. Should have known.

“Don’t you think he’s smokin’?” she asked.

“Smokin’,” I repeated. “Lemme see. Sure? I don’t know.”

They both seemed skeptical. And possibly jealous.

“So,” I said. “Back to the top of the show?”

I was more convinced than ever that drinks with Adam and a few of his colleagues was nothing remotely resembling a date, despite Lenny’s insistence to the contrary. I wondered what my associate producer’s deal was anyway. Was he just one of those happily married guys to whom the thought of a single life was anathema? Or did I come across as pathetic and lonely as I often felt?

Either way, Mr. Yale Crew Tupperware did not have a lot in common with me. He was just being friendly with the new girl. I tried to keep my conversation focused on the show, but I couldn’t help sneaking one last peek at Adam as he disappeared inside IBS without a backward glance.

Yep, just being friendly.

My certainty on the subject, however, did not prevent me from dressing with extra care the following day, nor from using the straightening iron, nor from putting on an extra coat of both mascara and lipstick.

But when I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror before heading off to work, I groaned and scrubbed it all off. Might as well scream “Jersey girl,” right?

“You look nice,” said Sasha at the morning meeting. “Hot date?”

“Cute suit,” said Colleen as we prepped for her food segment. “Got a new job interview already?”

“Hey, fangirl,” said Mike, “your hair’s looking awful big today.”

I flattened my bangs and glared at him.

Around seven, Lenny knocked on my office door. “I’m out of here,” he said. “Don’t forget you’ve got that ‘appointment’ at the bar tonight.”

“I’m getting scared of you and your odd obsession with my personal life.”

He shrugged. “You forget. I had your job, and I know better than anyone else how much someone in that position needs to have an outlet. It’s self-preservation, really. I don’t want you marching in here one day with a shotgun.”

I smirked. No, I’d leave that behavior to Mike Pomeroy.

“So get a boyfriend or a Boston terrier, I don’t care, but get out of here.”

I waved him off, but as soon as he was gone, I took one last crack at my hair, then grabbed my briefcase and headed out.

Schiller’s looked like the illegitimate love child of a French bistro and a subway station. There were a group of people with IBS ID tags clustered near the bar. Adam was among their number, and he spotted me right away.

I put up my hand to wave, and accidentally tossed my BlackBerry across the room. A few of the producers laughed.

Smooth one, Becky
.

I was down on my knees looking for it when I spotted Adam’s loafer-clad toes. I rose, taking in nicely tailored pants, the ubiquitous untucked dress shirt, and a hint of five o’clock shadow beneath his smiling jaw. He handed me my phone. “Slippery little bugger, huh?” he said. “You look like a woman who needs a drink.”

“Yes, please.”

Adam waved to the bartender. “Beer?” he asked. “Or are you a hard liquor girl? Please tell me you don’t do cosmos.”

“Beer is fine,” I said.

“For now.” Adam waited as I put in my order. “You’ll need something stiffer after Mike really starts getting to you.”

“Oh, he’s getting to me,” I said, as the bartender brought my beer. “Usually, I drink Sprite.”

Adam laughed. “I almost needed an intervention before I left
Nightly News
.”

“So it’s better now?”

“Absolutely. Plus, the hours are better at
7 Days
.” He grinned at me. “I get to go out now.”

Go out.
Go out
go out? Man, he was vague!

“Hey, let’s grab a table before this place fills up. Look, there’s one.”

I glanced at his group of friends. “Oh, don’t you want to—”

And then he put his hand on the small of my back, and I completely forgot what I was about to say. He guided me toward the empty booth while my mind raced. So this
was
a date? I mean, I didn’t even get a chance to meet those friends of his. Maybe Lenny was right, and he’d … lured me here under false pretenses. Got me to come on a date without asking me on a date. Maybe this was how things worked in the Ivy League.

But why would a guy like Adam Bennett need to do that? Wasn’t he the sort of person who could just saunter up to a woman and go “Pick you up at eight, baby,” and they’d fall all over him? I knew Tracy would. Sasha too, come to think of it.

And … me. If he’d actually asked me out, I’d have gone.

So now here he was, seated across from me in a booth, and checking out the description of the nacho platter on the dinner menu.

“Are you hungry?”

I started gulping my beer. Okay, so … date.

We ordered some nachos, and chatted about our early jobs in television news. Seemed Adam had come straight to network out of college; I guessed those were the perks that came with the
Newsweek
legacy.

“And you were at some show in Jersey before, right?” he said.

“Yeah.” I looked down at my glass. “Then I got ditched for some—” Crap. Some Ivy League rich boy. Hell, Adam and Chip were probably roommates.

“Some … ?” Adam prodded.

Blue-blooded, overeducated, nepotistic, old-boys’ network-owing, Brooks Brothers–wearing—

“Uh-oh.” Adam pulled out his buzzing BlackBerry. “Becky, I’m so sorry, but I have to take this. I’ve been trying to track down this source all week. It’ll just be a second, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, relieved on two counts. First, I could come up with a new topic by the time he got back. Second, he was as BlackBerry-mad as me.

As promised, he was back within moments, and, like the seasoned news producer I was, I turned the interview to him. But Adam was apparently every bit as skilled as I was, and repeatedly turned the conversation from anything that had a whiff of “summer house in the Hamptons” to war stories about our days in the newsroom.

“Seriously,” he said at last. “How are things going with Mike? All the veterans from
Nightly News
are pulling for you, you know that.”

“You mean there’s not a pool going on how soon I’ll crack?”

“Well, yeah,” said Adam, “but those of us with the long odds are hoping you’ll last.”

I laughed, and we ordered another round as we shared our favorite Mike Pomeroy anecdotes.

“I asked him to do a piece on Trump, and he took my Diet Coke can and hurled it across the room.”

“Nice,” said Adam, scooping up a bit of guacamole with the last of the nachos. “I asked him to cover a bumper crop of cranberries, he punched me in the face.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“To be fair, he was drunk off his ass at the time.”

I shook my head. “No excuse. If he tried to punch me in the face, I’d lay him out flat. I’m from New Jersey.”

Adam regarded me carefully. “Yeah, I believe it. So, has he given you a nickname yet?”

I paused, a chip halfway to my mouth. “Um … sometimes he calls me fangirl.”

“Fangirl?” he said.

“Yeah, you know, to underscore the fact that I should be respecting his venerable position and worshipping the ground he walks on.”

“Ah, right. Your little performance in the elevator.”

I saluted him with my beer.