Scoop (13 page)

Dr. Hoffman crossed her arms as she leaned against the cabinets behind her. “Hugo, do you want to know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think you’re depressed.”

“Depressed? I am not depressed! I haven’t cried since the day I stopped smoking.”

“You don’t have to cry to be depressed.”

“I am not depressed. And if I were depressed, it’s because you won’t diagnose me as anxious.”

Dr. Hoffman sat down on a stool and rolled closer to Hugo, who was sitting on the examination table. “Hugo, tell me about your home life. How is your home life?”

“My home life is fine.”

“Are you happy with your situation at home?”

“Sure.” He stopped her next question. “Look, let’s keep on track with the subject matter here. Last night was a disaster, and I was not able to handle it. I have to be able to handle stressful situations. I don’t have the luxury of removing stress from my life, so the only other option is to be able to face it calmly with a clear and medicated head.”

“Well, let’s put some things in perspective first. You say things went badly last night, and you didn’t handle yourself in the best manner. What’s the worst that could happen? You get fired? People get fired every day and bounce back.”

Hugo squeezed the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb.

“Seriously, Hugo, let’s name the fallout from this.”

“For one, I will probably, for the rest of my life, have an aversion to toilets flushing.” He resisted the urge to stand and pace the room. “Dr. Hoffman, I once watched a three-hour show on the Discovery Channel where doctors removed a two-hundred-pound tumor from a woman, and you’re trying to tell me there’s nothing you can do to fix me?”

“I don’t have any magic pills.”

“I’m not asking for a magic pill. I’m asking for the two-milligram version of what I’m on.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Hugo. I don’t take things like this lightly. My advice to you is that you take a long look at your life and figure out what’s causing you to feel this way.”

Nearby, Hugo heard a toilet flush.

Throughout most of the night and into the early morning hours, Gilda Braun had stood in front of her mirror at home, trying to work her brows into a furrow. At precisely 3:00 a.m., they folded inward slightly, enough to make her face take on a more serious expression. She’d finally collapsed into bed, hoping that by morning she would be able to do more than look perpetually surprised.

Apparently all the Botox in the world couldn’t keep her eyes from looking puffy, so she rubbed on some cream and wandered into her kitchen for coffee. Her appetite was shot, and she certainly didn’t want to watch the show again. Since the VCR was invented, Gilda had always recorded the ten o’clock news to watch the next morning, trying to refine her skill. But last night was nothing she wanted to see again. She didn’t have to imagine. Staring back at her in her rearview mirror on the way home was a very sad, dejected woman who looked like she’d just won the lottery.

Over the decades, Gilda had certainly seen her share of mishaps. In the few years that she was a reporter, she’d stumbled over lines, misquoted people, and even got her station sued by forgetting the word “allegedly” while reporting a story about a bank robber.

And in the anchor’s chair, she’d pronounced world leaders’ names wrong once or twice, had a sneezing fit, and had hiccupped herself all the
way through a segment after returning from the company Christmas party. But that comes with the territory, and her cultivated talent made up for the few blunders she’d experienced.

Last night was at an entirely new level, and she was not sure she could recover from it. Never in her life had she been more humiliated. And no matter how hard she’d tried to make it right, she made it worse. Hours before, she’d had such a confidence in her new appearance.

Before Gilda knew what was happening to her, she was weeping at her breakfast table. And even that was a task, because as much as she wanted her face to assume an expression of grief, it would only move mere millimeters.

Then her phone rang. Gilda’s head rose off the table and she stared at the phone, which lit up like a Christmas tree perched inside its stand. Wiping her nose, something told her not to answer it. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was because she knew whatever—whoever—was on the other end would not be delivering good news. She felt compelled to let it go to voice mail, but yet, maybe…just maybe…

Rushing to the phone, she snatched it up, praying something good would be on the other end.

Roarke and Ray sat on the couch together, each with a bowl of buttered popcorn. Roarke was holding up the remote, fast-forwarding through the commercials.

“You should really get TiVo,” Ray said.

“I’ve had the VCR for twelve years and it’s never failed me.” Roarke threw a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “And dude, please, never ever forget the M&M’s again, okay? This is killing me.” Ray had forgotten M&M’s for the first time ever. Roarke always provided the popcorn, and Ray brought M&M’s. They would mix them up, each take a bowl, and
watch their favorite show that Roarke had taped the night before. The show varied from season to season. This year, Roarke had gotten him hooked on ultimate fighting.

A few minutes into the match, Roarke glanced over at Ray. “You okay?”

“Why?”

“You’re totally not watching this.”

Ray gestured at the television. “I’m looking right at the screen.”

“But you’re not into it.”

Ray blinked. It was true. He wasn’t really concentrating. He was having a hard time leaving last night behind. All of it. From his disastrous attempt to ask Hayden out to the loss of the news story that would have propelled them into the top rank, to the station’s disappointing coverage of breaking news, he wasn’t sure anything else could’ve gone wrong. The only thing that went right for him personally was the fact that the exploding sewage plant trumped his dreadful and embarrassing incident with the pig-hater. He felt guilty about that, so he couldn’t really celebrate since the explosion had left two workers injured and the station very possibly mortally wounded.

To top it all off, two of the most even-tempered people he’d ever met had gone through what could only be described as nervous breakdowns, nearly at the same time. Gilda Braun was escorted away from the anchor’s desk during what was probably the worst broadcast in the station’s history. Hugo also lost it, and that was putting it politely. Ray wasn’t sure he could describe exactly what it was like to see a man of such self-control implode, but as the ten o’clock news ended, so, it seemed, did Hugo’s sanity. The man was cussing and ranting and at one point actually had to be physically restrained.

“Hello?”

Ray glanced at Roarke. “Sorry. I was just thinking about last night.”

“Why?”

Roarke seemed nearly incapable of worry about anything outside the very small world he created. If it didn’t affect him directly, he didn’t worry about it. And if it did affect him directly, he worried in what could only be described as a healthy manner. Roarke certainly wasn’t oblivious to the world’s problems. His entire job revolved around listening to the tragedies of the outside world and reporting on which one was most newsworthy. Maybe that was why Roarke was so good at what he did, because he could turn it on and off and never bring it home with him.

Ray, on the other hand, was capable of bringing truckloads of frustration, depression, anger, and guilt, among other things, home with him every night, as if he were so bored with life that all he wanted to do was mull things over. And no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t find the off switch.

Whenever Ray would bring up the fact that he struggled with his sensation-dependent job, Roarke would say, “Then don’t do it.” It was that simple for him. But for Ray, there were days when he felt like he was really making a difference. It’s what kept him doing it.

This was a means to an end, to a greater good that would make up for all the guilt he felt. He wished so badly that he could feel no sense of moral responsibility, that he could exploit the daylights out of any story, knowing it was just part of his job.

Once Ray had come up with the idea of doing a segment called, “The Bright Side of Life,” in which he would report on something good that was taking place around the city. It aired three times before it was cut because they actually got hate mail about it.

Roarke had commented, “Ray, people watch the news to see if their neighbor’s being arrested for indecent exposure, or if their boss slammed his car into a house while drunk. If people want to watch the good side of life, they can tune into
Barney and Friends.”
Roarke paused the tape. “It was pretty wild last night, I have to admit.”

There wasn’t much that Roarke hadn’t seen or heard, so it confirmed to Ray that last night was extraordinary.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Ray asked, turning toward him. “I mean, is Gilda going to get fired? Is Hugo?”

“I don’t know,” Roarke said. “Anything could happen at this point. But Sam Leege certainly had his moment in the spotlight, didn’t he?”

That he did. The newscast was in such chaos that Hugo’s only option was to run an extra-long weather segment to try to get Tate under control and everything back on track. Sam took advantage of every second, actually tracking the smoke plume from the explosion by radar. It was mostly an attempt to impress Hayden, who he’d recruited at the last minute to help him prepare.

Sam had always had an enormous ego, but it inflated to near capacity three years ago when Sam was credited for saving people’s lives when he predicted a tornado would turn to the north, which it did, while all the other meteorologists around town predicted it would stay on an easterly course.

The problem with Sam was that he could never admit he was wrong. Not once in their five years of working together had Sam ever referred to a botched seven-day forecast or even tried to make a joke out of it. He could miss the temperature by twenty degrees and go on as if nothing had happened.

It irritated Ray, mostly because he couldn’t make that big of a blunder and not address it. Any misrepresented fact had to be corrected. It was true for the anchors, the sportscasters, and the reporters. It just wasn’t true for Sam the weatherman.

And this particularly irritating side of Sam trickled into his personality as well. Sam would never say he was wrong, never apologize, and certainly never correct himself. He’d once tripped and spilled coffee all over Ray, then blamed the slick floor.

But Sam was a charmer. Of all the ten o’clock personalities, Sam seemed to be the one with the most staying power. And his lineage didn’t hurt. His father, Leroy Leege, stood in front of the green screen at the same station as Sam before retiring ten years ago and handing his legacy over to Sam.

Sam even had his own plug. The catch phrase “A Leege of His Own” preempted the description of Sam as a hero. Ray always wondered what was heroic about standing in front of a green screen and reading computer data while the storm chasers were out in the middle of all the chaos.

But there was nothing he could do. Ray had learned a long time ago that life wasn’t fair. It wasn’t that he liked it, but he accepted it. He didn’t, however, have to accept Sam and Hayden. There was plenty of room in this world for Ray and Hayden. And their names practically rhymed.

“She’s worth it,” Ray mumbled, trying to get a mental fix on the fact that he was going to be doing battle with a man who thought he could do no wrong.

“Of course she’s worth it, but why did she have to go do that to herself!” Roarke roared, making Ray jump. Roarke’s popcorn spilled to the floor. Ray’s jaw literally hung on its hinges. He’d never, not once, seen Roarke explode like that.

“I…I was talking about Hayden,” Ray said softly.

“I knew that,” Roarke snapped, his cheeks flushing a bright red color. He kept his eyes averted and said, “I thought you were reading my mind, man.”

Ray stooped to pick up the popcorn. “When are you going to tell me who this is?”

Roarke glanced at him. “You don’t know?”