Riverside Park

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 to be workaholics and one of the challenges at Darenbrook Communications seemed to be how to prevent people from falling in love with one of the very few people they were regularly in contact with. Jackson’s father began the trend when he married his personal secretary (his fourth wife, Jackson’s mother) and she stayed on at the newspapers as an executive. Then Jack’s best friend, the financial brains behind the company, Langley Peterson, married Jack’s sister, Belinda. As the Darenbrook sons and daughters and nieces and nephews got older they needed careers (real or imagined) and they were placed throughout the corporation in the least damaging circumstances. Jack’s brother Beau, who ran the magazine division out of L.A., was gay, and had set up housekeeping with the publisher of their most successful magazine. Jackson hired Cassy to launch DBS and ended up marrying her. Will Rafferty, sitting at the end of the table, fell in love with Jessica Wright, the DBS talk show host, and they were married. And so, in a way, Cassy reconsidered, maybe Sally Harrington falling in love with Alexandra’s brother could scarcely be considered a conflict since David otherwise had nothing to do with Darenbrook Communications.

“Before I forget, Cassy,” Will said, “Jackson will definitely be at the American Trust Foundation dinner in January, right?”

The Foundation’s Awards dinner was a biannual event celebrating excellence in journalism. “He will be there,” she confirmed. “But he thinks only DBS News is getting an award.”

“What’s Mr. Darenbrook’s award for?” the young man from RIT asked.

“Lifetime achievement,” Will answered. “And it’s a surprise, so that information is not to leave this room.”

“I should hope everyone at this table will be attending the dinner,” Cassy said.

“Depends on how many tickets corporate picks up,” Alexandra said while writing something. “The suits don’t give us a whole lot of money for extracurricular activities.” She looked up. “As you should well know, Cassy. And I do like your suit, by the way.”

Everybody laughed.

“All right, guys, let’s get back on point here,” Will said, picking up his legal pad.

“Yo,” Cassy concurred, making them laugh again. She slipped on a pair of half glasses and scanned the agenda that had been passed to her. When she looked up she saw that Alexandra was watching her. The anchorwoman smiled and looked away.

As she listened to Will, Cassy sat back in her chair slightly to cross her legs. Then she leaned forward, picked up her pen and made a note in the margin of the agenda. And then, somewhat idly, she wondered if she had ever not been in love with Alexandra Waring.

DECEMBER

9

Celia Has a Gift

A FRIEND OF a friend of Rachel’s came to pick up their old refrigerator before the new one arrived. The guy was apparently some kind of fix-it whiz and he was somehow going to restore the Freon and put taps in the side to dispense beer and soda. Celia said if he could fix it why didn’t they just hire him to fix it while the refrigerator was still theirs instead of getting a new one. “Daddy’s getting it so don’t worry,” Rachel said. Celia was not worried in the least; she just hated what felt like arbitrarily replacing things for the sake of something new.

“Charlie,” the man said when he arrived, holding out his hand to politely shake hers.

He was huge, this Charlie, filling the doorway. Behind him stood an upright steel dolly with big straps. He was much older than Celia had expected for Rachel’s friend of a friend. He was like her dad’s age, neatly dressed in a sweater (that Celia could wear for a dress), jeans, work boots and big blue parka.

“I feel kinda guilty,” Charlie said later, sipping the cup of black coffee Celia made for him while looking in the back of the refrigerator. “I should just fix this for you.”

“Thanks for the thought,” Celia said, sitting at the breakfast bar, well wrapped in her terry-cloth robe, “but there’re always appliances mysteriously falling off the back of one of my roommate’s father’s trucks. This time it was a stainless steel refrigerator.” She was drinking coffee, as well. Nine-fifteen was early for her to be up; she didn’t get home from work until almost three this morning.

“She’ll never keep it looking clean,” Charlie commented, coming back around from behind the old refrigerator, “not without a full-time maid.”

“One of those hasn’t fallen off the back of the truck yet,” Celia told him.

Something on the counter caught Charlie’s eye. It was an old door knocker, covered in years of crud, that was waiting for Celia to clean up. She bought it off a janitor last week who had been cleaning out a basement. The knocker was the head of a horse, made of what Celia believed to be solid brass.

“I might be interested in making you an offer for that,” he said, moving closer.

“This?” Celia handed it to him. “Sorry, but I’m totally in love with it. Someday I’m going to buy a house with a front door that will do it justice. I think it’s solid brass. Maybe a hundred years old.”

“It is,” he confirmed, hefting it in his hand. He took reading glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on to examine it further. “But my guess is around 1880. Where’d you get it?”

“On One Hundred and First Street. Guy was cleaning out the basement of the building. Ten bucks.” Actually, she had paid the janitor ten bucks so that she could climb into the Dumpster to see what he was throwing out. Celia didn’t know why she felt compelled to do things like this, but she felt no shame about it; she had always been fascinated by junk piles, looking for something that spoke to her. To a certain degree her mother shared her interest, but would never dream of the lengths Celia had been known to go.