After the Conference
I got home later than I wanted Saturday after another long flight. In fact, I almost cashed it in entirely, but the neighborhood bar called my name, and I walked over for a few nightcaps. The place was billed as one of Atlanta’s oldest bars and had apparently been in that spot since the early 1900s, surviving as condos and apartments went up around it. I liked it for its dark ambience.
I was weary, so I sat alone at the end of the bar near the door, nursing a gin and tonic. A woman I didn’t recognize walked in and surveyed the place. She was wearing a top that really showed her tits.
I perked up and gave her the Trent slow look-you-up-and-down as a flirtatious opening, and she took it, immediately coming over to me and saying, “Hey, is this seat open?” We started talking. She was cool and pretty sexy. Said her name was Jasmine. She was new in town and super flirtatious, touching my arm and leg as she talked. I started thinking this might be a nice end to my trip, and I went to the bathroom to pop a Viagra, just in case. Given my tired state, I figured I could use the boost.
When I got back to my chair, we talked for a while longer, and I was just about to invite her back up to my place when she said she had to go home for the night.
“Aww, no, don’t leave yet,” I implored.
“I’m sorry, I really do,” she said. “But give me your number and I’ll call you. This has been fun. You’re a super guy.”
“You give me your number first,” I answered, noticing that forming actual words was getting harder to do.
“No, I will call you. I promise, Trent,” she said. “In fact, I’ll text you a sexy picture when I get home. You’ve never seen anything like this.” She winked.
Well, that sounded enticing. What could I do but give her my number and hope like hell she followed through? I could text her back something equally fun. Maybe we’d meet up here tomorrow night.
Stumbling the two blocks home, I face-planted into bed and slept with my clothes on for most of the night. Waking up around six a.m. to use the bathroom, I checked my phone and was irked to see there was no text with a sexy picture. Still tired, I stripped down to my boxer shorts and went right back to bed.
Sunday was the NFL playoffs, and I wouldn’t miss that for anything. My plan had been to hit the gym for a workout to keep that old BP down for the doctor, then meet up with some buddies at our favorite sports bar, the one with ten TVs, bottomless wings, a pool table, darts, and good Bloody Marys.
But when I woke up again at ten a.m., I had the worst stomachache I had ever had.
“Ugh,” I moaned, rolling over in bed and clutching my gut.
I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. What the hell? I never got sick.
It was all I could do just to crawl back in bed.
I’ll sleep it off and then go meet the guys, I told myself, burying my face into a pillow and moaning again. Within seconds I was out.
When I woke up again, it was three p.m., and I had missed the first game entirely. I also had five texts from my buddies at the bar wondering what was going on—and zero sexy pictures from Jasmine.
“Well, fuu-uuck me,” I said aloud and texted my friends that somehow I got the “Rona” or some other virus at the conference.
My stomach was still feeling tight and painful, but at least I wasn’t wildly nauseated anymore. Moving from bed to couch, I turned on game number two bitterly. Who gets sick and sits around like a loser on an NFL Sunday? I thought of my buds at the bar, laughing and whooping it up, maybe playing the retro video games the place also had. It was a good spot to meet chicks too. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I barely ate the rest of the day and hit the bathroom a few too many times. I found myself dozing on the couch.
By 8:30 p.m., I even contemplated texting my secretary to say I needed a sick day Monday, but I never took sick days, priding myself on how steely I was. All those wimps who used every sick day they had and then complained about not having more. Nope, not me. I would go in come hell or high water.
But Monday morning, I had a pounding headache in addition to the stomach symptoms not being fully gone. I still had diarrhea, my throat was dry, and my bloodshot eyes burned.
“Motherfucker,” I said to my reflection in the mirror. I looked like hell. Would this actually be my first sick day in years? People at the station had heard me make fun of others who were constantly out sick. Was it my turn to be the butt of a joke? That thought made me ill in a different way.
If there were two things I couldn’t stand, it was getting laughed at and appearing weak. Weakness was not the trait of a leader; my team needed to see me strong as an ox at all times. If their leader was down, how would they go on?
But I felt like crap. Reaching for my phone, I made that call to my secretary that I never wanted to make, clearing my throat as it rang on her end.
“Trent, good morning,” she said. “How was your trip?”
“Yeah, hi, Mary, it was good, but I seem to have caught … some kind of bug.” It was embarrassing for me to even say the words.
“Oh no!” she responded. “You don’t sound that great. Do you need to take a day off?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other at the thought. “Maybe I’ll just take the morning and come in later.”
If I could just buy myself a half day, maybe I’d be better.
“Trent, your voice sounds pretty rough. Why don’t you take a day to rest so you’ll be back tomorrow? You have that sales meeting with clients. Remember? They want to meet some of the news people. Might as well be fresh for that. I know it’s a big deal to Bill and the sales department.”
Oh, man, I had forgotten all about that. But she was right. This could potentially bring in tons of advertising dollars, which paid our bills and my salary. Katrina’s monetary demands of me were getting bigger and bigger—the kids needed new clothes, new shoes, more lessons, yada yada, and I was feeling stretched very thin. Had even been holding off on some monogrammed shirts I’d been wanting to get. If this client came on board with all of their dollars, maybe I’d receive a bonus in my next check.
“Listen, Mary, if I take the day off, tell the newsroom I just extended my trip.”
“You don’t want them to know that you’re sick?” She sounded puzzled.
“Nah—people get weird about germs. Better just to say I stayed a bit longer.”
“OK, you’re the boss, but really, people don’t mind if someone takes a sick day.”
No weakness, Mary, no weakness. You give an inch, they take a mile. They smell blood in the water, they circle like sharks. One crack in the facade is sometimes all it takes.
“I haven’t taken a sick day in five years, and this isn’t going to be my first,” I said. “Tell the newsroom I’m on a plane today and I’ll be in tomorrow.”
Fatigue was calling me back to bed, and I wound up sleeping most of the day again. When I woke up in the afternoon, I checked emails—I had almost two thousand new ones since I had departed for San Diego. Life of a news manager. Sighing, I decided they could all wait for tomorrow, when I was officially on the clock.
An hour later, I felt like I could finally shower, shave, and put on clean clothes. I started to feel more myself, and my stomach growled. There were only three things in the fridge, though, so I used DoorDash to order a basic chicken-and-noodle dish from a place down the street and ate on the couch flipping between two NBA games. I fell asleep early and, thank God, woke up bright-eyed Tuesday, ready for work.
Driving to the station and parking my Range Rover in my favorite spot away from the rest of the cars—I couldn’t risk a scratch being with the proletariat—I bounded into the newsroom feeling strong and healthy.
“Good morning, Leslie, Zac, Warren, Terrell, Alice,” I bellowed as I went. When the news director walks into a room, everyone should know. People straightened up when they heard me; they stopped chatting and turned to their desks. It pleased me to see what kind of effect I could have just with a few words.
My office was a glass-walled space on the side of the newsroom that actually drove me a little batty. Sometimes a person needed privacy, and I was a fish in a bowl in there, couldn’t even scratch my balls without the newsroom seeing.
I flopped down into my extra wide ergonomic chair. It was a gift from our GM, Bill, for Christmas the year before and was the most comfortable goddamn thing ever. I was just firing up the computer when my assistant news director, Jorge, came in.
“Hey, how was San Diego?” he asked.
Jorge was a nice guy. Not news director material, in my opinion, but decent for an assistant. To be honest, he had been a diversity hire my GM had rammed down my throat. When the position was open, I had preferred a white guy from a smaller market, but was overruled in favor of getting more people of color into management.
“Great, man, stayed an extra day. How was everything here?”
“Good, really good. Got some stuff to catch you up on later.”
I nodded. By 8:45 a.m., I had picked the stories I wanted. I knew some stations did manager meetings before the regular newsroom meeting, but I always thought of that as a waste of time. One person would be making the decision in the end anyway—that would be me, the head honcho, the chief enchilada—so why prolong it by pretending to hear everyone’s ideas and opinions? Reporters just wanted to know what they were assigned to and get out the door. Those long, lingering meetings of my past, when I wasn’t in charge, were painful to even think about. I ran things my way now, and it was the best way. People always told me I was very efficient, and I considered that a high compliment. Who didn’t love efficiency, especially in a newsroom?
At nine, we gathered in our conference room, me at the head of the table at the whiteboard. A quick look at the weather with our meteorologist, a run-through of overnight crime and court cases from our assignment desk, and I could start putting reporters into those stories. Lickety-split, done and done.
Anything else happening that day in the city would be what we called “pace”—short stories, like thirty seconds, shot by a photojournalist but not with a reporter. The producer would write it up and put it into their shows to make the pace of the show go faster.
My philosophy was so simple I couldn’t believe it wasn’t patented: Reporters go to crime and breaking news and court cases. We load the show with these and put the fluff at the end.
Another station in town was doing a whole bunch of issue crap, like politics and “meet the candidates” and “this referendum means blah-blah-blah” shit. Who cares? People wanted three things: crime, breaking news, and weather. Maybe a dog-rescue story thrown in every few months, but that’s it. I had everyone out the door on their stories before 9:15, and I could see how much my staff appreciated my decisiveness.
The meetings made my morning go fast. There was the web team meeting and the sports meeting, upcoming election planning, and a meeting about how many stories we could fairly do for Black History Month without shorting all of the other specialty months. So many goddamn ethnic and other months. But I just shut up and approved a robust plan.
I also had my weekly check-in with Bill. He was the only person in the building who could tell me what to do. As I sat down, he jumped right in:
“Welcome back, Trent. How was the conference? Did you learn anything worth sharing?”
“Not really,” I said, struggling to remember anything that was actually talked about. “Went to all of the sessions, but we do things pretty darn well around here. People should look to us for ideas.”
“That’s good to know. What would you say was the most enlightening session you attended?” Bill pressed.
I tried to flash back to the program book, to remember the actual titles of the sessions. The only one that came to mind was mental health, the one I hadn’t attended. Could I BS my way through this? Of course I could. I was Trent McCarthy.
“Mental health, Bill. Such an important topic for any newsroom.”
“I agree, a critical topic, especially for our younger employees who seem to be more in touch with their feelings. And what did you learn?” Bill said, leaning forward in his ergonomic chair.
“Well, uh … they talked about why it’s so important, you know, stress and other triggers, and ways you can stay calm, like breathing or exercising.” That sounded plausible. I looked to Bill to see if he bought it. Amazingly, he seemed to.
“Terrific. Please write up other tips you learned about mental health and send them to me by the end of the day tomorrow. Our newsroom will be better for the knowledge you gained at the conference. I’m glad I sent you.”
Aww, shit. Now I would have to BS this assignment. Thank God for the University of Google.
“Tell me about the news directors you met there,” Bill said. “People in from all over the country?”
“Oh, yes, Boston to Kalamazoo and everywhere in between,” I replied, thinking of Dorothy, the stoic bitch, and Alan, that little geek.
“Anyone have anything interesting to share about the way they are producing news in different markets? I’m always fascinated by learning from others.”
“Um … not really, Bill. I mean everyone has their own style, but as I said, I don’t think anyone holds a candle to us.”
“OK,” said Bill. “Well, let’s adjourn for now. I will see you at the sales meeting after lunch.”
“You got it,” I said, popping quickly out of my chair, happy to be free. Plus, I had to start googling “mental health” to see what I could cobble together as my pretend session from the conference.
I made it through some other boring planning stuff; then it was lunch and time to prep for the sales meeting.
Swinging by the men’s room to make sure I looked sharp, I smoothed my hair and straightened my collar. The receptionist always kept mints in a little glass bowl, so I popped by there to grab one. Nothing worse than meeting someone you wanted to win over with lunch breath.
The clients were from a mattress chain that had just opened more than four dozen new franchises in our area. They wanted to advertise but needed to see which station would be the best fit for them for the max amount of dollars, and they were ready to open their wallets and flood the airwaves. They were standing in our news conference room with Bill, admiring the view of downtown as I walked in.
“And here comes our news director,” Bill said.
I turned the wattage on the Trent smile as high as it would go and walked over with my hand extended, saying loudly, “Trent McCarthy, the pleasure is all mine!”
We sat down around an oval glass-topped conference table. Bill hit a button so a drop-down screen descended at the front of the room and a video began to play. It featured a local band singing a jingle with images of Atlanta mixed in and video of our on-air talent out and about with station-logoed microphones. The music came to a crescendo and the words “Home is where the heart is: NBC6, Atlanta” flashed across the screen. I saw one of our saleswomen dab at the corner of her eye.
“It gets me every time,” she sniffed. Another salesperson handed her a tissue.
“Welcome to our wonderful city and to NBC6,” Bill said, spreading his arms wide. “We’re simply thrilled to have you opening up Mega Mattresses all over the metro. How can we help you get the word out?”
They began talking about the many mattresses they offered. The company was looking to advertise across all stations but would put most of their money into the place that felt like it best aligned with their values. Bill turned to me.
“Trent runs our entire news operation, so he can talk about our values. In fact, he just attended a conference in San Diego and will be writing up a report for me on how we can better serve the mental health needs of our staff.”
I had to go into full-on bullshit mode. It reminded me of college when a professor would ask for a two-thousand-word paper and I’d stretch it by saying the same things in several different ways. We all had tried the font trick too, making the font bigger to get to more pages, but professors always caught that one. No, it was better if you just had the gift of gab.
“Mega Mattress aligns with our brand perfectly,” I began, and saw Bill nodding. “We are all about comfort and safety. The stories we do matter because our community needs to feel safe. We report on the bad guys getting locked up so that you can feel better when you tuck little Johnny into a Mega Mattress at night. We follow through on cases every step of the way through the court system, so that you at home don’t miss a thing. Our investigators are out there working for you. If there’s wrongdoing, we will uncover it. If something is hiding in your medicine cabinet that could kill you, we will expose it. There is not another station in this town that works as hard to keep you and your family safe for a good night’s sleep. Channel 2? They hardly even cover crime. Channel 8? Try watching them, they’re all about politics. And I think they’re very partisan, by the way. You look around at the others, and I guarantee you’ll make your way back to Channel 6. We are mega-right for Mega Mattress.”
I flashed my smile, proud of myself for sticking the landing like an Olympic gymnast.
“That’s wonderful, Trent. What a nice description. And how do you help your own employees with mental health?” asked one of the women.
I had to scramble on this one. The only things that came to mind were days when I wasn’t helping at all. I had mocked a producer just last week for telling me her kid was having a mental health crisis and she had to take the day off. “Isn’t he in college?” I had asked. “Does he really need his mommy?” I had also turned down an offer from a local therapy organization to host a mental health awareness day with our staff because I thought it sounded like BS. But now I had to answer. The only things about mental health that leaped to mind were some of the talking points Alan and Dorothy had told me during our table session.
“We value the opinions of everyone in the newsroom. It’s a democracy, not a dictatorship, and I think that sets an important tone. Everyone knows they can come to me. My door is wide open, literally and figuratively. Mental health is almost as important as physical health. It all starts up here…”
I tapped my head. I was on a roll now.
“If you get that right, everything else will follow right to here.” I tapped my heart.
“Lovely, just lovely,” sighed the Mega Mattress woman, and I could feel my tail feathers rising.
“Diversity is also very important to us,” said a man seated next to her. “Can someone speak about the diversity here?”
The salespeople spoke of how over 50 percent of their staff were women or people of color. Bill then talked of our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion training, which was mandatory every year. I hated every minute of the videos we were forced to watch; had cheated, in fact, on the most recent test we had at the end of the video and asked Jorge to help me out, saying I was “so busy.”
Bill turned to me now.
“Tell them about diversity in our newsroom, Trent.”
“Diversity, yes, so important,” I began and pulled yet another Trent rabbit out of the hat, talking of Jorge and other people of color in the newsroom. “And just look at us on air,” I went on. “We’re like the United Nations!”
I laughed loudly, but others only gave a slightly nervous giggle. Maybe that wasn’t PC? What the hell could you say these days if you couldn’t compare yourself to the United Nations?
“Trent will now take you on a tour of the newsroom,” Bill said. “It’s fun to see what’s behind the magic, right? I’ll be back in my office, and I’ll catch up with you at the end.”
They started following me down the hall. Having given hundreds of tours over the years, I knew what people liked to see. I would save our glistening studio for last. First we would swing by and meet some of the anchors they admired on TV every day. Viewers always got excited by that.
We walked up to the desk of Leigh, our female five, six, and eleven p.m. anchor, and I began introductions. She was a pro and started charming them with a story about how her sister had found the best mattress she ever had at a Mega Mattress. I wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but it seemed to be working.
A noise came from my phone in my pocket. It wasn’t a ringtone; it was more like an alert you get from one of those apps you don’t use often. Slyly pulling it out, I snuck a peek. It was my doorbell-cam app from home. Living in a condo in a nice neighborhood, I rarely had seen this thing go off. No one bothered me, and I wasn’t one of those people who ordered from Amazon all of the time.
The app was giving me an urgent warning that someone was at my place. Stepping a few paces from Leigh’s desk, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Two police officers were banging on my door.
Leigh glanced over at me. I pointed to my phone so that she would see I needed her to keep up the pace while I took care of an important matter. Leigh was used to subtle cues like that as an anchor, and she just revved up another story and kept the group engaged while I went to my office.
The officers were banging hard. And calling my name.
“Police, open up!”
What the hell was going on? My mind was so confused by the sight that I didn’t know how to react. I had to play it cool, but I also had to get home. Now. Before they literally broke down my door.
Mega Mattress folks were being introduced to others by Leigh. I felt a surge of gratitude to her. I would repay her with a beer. She and I were good friends. Yes, we had one drunken slipup and made out after a holiday party many years prior, but that was old news. She trusted me and I trusted her. We helped each other out.
Leigh had her phone as she did the tour, so I hurriedly texted her.
Emergency. Do me this solid and finish the tour. Tell them a news matter arose for me and apologize. We need this client.
Her eyes shifted to my office, and she gave an ever-so-slight nod. I nodded back, grabbed my coat from the hook, and bolted for the parking lot.
My condo was just five minutes away. I had chosen it for that very reason. Keeping my eyes on the doorbell-cam app as I went, I saw the officers bang a few times more and then begin peeking in windows. There had to be some massive misunderstanding. I would clear this up and maybe even make it back before Bill noticed I was gone.
The cops were just starting to walk back to their squad car as I came up and threw the Range Rover into park. Jumping out, I yelled, “Hey, what’s going on? I live here.”
“Are you Trent McCarthy?” one officer asked. He was bald as a cue ball but had a thick goatee, so his face looked strangely out of proportion.
“Yes, and why are you here?” I asked. “What the hell is going on?”
“Sir, I need you to step over here,” the second officer said. He was a smaller Asian guy with a very loud voice. “Take your hands out of your pockets and raise them up.”
“What the…”
“Sir, keep your hands up.”
I glanced around anxiously to see if any of the neighbors were watching. How would this go over at the next HOA meeting?
Officer Goatee came over and started patting me down. Finding nothing but my keys and wallet, he was satisfied and nodded to Officer Deep Throat, who then stepped forward.
“Sir, we received a 9-1-1 call from a concerned citizen that a woman might be in danger here.”
“Whaattt? Who called 9-1-1? Who said they were in danger??” My mind didn’t know where to turn. Was this Katrina’s doing? “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I was at work when I got a notification from my doorbell cam.”
“Sir, we are responding to a 9-1-1 call. Is anyone in the residence at this time?”
“No, I live alone. No one is here.”
Officer Goatee pointed toward the front door.
“Mind if we have a look around?”
“Sure, you can look around,” I said. “There is no one here. I have no idea how this could happen. Are you sure you have the right address?”
“This is the address that was phoned in.”
I walked confidently up the front walk and unlocked it.
“Come right in, look in every damn corner,” I said. “There is not a soul here. If my ex-wife did this…” I let the sentence trail off.
“Are you divorced?”
I glared at him. What did he think I meant when I referenced an ex-wife? But it probably wasn’t wise to get too mouthy, so I said:
“Yes.”
The officers started poking around, opening closet doors and peeking behind the couch. I took them to the bedrooms, the office, the bathrooms, and the dining room. We ended back where we started.
“See?” I said with satisfaction. “Not a soul. Can I go back to work now? Somehow you fellas got the wrong address.”
“Wait here,” said Officer Deep Throat, and he went outside to the squad car. Officer Goatee stayed in the living room with me. I could see Deep Throat talking into the radio to someone. Goatee tried to strike up a conversation.
“What do you do for a living, sir?”
“I’m the news director at Channel 6. I run a newsroom of over a hundred fifty people,” I said. “I know your chief very well. We interviewed him for a story just last week.”
“Oh, that was you guys? The one on the police-community basketball game? That was a good one.”
“Yup,” I said. “So, can I go now? I was in the middle of an important meeting when this happened.”
“You should be clear in a minute, sir,” said Goatee as Deep Throat got out of the car and gave a thumbs-up that we saw through the front window.
“You’re good to go. Sorry for the inconvenience, but if someone calls 9-1-1, we’re obligated to check it out.”
“Make sure that never happens again. Get your facts straight or I’ll have my investigative journalism team look into fake calls to police.”
“I’m sure it was a misunderstanding,” said Goatee tersely and left my living room. I followed behind him and locked the front door.
They got into their squad car and drove off, and I sighed deeply.
What the hell was that? I looked around one more time for the prying eyes of neighbors, but it appeared all was quiet, and relief flowed through me. Now I had to hustle back, though. I had never even told Bill I was leaving.
Jumping into the Range Rover and flying toward the station, I formulated an excuse in case I needed it. Something that would make me a hero.
Back in the parking lot, I sprinted through the back door and into the newsroom. Leigh was at her desk, but the Mega Mattress people were nowhere to be found. Walking over quickly, I leaned down and whispered, “Where are they?” We were so close I could smell her hair spray and some kind of berry lip gloss.
“In Bill’s office wrapping up,” she whispered back.
“Thank you, you are amazing.” I gave her a little pat on her shoulder.
“That’s what they all say,” she shot back with a smile.
I needed to say goodbye properly to try and seal this deal, so I strode back to Bill’s office. Thankfully, they were all still there, and Bill was showing them a framed Wayne Gretzky hockey jersey on his wall.
“I’m so sorry about that,” I said to the group. “A reporter in the field texted me. She was having a mental health crisis right at that moment, so I ran out to assist her. That’s the kind of newsroom we run, the kind of care we give.”
“That is sooo inspiring,” said one of the women, and her coworkers nodded as she added, “Everyone needs a boss like that.”
We all shook hands and wished the Mega Mattress people well, and Bill’s assistant showed them to the front door.
“Well?” I asked. “Do you think we got ’em?”
“I think we have a good shot,” Bill said. “By the way, which reporter was in crisis?”
Now I had to lie to my boss. It was not a good feeling, but I had no choice. I picked the youngest, most fragile female, the one who always seemed on the verge of tears.
“Hannah. But we’re all good now, she’s in a much better place.”
“Excellent, Trent, just excellent leadership,” Bill responded, and I walked back to the newsroom knowing I was coming out on top, as I always did. I was a winner.