SHE BOUGHT NEW LUGGAGE for the trip to Mansfield. Had her hair highlighted, got herself a new briefcase. I’d be willing to lay odds she even started going to a tanning parlor a week or so before the big event. I mean, this was the dead of winter, and all of a sudden Suzanne’s looking like she’s just got back from Hawaii.
One morning when she was bringing in the coffee—which was still the most important part of her job, if you asked me—I commented that her husband must be looking forward to this little getaway. Two nights in a nice hotel with his bride, indoor swimming pool, Jacuzzi, king-sized bed. “Oh,” she said, “Larry’s not coming on this trip. I thought it would be best not to have any distractions, knowing I’m going there for business reasons.”
She was doing her homework all right. Looked up the keynote speaker, Casey Anderson, in our Who’s Who in Media guide, so she’d have some idea of her interests. Even sent a couple of introductory letters to five or six station managers who were signed up to attend, letting them know she’d be there and she was looking forward to meeting them and perhaps sharing her tapes with them.
One thing I got to say for Suzanne. She never concealed from me the fact that she had bigger fish to fry, never pretended she was going to grow old at WGSL. “Someday you’ll be able to point to me up on the screen and tell people you gave me my start in broadcasting, Ed,” she’d say. “I’ll never forget you for that.”
And she knew it was fine by me, too, that she was looking for a better job. Having Suzanne around was kind of tiring, if you want to know the truth. She was so wound up, you had to keep thinking up jobs for her to do. So all of us at the station looked forward to her big break almost as much as she did.
Day she left for Mansfield, George, our sound man, tied a bunch of tin cans to her bumper: “Mansfield or bust.” It was a joke, you know. We watched her go out into the parking lot, to her car, to see her expression. Nothing. She gets in her car, turns on the ignition, like there’s nothing out of the ordinary, backs up, and turns around. Still no reaction. I mean, those cans must’ve been making one hell of a racket, but she just drove off down the road, never stopping. Way I figured it, she was just so focused on the damn conference she never even noticed. Probably drove the whole three hours to Mansfield like that. I like to think of her pulling into the parking lot at the Mansfield Marriott like that. Mrs. Big Shot Weather Girl. With her tin cans clattering.