Chapter Two

back when i was in high school, Corey Molina described what it felt like to walk into the CBS offices for the first time. The walls were lined with portraits of legends—Edwards, Cronkite, Rather, Stahl—and it was thick with the aura of seriousness and 60 Minutes. He had gotten his first job by showing up and not leaving until someone gave him something to do. “You need two things to succeed in this business,” Corey had said. “A news instinct, and a little bit of masochism.”

I had moved to New York the summer after graduating from college. I struck out at the page program at CBS. Ditto for NBC, and ABC, and CNN and Fox and MSNBC. My résumé lacked the right internships and connections, but it didn’t faze me. My mother was always falling for those law-of-attraction scams: think like a millionaire and you’ll become a millionaire! She assumed it was as easy as ordering a pizza. But I believed in my own version of the law. You can become a millionaire if you really want it. You just have to bust your ass to get there.

There was a relatively new channel called King Cable News. It had no ideological bent, nothing that made it stand out, except for a wealthy owner—Mr. King, of King Media—who was happy to run the company in the red for as long as he had to. For the decade of KCN’s existence, Mr. King had been poaching stars from other networks, wooing them with massive paychecks, complete editorial independence, and equity in his privately held media conglomerate. When King Media eventually went public, the star anchors wouldn’t be wealthy in the usual multimillion-dollar-contract way. They’d be wealthy like tech titans, or hedge funders. KCN had won several Peabodys and Emmys in the past few years and had started gaining respect in the industry. Their audience was growing, too; they were often in third place, sometimes in second. More to the point, they were the place that offered me a job.

Rebecca Carter had been a network star, a White House correspondent and then a morning show anchor, and one of Mr. King’s original hires. Her innate seriousness, which she’d had to shelve for morning television, was on full display at Frontline with Rebecca Carter, the flagship program in the 8 p.m. hour. And it worked: she was on a hot streak lately, moderating a primary debate in the last presidential election, scoring big sit-downs.

After arriving at KCN’s headquarters in Midtown on my first day in August, I took the elevator up to the floor that housed Frontline. There had been no instructions about an orientation or who to ask for. Within seconds, a woman spotted me—and the bright lanyard that held my new ID badge—and shouted, “Intern!”

“Me?” I said.

“Who else? I need you to photocopy this.”

She was waving a sheaf of paper like an urgent white flag. I took it from her, but before I could ask where the copier was, she had disappeared.

“Over there.” At the desk next to me, a guy with his phone pinned between ear and shoulder gestured across the room. “The copier’s around that corner.”

“Ah—thank you,” I said, and ran toward the copy room. As I was squinting at the machine’s instructions, my forehead pricking with sweat, panicking at the options to collate and staple and double-side, the woman reappeared. “Actually, I need ten copies of that,” she said. She snapped her fingers. “Now, not yesterday.”

After leaving the copies with her, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Across the bullpen, the nice guy who’d given me directions was now off the phone. I walked back over.

“Success?” he said, eyes glued to his computer screen, typing with disarming speed.

“Thanks again,” I said. “It’s my first day. I’m an intern.”

“I’m Jamie,” he said. He had a Southern accent, and it came out like ahm Jay-mee.

“Violet,” I said. “I’m not sure who I’m supposed to report to.”

“It doesn’t really work like that,” he said. “People will figure out who you are and they’ll just tell you what to do. Although you’re lucky. You’re starting at a quiet time.”

“Really?” I said, looking around the newsroom—the ringing phones, the people running back and forth. There was a guy on crutches, following a group into the conference room. Even he was hobbling as fast as he could.

“Relatively quiet,” Jamie said. “Rebecca’s on vacation until Labor Day. It’ll get a lot busier when she’s back.”

“But that’s three weeks from now,” I said.

“Correct.”

“Well, I thought anchors hated being off the air for that long.”

Jamie stopped typing. He looked at me for the first time. “Violet what?”

“Violet Trapp.”

“You did your homework, Violet Trapp. Most anchors hate being off the air. But Rebecca would rather be on vacation. Normal people don’t care. That’s what she says. The only people who care about anchors taking long vacations are those rabid media-watcher types. And they’re all out in the Hamptons right now, too.”

“Oh,” I said. “Smart lady.”

“The smartest.” His phone started ringing. “All right, next thing. Could you run down to the cafeteria and get four coffees? Two black, two with milk and sugar. Keep the receipt.”

 

The days went fast. There was no time to train the interns, so we were assigned to the simplest tasks: fetching coffee, answering the phone, running scripts to the control room. Or seemingly simple, because the tasks had to be done perfectly and they had to be done now. On Friday, one of the production assistants approached our cluster of interns and said, “Which one of you made it through the week without fucking up?”

The other five interns had each been reamed out by somebody and laughed nervously at the question. Except for me. I stepped forward. “What do you need?” I said.

The assistant was maybe a year older than me, but hierarchy was hierarchy. “Bring the guest from the green room to the set before the D block,” he said. “You can handle that?”

“I’m on it,” I said, ignoring his snotty tone.

The guest was a consumer safety expert, there to talk about the latest changes in airbag technology. The executive producer wanted the anchor to stretch the interview to fill the block. It was amazing how much could be learned just by eavesdropping.

“Here you are,” I said, pushing open the swinging door that led to Studio B. Terrance, the substitute anchor while Rebecca was on vacation, was shuffling papers on the desk and humming to himself. He looked up at the guest and nodded, then went back to his notes. Terrance wouldn’t bother engaging until the cameras were on. It was a waste of energy.

“Hey, lady,” the floor director said. “Are you staying or leaving?”

“Am I allowed to stay?” I said.

“As long as you stand in the back and don’t get in anyone’s way,” he said. “But if you’re staying, close the damn door.”

It was dark around the edges of the studio, and freezing cold. The cameraman to my left was wearing a fleece sweatshirt and a hat, and the one to my right was drinking hot tea. The consumer safety expert squinted into the bright stage lights. “Can I get a glass of water?” he said.

“Two minutes back,” the floor director yelled. “Water’s under the desk.”

The door swung open. “Home stretch, Hank,” Jamie said, cuffing the floor director on the shoulder. “Almost the weekend.”

“Airbags,” Hank said. “Christ. They didn’t have airbags when I was a kid. You just had to hold on.”

“Did they even have cars when you were a kid, Hank?” Jamie grinned. Then he spotted me, standing at the back. “You’re staying to watch?” he said.

“Is this your segment?”

“Yup,” Jamie said. “How’s the first week been?”

“Good. Great, actually. It’s been fun.”

“Thirty back!” Hank the floor director yelled.

Jamie stepped forward. “Hey, Terrance. You’re giving us a quick intro, throwing to package, then four minutes for the interview. Got it?”

Terrance narrowed his eyes. “I’ve done this before, James.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Jamie said.

“Hey!” the airbag expert said. “That’s exactly my motto.”

“And we’re on in five,” Hank shouted. He finished the countdown with his hand. The red light on the camera went on. Terrance sat up straight, relaxed his face into a confident expression, looked into Camera One, and began talking. After he introduced the previously recorded package and the camera cut away, he sighed and went right back to shuffling his papers.

“Long week, I guess. So, do you like the other interns?” Jamie said.

“Sure,” I said. “I guess.”

Jamie smiled. “You sound enthusiastic.”

“We don’t have a lot in common,” I said. “Everyone seems…connected.”

“How so?”

“This one girl—her father used to be a producer. Tim Russert’s producer.”

“Ah,” Jamie said. “Yeah, I’d say that’s a useful connection.”

“She kept calling him ‘my late uncle Tim.’ Oh, you know, the time my late uncle Tim was talking to Yasser Arafat. Finally someone said, Tim who? She had been dying for one of us to ask.”

Jamie laughed, and I blushed. “Never mind,” I said. “I shouldn’t be talking trash.”

“Don’t worry about it. Those connections only matter at the beginning. Most of those people will wash out,” he said. “I didn’t know a single person when I started in news. Eliza completely took a chance on hiring me six years ago.”

Hank waved at us to shut up. The prerecorded package was over, and now Terrance was introducing the guest. During the interview, Terrance nodded and made eye contact and thoughtful “hmm” noises. It was a skillful performance, although when Hank started making “wrap it up” hand gestures, Terrance’s genuinely delighted smile undercut his previous posture of interest. This was what he was actually interested in—going home. “Well!” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have tonight.”

“And we’re clear,” Hank yelled when the red light switched off.

The studio was one floor below the newsroom. As Jamie and I climbed the stairs, he said, “They’re not stuck up like that. Rebecca and Eliza, I mean. They could be, with the success they’ve had, but they aren’t.”

I was intensely curious about Eliza. She was the executive producer of Frontline, her office adjacent to Rebecca’s corner suite, her shelves lined with a collection of news & doc Emmys. I’d googled her, of course, but this was the difference between talent and producers: Rebecca’s every movement was plastered across the internet, while Eliza remained almost anonymous. Mostly I knew that Eliza Davis was an exception in a business still dominated by white men: a powerful black female EP.

“I’d think that helps,” I said. “Not being snobby. Right? It keeps you outside the bubble.”

Jamie looked over at me. “Where do you come from, anyway?”

When I started telling him where I’d gone to school, he shook his head. “No, I mean, where are you actually from. Your hometown.”

“Oh.” I responded as I always did: “You’ve never heard of it.”

Back in the newsroom, Jamie said, “A bunch of us are going for drinks across the street. A Friday tradition. Want to join?”

I hadn’t gotten a paycheck yet, and my bank account was nearly bare. But I could afford one beer. I’d eat rice and beans for the rest of the weekend. “Sure,” I said.

“Good,” Jamie said, smiling. “More time to figure out what your deal is.”

“Honestly, it’s a nowhere town.” Didn’t moving to New York mean I’d never have to talk about my past? Then again, Jamie’s job was to ask questions. “On the Florida Panhandle. Barely even a real place.”

“Everywhere is a real place.”

“I haven’t lived there in a long time.” There was a tightness in my chest, and I was feeling uncomfortably defensive. “It’s not home anymore.”

“Okay, okay. You’re pleading the Fifth, then?”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“We can talk about it some other time,” Jamie said. “But you know, I’m from nowheresville just like you. Small town in South Carolina, in my case. My momma would murder me if she thought I was disrespecting it. Here, look.” Jamie pulled out his phone, flicked through a stream of photos. “From the Fourth of July parade. See that lady dressed up like Martha Washington?”

“That’s your mom?” I said. This woman was wearing a powdered wig and a hoop skirt.

“You don’t get to choose them,” he said, but his bashful smile showed real pride.

 

The week before I started at KCN, Stella’s mother asked me to meet her at the apartment to discuss the—as she put it—“arrangement.”

It was a gorgeous two-bedroom on a leafy block in the West Village. A chef’s kitchen, a wood-burning fireplace, a terrace, a doorman. Anne and Thomas Bradley had their waterfront mansion in Rye, but they were looking ahead to retirement, to eventually wanting a pied-à-terre in the city. At least, this was their excuse for buying Stella the apartment. Even the wealthy feel pressure to justify these kinds of decisions.

“Violet,” Anne said, kissing my cheek. The kitchen was empty except for her Birkin bag, resting on the white marble counter. “So nice to see you.”

Living with Stella was the only way I could afford to be in New York. After graduation, Stella planned to travel with friends for an indefinite stretch. She was in Cannes, then Lake Como, then wherever the wind took her. “But so what?” Stella had said. “Obviously you should move in right away. That’s what the apartment’s there for, isn’t it?”

Anne Bradley seemed to see things differently. From her bag she pulled a folder, and from the folder a stapled document. “We took the liberty of drawing up an agreement,” Anne said. “Just to formalize things.”

“Okay,” I said. There were several pages filled with dense clauses and subclauses. As I attempted to decipher the first paragraph, Anne slid a pen across the counter.

“Could I read the whole thing through?” I said. “Just to be sure.”

“Oh,” Anne said. Then she smiled. “Take all the time you need.”

From what I could tell, it looked like a standard tenant agreement. But on the last page, a number jumped out: fifteen hundred dollars per month in rent, to be paid no later than the first of the month, by check or wire transfer to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Bradley.

I swallowed. When her parents first came up with this idea and I’d asked Stella how much my rent would be, she’d shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Nothing, probably.” I should have known, by now, that Stella’s assurances were worthless. Her parents controlled the money, not her. Or maybe, to her, fifteen hundred was nothing. But still, the price came as a shock.

“Everything okay?” Anne said. The pen was in my hand but hadn’t yet touched paper.

I took a deep breath. “Mrs. Bradley, I’ll be honest. I can’t afford this. After taxes, I’m only bringing home about fourteen hundred a month with this internship.”

“Oh!” she said. “Oh, Violet, I didn’t realize. We’ll change it, of course.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate your understanding.”

“What would work for you? Let’s see. What if we halved it to seven hundred fifty?”

I ran through the mental calculation. Seven hundred fifty on rent, plus two hundred on student loans. That left four hundred and fifty to live on. Fifteen dollars a day. I’d walk to work; I’d eat cheap. Tight, but I could manage.

“That would be great,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Anne said. “Phew.”

“Should I just cross this out?” I said, pointing at the number. “And write in seven fifty?”

“Well.” Her smile slackened. “Actually, why don’t you give me that. I’ll have our lawyer type up a new version. It’s more official that way.”

But the process dragged out. Anne e-mailed me with updates. Just waiting for our lawyer to revise the agreement, she wrote. Then, I have the agreement! Thomas wants to look it over one more time. And then, I’m sorry for the bother, Violet, but could you please send us your employment letter from KCN?

Can you talk for a sec? I texted Stella. By this point I was staying at the apartment, in a sleeping bag on the floor, but Anne and Thomas probably only agreed to this because I had nowhere else to go. An employment letter? Did they think I was scamming them? I felt mildly panicked. If the Bradleys decided to pull the plug, I had no other plan.

Stella would reassure me. She would laugh and say that her parents were crazy, we just had to humor them. You know how rich people are, she’d say. Obsessed with every dollar. If she ever texted me back, that is—which she didn’t. She often forgot to check her phone, and while she was frolicking in Europe, who could blame her? But her silence stung a little.

In the end, it was fine. I signed the revised agreement and handed it to Anne. She nodded, her lips set in a tight line. “Thanks for your patience, Violet,” she said, tucking the papers into her bag. “You see, Thomas pointed out that it’s a…somewhat unusual arrangement.”

I wrinkled my brow, offered a vague smile of puzzlement.

“Stella isn’t living here, after all,” Anne said. “It’s a bit odd, don’t you see?”

“But she’ll be back soon,” I said.

“You’re practically like a second daughter, of course. But still. It’s a big expenditure. The maintenance alone! Well, you know what it’s like in New York.”

It’s official, I texted Stella that night. I am a tenant of Anne and Thomas Bradley.

Lol, she texted back. Now you know how I feel.

Where are you, anyway? I wrote, hoping to catch her while her phone was still in her hand. But there was no response. Not that day, or the next day, or the day after.

 

In September, one of Frontline’s senior producers quit. The gossip was that he had waited until Rebecca returned to give notice, in the hopes that she would make some grand gesture to counter his offer from another network. Instead she told him goodbye and good luck. Rebecca valued loyalty.

This created a ripple effect. Jamie was promoted to senior producer. Someone was promoted to fill his old job. It resulted in an opening for an assistant, a job with a real salary and benefits and security. To say that each of us interns wanted that job was like saying that America wanted to beat the USSR during the Cold War. It was a question of existential purpose.

“Are you busy right now?” I said, stopping by Jamie’s desk one afternoon. There were several rungs between us, but I still went to him with my constant questions. Plus, we were becoming something like friends.

“Always,” he said, typing on his phone. “What’s up?”

“I need some career advice.” I lowered my voice and glanced around. The newsroom was competitive but not cutthroat, so you couldn’t be too blatant. “I want that assistant job.”

He laughed. “Oh? I never would have guessed.”

“What can I do to make sure I get it?”

He put his phone down. “Memorize the difference between a cappuccino and a cortado. The other interns just don’t seem to get it.”

“Very funny.”

“Partly it’s luck. But you should try to make yourself indispensable. It needs to be you that producers think of when they need something done, not someone else.”

The vacant desk sat there like a shiny prize. There was no urgency in making a decision. At this point, several of us interns were capable of carrying out the work of an assistant. There was script-running and lunch-fetching, but there were also the complex systems that we had finally mastered: searching the archive, pulling stock images, monitoring alerts in iNews. Every minute of programming required a staggering amount of technical work. It wasn’t hard, but it was finicky, and a lot of it trickled down to us.

The lack of timeline drove some of the interns crazy. A few of them quit. That just showed they weren’t cut out for the work. If you wanted predictability, this was the wrong business.

“Is it a test?” I asked Jamie, at one point. “Like, Survivor: Newsroom Edition?”

He laughed. “Really? There’s a hurricane in the gulf and two wars in the Middle East and wildfires in California. You think the bosses have time to think about the interns?”

“Fair enough,” I said.

One day I walked past the empty desk and noticed that the phone was ringing. No one else made a move to answer it, so I sat down and picked up. “KCN, this is Violet speaking.”

“Who?” the voice shouted. “Never mind. We’ve got a big problem. I’ve got the camera crew here and I’ve got this lady mic’d and lit but she’s getting cold feet.” His voice was familiar: one of the field producers. “Major problem. We’re going to have to scrap this from the rundown.”

“Don’t hang up,” I said. “I’m going to put you on hold, okay?”

I sprinted to find the senior producer for the segment. Her eyebrows shot up when I relayed the message. “What else did he say?” she said. “What were the exact words?”

“I’ve got him on line three,” I said, pointing at her blinking phone.

“Oh!” she said. “Nice. Thank you.”

I wound up as the go-between all day, bringing scribbled messages to the senior producer when she was in meetings, relaying precise instructions back to the field producer. It was such a scramble that when the editor was cutting the tape, the producer asked me to record the scratch track, the narration that the reporter—who was en route back from the field—would later replace with his own voice. In the end, the interview was salvaged. Hours of frenzy were distilled into a neat three-minute package in the C block. After the broadcast, the senior producer thanked me and said, “It’s Violet, right? Good work today.”

The next week, the job was mine.

 

What’s our address? Stella texted me one morning that fall.

It was a busy day at work, and by evening I had forgotten about the text, or what her reason for it might be. When I got home, the lights were on. A pair of ballet flats and a quilted jacket were discarded near the front door. “Stella?” I called out.

A girl emerged from the kitchen. A brunette, who I didn’t recognize. “Are you the roommate?” she said. “Stella mentioned you might be here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But who are you?”

“A friend of hers,” she said. She was wearing an oversize button-down and, apparently, no pants. There was a cigarette between her fingers, with a delicate column of ash. “She said I could crash for the night.”

“You can’t smoke in here,” I said automatically, thinking of paragraph 5, subparagraph B, in my agreement with the Bradleys.

She took another drag. “Seriously?” she said, stretching out the word. Bad vocal fry.

“It’s their apartment, not mine,” I said.

“I can see that.” She stared at me appraisingly, like she was sizing up an untagged item at the flea market. I followed her into the kitchen, where she flicked her cigarette into the sink and opened the refrigerator. “Don’t you have anything to drink?” she said, scanning the shelves. “Don’t you live here?”

“How do you even know Stella?” I said.

“Isn’t Stella the best?” she said. Her purse had spilled its contents across the kitchen counter. Lipstick, eyeliner, crumpled bills, matchbooks. She lit another cigarette. There were always girls like this, blasé and affectedly cool, who buzzed around Stella like flies around rotting fruit. They made me feel prickly, territorial. Stella was mine, not theirs.

The girl said she was only spending one night. But that turned into two nights, and three. I couldn’t help texting Stella to vent. Not that I had any grounds to complain; she’d invited this girl, after all. And this was her apartment. But that night my phone rang.

“Is she still there?” Stella said, the connection clear despite the ocean between us.

“Yup,” I said. From down the hall came the smell of cigarette smoke and the tinny sound of a TV show playing on her computer.

“What the fuck?” Stella said. “Go get her. Put me on speaker.”

“Oh,” the girl said, startling when I opened the door.

“Hey,” Stella said. “I said you could stay one night. One. Why are you still here?”

The girl glanced back and forth between me and the phone in my outstretched hand. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened and closed, swallowing her panic.

“Hel-lo?” Stella said. “Can anyone hear me?”

“We’re here,” I said. “But it seems our friend is at a loss for words.”

“You told on me?” the girl hissed.

“Violet happens to be honest,” Stella said. “She happens to be a good person. The kind of friend who warns you about shady shit like this.”

“You should really pack your things,” I said, almost laughing at the look on this girl’s face. “I’ll ask the doorman to get you a cab.”

“See how nice she is?” Stella said. “I would’ve just thrown your crap out the window.”

Stella insisted on staying on the phone until the girl had gone. “Chop-chop,” she kept saying, her voice beaming through the black screen. When the front door finally closed behind the girl, both of us burst out laughing.

“God,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Are you kidding?” Stella said. “That was fun.”

“She was the worst.”

“The worst. I mean, I barely know her. She was in Cap d’Antibes a month ago, same time as me. I owed her one.”

“Owed her for what?”

“We were on this guy’s yacht. He was a creep. He wouldn’t leave me alone. She made an excuse so that we could leave.”

“Ah,” I said. “That trick. Instant case of food poisoning?”

Stella laughed. “It’s just not the same without you, Violet.”

We talked for a long time that night. Stella was a natural storyteller, and traveling had given her plenty of material. The jealousy that had accrued over the past few days, listening to this girl talk about Stella (they were so much alike, they were always on the same wavelength, you know?), washed away. This was just the long-distance phase of our relationship—that’s what Stella said. We knew couples from college who had moved to different cities on opposite coasts, determined that nothing would change. “They can do it, why can’t we?” she said. “It’s only temporary.” I didn’t want to point out how much work it took. How rare it was that both people put equal energy into maintaining the relationship.

“Wait, so where are you? In France?” I asked.

“Paris,” she said. “Currently lingering on the balcony, avoiding the world’s dullest dinner party. Guess what I’m looking at right now.”

“The Eiffel Tower?”

She laughed. “How did you know? What about you, what are you doing?”

I looked down at my pajamas, at the sponge in my hand, which I was using to wipe down the kitchen counters. It was immensely satisfying to have the apartment to myself again, to restore order to it. “Cleaning the kitchen,” I said.

“That’s my girl,” she said.

It could have been a split screen in a movie, two women in opposite settings. Both of us had been itching to graduate, bored with school for different reasons. But even as Stella told me more about Paris, the shopping and the beautiful people and the dinner parties that began at midnight, it struck me that I didn’t want to be there. I missed her, but I was happy with this life in New York, this sense of succeeding on my own terms.

She wasn’t sure when she was coming home. She wasn’t sure if she was coming home. The European lifestyle suited her. This she said jokingly, but also not. Climbing into bed that night, I thought of Anne Bradley handing me the paperwork. An unusual arrangement. Luck can vanish as suddenly as it appears. If Stella never came back, would they keep subsidizing this apartment just for me?

 

“She wants a hard copy of the script in front of her,” one of the producers said. “Run it down to the studio, will you?”

“Rebecca does?” I said.

“Who else!” the producer barked. “Pronto.”

In the weeks since her return, I’d only seen Rebecca from afar, through the glass walls of the conference room, or coming and going from her corner office. When I pushed open the swinging door to Studio B, where she was sitting at the anchor desk, she looked up from her phone right away. “Who is that? Is that my script?”

It was hot under the bright stage lights. “Here you are, Ms. Carter.”

She had intense green eyes, the color of spring. “It’s Rebecca. Never Ms. Carter, got that? Ms. Carter makes me sound like a middle school principal.”

“Sorry. Rebecca.”

“You’re new, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“Violet Trapp.”

“Violet, could you be a hero and get me a tea? The throat-coat kind they have in the green room. I keep telling them to tone it down with the air-conditioning, but they won’t listen to me. Even though my name is on the damn set—isn’t that right, Hank?”

“That’s right.” Hank, the floor director, nodded. “Buncha assholes.”

When I returned a few minutes later, Rebecca was marking up the script. Her eye flicked to the tea I slid in front of her, but she didn’t look up. She was in the zone. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“Thirty seconds!” Hank shouted. He turned to me. “It’s you again, huh?”

“Is it okay if I stay and watch?”

He shrugged. “You know the drill.”

Rebecca straightened her papers, nodded at whatever Eliza was saying in her earpiece, tucked her phone and her tea beneath the desk. After the cold open (“Tonight, on Frontline,” Rebecca’s previously recorded voice narrated) and the slick theme music, Rebecca followed Hank’s gesture to Camera One. “Good evening,” she said. “We begin tonight in the Caribbean, where Tropical Storm Lyle has officially become Hurricane Lyle. The storm is predicted to hit the Carolinas next week, and millions of Americans could be affected. For the latest we turn to our meteorologist—”

Rebecca had many things in common with Terrance, the substitute anchor: a warm facial expression that merged curiosity and concern, a beautiful low voice, an easy chemistry with the reporters in the field. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Rebecca. That hadn’t been remotely true when Terrance was anchoring.

“I can’t figure it out,” I said to Jamie, later that same night.

“Ah,” Jamie said. “Everyone remembers their first time.”

“But I watched Terrance that night. Remember, you were there.”

“Terrance is Terrance. Rebecca is a star. And the first time you’re up close and personal with someone like that—that’s special.”

“You make it sound like I just lost my virginity.”

“It’s an appropriate metaphor.”

I squeezed the wedged lime into the narrow neck of my Corona. “Well, it was much more exciting than losing my actual virginity, let me tell you.”

Jamie laughed, and I felt a ripple of uncertainty. Why did I say that? It sounded flirty, and I hadn’t intended flirty. We were at the bar with our colleagues, the Friday night ritual to ease the transition from week to weekend. For the workaholics who thrived at KCN, the cadences of normal life could be difficult. Some dealt with it by working all weekend. Others dealt with it by drinking and going out too much. And then there was Jamie, the rare producer who maintained a semi-normal life, and his psychological health, in addition to his career.

It was like Jamie’s wick burned slower than everyone else’s. He accepted the imperfection of the work we did, which didn’t make him love it any less. I had read once that the South was the only part of America that understood tragedy, because it was the only part of the country to experience defeat in war. This was grandiose, I knew, to leap from a calm voice in a Midtown bar to the sweep of history. But after a beer or two, my thoughts tended toward the grandiose. So did Jamie’s. That was part of the reason I liked him so much.

“What about you?” I said. “The first time you met Rebecca. What was it like?”

He held up a finger. “Let me ask you a question. Tonight, when you were watching. Who did you want to be? Rebecca, behind the anchor desk? Or Eliza, in the control room?”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Eliza.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. A gut feeling. Eliza’s job seems more interesting. And harder, in a way.”

“But you were saying that you couldn’t take your eyes off Rebecca. That she had something that made her different from Terrance. Better than him.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But whatever that thing is, I know I don’t have it.”

Jamie snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”

“Hey,” I said. “You could at least pretend to disagree.”

“You know what a producer can do? She can take mediocre talent and make it good. She can take good talent and make it very good. But she can’t take good talent and make it great.”

“You mean stars are born, not made?”

“Sort of,” he said. “Mostly my point is that a producer has to know his or her limits. Self-awareness. That’s what separates us from the talent. That ineffable thing you were talking about—you know what I think it is? Delusion.”

I laughed. “This is Rebecca you’re talking about.”

“I mean it in the kindest possible way,” Jamie said. “If you think you’re special and chosen, if you deliver the news believing that you possess some unique authority, guess what? It looks great on camera. People buy it.” Jamie shrugged. “But you and I, we know what we don’t have. We’re too honest with ourselves to feel like we deserve the spotlight.”

“Because no one deserves the spotlight?”

“Precisely.” Jamie lifted his beer in salute.

“This Socratic method of yours,” I said. “Is this how you haze all the new assistants?”

Jamie looked around the bar, at the tables covered in beer and nachos, at our colleagues gossiping energetically despite the dark circles beneath their eyes. “You see these people? Two or three years from now, most of them won’t be here,” Jamie said. “But I have a feeling you’re in this for the long haul.”