Love at 11

Chapter Seven



FROM: “Laura Smith” <[email protected]>

TO: “Special Projects Group” <[email protected]>

SUBJECT: Sweeps Story List



Hi Guys!



After much planning, Richard and I have finally finalized the story list for May. I think we’ve got some good ones this time! Please review the following stories:



Spray-on Nylons —A new spray makes wearing pantyhose passé.

Cellulite Sneakers —Special sneakers help you lose weight while you walk.

Pudgy Pets —Now it’s Fido and Fifi’s turn to go low-carb.

The Fast Food Diet —Big Mac can mean BIG weight loss.

Nocturnal Positions —The positions you sleep in can predict the future of your marriage.

Nail Salon Nightmare —How acrylic nails can lead to amputated fingers.



We will also be kicking off our latest Household Products That Kill series. Maddy has been working on our first segment—“Cosmetics That Kill” which edits tomorrow. We’ll also be assigning Deadly Doorknobs, Kitty Killer, Bad Beanie Babies, and Suspicious Sinks. And we’re looking for additional ideas, so if you come across something that can kill, please pitch it to me ASAP.



When working on these stories, please keep in mind that we are not to name any brand names unless we are saying something GOOD about the product. And please make sure if you’re writing about an experimental new diet product that may or may not work, you add a quick sound bite at the end from some grumpy, old physician who doesn’t believe anything but old-fashioned diet and exercise will lose weight. (As if people have time for that! :))



Your Boss, Laura



Monday morning. Back at work. I had to write the “Cosmetics That Kill” story and get Terrance to record it. It amazed me sometimes to think how little I got paid to shoot, write, and edit a story and how much he got paid to read it. When I first started, my family always harassed me about when I’d be on air. Uh, that would be never.

It bugged me that most non-news people thought producers were all wannabe reporters. That we were all just sitting back, waiting for our big break. I had no interest in going live on the air. I liked working behind the scenes and never having to worry about getting fired because the latest surveys found that viewers trusted five-foot-two brunettes more than five-foot-six blondes. As a producer you got to do all the fun stuff and never had to worry about your hair and makeup or getting old and fired. The only downside was the pay. But I’d heard top Newsline producers made a good six figures, so at least I had a goal.

The mail icon popped up on my computer screen. I knew I should have closed the program before starting my script; it was too tempting to click over to see who had written, even though usually it was either spam, e-mail forwards, or pesky viewers who wanted to complain about a story I’d produced. Not that I minded viewer feedback, but nine times out of ten the viewer in question hadn’t actually viewed my story—just the promo—and were condemning me on the fifteen-second tease I didn’t even write.

This time there were two e-mails in my box. One from my dad and one from the promotions department. Both were bound to be equally upsetting.

I clicked open my dad’s first.



Hi Maddy,



How’s my little girl? How’s work? When are they going to let you on TV?



Anyway, Cindi and I were wondering if you’d like to come to her ultrasound appointment tomorrow at noon. I bet you’re just DYING to see your little unborn sister or brother. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’m hoping for a boy!)



Let me know if you want to come. It’d mean a lot to Cindi. She really wants to meet you! Oh, and she wanted me to ask you if you knew her older brother. She thinks he might have went to high school with you. Does the name Tad ring a bell?



Love, Dad



P.S. Is Lulu eating right? The girl is too skinny.



Ewh. All I could say was ewh.

Why on earth would I want to go see photographic evidence of Dad cheating on Mom? To me, the ultrasound would be a live video starring the evil seed that broke up my parents’ marriage. Sure, technically the fetus would be my half brother or sister, but just because we shared a sperm donor didn’t mean I had to have anything to do with this unborn creature.

And how dare he ask about Lulu as if it were no big thing? He should be the one making sure she ate, not me! He or Mom, who was now equally pissing me off with her globe-trotting adventures. One of them needed to climb the hell back on the parental wagon and start acting like the adults they were supposed to be.

Lulu still wasn’t talking to me after Saturday night’s incident. She’d left the house before I woke up Sunday morning and for part of the day I’d sustained the hope that she’d gone back home. But late Sunday night she showed up again, drunk off her ass, and passed out on my couch. Like a good sister, I left her a glass of water and some Advil on the coffee table. I wanted to lecture her about underage drinking but didn’t want to set her off again. Besides, it wasn’t that big of a deal, was it? I mean, I drank when I was sixteen. Maybe not on Sunday afternoons, but still …

I guess I didn’t blame her for wanting to check out of reality. My parents’ marriage had broken up, and besides passing P.S. e-mails inquiring about her weight and school attendance, neither seemed interested in how she felt about the matter. I’d probably react the same way if I were her. Poor kid.

I closed Dad’s e-mail without responding and turned to the one from the promotions department. I knew from experience this one ought to be good.



Hi Maddy,



It’s Ron, your favorite Promo Boy! Here’s what we decided on for the promo for “Cosmetics That Kill.”



LURKING IN YOUR MEDICINE CABINET THEY SEEM INNOCENT …

HARMLESS.

BUT YOUR COSMETICS … CAN ACTUALLY KILL YOU!

TERRANCE TELLS ALL, TONIGHT AT ELEVEN.



What do you think? Awesome, huh? Ron



“Ugh” seemed the appropriate response. Nothing like a bad promo to ruin your day. Now I had to go argue with the promotions producer and beg him to change the promo to something that remotely resembled the story itself.

I picked up the phone. It’d take way too long to respond by e-mail.

“Ron speaking.”

“Yeah, hi Ron. It’s Maddy down in Special Projects. About that promo you e-mailed me …”

“Isn’t it great? I showed everyone up here and we all agree it’s one of our best promos ever.”

“Um, yeah. Very catchy. But you see, the thing is, it’s not exactly true.”

“True?”

Of course. The word was a foreign phrase to the promos department. Actually, to the whole newsroom if it came to that.

“Yeah. As in, cosmetics don’t actually kill you.”

“Of course they don’t actually kill me. I’m a guy. I don’t wear cosmetics. By ‘you,’ we mean the viewer. The twenty-four- to fifty-five-year-old soccer mom we call Abby who has two point four kids, a white picket fence and a ton of disposable income.”

I took a deep breath. “Right. But they don’t actually kill Abby either.”

“Hmm. Do they kill people who watch other stations besides News Nine? We might be able to work that in.”

“Uh, no. Sorry. The story is basically how certain lipsticks that contain lead may lead to brain damage to unborn babies.”

“Unborn babies can be considered viewers,” Ron said defensively.

I grimaced. “They can’t view. They’re blocked by a wall of mommy flesh.”

I could hear Ron’s annoyed sigh on the other end of the phone line. “Since when did you get so technical? I showed the promo to my boss Chris and he loved it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the promo. Except that what it says is not true.” I couldn’t believe I had to argue this point.

“Yeah, well, it took a day and a half to come up with this. We’re editing tomorrow and I have no time to rewrite my entire promo just because of some technicality,” he said in a huff.

It took him a day and a half to come up with five lines? It took me about an hour to write a four-page script. Promo producers had the best jobs in the world. I envisioned them having wild parties in their fourth-floor offices, laughing at the rest of the newsroom, who actually had to work. When an order came up for a promo they scribbled something out that took five minutes and then resumed the party.

“Look,” Ron said. “How about this? We change the line ‘your cosmetics can actually kill you!’ to ‘can your cosmetics actually kill you?’ with a question mark. That way if anyone says anything you can say it was a question not a statement and that the answer to the question happens to be no.”

I wondered if Newsline producers had to put up with this kind of bullshit.

“Fine. Whatever. Thanks, Ron.” I got off the phone quickly, my heart no longer into fighting the good fight. Why did I even care? In the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter one bit. So a few viewers might stay up a half hour later, worrying a bit about their killer cosmetics. When they saw the story they’d be relieved, right? It wasn’t like an incorrect promo would destroy the world.

After squashing all my noble journalistic ethics, I went back to writing my script. All I could do was be responsible for my own work. And my script was good. It contained facts, figures, and useful information. People would learn something. Unborn babies would be saved from possible brain damage.

I’d have to tell Dad to make sure Cindi didn’t wear any lipstick during her pregnancy. Not that I cared about her, but the baby’s brain itself shouldn’t be damaged simply because its mother was a home wrecker.

I finished the script and sent the file to the printer. I was actually pleased at how it had come out. A fair, well-balanced story that aimed to scare the viewer a little, but then brought back reason in the end so as not to keep them up at night. Sure, it wasn’t the ideal piece to kick off the new Terrance Tells All franchise. Not big and sexy and undercover. But it was better than half the drivel that ended up on TV, and hopefully after I got this one on the air I could turn my focus to bigger investigations and really make my mark at the station and pad the résumé videotape I’d eventually send to Newsline.

I grabbed the script off the printer and headed down to the Newsplex to give it to Terrance to voice. That’s one thing I definitely liked about my job. I had all the creative input and followed the story from beginning to end. The anchors and reporters simply read my words. I was the news world’s Cyrano de Bergerac.

“Hi, Terrance,” I greeted my own Christian de Neuvillette, approaching his desk.

He looked up, an annoyed expression on his face. I glanced at my watch. I didn’t catch him right before a show, did I? No. He wasn’t on for hours.

“What?”

“Um, I’m Maddy. Your new producer? I have a script for you to voice.”

“You think I’m going to voice something I haven’t even read?” Terrance reached out and yanked the script from my hand.

“No. Of course not,” I said, a bit taken aback. “I want you to read it. If you want to tweak it that’s fine, too.”

I stood there, hovering like an idiot, while Terrance grabbed a black sharpie from his desk and started making corrections to the script. Actually, corrections might be an understatement. I watched in horror as he made sweeping Xs through almost every line of text, mumbling as he did.

“No! No! NO!” The last no was almost a scream. Several other employees looked over, and I felt my face heat.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, a bit freaked out.

He looked up, a brilliant newsman smile on his face. “Oh, no. Nothing. I’m just making a few tweaks, like you said.”

A few tweaks, my ass. There wouldn’t be a word left on the page after he was done with it. But what could I do? He was the million-dollar anchor; I was the lowly producer. Even though Richard had said that this was a producer-driven segment—that Terrance should simply read what I wrote—if Terrance wouldn’t do it, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I couldn’t force him to read it, could I?

This sucked. My beautiful, thought-provoking, factual, and fair script now looked like a two-year-old had gone mad with a marker. How was Newsline going to see my work if it never got on the air the way I’d written it? I mean, I could see tweaking. Editing. Questioning But not ripping to shreds. There was simply no reason. It was a good script.

“Retype this with my corrections,” Terrance said after he finished his Texas Chainsaw Script Massacre. He handed me the paper’s mutilated corpse. “Then I’ll voice it.”

I stared at him. “Was there something wrong with the script?” I asked, trying to bite back my tears. Maybe we could work together. I could learn to write in his style and then in the future we could avoid this embarrassment.

“Besides the fact that it was the most shoddy, badly written piece of drivel that I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading?” he asked, picking up a hand mirror and teasing his anchorman hair.

“But—”

“Look.” He set the mirror down and turned to face me. “You obviously only spent about five minutes on that piece of garbage. If you’re going to be writing for me, you need to work a lot harder. My viewers have certain expectations. I cannot, in good conscience, let them down.”

I swallowed hard, crossing my arms under my breasts. “I worked hard on that script. I didn’t whip it out in five minutes.”

He shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. “Well, if that’s your best work, darling, we have a major problem.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself again, but the phone rang. Terrance grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?” he said. “Oh, hi Susan … Oh really? The new Armani ties are in? Okay, pick me up one red and one blue … Oh, you think blue’s too much? Okay, okay. Well, of course. You’re my personal shopper after all. I simply must trust you.”

He looked over at me, still hovering like an idiot. He frowned and waved his hand in a you-are-dismissed-insignificant-one kind of way. I backed off, humiliated beyond belief, while he continued to argue the pros and cons of Prada footwear.

I ran upstairs into the safe haven of Special Projects. David was out on a shoot so I had our cube to myself. I put my head on my desk and started to cry. I knew it was a babyish thing to do, but I couldn’t help it. All the events of the past week—my parents’ divorce, Lulu’s party, Jamie and the one-night stand, and now being told I was no good at the one thing I knew I was good at—came crashing together. I couldn’t take any more. I wanted to die. I knew that sounded overly dramatic, but I was in an overly dramatic state of mind.

“Maddy? Are you okay?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up, my face probably disgustingly bloated and red from my cry. For the third time that week, it seemed Jamie would be my guardian angel. He must have thought I was a pathetic blob of a human being, always crying about this or that.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I sniffed, my nose running like crazy. Jamie reached into his pocket and pulled out a napkin. He handed it to me and I blew my nose. “S-sorry.”

He sat down across from me in David’s chair. “What happened?” he asked in a voice that sounded like he really cared.

I related the Terrance story. “But it’s not only that. It’s everything. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, really. I’m so sick of everything in my life falling apart in one week.”

Jamie nodded. Then he smiled. “You know what cures life-falling-apart syndrome?”

“What?”

“Starbucks venti white chocolate frappuccinos with extra whipped cream.”

“They do?” I said, trying to smile through my tears. “My mom swears by them. Says they’re a magic cure for all of life’s ills,” Jamie assured me with a serious expression. He rose from his chair. “Though, personally, I like a more manly-man drink myself.” He beat on his chest for mock emphasis.

I laughed, despite myself. “Yeah, right. You’re totally a closet whipped-cream junkie, I know.”

“Hey! Quiet. You’ll ruin my rep.” He winked at me. “Come on, let’s go.”

Minutes later we sank into the plush purple velvet Starbucks chairs and sipped our decadent coffee beverages. Jamie with his triple Americano and me with my delicious girlie frappuccino.

“You’re going to get sick of being my knight in shining armor,” I said, feeling much better already.

“Never,” he declared. “We’re partners. That’s what partners do.”

“But it’s so one-sided. You’re always rescuing me and never needing your own rescuing.”

“Oh, please.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” He set his beverage down and leaned forward in his chair. “You rescue me from boredom.”

I giggled. “Are you bored?”

“Of course. And I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but you’re my first—and at the moment—only San Diego friend.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He smiled. “We are friends, right?”

“Definitely.” I smiled back and lifted my almost empty drink. “To friendship.”

He picked up his cup and touched mine, then took a sip. I watched him, feeling a bit warm and fuzzy inside. It was odd. You’d think that because we’d slept together things would have been completely awkward. But they weren’t. And I did feel like I was his friend in a weird way.

Of course I also still wanted to jump his bones, but I wouldn’t act on it. After meeting Jennifer she had become a real person in my mind instead of a vague idea. And I realized that no matter how much I lusted after her fiancé I had to rein in my desire. It wouldn’t be right—and not because I was some saint, either. Rather, because I knew how these stories always ended: He and Jennifer would get married and live happily ever after and I would be the one left with a broken heart.

Much better to stay friends, keep the heart intact.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Setting down his cup, Jamie reached into his bag and pulled out a worn paperback. “That night at Moondoggies you said you wanted to read it.”

I took the book and turned it over so I could check out the cover. The artwork depicted a dashing man dressed in black leather, carrying a futuristic-looking gun. In the background hovered a spaceship and a scantily dressed woman with big breasts. The gold embossed title declared the man was Trapped on Mars. Underneath in smaller letters it said, “A Novel, by Jamie Hayes.”

“Your book!” I exclaimed, fascinated. I turned the novel over to read the back blurb.



AN INTERGALACTIC PRISONER WITHOUT A CAUSE



All Kayne wanted was a simple life. He and his wife lived comfortably in one of the few remaining Earth cities. But then he was accused of a crime he didn’t commit and forced to leave everything behind—to serve out a life sentence on the Royal Mars Penal Colony.



There he meets Marla—the brave, independent rebel who would change his life forever. But could the two lovers hatch a daring plan of escape? Or would they forever be: Trapped on Mars?



“I know it’s not Hemingway,” Jamie said, a bit sheepishly, as I looked up from my reading. “But it’s mine.”

“Are you kidding? This is better than Hemingway. He just wrote about old guys fishing. This sounds really exciting.” I looked down at the cover again. “When was this published?”

“Five years ago,” he said with a sigh. “And I haven’t been able to get anything published since.”

“Why? Didn’t it do well?”

“No. It did great, actually. I mean, not best-seller great or anything, but good for a sci-fi book.”

“So what happened?”

He shrugged. “I must be the literary equivalent of a one-hit-wonder. I’ve started several books since and haven’t been able to finish any of them. Two years ago my agent dumped me. After that, I kind of gave up on the whole dream.”

“But you can’t give up on a dream,” I protested. “That’s against the rules. I mean, look at me. My dream is to be a Newsline producer. Sure, it’s a long shot—especially with what I’m stuck producing at News Nine—but I’m not going to give up on it.”

“You’re cute,” Jamie said with a smile. “You know that?”

Oh, man. I knew I was blushing a deep purple. “Yeah, yeah.” I brushed him off. “But I’m right, too. Do you think Hemingway never got rejected? In fact, I read somewhere that before he became a successful writer someone stole his suitcase and it had almost everything he’d ever written in it. And you know in the 1920s they didn’t have any of it backed up on a hard drive.”

“Man. That would have sucked.”

“Yes. I’m sure it sucked royally. And imagine if Mr. Hemingway, greatest author of our time said, ‘Okay screw this, I’m just going to be a lame-ass journalist for the rest of my life and never write shit ever again.’”

“I’m willing to bet money that Hemingway never once used the term ‘lame ass’ in a sentence. Or ‘screw this’ for that matter.”

I rolled my eyes. “Exactly. And he didn’t quit, either.”

“Fine. I get your point.”

“So you’re going to start writing again?”

“Just for you.”

“Good.” I nodded firmly, ignoring the chills of pleasure running up and down my spine. Just for me. I shouldn’t like the sound of that as much as I did. “And I expect to see this work in progress on a regular basis.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And in the meantime I’m going to read this.”

“If you want to. But don’t feel obligated.”

“Are you kidding? I’m dying to read it!” I stuffed the book in my purse before he could change his mind. “Thanks for bringing it in.”

“No prob,” he said. “On one condition.” I cocked my head. “Which is?”

“You’re not allowed to let those losers at News Nine get you down, either. That bastard with a superiority complex, Terrance Toller, or anyone else.”

I grinned. “Fine. It’s a deal.”

“And no matter how many exposés you have to do on killer household products, you are hereby not allowed to give up your Newsline dreams.”

“Roger that.” I lifted my hand in mock salute. “Good. As long as we understand each other.”

We did, I thought as Jamie stood to throw his cup away in preparation to go back to work. In fact, we understood each other too well. And that was becoming a problem. At least for me.

We were coworkers already. We were fast becoming friends. So why wasn’t I content with that? What made me long for more?