Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  “The network thinks it’s a good idea,” Ted said.

  “Is that a yes?”

  The waitress brought the check. “When you’re ready,” she said.

  Franny had her credit card out. Ted reached for his.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Franny said, not looking at him. She felt she’d not been brave enough. She was starting an internal monologue of self-laceration. She needed to leave.

  “Franny,” he said.

  “It’s Frances! For Chrissakes.”

  It was a screech so painful to Ted’s ears because it was Franny at four, Franny at seven, Franny at eleven, when she was out of control, wide-eyed. She stared at her lap and Ted looked out the window and they waited for the moment to pass, like it had never happened.

  And then, in a quiet voice, Ted said, “Sorry. I was just saying that . . . the network has a condition.”

  She had started gathering up her things. Her cheeks were flushed. The same thing happened to Claire.

  “What is it?”

  “They’ll want to see a draft.”

  “No.”

  The waitress returned with the check. Franny signed quickly, a woman about town. She stood, grabbing her large leather bag. It looked expensive.

  She looked like she was about to go when she stopped and looked at him.

  “Do you really want to do this?” she asked.

  “Do you?”

  Say no. He wanted her to say no. Say something nice.

  “It’s my job.”

  He watched her go. He waited for her to turn around as she left the restaurant. She never did. She walked out the door, her phone to her ear, made a left, and was gone.

  Kandahar Province, Bravo Company, Third Marine Battalion.

  Two months ago, during February sweeps, they went to Afghanistan for five days of frontline reporting. If by frontline reporting you mean many miles back from any activity. They wanted the ground soldier’s experience. They’d run promos with Ted in a khaki shirt from the last time he was at the front. “An exclusive look at the frontline experience. Ted Grayson. Front. And center. All next week.”

  They had waited for a Marine Corps platoon to return, Ted and his small crew. It had been raining for days. Cold and rainy. They had waited all night, well into the morning. When the soldiers did return they were soaked and exhausted. They seemed distant. Ted and the crew waited as they went to the tent that served as the mess hall and ate. After a while they filed out, some to their tents, some for a smoke. And one, a lieutenant, stood off to the side, leaning against a rock, looking out over the camp and the hills beyond. He looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six. Handsome kid. All-American look. Ted looked at Lou, who was looking at the kid, too. They knew. He was the one. He was the face of the story they wanted to tell.

  Ted walked over to him.

  “Mind if I talk with you, Lieutenant?”

  Most times this was all it took. They recognized Ted, smiled automatically. Not this one. He just stared at Ted.

  “I’m Ted Grayson.”

  The kid kept staring and it was unnerving. Ted saw in him a strength of character, a rawness and honesty, that was intimidating. What he had seen, what he had been asked to do, what he would have to live with.

  Ted said, “What’s your name?”

  The soldier pointed to his name, above his left breast. Kelly.

  Ted had done a stand-up after a package showing footage gathered by a local camera crew who’d gone to the front. The military wouldn’t let Ted near the front and the network forbid it for insurance reasons. All they needed was a soldier talking about how important the war was. For the package. Ted was tired and sick of the place. He wanted to get on the plane and go home.

  Ted tried again. “We were just hoping for your thoughts on how the fight was going, on what it means for you to be here, for the folks back home.”

  The marine stared for too long and finally said, “Well, sir. Here’s what I think. You know what you look like? In your little flak jacket and shiny helmet? I think you look like an asshole. Sir.”

  It happened. The number of interviews that go wrong, that amount to nothing, that end up not being used, subjects who don’t want to be asked questions. It happened.

  It’s just that they had been rolling. The camera had. That’s how you do it. You have to roll. It’s not scripted. You can’t go again. So you roll. Picture and sound. Ted was wearing a lav. A lavalier mic on his shirt and it picked up everything. It picked up the kid. Ted had forgotten about it.

  But now it was online. Someone had leaked it. And it was everywhere.

  You look like an asshole. Sir.

  Old news.

  The talk had been scheduled for six months. Despite the fact that it was to be held at the nation’s leading school of journalism, no one from the school seemed to have the remotest grasp on the news itself and how Ted speaking to graduate students might play. The paparazzi, though, were very much aware and made leaving his own building that morning difficult.

  From the back of the car service that the university had sent, Ted could see the crowd in front of Lerner Hall at 116th Street and Broadway, and he was praying it was a just another group of spoiled, self-righteous twenty-year-olds protesting the male-centric curriculum or the paucity of vegan options available in the dining commons. But he knew it was for him. The driver was looking at the crowd and Ted watched him put two and two together, watched him turn back.

  “You are the TV man, Fred!” he said, in an accent Ted couldn’t place, though he guessed Egypt.

  The man grinned, wide-eyed, as if Ted were an astronaut.

  “Ted.” Ted smiled back.

  “I have a story for you. For your news. Atom bomb.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Atom bomb. The weather. Global warming. The crazy weather is because of all the atom bomb America tested. You research. Is true.”

  The car came to a stop by the curb, where a woman with an especially large head, mid-forties, smiled and waved like a crazy person. The driver held up his cell phone and before Ted could say anything the man leaned back and took a selfie of his own lunatic smile and Ted’s furrowed brow. He tapped his phone a few times and said, “I put it on my Facebook.”

  The back door of the car opened, startling Ted, and the woman with the large head leaned halfway in.

  “Atom bomb, Fred,” the driver said. “Look it up.”

  “Hi, Ted!” the woman shouted. “Margo Litt from the School of Journalism. We spoke on the phone. I’m sorry, did he say ‘atom bomb’?”

  Margo had a forced smile on her face. Despite the cold, small beads of sweat dotted her hairline and upper lip. She shouted, as if Ted might be hard of hearing. Also, perhaps, to be heard above the noise of the chanting protestors outside. She kept moving farther into the car, one leg kneeling on the seat.

  “Atom bomb, yes,” the driver said. “Global warming atom bomb.”

  “I see,” Margo said to him. “Okay, then.” She turned to Ted. “We’ve got a larger-than-expected crowd, as you can see. Several networks are here as well.” This was said in a shout, despite the close quarters.

  “She was Polish, though,” the driver said. “The girl. Not Russian. Also not prostitute.”

  “Very factual,” Margo said, laughing too hard. “I like that. Shall we go?”

  Margo maneuvered herself out of the car, ass first, Ted following.

  The crowd was chanting, singsong, “Hey, ho, this we know, mi-sog-y-ny has got to go.”

  Ted knew crowds. War zones, protests, the Arab Spring, the quicksilver energy of crowds protesting, how it could change from good to bad, from positive to violent, in seconds. This one felt bad.

  He followed Margo as students held up their smartphones and recorded the man of the hour. Margo was still smiling but it was a nervous smile
as they moved through the crowd, many of the students grinning when they saw Ted, the magic of seeing a TV personality. One of Ted’s great strengths had always been his power to impress in person. Taller, broader shouldered, more handsome. He doesn’t seem like an angry, spittle-mouthed prostitute hater.

  They were joined by two of Columbia University security officers who, it seemed to Ted, were trying very hard to look serious and intimidating, though their ill-fitting uniforms didn’t help.

  The day had dawned sunny and clear but the weather had changed and it was colder now and windy, slate-gray sky, small patches of still-frozen black snow along the corners of the walkway, along the shrubbery, hearty daffodils giving fight. Ted was underdressed, Jack-Kennedy-sports-coat-only. The cold never bothered him but he’d gotten a chill and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. The officers led the way.

  “Ted, thank you so much for coming today,” Margo shouted. “We’re thrilled to have you, though I should tell you that it’s entirely possible we may cancel the talk, due to enormous pressure online. We’ll know shortly. There’s an emergency meeting of the deans. The student union has called for a boycott, which has only made ticket sales go through the roof.”

  Initially, Ted thought that a particularly large bird had shat on his back. But when it happened again and then again, he knew he was under attack. He heard the gasp from the crowd. “Oooohh!” He heard Margo Litt mutter, “What the . . . ?” He felt something hit him squarely in the forehead and he thought, My God, they’ve assassinated me. But guns don’t have onions and what was happening was that someone was throwing pierogi as an act of Eastern European defiance. People were laughing now as the airborne pierogi landed with a disgusting plop, most harmlessly exploding onto the pavement.

  Margo, clearly under pressure from a long morning, turned and shouted to the crowd. “You selfish, cocksucking little pricks!” (This, as with everything in the new world, was captured on a phone, uploaded to the internet, and would later require an apology and ultimately her forced resignation from a job she loved.)

  One of the security guards had tried to rush into the crowd but didn’t get far. The pierogi hurler had escaped, a story he and his buddies would tell for years to come, a defining life moment at reunions thirty years hence. “Dude. You nailed that guy. What was his name?”

  Margo and Ted made their way to the entrance of the hall and were joined by two of Margo’s colleagues, one of whom handed Ted and Margo paper towels to wipe off the stray beef and onion from their clothes. No one seemed to have a response for this, though the assistant laughed. Margo turned on the assistant. “I don’t know why an Ivy League–educated graduate student would throw an Eastern European dumpling at a grown woman! And I don’t find it funny.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They walked quickly now, through a key-card-access door that took them down a long corridor to the backstage of Roone Arledge Auditorium. Ted had met Roone once. A legend. Brought sports to prime time. Games used to be played only in the day. The man invented Monday Night Football.

  Ted was watching Monday Night Football on the night of December 8, 1980, with his father, at home in Woonsocket. The New England Patriots versus the Miami Dolphins. Ted was working at WPRI as a news writer, just out of school. It was late, after 11:00. The Patriots were driving, the score tied.

  Howard Cosell said, “We have to say it. Remember, this is just a football game. No matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City. John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash, which, in duty bound, we had to take.”

  Ted and his father turned and looked at each other. The impossibility of it. The electricity of it. The house phone rang and it was Ted’s friend Rick, from down the street. He’d been watching the game.

  “Are you watching this?”

  He was watching. The nation was watching. They were hanging on Howard Cosell’s voice, his words. He told the nation. Imagine that. The enormity of that. Of the knowing before others. The responsibility of it. Of how you share news people will never forget. That knowledge. That power. Ted wanted to be that person.

  * * *

  • • •

  They arrived at a large room backstage. Several students sat around a fortyish woman with long, wild, graying hair. She had olive skin and large green eyes and was the kind of woman who made you slow your pace in the street. Ted knew the face. Elena Wolff.

  Elena looked up and smiled.

  Margo said, “Elena. My God. They pelted us with pierogi.”

  Margo and Elena hugged.

  “At least they were fresh, not frozen,” Elena replied. Her entourage laughed as well. Ted noticed that there was a young man in the group. He was wearing makeup and a dress.

  “Where are my manners,” Margo said, remembering Ted was in the room. “Ted, meet Elena Wolff. I’m sure you know her work.”

  Elena beamed, a smile Ted mistook as flirtatious.

  “Of course,” Ted said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Ted,” Elena said, eyes squinted, an enigmatic look. So nice to meet you. Or, perhaps, Wow, you’re a cock.

  Elena Wolff held a chair in women’s studies at Columbia and lectured on gender in journalism at the graduate school. She’d authored four or five books, all best-sellers, and routinely made the talk show circuit, where her easygoing style, quick wit, and sharp mind cut other guests to pieces.

  “Elena’s filling in for Hugh Frankel,” Margo said.

  “What’s that?” Ted asked.

  “Should the talk go forward, we’ve taken the liberty of changing moderators.”

  “What happened to Hugh?”

  “The women reporters’ caucus felt that two white men onstage sent the wrong signal about the school, reporting, and the future of news.”

  “Yes,” Ted replied, confused. “But the talk is titled, ‘News: Where We’ve Been.’”

  “Fair point. But the ship has sailed.”

  Elena stood and her entourage stood with her.

  “Ted, if you’ll excuse me. This was a last-minute ask and I should prepare. I want to watch your YouTube clip again.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Noisy college students began filing into the auditorium. Ted watched them from the wings of the stage. Elena was off in a corner, backstage, huddled with her staff.

  Hugh Frankel appeared and walked up to Ted.

  “Hugh,” Ted said.

  They shook hands. Hugh looked pale.

  “Ted, I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Hugh had been a reporter for The Washington Post. He was maybe ten years older than Ted. He had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall as their Moscow bureau chief. Two Pulitzers. Now he taught a class or two, accepted a comfortable stipend, and tended a lovely garden on weekends with his wife at their home in Stonington, Connecticut.

  “The inmates are running the asylum. I just got off a conference call that would have made you vomit. They don’t want to do the talk.”

  “But . . .”

  “They want to make a statement.”

  “To the press?”

  “No. Ted. A political statement. They want to take a stand.”

  “On what?”

  “On you.”

  Elena walked over, on her way to the stage.

  “I’ll introduce you, Ted. Then we’ll chat. This is going to be fun.” She smiled and then walked onto the stage to huge applause.

  “Ted,” Hugh said. “You’re about to be ambushed.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Two massive screens sat behind her.
On one, live tweeting. On the other, live commenting from the journalism school’s Facebook page.

  “We live in an extraordinary time,” Elena began. “Perhaps all generations say that, but we are witnessing history every day. The speed of technology, the ability to communicate, the power of the masses to influence government and corporations, to map out the way we want to live, has never been more real.”

  Applause and hoots. Tweets, real time:

  Power to the people!!!

  You tell them, Elena!

  Fuck Ted and the old guard!

  And on and on.

  “This afternoon’s talk was originally titled ‘News: Where We’ve Been.’ But we know where we’ve been. John Cameron Swayze and a newscast sponsored by Camel cigarettes. He interviewed baseball players and they spoke about how they loved smoking Camels. David Brinkley and Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite and Hal Winship. Now. The names I’ve listed. There isn’t a vagina among them.”

  They laughed and cheered.

  Hugh had gone. And now Ted waited alone. Who says the word “vagina” out loud? Ted wondered.

  “Women in America,” Elena continued. “Women around the world. We are second-class citizens. Paid less. Asked to do more, in the home, at work, to look good, to look sexy, to be an object, to be quiet. And who demands this? Men. Men in charge of companies. Fewer than one in five members of Congress are women and yet we are fifty percent of the population. The vast majority are Democrats. Republicans simply won’t elect women to leadership roles. What about corporate America? Surely that’s a place where all you need is talent, right? Well, listen up, future journalists. This quote is from a recent issue of Fortune magazine. The headline: ‘Female Fortune 500 CEOs are poised to break a record in 2017.’ Wow, I thought. There’s hope. There’s change. Thank God. Except, in this country, in this time, ‘poised to break a record’ means that, out of five hundred CEO positions in America today . . .”