Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  Whatever the origins of the conflict—and neither Daniel nor Aya would comment on it—one thing was clear: If Driscoll got the job, Daniel would not only be humiliated, he’d be ousted.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Sam.”

  Daniel stood in the open doorway, tie loose, wrinkled shirtsleeves rolled up his forearms. Sixteen hours in the edit suite had etched his face with fatigue. He always stayed until the bitter end of a final mix-down.

  He dropped into a wing chair, elbows on his knees, and kneaded his neck. “We had trouble locking up the track.”

  Sam walked over to the conversation area and sat in the center of the sofa, cowboy boots on the rug, arms stretched out along the back. “I’m putting myself out to pasture,” he said. “Retiring, last day of August.”

  Daniel looked as though the cheese fell off his cracker.

  “I want to leave while I still have time left to ride the trails with Mae,” Sam explained.

  Daniel mustered a smile. “Congratulations, Sam. It’s well-deserved. Tell your wife I’m happy for her.”

  At this point, Sam thought, most men would be wondering if they were about to be promoted. Apparently, it didn’t even occur to Daniel.

  All the more reason to shake him the hell up. Maybe what Sam was about to do was a mistake. Maybe Daniel had become a dog that wouldn’t hunt. Maybe Sam would get him killed. “There’s something I want us to do before I leave,” Sam said.

  Daniel stroked the day’s stubble on his face. “How can I help?”

  “I want to go out with flying colors. At the top of the heap, with you at the helm,” he said. “This series of yours can soar. I want you to make the pilot a knockout and get us an Emmy.”

  “I don’t see how that differs from what I usually do,” he replied cautiously. “The hallway’s full of Emmys.”

  Right. But none from the past two years. Daniel was turning out excellent—but not extraordinary—programming.

  Sam studied his boots. Daniel needed a kick in the butt. Driscoll was going to walk away with his job. But Sam wasn’t going to tell him that yet. “I want you to go to Kavsak with Brenna Rease and write the piece yourself.”

  Daniel jerked his head up, thunderstruck. Where the hell did that come from? Was Sam nuts? Daniel hadn’t written copy in years, and now all of a sudden Sam was proposing a refresher course? In a war zone? With Brenna Rease?

  “Christ Almighty, Sam.”

  “You need to get back to basics. Find the fire in the story. Build it like you used to, from the ground up.”

  “Geoff Garrett’s writing it.”

  “I saw what he sent you today. Cow-patties. And you know it. Backgrounders you could have downloaded from the Internet. Leaving him on this is a mistake. Your name’s on this. Mine. Brenna Rease’s, too. You’re squandering your first line with a bench-warmer.”

  “I hate parachute journalism. I know nothing about Kavsak. It would be presumptuous to write as if I did.”

  “This is a story about the human heart, not politics. You have a heart. You’re qualified,” Sam retorted. “Besides, what you don’t know Brenna Rease can fill you in on.”

  “She going to fill me in on getting killed, too?”

  Sam lowered his voice. “I’m not ordering you to go. I’m…strongly recommending.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you sold me on this segment, you said it was for Aya. Seems to me that makes it personal. Not something to hand off.”

  Daniel twined his fingers and stared at them while Sam’s words evaporated into a long silence.

  Aya had been a producer in her own right, smart, hard-working, intuitive. Where he grappled for meaning, she had flashes of insight. His work shone, hers was brilliant. As far back as grad school, she’d been a driven woman—so rigidly self-disciplined, his own conscientious work habits looked shabby by comparison.

  Never had that been more noticeable than when—after two tempestuous years as co-editors of the prestigious Columbia Review of Journalism—they became lovers. Too preoccupied indulging his considerable sex drive to make it to all his classes, he had narrowly avoided getting ditched from the Dean’s List. Aya, however, had kept her 4.0 GPA solidly nailed. She steadfastly made it to every tutorial. She got up to study when he dismounted her and slumbered.

  Daniel scowled, thinking about how he had entreated her to join him. Come on, sweetheart. Sleep with me. I want to hold you.

  There was so much he hadn’t understood then about what it was like for her as a Japanese-American woman. But Aya had always realized that, after the degrees were conferred and they emerged from his tiny apartment, he would be the All-American Golden Boy and she’d be thought of as a ‘China Doll.’

  The love they made in his cramped apartment did not alter the facts. His ancestors had come home from World War II as heroes while hers had sat shame-faced behind fences, relocated, stripped of their property, vilified for their ancestry despite their birth on American soil.

  History had humiliated the Tanakas, and Aya inherited their disgrace. Despite her feminism, despite her American ways, the family’s dishonor had become her own. Trying to erase the indelible, she had sworn never to be found wanting beyond the shape of her eyes.

  Sam didn’t know the half of it. He didn’t know how badly Hugh Driscoll had ground Aya’s spirit down. Driscoll hired her because she was soft-spoken and tiny and he thought she would be docile. Then he’d discovered her astonishing talent, her steel will, her staunch but not confrontative feminism. Afraid of being overshadowed by her brilliance, he settled for thwarting her at every turn. He assigned her the dullest subjects, kept her on the shortest leash of all his producers, and ensured that she rarely found her own expression.

  Sam had no idea how many times Aya had come home fighting tears and locked herself in the bathroom, scrubbing away her day with Driscoll. Sam hadn’t seen her emerge, precariously restored, pretending that nothing had happened. Aya was proud, more Japanese than she admitted, and by never letting her succeed, Driscoll had humiliated her.

  It hung between Daniel and Aya that with the same credentials, more talent, and extraordinary effort she had achieved only a moderate success. Her career had faltered and his had soared. Her family had warned her, argued against an inter-racial marriage, saying it doomed her to inequality at home as well as in society, but she had gone against them—and set herself adrift between two worlds.

  Daniel knew how much love and trust their union represented, and he worked assiduously never to betray it. Still, the struggle took its toll. Aya became painfully vulnerable to comparisons of their respective achievements.

  Try as they did to conceal it, Hugh Driscoll picked up on it. During the National Capital Broadcasters Association awards, he twisted the knife, subjecting them to a cruel public test of their ability to survive as spouses when their professional achievements were at such odds.

  The annual dinner was part fund-raiser, part awards, and part networking. Careers were made and lost during that pivotal gathering, where the secrecy surrounding the nominations ensured the greatest possible attendance.

  Aya looked iridescent that night, like a shimmering hummingbird admired for its delicacy while its Herculean migrations were left unremarked. She wore a midnight-blue crepe-silk dress, and he could still recall how the rustle and scent of her left him in a pleasant state of arousal all night long.

  As president of the association that year, Hugh Driscoll claimed executive privilege, electing to present the plaque for Best News Documentary. No one was more surprised than Daniel when Driscoll announced him as a nominee for the hour-long piece he had produced on public education.

  “Oh, Daniel!” Aya beamed, running her hand proudly across his shoulders.

  But Driscoll was not finished “—And our second nominee ... This Doorway Called Home, Aya Tanaka, Producer.”

  The members of the press who knew that Daniel and Aya were married gasped. A buzz spread through the hall.

  Aya t
urned ashen, the glitter of her smile extinguished. Her eyes met Daniel’s in horror, her worst nightmare come true. She blindly pushed her chair back, her face burning, tears brimming in her eyes. Daniel’s hand shot across and caught her elbow in steel fingers, arresting her departure. Pulling her down again before she was seen to have risen, he leaned rapidly into her, obstructing her face from general view with what looked like a congratulatory remark.

  “Fuck him,” he said.

  Aya struggled in his grip, a muted choke in her throat, but he didn’t release her. Don’t run out crying, he wanted to say. They’ll never forgive you. But how could he tell her not to show her woman’s heart when that was what he loved the most?

  Aya relented, her chin quivering momentarily before she regained her composure. He took her hands in his and kissed them, never taking his eyes from hers.

  “And the winner is—” Driscoll paused dramatically, drawing out the moment “—Daniel Ellsworth, for School’s Out!”

  The crowd applauded. He was shoulder-slapped by a dozen unseen hands but he never took his gaze from his wife’s beautiful hurt face.

  And he did not rise.

  “Daniel—” someone prompted.

  Driscoll waited for him at the dais, plaque in hand.

  Daniel shook his head, not wanting it. Not like that, at Aya’s expense. His piece was good, but hers was better, done while Driscoll was overseas on an extended assignment.

  The applause died down around them, gradually replaced by an uneasy silence.

  Driscoll leaned into the mike again. “Daniel Ellsworth,” he repeated.

  Daniel did not budge. He didn’t care if it insulted the association. He didn’t care if it was professional suicide. He would not accept this award. Aya came first.

  She leaned forward, taking his face in her hands. “It isn’t that you don’t deserve it,” she said. “That has never been it. Never.”

  He shook his head, adamant in his refusal.

  Aya stood, rested her cool fingertips momentarily on his cheek and mouthed his own words back to him.

  Fuck him.

  Then she walked to the dais, head high, back straight, and rose on her toes to speak into the microphone.

  “Daniel has asked me to accept this award on his behalf,” she said, “and it is with great pride in him and in his work that I do so. Thank you.”

  A dumbfounded Driscoll handed her the award.

  The room burst into a chaos of cheers and applause so tumultuous that Aya was scarcely able to navigate her way back to her husband. He stood, caught her in his arms when she returned.

  “You’re the best,” he said, voice husky in her ear, drawing her into himself so tightly he nearly lifted her from the floor. “I’m so proud of you, Aya. I always have been.”

  Daniel never forgot the look of pure hatred Aya had shot Driscoll that night.

  “What do you say?” Sam repeated. “Will you go?”

  Daniel blinked, mentally returning to his office and his boss’ question.

  Yes. For Aya, he would go.

  He would complete her project—the last story Driscoll had tried to thwart, the one she had vowed to make even though it meant leaving his employ and bearing the dishonor of that apparent retreat. He would finish the project that would have freed Aya at last from Hugh Driscoll.

  “Jeez, Sam. Three fun-filled days and nights in a war zone with Brenna Rease? Did I win a contest?”

  The gravel along the C & O Canal towpath crunched beneath Brenna’s Nikes in a satisfying cadence. It was six a.m. on a cool blue morning, and she was verging on elation. Motion, at last! Not breathing hard, she was in a groove. She felt like she could fly like this, hour after hour. It was coming back!

  It had been difficult, at first, working through the stiffness and the impact of every jarring step on her bruises. But she had reached for it and found the familiar pattern.

  It pleased her that she could do this. Made her feel in control. Coping with physical discomfort was a constant in her life. On a typical assignment, she shouldered twenty-some pounds of gear, then moved it fast, over uneven terrain, often under fire. At six feet, she was hardly a fragile woman, but she routinely worked at the extreme limits of her physical strength and under duress.

  She had no illusions about how that ability was achieved, and she trained obsessively to maintain it. Fitness didn’t just feel good. It kept her alive.

  Her feet kept up the steady pat-pat-pat. Maybe she would extend her planned run to her usual eight miles. Her watch beeped. Damn. Time to turn around. She was meeting Ellsworth at his office at eight to sign the contract. She turned back.

  At home, she took a luxuriously-long hot shower and stepped out of her claw-footed bathtub, still invigorated from the run.

  Picking through a closet-full of long-forgotten clothes, she impulsively pulled out a silky navy blue wrap dress. It would feel delicious, she decided, a welcome change from the canvas and leather she normally wore for protection. It was a luxury to live in a peaceful country. She should take advantage of it while she could.

  Slipping it over her hips, cool and soft, she checked herself in the mirror. It still worked. The cut was timeless, simplicity itself, accentuating her body without overtly calling attention to it. Adding hosiery, modest pumps, and a navy jacket with a gold lapel pin, she grabbed her leather organizer and left the house.

  Daniel had worked late for the third night in a row, slept through his alarm, and rousted himself from his tangled sheets with scarcely enough time to shower, dress, and stop by Starbucks on the way to work.

  Hands loaded with his briefcase, coffee, and files from Mildred, he toed his office door open, unburdened himself at his desk, then put his feet up, praying that Brenna Rease would be late. He felt vaguely uneasy. Just five minutes. That’s all he wanted. Five minutes for coffee and he’d be ready to face her.

  He pried the lid off his cup and lifted the steaming brew to his mouth. He took a tentative sip, unsure if it was still too hot.

  Brenna Rease stepped, unannounced, into his open doorway.

  He took one look at her and inhaled his drink.

  Turned out it was scalding. So he spat it out. And sprayed his Prada suit.

  He leapt to his feet, sputtering, unsure whether to rescue his burning mouth, his suit, or his dignity. Dignity, he decided. Enough with the graceless dance. He straightened, smoothing his tie, and looked at her again.

  Christ.

  She was wearing one of those silky dresses that draped over a woman’s breasts and hips.

  “Your cup is tipping, Ellsworth.”

  He looked down. Coffee dribbled through his fingers.

  “Ah.”

  She stared at him, expressionless.

  He held his dripping hand away from his suit and rummaged through the papers on his desk for a napkin. “Er...why don’t you have a seat. I’ll ask Mildred to get you coffee.”

  “No. No coffee.”

  “Perrier? Juice?” He found a napkin and wiped his fingers.

  “I’d rather get down to business.”

  Brenna stepped forward and came in, inexplicably to his relief. He retrieved her thick file from his desk, and settled himself toward one end of the sofa, thinking she might want to sit next to him as he explained the paperwork.

  Showing none of the stiffness he had noticed during her first visit, she took the wing chair across from him. Back straight, wrists resting on the arms of the seat, she crossed one lovely knee over the other, and scrutinized him with that impenetrable gaze of hers.

  He set the laden folder on the coffee table.

  Her eyes cut to the dossier. She frowned.

  “All of these documents together will comprise the terms of our agreement,” he explained, unclipping the first set of contracts in the stack, and sliding her copy across the table, along with a pen.

  Brenna made no move to take them.

  “I thought you might want to sign as we go.”

  “I want to hea
r it first, Ellsworth. Every splendid word.”

  “Er...hear?”

  “Yes. Read it to me.”

  “Wouldn’t it—”

  “No. It wouldn’t.”

  Doubting he could dissuade her, Ellsworth pulled at the knot in his tie. Suddenly, it felt too tight.

  He read for nearly two hours, clause after clause, document after document, adding comments where he thought they might be necessary. These were the standards of his profession, documents he had always accepted as the way of doing business. These were the disclaimers, the limitations, the waivers of corporate liability upon which all of his transactions rested. But they were more than that, and he began to regret having included every contract in his arsenal. Read aloud, they were excessive and self-serving.

  Sam would be pissed as hell if this fell through.

  He paused, sipped cold coffee, and picked up the last two sheets. “I hereby grant ... irrevocable right to forever use ... my name, face, likeness, appearance, voice, actions, activities, career, and experiences ... in perpetuity throughout the world ... in any medium now in existence or...”

  Brenna, her fingers drumming on the armrest, loosed an aggravated sigh. “I’m taking the pictures, Ellsworth, not appearing in them. Why the Personal Release?”

  “We’re paying for your name, Ms. Rease. We intend to promote it—and your likeness. To that end, we’ve also asked you to commit to attend the corporate sponsors’ premiere at the Kennedy Center later this summer.”

  Her patience for the wing chair exhausted, she strode to the window. “In other words, I’m a product,” she said tightly.

  “No,” he said. “The program is the product. You’re the attachment.” Without the Rease name, he didn’t say, she was ‘Brand X’.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. I’ve decided I’m going with you. I’m writing the piece myself.”

  She looked up sharply. “What happened to Garrett?”

  “He’ll help me with the research.”

  “I work alone.”

  “I appreciate that it may be your usual style, Ms. Rease, but this project requires you to work with me.” He would not negotiate the point. This was for Aya. He was going. He set the final pages atop the folder and squared the edges.