Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  Pause and then, “She isn’t there?”

  “Adele,” Langley called. She appeared at the door. “Have we seen or heard from Jessica Wright?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “No,” Langley said into the phone.

  “Oh,” Malbern said. “Sorry for yelling—bye.”

  Click.

  Blinking rapidly, Langley hung up the phone.

  “The Terror of Tucson,” Gordon said, citing Jessica Wright’s nickname as stated on a recent DBS press release.

  “The hints grow stronger, yes,” Langley murmured, standing up. He checked his watch. “You better get going.”

  “Right,” Gordon said, jumping up.

  Langley came around his desk and, putting a hand on Gordon’s shoulder, walked him to the door. “You have a child overseas, don’t you?” he asked.

  Gordon laughed. “I didn’t find him in a magazine ad.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind,” Gordon said, stopping at the door and turning around. “But, yes—I have a son,” he added, nodding. “Christopher. He lives in Paris. With his mother.”

  “So you’ll be able to see more of him this year,” Langley said.

  “Plan to,” Gordon said, smiling. Then he gave Langley the thumbs-up sign. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Great,” Langley said.

  When Gordon turned the corner, Langley sighed slightly, dug his hands into his pockets and leaned against the doorway. He couldn’t help wondering what Gordon would think if he knew the extraordinary lengths to which Jackson had gone to bring Alexandra to DBS. He wondered, too, if Gordon would notice that what Jackson had opted for as the best solution to the writers’ strike was the one that put the most miles between Gordon and Alexandra, and for the longest period of time.

  In the beginning, months before Alexandra had been shot, Langley had been all for hiring her and moving DBS News up a year. He approved of Jackson’s committing DBS to a crash schedule of preparations on the strength of a handshake, and he enthusiastically began negotiations with Alexandra’s agent, John Mohrbacher. Although Alexandra was so young and, at this point, still but a mere reporter (who had trouble getting on the air at that), the outside consultants Langley had employed had come back to him with audience reaction scores to Alexandra that were, they said, truly remarkable.

  Furthermore, aside from the jealousies that came with the profession, Alexandra’s reputation among her colleagues was excellent. The consensus was that she was fiercely bright, fast, reliable and fair. She was known as an extremely hard worker and an excellent writer. In fact the only real criticism they heard about her was that sometimes she operated out of a sense of entitlement so strong that employees who didn’t even work in her department were often found to be working on something for her. And happily so. To Jackson and Langley, this drawback in a reporter sounded like a terrific plus in an anchor.

  Mohrbacher told Langley that Alexandra had turned down five hundred and fifty thousand a year as a local anchor for WWKK to join The Network as a correspondent for two hundred thousand. The credential and national exposure had been worth it to her, Mohrbacher explained, but he wanted Langley to keep in mind that she could command six-fifty, easy, if she went back into major-market local news.

  They came to a preliminary agreement that Alexandra’s salary would be five hundred thousand the first year, escalating to a million in three, plus bonuses tied to gross revenues for DBS News. Fine. But then they got into the extent of Alexandra’s power within DBS News and the pleasant road of negotiation took a turn down what Langley later saw as Nightmare Alley. Mohrbacher made the most extraordinary demands—”She needs approval over the executive in charge of the news division”—and Langley said forget it and then Mohrbacher said, okay, forget it, and then Jackson started yelling that he wanted the contract settled and so then Mohrbacher started in again on Alexandra’s demands and Langley stood his ground…

  When by December they had not even reached a tentative agreement on the issues Mohrbacher claimed Alexandra would never back down on, Jackson flew down to Washington to straighten it out with her himself. And by the time he returned to West End, Langley had been near apoplexy.

  “Now what’s the matter?” Jackson had said, looking through his mail. “We wanted it settled. It’s settled.”

  Langley was so angry, for a moment he couldn’t speak. He took off his glasses, wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve and put his glasses back on. “That girl does not have a good effect on you,” he finally managed to say.

  “Alexandra’s a pleasure to deal with,” Jackson said. “She’s a professional.”

  “I’ll say,” Langley said.

  Jackson looked up from his mail.

  “Yesterday her salary was five hundred thousand,” Langley said, “today it’s over a million.” He tossed a sheaf of papers on Jackson’s desk.

  Jackson frowned. “What’s that?”

  “Mohrbacher faxed them to me,” Langley said. “They’re what he claims are her notes from your meeting.” He paused to collect himself, but his voice started to climb anyway. “They’re the thirty-eight contract clause revisions she says you approved.”

  “Well, Alexandra is a complicated kind of gal,” Jackson said diplomatically.

  “You’re handing a thirty-year-old nobody the news division!” Langley cried, slamming his hands down on Jackson’s desk. “Hire and fire approvals, co-copyright ownership on specials—and then there’s this lunacy about her own syndication arm overseas—”

  “I want her to be happy here,” Jackson said. “If it doesn’t work for her, it’s not going to work for us.”

  “Happy? Happy!” Langley fell backward into a chair, holding his head in hands. “We’re ruined, we’re ruined before we even start,” he moaned.

  Jackson reached down next to his chair and came up with a tin of Cheddar cheese popcorn. “You worry too much,” he said, prying off the lid. “No faith—no faith at all, Lang, that’s your problem.”

  Langley dropped his hands and stared at him for a long moment. And then he said, quietly, “She’s miserable at The Network, everybody knows that. She doesn’t want local news—she wants us, Jack. We can make her, no one else will and she knows it. All we have to do is wait and she’ll back down.” He sat forward in his chair. “Listen to me, Jack. There’s no reason to give Alexandra Waring all this. None.”

  Jackson, chewing, looked at him. “No reason,” he had finally said, swallowing, “except that I said I’d give it to her.” Pause. “So give it to her.”

  Langley walked across his office to reach the connecting door to Jackson’s office. They had had side-by-side offices for seventeen years, first in Richmond and now here at West End. They were on the second floor of Darenbrook I, looking straight out over the square, west, toward the river. It was dark outside now and, below, the old-fashioned lamps were on, casting a gentle light over the square. The waters of the Hudson were black, beautiful, reflecting the lights of New Jersey from across the way.

  Langley knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again and stuck his head in. “Sorry, Mr. Peterson,” Claire said. She was one of Jackson’s three assistants and was poking her head around the door leading to the outer office. “He’s left for the day.”

  Langley looked at his watch. It was only five-fifty. When he was in town, Jack usually hung around as long as he did, until seven-thirty or so. “Where’d he go?”

  “Do you know where he went?” Claire asked someone in the room behind her. Mumble, mumble. She turned back to Langley. “Randy says he thinks he went apartment hunting with Ms. Waring.”

  “Thanks,” Langley said, closing the door. He turned around and jammed his hands into his pockets, jingling change, thinking. And then he said, “Adele!”

  She appeared at the door. Adele had been his secretary for twenty years and Langley had yet to determine how old she was. She might have been sixty, but then, with her energy and dexterity, she might have b
een fifty and prematurely gray. Or maybe she was seventy—who knew? When the issue came up in personnel several years ago, Jackson declared that the statute of limitations had run out—if Adele had gone fifteen years without telling Darenbrook Communications how old she was, then she never had to.

  “Adele,” Langley said, “I want you to get Cassy Cochran on the phone. Use every number we have for her, but find her, please. It’s extremely important.”

  Cassy Cochran. The one major source of agreement between himself and Alexandra Waring—that they absolutely had to hire her away from WST to run DBS News. As the general manager credited for making WST the number one independent television station in America, no one had the clout with the indie—independent station—managers across the country that she did. And guess who desperately needed someone to recruit affiliate newsrooms? As one who had come up through the producing ranks of the newsroom, no one had more sympathies with the needs and temperaments of that group than she whom they called Mother Confessor. And guess who desperately needed a mother confessor for the news group? And as the executive responsible for budgets that both the station and its management could live with, few had ever been so well respected by both sides. And guess who desperately needed an executive who understood how to make a news operation compatible with the bottom line?

  Alexandra was convinced they could get her. According to her, Cassy had been bored in her job for years, longed to be near the newsroom again and for the first time in years was in a position to risk a move.

  Langley had been talking with Cassy for weeks now, at first stunned and then delighted as he realized that he liked and admired her as much as Alexandra did. But Cassy was taking a very long time with all this and didn’t seem much closer to taking the job or turning it down than she had been weeks ago.

  “Zero in on her age,” had been Alexandra’s latest suggestion. “Tell her—” She had paused, thinking for a minute. Then she had slowly leaned forward, a smile starting to emerge. “Tell her,” she said, “that forty-three is the perfect age to revolutionize television.”

  Then they had both laughed (because Langley was forty-three too), and then they had both frowned—looking at, each other—as if they were sharing the same thought: that there was no way in hell the two of them were going to revolutionize anything until they got a Cassy or someone to act as a go-between for them. Langley didn’t know anything about TV news; Alexandra didn’t know anything about business at Darenbrook Communications; they didn’t know how the hell to deal with each other.

  Adele located Cassy Cochran on her first try. She was in her office down the street at WST. “Mrs. Cochran on one!” Adele called.

  Langley walked over to his desk and snatched up the phone. “Cassy,” he said.

  “Langley,” she said, not missing a beat.

  “This is what is called a pressure tactic,” he said.

  “I see,” she said.

  “Are you coming with us, yes or no?”

  She laughed.

  He smiled. He imagined exactly how she looked as she laughed. Cassy Cochran was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. It had come as somewhat of a shock to him when he first met her; he had never known a woman like her to make a career off camera. (“She was always frightened by what happened to women who traded on their looks, I think,” Alexandra had said.)

  “Listen, Langley,” Cassy said, “you’re the one who’s been hiding Jackson Darenbrook from me—yes or no?”

  He hesitated and then thought, What the hell. “Yes. Alexandra and I thought he might be a little—unconventional for your tastes.” And then he quickly added, “But now we want you to meet with him. Look, Cassy,” he said, raising one leg to sit on the edge of his desk, “truth is, if you don’t come to DBS, I’m going to have to drown Alexandra. She signed for a million dollars’ worth of equipment today and hired fourteen people who I haven’t the slightest idea what they do.”

  She laughed, softly. “I know. She told me.”

  “She did?” Langley said.

  “I think her strategy is to make me do the job whether I take it or not,” Cassy said.

  “Wait a minute,” Langley said, standing up. “Do you mean to tell me that you actually know something about these fourteen people?”

  “I suggested nine of them,” Cassy said.

  Someone was tapping Langley on the shoulder. He turned; it was Adele.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pointing to the blinking light on the phone. “But it’s about Mrs. Peterson—”

  Langley’s stomach turned over. He recognized Adele’s expression. Something had happened again. Something bad.

  “Cassy,” he said, “excuse me. Hold on and Adele will set up a time to meet with Jackson. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go—I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He pressed Hold. “Set up a meeting for Mrs. Cochran with Jack. See if you can do it for tomorrow.”

  Adele retreated from the office and, after looking back at him once more, closed the door behind her.

  Langley sighed, held the bridge of his nose for a second and then pushed the button down on the line. “This is Langley Peterson,” he said.

  “Mr. Peterson, my name’s Robbie Jones and I work in the building of a friend of your wife’s, Mrs. Bell.”

  “Yes;” Langley said, swallowing.

  “Well, sir,” he said, “the Bells are away and um, well, your wife told me to call you—”

  “Where is she? Is my wife there?” Langley said.

  “She’s in a room off the lobby—um, the doorman is with her—”

  “Where’s the chauffeur?” Langley said. “Isn’t the chauffeur with her?”

  “No, Mr. Peterson. There didn’t seem to be anyone with your wife when she, um, arrived. And she’s kind of worked up, excited—you know.” He took a breath. “We didn’t think she should be on the streets—alone, I mean—and, um, she gave us your number.”

  “You did the right thing,” Langley said quickly. “Where are you?”

  “Nine eighty-six Fifth.”

  “I’ll be right there. Tell her I’ll be right there. And—and thanks,” he said. He hung up the phone and sat there a moment. And then he called, “Adele!” He grabbed his briefcase and started stuffing papers into it. When Adele’s head popped in, he said, “Tell them to bring my car around—and fast.” He finished packing stuff in, closed the briefcase, slipped on his jacket and walked quickly out of his office.

  He had to hurry. His wife was in trouble.

  His wife, Belinda Darenbrook Peterson.

  5

  Cassy Cochran

  “You’re supposed to feel frightened,” Cassy Cochran’s therapist said. “That’s how human beings feel when they consider changing jobs after fifteen years.”

  “But I don’t know why,” Cassy said. “It’s not as if it were some kind of fly-by-night outfit. And this is what I’ve wanted—for years I’ve wanted to do something in news again.” She paused, staring down at the carpet for a moment, and then raised her eyes. “And I honestly think it can work—that I can make it work. Michael thinks so too—he thinks I’m crazy for hemming and hawing like this.”

  “But Michael doesn’t know everything that is involved,” the therapist said quietly. “And Michael has always had you to fall back on—he’s always been able to depend on you at your job at WST. And right now it doesn’t seem wise for you to depend…” The therapist waved her hand, indicating that she need not remind Cassy of the uncertainty in that area of her life.

  “If I take this job, I couldn’t depend on anything. I mean, my contract, but…” Cassy said quietly. “Well, no, that’s not true,” she reconsidered. “Actually, it all comes down to Alexandra, doesn’t it?” She paused, looking to the window, biting her lower lip slightly, thinking. “I find it so strange that the thought of working with her only gives me the most incredible sense of relief.” She looked at the doctor. “It makes me feel as though I have somewhere to go. Somewhere other than where I feel like I’ve been stuck for so
long.” She pressed her forehead with one hand, closing her eyes. “I so hate feeling as though everyone is moving ahead in their life but me. I hate that feeling of being stuck, of being left behind.” She lowered her hand and opened her eyes. “Poor old Cassy,” she said with a sigh, “that’s what I hear in my head every time one of these bright young things comes and goes at ST.”

  “But it’s not true,” the therapist said. “And you know that, don’t you?” She paused and then asked, “How do you think Alexandra views you?” She smiled. “Is hers a mission of mercy, do you suppose, to rescue you from being stuck?”

  “She’s certainly not going to last long in this business if it is,” Cassy said, laughing. She shook her head and recrossed her legs, smiling still. “No, I see what you’re getting at. No, I don’t think she thinks of me as being stuck.” Her smile expanded. “At the moment she thinks I’m willfully withholding a valuable contribution to her career.”

  The doctor nodded. “Not once, not once in all these weeks have you said anything about being scared you can’t do the job.”

  Cassy shrugged. “That’s not one of my fears.”

  The doctor smiled.

  Cassy checked her watch. “I better get going.” She got up. “I really appreciate your making time to see me this morning.”

  “I think it’s wonderful, Cassy,” the doctor said, standing up and walking her to the door. “Whatever you decide to do—I think it’s wonderful that you’re willing to contemplate making a change.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “Good luck,” the doctor said.

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know what happens.” Cassy closed the office door behind her, walked through the waiting room and out to the lobby. When her son, Henry, was still in private school in the city, Cassy used to come to this very same posh East 74th Street building for board meetings at the apartment of the longtime school board president, Beatrice Barenberg. Every time Cassy came and went to her therapist’s office, she’d wonder if today was the day she’d run into Beatrice. (“Oh, my dear,” she imagined Beatrice saying, “simply marvelous idea, getting your head examined. Should have done it years ago.”)