What will Jessica be like tonight? Will she be the gentle young woman of sympathetic murmurings or the guffawing Minnie Pearl of Country Western TV? The straitlaced Eastern dilettante or the screaming fishwife who seems to be appearing with increasing frequency of late? Well, regardless of whatever difficulties the twenty-five-year-old may have in controlling herself these days, there is one question burning brightly in the heart of every red-blooded American male who was watching the other night: When will Jessica wear that dress again?
The dress in question was one Jessica had borrowed from a waitress in the El Pueblo restaurant next door fifteen minutes before air time one night. Jessica had spent the day with some man in Sabino Canyon and, although her head had been quite messed up, she hadn’t been so out of it as not to know that she shouldn’t show up at the studio in a torn halter top, clay-stained shorts, hiking boots and anti-snakebite socks. The dress had fit very well everywhere except in the bust, where Jessica’s considerable endowment had stretched and strained the whole upper part of the dress into rather indecent proportions.
But Jessica went on, running and running, cracking clever remarks anywhere, everywhere—on the show, to the bank teller, to the ceiling, she just couldn’t turn it off—and she razzled and dazzled and grew more outrageous on her show, pushing her ratings higher, promising herself that if she didn’t feel better soon she would simply kill herself. And she nearly did one night—the night her husband Gary slapped her across the face so hard at a party at Denny’s that she fell backward off the patio stairs, cracking her head on the cement by the pool—only Denny broke down the bathroom door and stopped her from hacking her wrists (oh, God, a safety razor—wouldn’t you know that was what he would have?).
The following dawn, sitting on a rock at Gate’s Pass, watching the sun come up, Jessica decided she had had enough. She could die now, at twenty-six, or she could try to make some changes in her life.
And so she made some changes.
She quit cocaine, threw out her pot; she quit Gary and threw him out too (and his cocaine and his pot and his pills), went into therapy and felt quite a bit better.
The show would never be as manic as it had been up to that point, but then it did get more understandable again. Her eighteen-to-thirty-four audience remained loyal, but she started to pick up—of all things—senior citizens too. (Sun City, a retirement community, gave her an award as “Outstanding Young Person on Television.”) She was able, at long last, to take the show on the road once in a while and it was on such a trip last year, to L.A., just after she and Denny had been talking about how much they needed a change, that they met Jackson Darenbrook. DBS seemed to them both to be the exact kind of change and challenge they needed and negotiations had begun.
And so here she was, Jessica Wright, finally out of Tucson, here at DBS in New York—three and a half weeks late but, as she kept trying to explain to the president of DBS (who looked exactly like Mr. Mitchell, Dennis the Menace’s father), she was late because she had a chance to get an exclusive interview. But Langley—or Mr. Mitchell or whatever his name was—wasn’t buying it. He was angry because he thought Jessica had disappeared to protest Bertie Flotsheim being hired as her executive producer and was only showing up now because she had heard they’d bought out Flotsheim’s contract.
Well, it was true; Jessica had thrown a fit when she heard DBS had hired Flotsheim. She had never even met the man but would hate him forever anyway. Flotsheim had once worked at a station in Los Angeles and Jessica had seen a copy of the memorandum he wrote to his station manager about why they shouldn’t take “The Jessica Wright Show.” It had said, in its entirety, “Big tits, but so’s her mouth—I’d pass.”
Jessica had already signed her DBS contract at that point and had no say over her executive producer, but she told her agent to tell Jackson that, much as she loved him, she’d go to hell before she’d ever work with Bertie Flotsheim. And when her agent reported back that there was nothing they could do, that Flotsheim’s contract had been signed, well—okay, yes, that part was true, she had decided to go down to Palumboca, Mexico, to give everyone a little to think about. But that wasn’t why she had stayed down there and it wasn’t why she was so late arriving.
“Okay,” Langley sighed, “start from the beginning.”
So she did.
Jessica explained how she had driven down to a fishing village, Palumboca, in Mexico, to cool off for a few days, and how early one morning she accidentally backed her car into the Gulf of Mexico, and then how, down at the police station, she got into a terrible argument with the police because they started taking her car apart—literally, bolt by bolt, piece by piece—looking for drugs, and how, by screaming in Spanish, “You stupid fucking shitheads, I haven’t done drugs in two years!” she landed in jail.
“You’ve been in jail all this time?” he asked her, horrified.
“Oh, not jail-jail,” she explained. “It was more like a motel, really. Actually, it was a motel. It was built in the fifties when they thought they were going to get legalized gambling and—” She cleared the air with her hand. “Never mind. Anyway, it wasn’t so bad—I just had to write checks all day and send out for beer and pizza, but then the mayor’s wife came over to play backgammon and invited me to stay in their pool house—’cause the police chief is the mayor’s brother—and so I went and that’s when I found Richard Barnes.”
“Richard Barnes—the writer?” Langley said.
Yes, Jessica meant Richard Barnes, the novelist who had won the Pulitzer Prize in the sixties, went through five wives in seven years and then disappeared from public life and from whom no one had heard since 1978. And Jessica had found him. He lived in a converted fishing hut by the beach in Palumboca and came over to garden with the mayor’s wife twice a week.
Barnes took a great liking to Jessica and came over daily to drink tequila and play Ping-Pong, and every day Jessica would urge him to do an interview with her. At first he said he would never do another interview as long as he lived, but a few days later said that if he ever did decide to do an interview he’d do it with her. And then he started talking about how, if he ever did do an interview, he supposed he could set the record straight on all those stories people had written about him in their memoirs. (“Liars, all of ‘em,” he growled, “writers.”)
“And so,” Jessica said, concluding her tale, “I stayed as long as it took to convince him to do an interview with me. And he did. And I have it right here,” she said, patting her leather bag. “Four hours.”
Langley started making phone calls while Jessica sat there in his office, periodically running both of her hands back through her hair, making her gold bracelets jangle and Langley look at her. Then he would look away—while talking into the phone—and then he would try to sneak another look at her (she knew what he was looking at), but Jessica would catch him at it and wink at him and so finally he turned his chair away from her.
“Jessica baby!” Jackson cried, flinging open the door from his office. “I just got in from the West Coast and here you are!”
“Hi, Jackie,” she said, standing up to receive a hug.
And then in through the other door came a great-looking blond lady, about forty or so.
“Oh, no,” Jackson groaned, releasing Jessica. “She’s my friend,” he said to the lady. “Go away.”
“Jessica’s brought an interview with Richard Barnes,” Langley said to the lady, hanging up the phone and standing up. “I was hoping you might help us decide what to do with it since she no longer has an executive producer.”
“Hello, Jessica,” the blonde said to her, taking her hand. “I’m Cassy Cochran. Richard Barnes—how on earth did you find him? Where is he? How long is the interview? It’s on videotape, right?”
“Cassy’s the president of DBS News, as well as the executive producer for ‘News America Tonight,’ “ Langley explained.
“News, huh?” Jessica said, turning to look at her again. “I did bring my pro
ducer with me—Denny.”
“Then let’s go find Denny,” Cassy said, “and let me find our producer, Kyle, and then we’ll run some of the tape, see what you’ve got and start talking about what we should do with it.”
Jessica looked at Jackson. “But you’re not on the air yet, are you?”
“Not yet, sweetiest pie,” Jackson said, giving her hair a playful tug. “But soon.”
“Maybe sooner than we know,” Cassy said. To Langley, “If it’s good enough, we might have a special on our hands.”
“It’s good enough,” Jessica said without hesitation.
“Then let’s go,” Cassy said, taking Jessica’s arm.
“Wait a minute—hold on, Mrs. Cochran,” Jackson said, taking Cassy’s hand off Jessica’s arm and holding her by the wrist. “Jessica here’s a real nice girl and I’m gonna be real upset with you if you let the dogs drag her under the house.”
“If the what drag me where?” Jessica said.
‘Just ignore him,” Cassy said, yanking her arm away from Jackson and reaching for the leather bag. “The tapes are in here, right?”
“Creeping catfish, Jessica honey,” Jackson said, snatching the bag out of Cassy’s hand and handing it back to Jessica, “you’re gonna have to do a lot better than this if you’re going to hold on to your special.”
“Will you stop it?” Cassy said, giving Jackson a shove, making him laugh.
“Cassy you can trust,” Langley said to Jessica. “It’s Alexandra you have to watch out for.”
“Oh, stop it, you two,” Cassy said, taking Jessica’s arm and pulling her to the door. “Come on, let’s go find your Denny. Langley, I’ll call you as soon as we know what we’ve got.” And then, once they were out the door, she called back, “And then both of you might want to come down.”
As they made their way down to Sub Level 2, Cassy told Jessica that, when it came to her show, she thought it would be best if Jessica didn’t pay too much attention to anything Jackson said. She also told her that Langley Peterson tended to view matters in financial terms as opposed to content and aesthetics, so until Jessica got herself an executive producer Denny should talk to Langley for her, or, if need be, Cassy would. Then she started in on how wonderful Alexandra Waring was, how talented she was, how much Jessica would like her…
It always amazed Jessica how otherwise very smart people were very dumb when it came to talking to one TV personality about how great another one was. Why Cassy thought she wanted to hear about how wonderful Alexandra Waring was, was beyond her—particularly on the unspoken premise that, as an anchorwoman, Alexandra’s work was much more important than her own. To Jessica, Cassy might as well have said, “You’ll be delighted to know that Alexandra’s not the kind to mind stooping so low as to associate with the likes of you.”
Yeah, well, if Alexandra Waring was so high and mighty, then why, Jessica wanted to know, had she chosen TV? Didn’t journalists go into TV for the same two reasons that all performers—actors, announcers, puppeteers—did, for money and exposure? And did Cassy think the insecurity and ego of an Alexandra Waring were really so different from that of a Jessica Wright? Yeah, right! Try telling Alexandra Waring how absolutely wonderful Jessica Wright was and watch her eyes. And at least Jessica talked to people on the air—what could one make of someone who only talked at people?
When they got downstairs they found that Denny was already with the senior producer of DBS News, Kyle McFarland. Kyle was a nice guy and sort of good-looking (not much hair though), and said that Jessica was right, she did hear a trace of an English accent. He had gone to school in England for six years as a boy. Then Jessica noticed Kyle’s wedding ring and her pleasantries eased to a stop, and she handed the tapes to Denny.
Denny wore a wedding ring too, only his spouse was a man—an innovation one wouldn’t suspect until one was invited to his home for dinner. Bill (Denny’s other half) was a geologist and, while it was a tremendously esteemed profession in the Southwest, it was unclear how well Bill would do in New York City. So this move had not been an easy decision for the couple to make and Jessica prayed it would work out, because Jessica didn’t know what she would do without the man who not only had given her a career but who had made it possible for her to live to survive her life in general.
While Kyle and Denny went off together, Cassy gave her a whirlwind tour of the floor. It was something—engineering, the satellite room, graphics lab, audio lab, editing bays, the control room, the newsroom, the news conference room—and by the time Jessica walked into Studio A itself she could feel her heart starting to pound because—oh, yeah—she could feel it in the air, feel that it was soon to happen. The red light would soon be going on for DBS.
But while there were carpenters and electricians and workers hammering and snipping and banging in and around Studio A, except for the lighting grid (with no lights attached), there was no one and nothing in Studio B next door. ‘This is why everyone was so anxious for you to arrive,” Cassy said. “You’ve got to figure out what kind of set you want and the seating arrangement for your studio audience. See,” she said, pointing to the gray burlap-covered wall, “this wall retracts to open on to Studio A. Your permanent set will be right on the other side of this wall. And so the audience will be in risers, or whatever you want, over here. And they’ll enter and exit the complex from there too.” She was pointing to the far wall of Studio B, where there were three sets of double doors.
Cassy turned to her. “You really need to let them hire an executive producer for you—like yesterday, Jessica.”
Jessica nodded. “Why can’t Denny be it?”
“He’s already turned it down,” Cassy said.
“He did? When?”
“While you were away,” Cassy said. “Langley offered it to him, but he said he loved the floor too much.” She smiled. “He also said he despised budgets and so Langley quickly retracted the offer.”
Jessica looked at her. “For someone who runs the news, you sure seem to know a lot about my show.”
Cassy laughed. “Well, that’s why I’m in news, Jessica,” she said, taking her arm to move on, “I need to know everything.”
Jessica liked her. And Jessica was impressed by the tour. Compared with the facilities here, the Group K studios looked like a high school audiovisual club.
They saw the greenroom (the room—which in this case was going to be blue—where studio guests waited to go on), makeup, and a series of dressing rooms, the second of which Cassy stopped in front of. JESSICA WRIGHT, the sign said. When Jessica’s eyes traveled to the first door, the one that said, ALEXANDRA WARING, Cassy smiled and said, “First come, first served, that’s all.” They went inside Jessica’s. It was a large, empty, oblong room with an attached bathroom and shower. Cassy explained that Jessica had to tell DBS what she wanted in there—painted? wallpaper? furniture?—and answered Jessica’s next question with a gentle no, she couldn’t show her the inside of Alexandra’s because, well, it was Alexandra’s.
They wound around the hallways to reach a screening room, which was actually more like a tiny theater. Denny was in there with Kyle; Jessica met some guy named Dan and a good-looking black guy named Hex (“My mother was a witch”???). And then, when Jessica and Cassy took seats, Herself came rushing in.
There she is, Jessica thought, Queen of the Daisy Chain.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” Alexandra said to Cassy, “but Rookie trapped me with these dog food sponsors.” She laughed, showing marvelous teeth, and leaned over Cassy to offer her hand to Jessica. “Oh, Jessica, it is such a pleasure. I’ve seen some tapes of your show—your work is so good, and so are you.”
“Thank you,” Jessica said, thinking how she hated, hated, HATED this, shaking the cool hand of this very together, very attractive Miss Perfect. I’ve spent my entire life avoiding people like you! she screamed in her head, looking at those incredible blue-gray eyes. Ever get a B, Alexandra? No, I bet you didn’t. And got all the bo
ys, didn’t you? Oh, fuck you! Stop with the smile, already!
Kyle dimmed the lights slightly and started the tape; the screen in the wall came alive and the sound of Jessica’s voice filled the room.
“Good morning good morning good morning good morning,” her voice said in singsong, as some unidentifiable blur came into focus as an extremely tan Jessica smiling into the camera.
“Denny and Jessica indexed the parts they think best,” Kyle said loudly. “So I’m going to skip ahead.”
“Have we made a dupe yet?” Alexandra asked from across the aisle.
Jessica leaned forward in her seat to look at Alexandra. “It doesn’t belong to you yet,” she said sweetly, prompting everyone to laugh.
They were barely ten minutes into the material before Cassy Was on the phone in the back of the room; Denny, Kyle and Hex were talking cutaways or something; and Alexandra was sitting next to Jessica, firing questions at her about where Barnes was, how she had gotten to him, were there any limitations she had agreed to, had he signed a release, and on and on. Within the hour Jackson and Langley and some PR guy named Derek were in the screening room too, and everybody was talking a Jessica Wright interview special produced by DBS News that would air just as soon as they could work it out with the affiliates—which Cassy said could be very soon.
“But I don’t work for DBS News,” Jessica said to everybody over the sound of the tape.
“And DBS News doesn’t work for you either,” Alexandra said, “but we’d still like to see your special get on the air—so we’ll do you a favor and DBS a favor and ourselves a favor and produce it for you.”
“Now hold on,” Langley said, turning around in his seat to look at Alexandra.
“Hold on what?” Cassy said from the back of the room, covering the phone she had been talking into. “If we’re going to produce it, it’s going to be called ‘A Jessica Wright Interview Special—Produced by DBS News.’”
“And Alexandra will do the opening with Jessica,” Kyle said.
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