The Means

by Douglas Brunt

  David, please get this! We’re not at altitude but we’re standing at sharp angles to the deck. The passengers are starting to realize something is way off.

  There is a crack of hard plastic on hard plastic and many voices jump on top of each other but no words can be understood, only that there is fear and distress.

  David! [She is yelling now, over yells in the background that are constant and more panicked.] The plane jolted. We’re too low. We’re getting . . . I think we’re getting lower, it’s hard to tell looking out. Mark, can you reach the captain? Try knocking on the door.

  A “No” comes through more clearly than the screams.

  David, I love you, I love you, I love you. Kiss our little babies for me. You kiss them, you love them. Take care of them. Help them remember me.

  There are seven seconds of quiet. Nothing from Sarah, just the dull screams from the cabin around her. Sometimes a voice rises then falls back into the rest but words are never intelligible. The seven seconds feel much longer than that. There is the sound of a catch of breath near the phone then all noise cuts out. There is no sound of a crash, no explosion. Just silence.

  Ken Grant holds the silence. He knows that silence propels the mind of the viewer. Cut off from sensory input, the mind is forced to become metaphorical, to conjure the scene for itself which is more powerful than to be provided the scene. The absence of noise from the television set creates a vacuum, the bodies of the viewers sucked toward the screen and the strange quiet, no longer propped up by Ken’s voice.

  Ken lets it run on for ten seconds. The control room is silent and unmoving. “David, are you there?”

  “I am.” The voice is a whisper.

  “Thank you for sharing this with us. Our deepest sympathies. This is a terrible tragedy.”

  No reply.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I want to tell the viewers that you contacted us with this tape. Can you tell our viewers why you did that?”

  “I want a full investigation into what happened. I want the media to make sure there is a full and open investigation.”

  Ken ends the interview.

  “My God,” says Paul.

  “I have a spokesman from Airbus.”

  The hum returns to the control room and Paul is yelling orders again.

  Mueller remembers Samantha is standing next to him. “Let’s take a walk.”

  They exit the metal door and turn right to a conference room with a window out to the newsroom. Mueller opens the door and walks in. There is an oval table that seats eight and Mueller waves her to a chair. She pulls it back from the table to face him. He sits first but not because she waited for him. He raises his arms to say, Look around you.

  This is her third interview with UBS News. Mueller is president of the news division and the last hurdle. She reminds herself of all the men in power she’s dealt with and impressed as a lawyer. She’s handled depositions of Fortune 500 CEOs and litigated cases in front of juries for billion-­dollar settlements. She’s only thirty-four, but she’s been excelling in powerful circles for years already.

  She has just told her senior partner that she’s considering a move out of the law. He’s still mounting an argument as to why a move to journalism is a mistake and waste of her talents. As gifted a litigator as he is, Samantha knows she’ll be immune to his protests. She loves the law but hates her life as a lawyer.

  “I remember you from Latch Key years ago. I was too old for that show but my niece loved it. How old were you then?” asks Mueller.

  She was a child actor from the age of eighteen months. First baby commercials, most of the time playing with dolls and toys. Then toddler clothes. At seven years old came her break—Sally, the seven-year-old daughter with attitude to a single, working mother of two daughters on the show Latch Key. Samantha had a deep voice that was so incongruous with her little body that the writers of the show used this voice as a tool in most episodes. Latch Key ran six seasons in prime time, made her famous, made her money, and made sure she was homeschooled by her real-life mom until she was thirteen, when Samantha insisted on a break from acting to attend an actual school for a while. “I was seven in the first season and it ran for six seasons.”

  Humans form lasting memories as early as three years old. Samantha didn’t have the opportunity to remember getting her SAG membership card. Clearly it wasn’t her idea. Nor was it about her at all. It was about the nineteen-year-old girl who was waiting tables in Santa Monica and taking acting lessons who had given birth to Samantha and who then had the idea that her baby could be a child actor when she saw what a pretty face her baby had. And the nineteen-year-old former waitress turned stage mom was right. With enough force and will and compulsion, she was right.

  When Samantha was a child, her face was rounder and people called her very cute. In her last seasons of Latch Key her bones started to show up as the flesh melted away. Bones in her cheeks and jaw made her face seem longer and less girly, bones in her shoulders and hips pushed aside her youth and prepared for the transition from child actor to real actor. Her mother controlled her exercise and her nutrition, brought in a special breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Samantha ate with her mother by the set and not the other actors so that her mother could critique the acting skills and weight gain of the others.

  Her mother didn’t complain about the bulimia in her twelve-year-old daughter until Samantha’s weight dropped below what was attractive on screen and the show’s director asked if Samantha was sick. But by that point the disease was caught. The years of psychological damage had taken hold. Her mother could find equal success in mentioning to a person with diarrhea that he ought not to crap so much.

  “Any acting after that?”

  “Just some smaller stuff, commercials mostly. By the time you become a teenager, you need to decide whether or not you’re all in. I wasn’t.” Samantha takes a breath. She didn’t expect to be nervous for this interview.

  By seventeen, Samantha had left acting and gone to college. From college it was law school. Three more years to prove she was more than a child actor. With each year, her relationship with her mother was more estranged.

  Her first seventeen years in acting were about her mother. The next seventeen years in law were a reaction to her mother. This is her first choice driven neither by her mother nor by the damage her mother inflicted.

  “Columbia Law. Impressive.” Mueller smiles. “Partner at Davis Polk?”

  She nods.

  He leans back in his chair, interlocks his fingers, and rests his joined hands on his belly. “Samantha, why are you here?”

  She knew this was coming. Lots of lawyers turn to journalism but most don’t turn their backs on a successful law career in order to take an entry-level news job. But this question had been asked and answered by herself. “I want this job and I’ll be great at it.”

  “You’re a partner at Davis Polk. You’re probably making a million bucks a year. In a few years, maybe two million. For a first-year news correspondent at UBS, I can maybe pay you six figures, barely. And that’s if I think we’re going to use you a lot.” He pauses. “That’s a big salary change. How are you going to pay your bills?”

  “I’ll manage.” She has no family money, modest savings since she only just made partner, and a mortgage on a new apartment that is too big for a hundred-thousand-dollar salary. “Let me worry about that. All I’m asking is that you make a bet on me. A small bet.”

  “I’ve seen your tape,” says Mueller. With TV broadcasting, it doesn’t matter much where a person’s degree is from. It’s the resume tape.

  Samantha paid a thousand bucks to a cameraman who is an old friend from L.A. to shoot her doing a fake news story. She scripted a hurricane disaster site and got herself in the mode of delivering closing arguments and appealed to the viewers of her tape to
relate to the plight of the victims in the way she would appeal to the jury to award damages. “I’d appreciate your advice. What did you think?”

  “It’s rough as hell but there’s something there.” Mueller knew after watching it the first time that he wanted to hire her. She has that intangible star quality. You never know what makes it come across. You just know it when you see it.

  He wants her and he’ll pay more than a hundred grand if he has to. His mind was made up by the end of the initial handshake, as it is in all his interviews.

  Mueller’s manner changes as his internal timer for the meeting has gone off. “Anything else?”

  “No, thank you. If I have any questions I’ll email your assistant.”

  “Great.” He stands and they shake hands. “I’ll walk you out of the newsroom.” He leads her through the hive and to the security guards.

  “Thank you.” They have another handshake which is an awkward one because neither feels it is necessary or is sure it will happen until Samantha decides it will just be easier to get it over with and she sticks her hand out.

  He walks back toward the control room.

  She takes the escalator back up to ground level and steps outside into the heavy, wet July air. She decides she wants a drink to celebrate and contemplate whatever the hell just happened in there. Whether it leads to a job or not, it was a moment. It was a step toward change. Real change to make her life happy again.

  Heavy drinking is the one thing about a lawyer’s life that sits well with her. As is too often the case, it will be drinks alone. Sometimes to blow off steam or after a good verdict she’ll get drinks with the legal team. But if it’s something personal to celebrate, she has no one to go to.

  I want this job, she thinks. Litigation to broadcast journalism is a proven path. If it isn’t UBS, it’ll be someplace else. I won’t stop.

  She cabs to the Time Warner building, walks past the statue of the fat man and up the escalator to Stone Rose. It’s 4:30 p.m.

  A waiter comes right over wearing a starched white button-down shirt and black pants. He’s deciding whether or not to flirt.

  “Vodka martini up, slightly dirty.”

  He nods. He decides to hold off on flirting until he has a better read.

  Samantha’s cell phone rings. It’s Robin Paris, her friend and college roommate. “Sam, if I didn’t call you we’d never speak.”

  Samantha laughs. This is not said with judgment, just an observation. “I swear I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  “Thank God one of us is a pampered housewife,” says Robin.

  “I knew I chose the wrong major.”

  “Did you get the job?”

  Samantha says, “I don’t know yet. He seemed to like me but it wasn’t much of an interview because they were busy covering the plane crash. It was more like an introduction to the news business and he was challenging me to like it.”

  “What’s next? Another interview?”

  Samantha says, “There’s no one left to meet. He’s the one who decides. Now either I get it or I don’t.” She sips her martini, drawing the vodka up from the glass more than pouring it past her lips.

  “You’ll get it, Sam. You’ll be the smartest, prettiest badass lawyer on TV.” Robin is the only daughter of a wealthy Boston family and she went to Andover, so admission to Harvard was not as significant as a rejection from Harvard would have been. She married a childhood friend and managing director at Goldman Sachs. She’s the rare person who’s taken advantage of an easy draw in life to be a happy person and not expect even more of the world.

  “I may not get this one, but I’ll get something.”

  “When are you giving your notice at the law firm?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m sad but certain about it,” says Samantha.

  “Good, Sam. We get one go-around on the planet. Don’t spend it filing legal briefs.” Robin plays tennis, goes to lunch, shops, manages two nannies for her two kids, and has the time to be a considerate friend. She carries the bigger part of the burden for nurturing the friendship and does it without real complaint because she loves Samantha. They have a curiosity for each other. There is the unusual combination of a separation of their lives mixed with institutional knowledge of each other’s lives that makes them perfect confidants.

  Call waiting beeps on Samantha’s phone. She holds the phone back to look in case there’s an emergency legal filing required of her at Davis Polk, which is probable. The caller ID says unknown.

  “Robin, I need to take this. I’ll call you later.” She presses to hang up and accept the incoming call. “Samantha Davis.”

  “Samantha, it’s David Mueller.”

  “David, hi.” She pauses while her brain runs scenarios of why he could be calling and prepares her answers. Legal training. “Nice to hear from you.”

  “Well, Ms. Davis. Do you always get what you want?”

  “It feels like never, but that may be a neurosis of mine.”

  “I’m calling to offer you a job.” Mueller knew he was going to hire her. He just wanted a few minutes to decide on the salary and terms. “It’s a three-year deal. One fifty year one, one seventy-five year two, two twenty-five year three. General assignment news reporter based in New York.” Mueller had upped his number because he wants to put a condition on it. He knows there are still people smart enough at his competitors to hire her if they see the resume tape. “One more thing. I need to fill this spot, so you have forty-eight hours to accept.”

  “Okay.” She decided earlier that she would take any offer without pushing a negotiation on terms. Now that she has an offer, her instinct to drive a better deal is kicking in. She knows she’ll be a success. She can push either for more money or fewer years. “Is the three-year commitment negotiable?”

  “We like three-year deals.” He pauses. “You don’t have an agent.”

  “No.”

  “Friendly piece of advice. Get one.”

  I tried, she almost says and doesn’t.

  “I’ve got a forty-eight-hour window for you, so it won’t matter for this deal, but you should get one soon. He’ll tell you that three years is standard.” He continues. “Today was a plane crash. That’s newsworthy but not consistent. The only consistent news we do is politics. Are you political?”

  “Not really.”

  “Bone up. Get steeped in the news, especially politics. I’ll email you a few websites that you should read every day, and watch cable prime time. Bounce between channels and start with ours.”

  “Got it.”

  “Alright.”

  “David, I appreciate the call. Can I call you at close of business tomorrow?”

  “Sure. One more thing I want you to think about. This is UBS News. You can work packages for the network morning show and for the network evening news. No show has bigger ratings. Bigger exposure. Nobody. I also have UBS-24. Twenty-four-hour cable news where you can do legal, political, and general news reporting. There’s a lot of real estate to cover here. Nobody has more real estate than I do. That kind of opportunity for growth and exposure is an important thing for you to think about as you start your career in this business.”

  He’s selling me! I can’t believe this, she thinks. “I appreciate that, David. I also appreciate the opportunity.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow, Samantha.” He hangs up.

  “I got the job,” she says to her martini.

  2

  “Samantha, it’s Megan Ruiz from booking.” Samantha has met Megan in person twice now and likes her. When meeting other female on-air talent, she always gets an up-and-down from them the way she would from a drunk guy in a bar. Whether it’s from a place of competition or benign curiosity, it’s second nature to them. Megan isn’t that way. She doesn’t preoccupy herself with things other than getting the bookings done. She seems like a nice, hardworking per
son.

  “How are you?”

  “Good, thanks.” She seems rushed, which she is. “Sunrise America wants to use you for a piece tomorrow. Their booker asked me to get in touch with you. A Bronx couple won the largest lottery payout ever, over one point two billion. We’re going to roll a truck for you in an hour to do a pretape with them to air tomorrow at seven forty-five a.m. You need to be back on location tomorrow morning to intro the package and do some banter with Mike.”

  “Great. Tell me where to go.”

  “Stop by hair and makeup in studio if you want. You should have time. One of the show producers will get you and take you out.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Samantha.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re doing good work. You’re impressing people and they want to use you. That’s a good sign for you. A package for the network morning show is a big deal.”

  “Thanks, Megan.” I love compliments from other women, she thinks.

  An hour later she’s in a truck with six other people heading to the Bronx. She doesn’t even know what they all do. The Sunrise America staff is huge, more than a hundred people.

  She learns one of the guys is a writer for the show and he’s giving her the story background. A retired mailman and his wife living in the Bronx claimed the single winning ticket for the $1.2 billion lottery three hours ago, making them the largest single-ticket lottery winners ever. They’re active in the local church, have one son and one grandson.

  “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam comes on the radio and the driver turns up the volume. “Pearl Jam rules.”

  Samantha laughs and says, “Don’t say anything rules. You sound stoned or twelve years old. And anyway, they don’t rule.”

  “Then they dominate.” He smiles. He balances cocky and unoffensive.

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those surfer geeks who feels an obligation to love Pearl Jam. You realize how ridiculous that is?”

  “Okay, old lady. Who’s bigger, Pearl Jam or the Who?”

  “The Who, by far.”