Morning Glory

by Diana Peterfreund

  “—Experience and education,” Adam finished, as though I hadn’t interrupted him.

  I returned the favor. “I mean, who names their kid Chip? What is that?”

  Adam didn’t respond, just stared at me with an appalling mixture of shock and pity on his face. I was depraved. Ridiculous. Paranoid.

  Perfect. Just Perfect. At least we were on the same page about what my failings were. “See?” I said, gesturing at him. “That’s the look. That. I have to go.” I grabbed my briefcase and practically raced to the door.

  “Becky, wait a second.”

  His voice sounded so plaintive that, for a fraction of a second, I hesitated, my hand on the knob. But I couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” I said, and hurled myself out the door.

  I was barely in the cab before I realized what a huge fucking mistake I’d just made. Again. I’d run out on Adam when I’d seen him with the blonde. And tonight, I ran out on him as soon as he prodded the giant, festering wound that was my career insecurity. Chip! I’d likened him to Chip and I’d picked a glimpse at a neighbor’s television over the way he was kissing me and now I was sitting here in a dark cab that smelled vaguely of stale vomit instead of in Adam’s bright and welcoming kitchen because I couldn’t turn it off. Not for a single evening.

  The in-taxi television announcer said, “An interesting development in California today—”

  I switched the set off and looked out the window. See? I could do it.

  I looked out on the dark Manhattan streets. It was early yet, so the sidewalks were still filled with people. Parents hurrying home to their children. Lovers on their way to a rendezvous. Newsmakers on their way to give me some content. I sighed and turned the TV back on. Who the hell was I kidding?

  As it turned out, the development in California was not very interesting at all. Of course not. It was taxicab news. Only a step or two up from my own miserable excuse for a show. My own bit of mass-media-pandering newstainment. My—what had Mike called it?—horseshit. The horseshit that was my reason for living.

  I trudged up the steps to my apartment and dropped my briefcase by the door. I trudged to bed, shedding my coat and shoes as I went. Out of reflex, I turned on the television on the counter, then the one on the bookshelf, then the one by my bedside table. I sat there, listening to the anchors drone on for a minute. There was nothing important. It was all just noise.

  I shut them off, and for once, silence reigned in my apartment. I was utterly alone.

  The next morning, I was surprised to discover that I wasn’t the first person into work. Mike was already seated at his desk, his phone pressed to his ear, taking furious notes about something or other. I wondered if he was having some sort of issue with his stock portfolio. Or maybe he was planning some sort of supercool pheasant-hunting trip. Those were the only things I could imagine would get Mr. Clock Puncher Mike Pomeroy excited these days. It certainly wasn’t the fact that I was forcing him to bake blueberry muffins with one of the runners-up from Top Chef next week.

  It was a shame. If he could manage to get past his news snobbery, he had a lot to offer to a morning show audience. His life experiences were fascinating and his expertise was broad. He could bring so much to the broadcast, if only he got his head out of his ass. But that was a losing battle and one I was sick of trying to fight.

  As I rounded the corner to my office, an intern caught up to me. “Ms. Fuller? These just came in.” She held out a ratings sheet. I snatched them from her hands like an addict waiting for my fix. Maybe this was it. All the skydiving and the sumo wrestling and the horrible hoops I’d made my on-air talent jump through—maybe it had all paid off. I scanned the sheet.

  Things had been looking so good. We were so close. More and more people were tuning in all the time. Our ratings had gone up … more than half a point.

  But it wasn’t enough. Not for the deal I’d made with my boss.

  I slumped against the wall. There it was in black and white. Official. Irrefutable. I hadn’t done it. A minute later the phone rang, and I knew even before I answered that it was Jerry, calling to discuss my abject failure.

  Man, I hate it when I’m right.

  “Have you seen the numbers?” he asked in his usual brisk style.

  “Yes,” I mumbled. I cleared my throat. Maybe I could try to spin this. “They’re much better. If you look at the trends, we’ve been really improving. We’re way up from last year.”

  “So?”

  “Come on,” I begged. “I’m almost there. Only a quarter point to go. If we only had a little more time. I think if we maybe do that segment where Ernie—”

  “Becky—” Jerry began.

  I didn’t want to beg, but what the hell? Humiliation was the order of the day at this morning show. “Please, Jerry. There are so many people who rely on this show. Who believe in it.”

  Jerry tsked through the phone. “You have until Friday. That was the deal we made. And those numbers—Becky: They’re just not good enough.”

  18

  I floated through the next few hours like a ghost. I accepted the stories people pitched, signed off on requests for remote teams or guest gifts. It’s possible I told Lenny he could buy a new espresso machine for Craft Services. What did it matter anyway? It wouldn’t even be delivered by the time Daybreak’s days were done.

  Done. Finished. Finito. And it was my fault.

  I thought about the two-part series Sasha was putting together on endangered birds of prey. The piece Tracy had pitched about doing a mock Project Runway event at a local arts high school to drum up scholarship money for its flagging design program. I thought about Lenny and his two kids, and how Colleen had outlasted fourteen executive producers and half a dozen coanchors and was willing to make a fool of herself on-screen in order to keep her job. I thought about how Ernie had foolishly added the word “Daybreak” underneath his tornado tattoo. It was like getting the name of a lover inked on your body when said lover’s already got one foot out the door.

  Every single one of these people would soon be out of work. Some of them would land on their feet, sure. In fact, Ernie probably had a decent career ahead of him in the growing industry of late-night news show clowns. Jon Stewart had featured clips from “Atmospheric Adventures” so many times I half expected him to steal my meteorologist away. But as for the others … the prognosis wasn’t too good.

  On set, Colleen was wrapping up the latest segment. “… it turns out the burger patties were contaminated with E. coli, which can cause cramping and diarrhea. And we’ll be right back on Daybreak.”

  The camera light went off, and Colleen wrinkled her pert nose. “Ooh, a story about uncontrollable shitting and look who gets it. Me.”

  “That’s not my sort of thing,” Mike said, tapping his notes into order against the desktop.

  “Hey,” Colleen snapped at him. “This is our job. You think you’re above it? Maybe you were, before you were fired, but now you’re down here in the muck with the rest of us.”

  A few of the producers looked over. I wondered if they were about to burst into applause.

  “And yet I still have standards,” Mike said, unfazed. “Unfortunately for you.”

  “Oh,” Colleen said. “And I suppose I don’t?”

  “Sure you do. When you got your Pap smear on-air, you wore a robe. Classy touch.”

  She started in her seat. “You know, I’ve just about had it—”

  “And we’re back in five, four—,” said the stage manager.

  “You self-important, gaseous—”

  “—Three, two, one—”

  Mike didn’t miss a beat. He turned to the camera. “Welcome back to Daybreak. Tomorrow on the show, Colleen will make the British classic ‘bangers and mash’ with chef Gordon Ramsay.”

  “That’s right,” she said coldly. Colleen! Cold! On air! “I will. Because you refuse to do it, Mike. Guess it’s beneath you.”

  “Well, that,” Mike said evenly. “Plus it’s tough to get between y
ou and sausage, so—”

  “Also, you’re a fatuous, pretentious idiot, so there’s that.”

  He raised a finger. “A fatuous, pretentious idiot who makes three times what you do.”

  Everyone in the studio stared at the anchors, mouths agape in horror.

  I gestured wildly to Merv. “Go to tape!” I hissed.

  He held up his hands, completely at a loss. “Tape of what? End credits?”

  On set, the nightmare continued.

  Colleen’s smile had turned dangerously brittle. “Well, that’s all for this morning. See you tomorrow, folks.”

  “Goodbye,” Mike said.

  Colleen glared at him. “Goodbye,” she repeated.

  Oh no. Oh, no no no no no. I thought we’d resolved this.

  “Goodbye.” Mike gave that one a cheery little brogue.

  “Goodbye!” Colleen cried, her voice shrill.

  As Merv thankfully went to credits, an assistant ran in with a phone. “It’s Mr. Barnes,” she explained, shoving the receiver at me. “Calling from home.”

  Oh, God. He’d picked this episode of the show to watch? I mean, Yay, another viewer! “Jerry?” I said uneasily into the mouthpiece.

  “What the hell was that?” he bellowed.

  “It was a lapse,” I explained as quickly as possible. “An unfortunate lapse. I’ll take care of it, I promise. I will speak to both of them. It will never happen again. I swear.”

  I turned to the set, where now, safely off the air, Colleen and Mike’s bickering had taken on gale-force proportions.

  Only what was the point? We were dead in the water anyway. No wonder they felt on edge. Maybe it wasn’t so bad I let my staff blow off steam. Still, what Jerry said, went. After all, he still held our fate in his hands, and even if we did by some miracle meet our agreed-upon numbers, I still needed him to go to bat with me against the bigwigs.

  I had every intention of keeping my word to Jerry. I would have met with Mike and Colleen right after the show, even, but I’d been stuck in meetings all day and Mike had gallivanted off to some kind of lunch fête for Tom Brokaw. So it wasn’t until the next day that I was able to get the two of them into a room to hammer out their issues.

  But before I even made it to the meeting, I got a special surprise: yesterday’s minute-to-minutes, which featured a very noticeable bump starting as soon as the cold war between Colleen and Mike went nuclear. I stared at the sheet.

  Hmmm, that was weird. Maybe it was people tuning in early for the soap opera that came on after Daybreak. Perhaps I should think about asking a few of the regulars onto the show to bake cookies or something. Or maybe it was the mention of Gordon Ramsay? I mean, who didn’t love Hell’s Kitchen?

  That had to be it, right? There was no other reason to tune in to a morning show thirty seconds before it was over. Except … what was it I’d told Mike? People wanted to know his personality—they wanted to feel like he was a friend. That’s why I wanted him to banter. And what if fighting was every bit as good as banter, from an entertainment perspective?

  It wasn’t possible, was it? But if it was true, was it worth exploring? Could I do it again?

  Only this time, more so?

  Why not play to our strengths? Mike was a cold, pretentious ass. Colleen was a snide, snarky queen bee. Sparks flew. People loved that shit. And what could it hurt? This was it. Eleventh hour, bottom of the ninth, fourth and goal—whatever kind of metaphor you wanted to slap on it, we had no more time and nothing to lose.

  Jerry could suck it.

  I met my stars on the living room set, and they were already going strong.

  Colleen to Mike: “Jerk.”

  Mike to Colleen: “You started it.”

  Colleen snickered at that one. “ ‘You started it’? Really? Are you in kindergarten?”

  I cleared my throat. “Guys, about yesterday—”

  They both started talking at once. It was more of the same. I held up my hands. “About yesterday,” I repeated, loudly this time.

  “You know,” said Mike, “I don’t have to sit here and be lectured by a community college dropout—”

  “I’m not here to lecture you.” I gave him a cool, even stare. Your barbs have no power over me, Pomeroy.

  “You’re not?” Colleen asked, baffled.

  “You two are responsible professionals.” That was almost the truth. “It’s not for me to determine how you should behave.” I looked at Colleen. “And if you want to attack him for being rude and demeaning …” And, sister, I was so there with you! I turned to Mike. “And if you feel she’s utterly inadequate to perform the job at hand …” I shrugged. “… Who am I to change that? Those are your own, personal, deeply held beliefs. Nothing I can do.”

  They looked at me. They looked at each other. They looked at me. I smiled serenely.

  “Good talk,” I said. “Okay, show starts in a few, so …” I gave them two enthusiastic thumbs-up.

  It was probably the cherry on the sundae. Both of my anchors looked ready to explode.

  Back in the control room, Lenny greeted me. “All taken care of?”

  “Oh,” I said, smirking, “you betcha.”

  The show began, and for the first few minutes everything seemed to be business as usual. But I could see the tensions simmering beneath the surface. A few times, Colleen bit her lip. A few times, Mike gave her an almost imperceptible dirty look. We were using the living room set today, a more casual environment and one that Mike hated, since it detracted even more from his illusion of hard news. Today, I hoped that would contribute to my cause.

  “Coming up in our next hour,” said Colleen, “we’ll be talking to people who have successfully completed an innovative rehab program.” She glanced at Mike. “Might pick up some tips there.”

  Mike’s gaze focused on her. “What I’m wondering is if they have rehab programs for angry ex–beauty queens with self-esteem issues. And if not, when are they going to start one?”

  Neither of their smiles flagged for a moment.

  “Coming up next after local traffic,” said Colleen.

  Lenny turned to me. “I thought you said—”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I steepled my hands under my chin and hid my grin.

  After the break, they returned with a story on new trends in interior design.

  “Wow,” said Mike. “That’s some butt-ugly wallpaper.” The cameraman snickered.

  “You’re right,” Colleen said. The producer on the story, standing just off set, gasped. “Reminds me a lot of your tie, actually.”

  Mike ran his fingers over his tie. “This is a Marinella. It’s the best tie in the world. It probably cost more than your last three Botox treatments.”

  Lenny signaled to Merv to cut to tape.

  “No,” I said. “Keep going.”

  “Becky!” Lenny cried. “They’re about to come to blows.”

  “You think so?” I asked hopefully. Colleen had taken that Krav Maga class last year. If Mike Pomeroy got a black eye on air …

  The control room phone began to blink. “Ah,” I said. “That’ll be the illustrious Mr. Barnes.” I picked it up. Yep, I was right. “Jerry,” I said, “I swear, I don’t know what’s happening. Yes, I did speak to them. Both of them. Emphatically.”

  I grinned at Lenny while Jerry ranted in my ear.

  “Well, I guess our option is to go straight to tape. I don’t know if there’s much point in anything more drastic … you know, considering.”

  “Considering you’ll only be on for a few more days?” Jerry asked. “What’s with you? You like salting the earth?”

  No. But perhaps the morning television landscape could use a bit more spice. I met Lenny at the coffee shop to, in his words, “explain what the hell is going on.” I spread out several of my collected minute-to-minute records.

  “On the first day,” I said, pointing to the relevant numbers, “it was a tiny bump. You could see it, but barely. And it could have been a fluke, so I thought I’d try to
repeat the conditions and see what happened.”

  He eyed me over the top of his coffee cup. “Morning television as a petri dish?”

  “Exactly.” I flipped a sheet. “This is yesterday. Right after the tie comment.” I moved my finger down. “And then here’s after he asked her if she cried ice cubes.”

  “Oh yeah.” Lenny chuckled. “That was hilarious.”

  “See?” I said. “Another big spike. My theory is they love it. I think people are calling their friends during the show and telling them to turn it on every time Mike and Colleen go for the jugular.”

  Lenny shook his head, his mouth a thin line. “Don’t you think this is a little … desperate?”

  “Yes, maybe,” I admitted. “It’s desperate and weird, and sick. But also, maybe it’s just that they are being real with each other instead of all fake cheery plasticine and the audience loves it. I mean, come on, Lenny. We love it.”

  “Yeah, but we know them. We like to see them burned a little.”

  “The audience feels like they know them too,” I pointed out. “They’ve been having breakfast with them every morning. The anchors are there in their homes. They’re old friends. They can deal with old friends sniping at each other. Maybe it’s a thing.”

  Lenny didn’t look convinced. “Like George and Gracie?”

  “I think you’d do best not to mention that comparison to Mike and Colleen.”

  “Absolutely not,” he agreed.

  I gathered up the ratings sheets and slid them back into my folder. “It’s making waves in the numbers, and that’s all I need. I’ll take anything. We need this. We’re so close. We’re almost there.” I hugged the folder to my chest.

  Lenny asked, “Where’s ‘there’?”

  I froze. “You know what I mean.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “You know. Where we want …” I trailed off, helpless to cover for the gaffe.

  “Becky, I don’t know what kind of show you want to end up with here.…”

  One that’s on the air. One that continues to pay us all. “One people watch” was what I said out loud. And I was going to get it, even if I had to supply Mike and Colleen with their own set of switchblades and play the sound track to West Side Story on set.