I’d arrived too early. There were a few docile boyfriends at the perimeter, but most of the group was girls. The party was still more of a pregame, clustered around the island in the kitchen, which was sticky with spilled tequila and lime husks. It was the moment in the night when the hostess was entirely pleased with herself, with the assembled group of women who reflected back her aesthetic ideals. The best pictures of the night would be taken now, when the apartment was still empty, the fridge brimming with liquor.
The girls kept asking me where Stella was. We’d been invited as a package deal, but they really wanted her. I was a little too plain, too serious, too sober. Everyone liked to say that after high school, popularity contests ended. That was true in most cases. But, like high school, the world of Manhattan trust-fund babies was an artificial construct. Nothing really mattered; everything was signaling; it was as insular and petty as a high school cafeteria. These girls were hungry and anxious, but they had perfect blowouts and designer clothing, and they took comfort in telling one another how hot they looked. Which was true—they did look hot. It was possible to envy them, and hate oneself for envying them, all at once.
Around 11 p.m., as the party started to fill up, I slipped out unnoticed. The subway was nearly empty. Most people would stay put, wherever they were, as the clock approached midnight. But being underground at midnight didn’t seem like the worst possibility. I’d never liked New Year’s Eve. So one year was ending and another beginning—did no one notice that life itself proceeded without interruption, indifferent to your resolutions and reflections?
If Stella were there, I would have leaned over and said this to her. She would have laughed and called me a cynical bitch, but she also would have agreed. Our friendship was built on those moments, when our perspectives overlapped like binoculars twisting into focus. We said to each other what we wouldn’t say to other people.
But for Stella, observation wasn’t the same as belief. She spent her opinions like she spent her family’s money: easily, constantly, but never as an investment in something permanent. She’d say something provocative, and often true, but then she’d abandon it. When pushed on a comment she’d made, she’d shrug and say that she wasn’t really serious; she didn’t really care. For a long time, Stella’s indifference had impressed me. Other people would feel bad about running away from home on Christmas Eve. Stella? She was probably drinking a mai tai on a beach somewhere.
And that was fine. Having Stella back in New York had been exciting, but it was also exhausting. At some point in the last several months, our lives had diverged. She wanted spontaneity and freedom. I wanted routine and discipline. I wanted to care about my work. If this was the new pattern, Stella coming and going as she pleased—maybe that was okay. Maybe we needed some breathing room. To occupy our own separate lives.
Pete, the doorman, was on duty that night. “Just a few minutes to midnight,” he said. “Did you race home to catch it?”
“Nah,” I said. “It’ll be a quiet night for me.”
“That’s good,” he said. “That reminds me, actually. Miss Stella asked me to tell you that she was very tired, and she was going to sleep. She was driving for hours.”
“Stella?” I said. “She’s back?”
Pete nodded, smiling brightly. “Happy New Year!” he said, as the elevator door closed.
Chapter Six
Nine months later
i’d reached the one-year mark at KCN in August. A year was a solid, respectable thing. Now when I heard the new assistants and interns bragging about the number of months they had under their belts, I thought, months! Who were they kidding? Of the six other interns who had started with me, five had already washed out. The last remaining girl was always crying when the senior producers yelled at her. I gave her until October, tops.
At this point, I’d learned the ropes, and figured out how to navigate the personalities within the newsroom. I knew how Rebecca liked her coffee (extra hot, skim milk), and I knew what to talk about with a nervous guest in the green room (pets, children). But when I was at my desk, hours sucked into technical scut work, I enviously watched Jamie coming and going from meetings with senior staff. That world was so much bigger than mine: sources and scoops, competitive bookings and big gets. I didn’t want to be an assistant anymore. I wanted to be a producer, helping to make the news.
“Let me give you some advice,” Jamie said, one afternoon in September. He’d emerged from yet another meeting, looking dismayed. “You know how you should pick a lane and stick to it?”
“You’ve said that a hundred times,” I said. Jamie was always harping on developing a beat, finding an angle that others weren’t covering. “I’m trying, okay? I really am.”
He plopped down in his chair and shook his head. “No. What I was going to say is, when you pick a lane, make sure you don’t pick a lane that’s about to be blocked off for the foreseeable future. Because then you don’t have a lane. You’re just stuck in traffic, like a chump. And then—I don’t know. I give up on this metaphor.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve spent five years covering the DoD, and now this administration is going to choke the life out of it. Did you see the latest budget cuts?”
“Yeah, but we’re spending that money on other things. Education. Social Security. The NIH. Isn’t it kind of a good thing?”
Jamie sighed. His father had been a naval officer, and his older brother worked for the Air Force JAG. Several of his hometown friends had joined up after high school. Jamie had naturally gravitated toward covering the Department of Defense, and in a newsroom where few of the producers had connections to the military, he didn’t have any competition. “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “But long story short, there’s not gonna be a whole lot of news coming out of the Pentagon in the next few years.”
He stared idly into the distance, swiveling his desk chair back and forth. “My mom was always saying I should go to medical school,” he said. “I could have been a doctor by now. I’d make a good doctor, right?”
“You talk too much,” I said. “You’d annoy the patients.”
He laughed and pushed his foot against my chair. I’d had chances to move to better desks, those closer to the water fountain or with more sunlight, but I liked sitting next to Jamie. He was so calm. His self-possession, I suspected, came from the fact that he loved this job. All of it, from breaking a big story to writing the perfect chyron. This was his place in the world.
“Jamie!” Eliza called, as she walked over. “Just heard. We got the interview with the football player. His people confirmed for Thursday morning.”
“Whoa,” he said, sitting up straight. “What did the trick?”
“Rebecca worked her usual persuasive charm.”
“And Mr. King’s not going to mind? Given that he’s friends with the commissioner?”
Eliza half smiled, half smirked. “Fuck ’em. Ginny’ll take the heat if need be.”
“That’s huge. God, what a relief.”
“I know. I really wasn’t looking forward to another Community Cares segment.” She rolled her eyes, then she noticed me. “You didn’t hear that, Violet.”
I cocked my head. “Didn’t hear what?”
“Good girl.”
Increasingly, I had the sense that she liked me, but Eliza remained an enigma. She was the type of person who, while sharing an elevator, was perfectly comfortable staying silent. Whereas Rebecca would fill that time with a torrent of conversation, bathing you with her relentless attention.
But this didn’t mean Rebecca was always warm and fuzzy. More than once she’d snapped at a producer, loud enough for the whole newsroom to hear: “Would you get to the point!” Or the night when the teleprompter was malfunctioning, and the rundown had changed at the last minute, and with sixty seconds to air Rebecca still didn’t know what the lead story in the A block was. When we went to the first commercial break, her face changed from professional warmth to pu
re rage. “This is my ass on the line, people,” she said. “Do you understand that? When we fuck up, I’m the one whose face gets plastered all over the internet. I get blamed. I look like a goddamn idiot because you don’t have your shit together.”
Eliza calmed her down that night, as she always did. It was obvious from the beginning that Eliza was an excellent journalist, but what took longer to reveal itself was her diplomacy. It didn’t matter how nasty a situation got. She was smooth and reassuring in the face of disaster. But Eliza’s diplomacy, like Rebecca’s famous generosity, was not an end in itself. At the root of every behavior, you could find a seed of self-interest.
“She and Rebecca are a package deal,” Jamie explained once. “They bring out the best in each other. You put Rebecca with a different producer, or Eliza with a different anchor, and you just don’t have the same magic.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Which is good, right? That makes them untouchable.”
“As long as you keep the peace,” Jamie said. “Rebecca’s temper is the X factor. A newsroom stays loyal to an anchor until it doesn’t. The people who light you, who mic you, who do your hair and makeup, who prep the guests—if you really piss them off, sabotage is easy.”
“So Eliza needs to make sure Rebecca doesn’t alienate everyone?”
“Because if they bring Rebecca down, Eliza goes with her. See?”
I nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
Jamie furrowed his brow. “You don’t seem bothered by how Machiavellian it is.”
“It’s not Machiavellian,” I said. “It’s just survival.”
We were running wall-to-wall promos for the interview. He was a retired football player who planned to speak out on the NFL’s long-term cover-up of brain damage. In addition to being a Hall of Famer, he was the stoic and silent type. When he spoke, people listened.
Rebecca and Eliza returned to the newsroom around lunchtime on Thursday, after taping the interview. They stood outside Rebecca’s office, conferring. The interview must have gone well. If Rebecca was listening this carefully, it meant she was in a good mood.
Rebecca and Eliza spent most of the day in the edit room. After a few hours, Eliza opened the door and stuck her head out. “Jamie!” she yelled. “Come eyeball this for me.”
Half an hour later, Jamie returned, looked subdued.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “I guess I don’t need to ask.”
He sighed. “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. We’ve got him saying some incendiary stuff. He has proof that officials ignored the data. But it just feels… flat. Lifeless.”
“It probably doesn’t help that he’s so serious.”
Jamie shook his head. “No, it’s not that. He’s good on camera. He’s got gravitas. But after the segment’s over, you’re kind of left thinking—so what?”
“Yikes.”
“I know. It needs something.”
I drummed my fingers. “It’s hideous, when you think about it.”
“I agree,” Jamie said.
“I mean, children are at risk. Children with young, developing brains. How many teenagers play football in this country? Doesn’t Rebecca’s son play?”
Jamie had been spinning back and forth in his chair, which he always did while mulling, but he stopped. “Yes. Exactly,” he said. He jumped to his feet. “Come with me.”
Rebecca and Eliza were in the edit room, standing behind a hassled-looking woman. Eliza was probably itching to grab the controls, but union rules meant that only an editor could do this work. The editors tended to be older and grumpier, and they didn’t always appreciate fresh-faced producers coming into the room with a segment to crash. I was scared of this particular woman: she was a chain-smoker from Staten Island who sometimes reminded me of my mother. She did the work well, but with a maximum of grumbling. But with Rebecca and Eliza in the room, she was silent and deferential.
“Yes?” Eliza said, with a look of this had better be important.
Jamie pushed me forward. “Tell them what you just told me.”
“About how many teenagers play football?” I said, and Jamie nodded. I took a deep breath. “I was just saying how outrageous it is. That there are children at risk, whose brains are still developing. If they’d known this sooner, parents might have thought twice about letting their kids play football. Even your son, Rebecca. Doesn’t he play football?”
Jamie snapped his fingers. “That’s the lead-in. Right there. That’s the frame for this whole story.”
“It’s a public health risk.” Rebecca nodded slowly. “It’s about our children. Shit. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“It’s a question every mother has to ask herself,” Eliza said. “Knowing what I know, am I willing to let my child do this? Jamie, this is really good.”
“It was all Violet.”
“Violet,” Eliza said, grabbing my forearm. “Nice work. Can you chase down the up-to-date stats on how many kids play? Anything you can find on concussions, too.”
At 8 o’clock, the newsroom was quiet as the Frontline theme played. When Rebecca appeared on-screen, she looked different. Her hair was in soft waves instead of her usual sleek blowout, and her dress was a pastel floral instead of her favored bright solids. This was the Rebecca Carter who remembered her years in family-centric morning television.
“Good evening,” she began. “At Frontline, we have one mission. Keeping you, our audience, as fairly and accurately informed as possible. You’ve probably noticed that I don’t often speak about myself. That’s because this hour isn’t about me—it’s about you. But tonight, we’re featuring a story that hits close to home. So I want to speak to you personally. I want to speak to you as a mother.”
Fifteen minutes later, when the story ended and we went to commercial, the newsroom exploded in applause. Jamie broke into a grin, and slung his arm around me. “You’re good at this,” he said. “You know? You’ve got it, Trapp.”
In the past year, evidence of my contributions had appeared on-screen in small ways. A statistic that I’d dug up, or a change made after my fact-check. But this was different; this was bigger. A contribution big enough that it might actually compel a viewer to keep watching. It might stick with them. It might change their mind.
After the broadcast, everyone gathered in the newsroom. Rebecca and Eliza believed in traditions, and one of them was marking a big story with good champagne. A few minutes later, Eliza came over with two plastic flutes. She handed one to me, then tapped hers against mine.
“We’ll have to wait for the overnights,” she said. “But I have a good feeling.”
“Rebecca was great,” I said.
“Remind me how long you’ve been here?” Eliza squinted at me.
“A little over a year.”
“You’re a quick study.”
I glanced over at Jamie, across the room. “I’ve had a good mentor.”
“So you’re modest, too.” Eliza smiled. “Follow me. I want you to meet someone.”
Rebecca was in the corner with a handful of executives, some of whom I recognized from her holiday party. There was an older woman, deep in conversation with Rebecca. She looked like the kind of woman who would be friends with the Bradleys: ash-blond hair, a tweed suit that suggested Chanel. Eliza tapped her on the shoulder.
“Ginny,” Eliza said. “This is Violet Trapp, the young woman I was telling you about. She’s our newest associate producer. Violet, this is Ginny Grass, president of KCN.”
“I’m—what?” I said.
“She just got promoted,” Eliza added. “Approximately five minutes ago.”
“Congratulations,” Ginny said, shaking my hand. Her voice had a crisp delivery that reminded me of old black-and-white movies. “Lovely to meet you.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then to Eliza and Rebecca, I said. “Wait, really?”
“So what do you think, Gin?” Rebecca said. “Think we beat MSNBC?”
“Let me worry about that,” Ginny said. “Just enjoy
yourselves tonight.”
“Oh please.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Give me the numbers as soon as you have them.”
“You’d think a Peabody and six Emmys would help with her obsession, but you’d be wrong,” Eliza murmured to me.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Rebecca said, hitting Eliza on the shoulder. “She’s a whore for the ratings just like the rest of us.”
Ginny wore a strained smile. I got the sense she disliked my witnessing this level of candor—and insecurity—among my superiors. “It’s an achievement no matter what,” she said. “We should all feel proud of this story.”
“I can feel proud and still envy Fox’s audience, can’t I?” Rebecca said.
Eliza nudged me. “Go on, go celebrate. You don’t have to hang with the old folks.”
Jamie was by the kitchenette, which had been turned into a makeshift bar. He refilled my plastic flute. “You look like you have some good news to share,” he said.
I paused. “Did you know?”
“Just a few minutes before they told you.” He grinned, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Congratulations.”
I touched my cheek in surprise. I blushed, and so did Jamie. The moment stretched on for several long beats, until Jamie glanced away. “Your phone,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Your phone.” He pointed at my hand. I’d gotten into the habit of bringing my phone everywhere, even the bathroom. “Someone’s calling you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Just a second.”
I stepped away, stuck my finger in the other ear. “Hey,” I answered. “I can’t really talk.”
“Violet!” Stella had to shout over the music in the background. “You need to get down here, stat. This party is crazy.”
“I’m still at work.”
“It’s nine thirty. The show’s over, isn’t it? You can bring that guy, you know, whatshisname. Frank. Isn’t his name Frank?”
“His name is Jamie.”
“Okay, sure. I’m putting your names on the guest list.”
Necessary People Page 9
