Alexandra Waring (14 page)

Alexandra was still carrying on about how wonderfully the breakfast had gone when Chi Chi arrived with the folder. “The legal department is copying the one from
Spy Glass,
” Chi Chi told Cassy at the door.

“Oh, that,” Alexandra said, groaning and plunking herself down onto one of the sofas. “Did you see that one, Kyle?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Have a seat, Kyle,” Jackson said, getting up from behind his desk. “All of you,” he added, gesturing to the seats around the glass table, where Alexandra was. “Come on, Lang, sit.” He patted Langley on the shoulder and looked over at Cassy.

“Look through these,” she murmured, handing him the folder and moving over to sit in one of the chairs.

And so they sat around the glass table and Jackson started reading through the folder. The Regina Baxter quote—the one that appeared on Alexandra’s first day of work at DBS, the one implying that Alexandra was some kind of million-dollar call girl of Jackson’s—had become the standard reference used by the tabloids to establish credibility for “Alexandra” stories. There were several clippings from papers that had run a wire service photo of Jackson and Alexandra at the company retirement dinner in Richmond, and one tabloid ran the following caption underneath it:

“Alexandra Waring out on the town with billionaire boyfriend-boss Jackson Darenbrook. Even newswoman Regina Baxter, who prefers to steer clear of controversy, felt compelled to speak out against the woman she sees giving all women in TV news a bad name.”

Jackson glanced over at Cassy. She met his eye and lofted her eyebrows, as much as to say, “Happy?”

Another ran the caption, “Jackson Darenbrook with Alexandra Waring, the video vixen Regina Baxter says is overpaid by $999,800 a night.”

Jackson closed his eyes for a moment and then went on. A blind item was circled in Roz Gladden’s syndicated column:

My oh my but does a certain farm girl seem to drag a lot of dirt around with her. First we heard whispers about her old boss, now we’re hearing about million-dollar moans with the new. So someone explain it to me—what’s with the boyfriend? Is he deaf and blind, or just out of town too much? Or is this the one about the farmer’s daughter I missed?

“I bet he’s reading Roz Gladden’s column,” Alexandra was saying to Kyle.

Jackson looked up. “This is disgusting.”

“Bitsy Bourner’s column is quite nice,” Alexandra said, recrossing her legs and smoothing her skirt. “Read that.”

He did:

Jealousy, readers, that’s all it is, pure and simple. I talked with one NBC news official who said, “Even if she were Walter Cronkite, people would be jealous. The point is, a major corporation has pledged its faith in one individual, and people can’t believe a very pretty 30-year-old woman has earned it on professional merit alone.” Well, readers, here’s one that does. Go get ‘em, Alexandra! That’s what I say.

“Don’t read any more,” Alexandra suggested, leaning over to take the folder away from him.

“I’d like him to read them,” Cassy said.

“And I want to know what we’re doing about it,” Jackson said to Cassy.

“Well,” Langley said, “Derek”—referring to their PR director—”has a ringer he can bring in from the West Coast. A guy who’s got something on everybody at these rags so they’ll leave her alone.”

“Oh, no!” Alexandra and Kyle said simultaneously, trying to wave this suggestion away.

“But this is very nasty stuff,” Cassy said to Jackson, “and they’re only warming up.” She looked sideways at Alexandra. “I don’t know why, but they seem to think they can sell a lot of papers dragging our poor friend here through the mud.”

“Well, they’re right,” Kyle said. “Because Alexandra’s very hot stuff.”

“Thank you, Mr. McFarland,” Alexandra said. “I think you’re pretty hot stuff too.”

He grinned and looked back at Cassy. “And so I think we should consider moving up the debut of ‘News America Tonight’ from Labor Day to Memorial Day and cash in on the publicity.”

“What?”
Langley and Jackson said together, turning to look at Cassy.

“Interesting idea,” she murmured, reaching for the phone on the table.

“It struck both me and Alexandra when Derek said what a pity it was that all this publicity was going to waste,” Kyle said. “And yesterday Dr. Kessler’s tests with the affiliates went off without a hitch.”

“How many?” Langley asked Cassy.

“They ran them with forty-one, I think—wasn’t it, Kyle?” Cassy said, punching four numbers into the phone.

“Yep.”

“I’d prefer to go on the air with everything nailed down,” Alexandra said, “but I think Kyle’s right. If we could go on the air soon—while I’m still all over the newsstands and the networks are going into reruns…”

“But everything
has
to be nailed down,” Cassy said, covering the phone with her hand and speaking over it. And then she shrugged. “So we just have to hammer away night and day to get it done in time, I guess.” She spoke into the phone. “Yes, hi, Rookie.” Evidently she was talking to Rookie Haskell, the director of advertising sales. “I want you to call around and see what the reaction would be if ‘DBS News America Tonight’ debuted on Memorial Day—right, Memorial Day. Yes.
This
Memorial Day, Rookie.”

“May 30,” Kyle said.

“May 30,” Cassy said. “And we’d run straight through the summer, the only original prime-time programming around.” She smiled. “Well, what’s the point of being an alternative network if we can’t do whatever we want?” she said, winking at Kyle. “Yes,” she said, now looking at Alexandra. “Sure. Tell them Alexandra is an absolute knockout with a suntan.” She laughed. “Okay.” She lowered the phone slightly. “He wants to know if he could bring a couple of sponsors to meet you.”

“Sure,” Alexandra said.

“How can we—” Jackson started to say.

“Shhh,” Langley said, eyes on Cassy.

“And make sure to tell them,” Cassy said into the phone, “that if the writers’ strike continues, then ‘News America Tonight’ could well be the only original prime-time programming around to watch in the fall.”

“Yeah!” Jackson said, pounding a fist on Langley’s knee.

“Ow,” Langley said.

“Wait a minute!” Cassy suddenly said, bouncing in her seat. “Wait a minute, everybody.”

“What?” Kyle said.

Cassy looked at Langley, snapping her fingers twice. “What about Jessica Wright? What’s happening with her show?”

“Uh,” Langley said, “she’s—uh—well, I mean, she’s missing at the moment—”

“You still haven’t found her?” Jackson asked him.

But when is her show scheduled? What are you doing with her?” Cassy asked Langley.

“Um,” Langley said, “we’re not sure. She threw a fit over Bertie Flotsheim as her executive producer and so now she doesn’t have one.”

“What are you thinking of?” Alexandra asked Cassy.

“Rookie?” Cassy said into the phone.

“Here,” Jackson said, leaning forward and turning the speakerphone on. “Hey, Rook, can ya hear me?”

“Hi, Jackson,” Rookie said.

“Okay, guys, listen up,” Cassy said, putting the phone down on the table. “What do you think about selling ‘News America Tonight’ and ‘The Jessica Wright Show’ together? Back to back? As a package? Two hours of original prime-time programming against reruns for at least three months? We could head into the fall with a good audience, news and entertainment, nine to eleven. And if the strike lasts—who knows? We might clean up this fall.”

“I like it,” Rookie said. “I think advertisers’ll like it too. Jessica’s a real strong drawing card out there.”

“What’s the matter, Alexandra?” Cassy said.

“I’m all for trying to get on the air by Memorial Day,” she said slowly. “But about ‘The Jessica Wright Show’
…
” She shook her head. “I just don’t know. Her style is so—so
…
” She smiled a little, looking for the right words. “I guess I’m wondering if we attract the same audience.”

“You’ll be the lead-in for her,” Cassy said. “DBS can’t put anyone named the Terror of Tucson on during family hour.” The latter was said to Langley.

“No, of course not,” Langley said.

“So you’ll just bring a new audience to her,” Cassy said.

“Okay,” Alexandra said, shrugging, “if it’ll get us on the air by Memorial Day.”

“I’d pair up with her if I were you, Alexandra,” Rookie said over the speaker. “Out West, the demos say Jessica Wright’s the biggest thing to hit eighteen-to-thirty-fours since the Honda Civic.”

“You know what?” Jackson suddenly said. Everybody looked at him, and he looked at Cassy. “I think you’re very smart, Mrs. Cochran.”

Cassy blinked several times. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Jackson said. He turned to Langley. “And I think what we gotta do, Lang, is send out a search party and find Jessica and then,” he said, turning to Cassy, “I think Mrs. Cochran should talk to the affiliates and see what they think, and she should also sit in on a production meeting about Jessica’s show—if she doesn’t mind, that is.”

“I’d be delighted to,” Cassy said.

“Then,” Jackson said, turning to the speakerphone, “I think Rookie should tell us what he can fetch for the ladies of DBS, and then,” he said, turning to Alexandra, “I think we hustle to get ‘DBS News America Tonight’ on the air by Memorial Day—right?”

“Right!” Alexandra said, leaping to her feet and heading for the door.

“Great!” Kyle said, right behind her.

“I don’t know how we’ll get it all done in time,” Cassy said, standing up, “but we will. I promise you.”

Within a minute, Langley and Jackson were left sitting there, alone.

“Hello?” Rookie said over the speakerphone.

“Slowpoke,” Jackson said, leaning over to hang up on him.

8
Alexandra, Cassy, Stolen Money,
Weddings and His Wife:
Langley Tries to Stay on Top of Things

For the life of him, Langley Peterson couldn’t understand why nobody else seemed to notice—or care—that their anchorwoman was the most manipulative creature since Mata Hari.

Boy was she good.

When Alexandra walked into a room at West End, people came alive. Heads snapped to attention; people sat or stood a little straighter; women checked their hair; men touched at their ties or, in the absence of one (which was more often the case in the news group), ran their hands once over their shaven or unshaven chins; and most everyone would smile—except the shy ones, whose faces would freeze a little, color spreading through their cheeks.

Alexandra’s eyes would sweep the room quickly, assessing the situation, much like one who has joined a chess game in progress, and invariably—and Langley had seen her do it so many times he knew he was not imagining it—by the time she left she would have gotten what she wanted, though few would have realized that she had arrived with any premeditated motive. She was so damn good at it and carried so many possible mixed motives at any given moment that Langley still couldn’t anticipate the direction from which she would make her approach—or sometimes even figure out where the approach was leading until it was too late.

Yesterday had been a perfect example. It had been raining heavily all morning—the skies dark outside, the pools of water gathering in the square below—and everybody who could had stayed at West End to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The cafeteria was a very pleasant place. It had a vaulted ceiling that rose up through the third floor of Darenbrook I to the skylights in the roof; the walls were pale yellow with all kinds of jazzy, cheerful art prints hanging in all colors of frames; the fourth wall, overlooking the square, was all glass; the floor was covered with a muted, brick-colored tile; and all the tables and chairs were made of wood. More than one person, on such dark rainy days, would say they didn’t know why, but eating in there reminded them of eating dinner in the kitchen as a child.

Jack was in L.A. on magazine business, and Cassy invited Langley to lunch with three new players at DBS News: Senior News Editor Dan Shelstein, a balding man of about fifty-five; News Producer Kelly Harris, an energetic redhead in her late thirties; and Studio Unit Manager Bozzy Gould, a compact guy about forty or so, built like a marine—with a haircut like one, too—but with a beautiful, smoke-colored complexion.

They were sitting there, lingering over coffee and tea, accustomed to the din and chatter from having so many Darenbrook Communications employees around them, when a sudden hush fell over the room. Dan Shelstein noticed it first, cocking his head and looking around to see what was happening. It was the same kind of hush that falls when people in a restaurant become aware of someone coughing but aren’t sure if the person is in trouble choking or not. Only no one was coughing or choking; it was just Alexandra making one of her entrances. And yesterday—when they had been running some official looking (but utterly fake) studio tests so that one of Rookie’s important sponsors could oooh and ahhh over Alexandra—she had been looking particularly stunning.

“Now that’s what I want to be when I grow up,” Kelly said, watching Alexandra, “devastating in black.”

Yes, she was, Langley had to admit. She was in a very simple, sleek little black dress with a high neck and long sleeves. The dress hit her right above her knee, curved up over her hips, and fitted well over her bust and across her shoulders. Her hair—quite nearly black itself—was pulled straight back, secured with a large black bow, and except for some large silver earrings and one thin silver bracelet, she was otherwise unadorned. Eyes blazing blue against the black, she smiled and nodded to several people as she wound her way through the tables toward them, taking almost every eye in the place with her. Dan and Bozzy were scrambling to their feet; Langley was much slower, but he did offer her his seat.

“No, thanks,” she said, touching his arm. “Please sit, I just wanted to see what fruit they have up here.”

Warning, the alarm in Langley’s head said,
she’s going to ask for fresh fruit deliveries to the newsroom
.

Everyone sat down again and Alexandra stood there, her hand resting on Langley’s shoulder. (He resented her doing that for a number of reasons. One, he didn’t like being touched. Two, it felt like a dare. And, three, he didn’t like the others at the table to assume, as he knew they were, that Alexandra had an easy familiarity with him, the president of DBS.)

Alexandra looked at Bozzy. “Things went rather well this morning, don’t you think?”

Warning
, the alarm in Langley’s head said,
she’s going to bring up expanding the area for the news sets in the studio again.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Bozzy said, looking over at Cassy. “It’s a good crew—and Kyle’s great.”

Alexandra looked at Dan. “And I have to tell you, Dan, I scarcely recognized the newsroom last night. Chaos is turning to organized chaos. Kyle might live to talk about this experience, thanks to you.”

Warning
, the alarm in Langley’s head said,
she’s going to press for that extra news editor again
.

Cassy smiled and said, “Kelly—”

“Oh, and you,” Alexandra said, turning to smile at Kelly, “Dr. Kessler is absolutely wild about you.”

No, she’s angling toward “borrowing” another technician from someone else’s payroll.

To Cassy, Alexandra said, “Did you know that he would like to run a test with BINS, thanks to Kelly?”

“Uh-oh, sounds expensive. And Cassy’s got that poker face again. That’s trouble—
they’re in this together. Whatever it is, she wants it too but doesn’t want to pay for it.

“What’s Bins?” Langley said.

“British International News Service,” Cassy said. “It’s an overseas stringer operation.”

Aha!
Langley thought.

“Actually, it’s part of Lord Hargrave’s group,” Alexandra said, taking her hand away from Langley’s shoulder. To Dan, “Langley is going to have the miniseries group working out of the Hargrave studios in London—”

“Yes, I do seem to detect the air of coincidence,” Langley said, turning to look up at Alexandra. This was unbelievable. They hadn’t even built the domestic network and Alexandra was already pushing for international tests? And he didn’t have the slightest doubt that somehow Gordon’s trip to London had something to do with this. “Expanding internationally, are you?” he asked her. He pointed a finger at her. ‘Just let me know when I should transfer Gordon’s salary to your budget.”

Alexandra’s eyes went to Cassy.

“It’s just a test, Langley,” Cassy said. “Langley—”

He stopped staring at Alexandra to look at her.

“It’s nothing but a test,” Cassy said. “And we’re just looking into it—but the Moscow summit is going to be over Memorial Day weekend, and it would seem a little funny if on our very first broadcast we didn’t have a live report from what could be one of the biggest events in American history.”

“We certainly have the capacity to tie in with BINS or somebody,” Kelly said.

“Tell Langley what you told me this morning,” Alexandra said.

“What? Oh, just that I’m amazed at what you’ve got here,” Kelly said to him. “You have the best setup I’ve ever seen. I told Alexandra that someone really thought through the whole electronics division.” She paused, smiling a little. “Alexandra said you engineered the whole thing. Getting Dr. Kessler and all.”

The next thing Langley knew, by the time Alexandra left the cafeteria (without even looking at the fruit, mind you), he had been talked into approving a satellite test with BINS—and promising that he’d get the test costs charged to the R&D department of Darenbrook Electronic Retrieval Systems, Inc.

Well, at least Alexandra was an equal-opportunity manipulator, he’d give her that. She used everybody. In fact she played all of them off one another in such complicated ways that sometimes it took awhile to track it all back to her. Even the idea of moving the debut of DBS News up to Memorial Day to cash in on all the publicity about her had had a whole other agenda attached to it, and Langley later realized that Kyle’s “sudden” idea had actually been a very carefully orchestrated plot by Guess Who and her executive and senior producers to get Langley’s and Jackson’s wholehearted approval behind the effort. (That was another infuriating thing about Alexandra. She knew Jack well enough now to know that he couldn’t resist any dramatic idea like this—Go on the air three months early!—particularly if he thought he had helped to brainstorm it.)

But that wasn’t the end of the plot, because right now, this very second, Cassy was sitting in his office, unveiling the other agenda that had been attached to it—the hidden one. Now that their revised schedule to meet the Memorial Day debut was set in motion, now that Rookie Haskell had signed sponsors for the summer months—in other words, now that it was too late to back out of launching “DBS News America Tonight with Alexandra Waring” early—Cassy said, since they would be generating income three months ahead of budget, Alexandra wanted to know if it was okay if she hired three full-time DBS field correspondents with the extra money.

“What extra money?” Langley yelled.

“Early money, then,” Cassy said calmly, sitting there with an open notebook in her lap, looking at him over a pair of half glasses on her nose. “We’ll be three months ahead of budget and, Langley, I have to tell you, I agree with Alexandra and Kyle, I’m sure we can make up the difference before the end of the year.”

“We are
not
going to be ahead of budget because we’re going to have our operational expenses three months early too,” he said. “And how the heck are you going to make up the money before the end of the year, may I ask?”

“We’re going to use the correspondents to work on some specials,” Cassy said.

“And over what network are you proposing to air these specials?” Langley asked. “Come on, Cass, I hate to sound like Jack on this one, but you
are
running the news division,
not
the network.” She smiled slightly and inwardly Langley groaned. He did not feel like getting into the issue of how—at the moment—hers was the only division that had any programming to put on the network. Nor did he feel like being reminded that she was directly or indirectly responsible for over fifty percent of the indies who had signed with them as DBS affiliates. He shook his head, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. “Cassy, I’m sorry, but no,” he said. “I can’t let you overrun with any more immediate expenditures right now.”

How he hated to say this to her! Forget Mata Hari downstairs—he trusted Cassy and, if circumstances were different, he’d think nothing of giving her more slack, trusting that she would—as she had said she could—still come out on budget by the end of the year.

(But what choice did he have? What else could he say—”Hey, Cass, guess what? Know that paycheck you and the others get? The money that paid for those cameras? The editing consoles, pencils, electricity? Yeah? Well, it’s stolen. All of it. Yeah. Jack and I stole it from the miniseries and if we’re not careful Old Hardhead in London’s going to walk off with the whole project. How much? Oh, we’re only short about forty-three million right now. So now do you understand why I have to say no? That every additional dollar you get out of me is going to force me to steal more money from another division?”)

“I’m sorry, Cassy,” he said, “but I’m afraid we just can’t do it right now.”

“Langley,” Cassy said, slipping her glasses off and lowering them to her lap, “listen to me.”

Langley sighed, taking off his own glasses to rub his eyes. This was not going to be good. As beautiful and as gracious as he found Cassy to be, he had quickly learned to recognize when she was about to deliver some sort of discreet (and surely distressing) ultimatum from a certain young anchorwoman they all knew.

“If you check Alexandra’s contract,” Cassy said, “you’ll find a clause pertaining to the gross advertising revenues from her newscasts—”

“No,” Langley moaned, slumping over his desk.

He knew what Cassy was about to say and it was moments like this that made him want to tell Jack to either give him back the electronics group or go screw himself, he was leaving Darenbrook Communications. This was it—the limit. The absolute limit. Never had Langley had to deal with such convoluted, screwball financing on a new division as this. Never had he been associated with such a convoluted mess masquerading as a new venture. But then Langley had never had to move sixty and seventy and maybe eighty million dollars’ worth of the company around like some kind of weird Knock-Hockey game, all because Jackson had fallen for some girl with pretty eyes!

But Langley had to remind himself (while slumped over his desk, eyes closed, not caring what Cassy thought) how much he needed a television network for the IMS, the Interactive Media System that had been (and still was) his pet project in the electronics division. IMS was an extraordinary system of programs that combined computers, video, graphics and sound on optical discs in such a way as to allow a user to command the computer to follow the path of his own curiosity and imagination. “Show me what this video of men walking on the moon would look like if each astronaut weighed five thousand pounds more