Money Shot (6 page)

If a pastrami sandwich
could talk it would sound like Rica Carbone, who is the youngest at
thirty-five and runs the chapter on the left coast. This petite,
raven-haired Brooklyn
paisan
could slice Tony Soprano in two with her death
stare, and has enough confidence in her body that she once marched
up to a jukebox and played
Brickhouse
. Every man in the bar
thought the lyrics fit perfectly as she strutted back to the table
smiling like she not only ate the canary, but the canary thanked
her for it on the way down. Everything on this woman's Pilates
whipped body points east and west without any lycra scaffolding,
with no indication of various parts heading south anytime soon. All
that and she's a brilliant journalist to boot.

"Yeah, she's got someone new," said Jillian,
using one hand to curl the ends of her straight strawberry blonde
chin-length cut in towards her face. "Her skirt's on backwards." I
snapped my neck down to check. "Made you look," said Jillian. "At
least that answers the question."

Damned reporter's tricks. You'd think I'd
know better.

Trust fund debutante
Jillian Charles is the black sheep of her family. Because she
actually has a job. With no desire to pitch Krugerrands with her
Massachusetts Ivy League neighbors, Jillian actually went to a
state school (such a
scandal
in the gated community!) and likes getting her
hands dirty. She's an inch shorter than I am, but all legs and none
of it fat. I think her age (thirty-seven) matches her inseam;
meanwhile, not a wrinkle on her gently freckled face and no botox
receipts on her tax return. Beneath those soft blue eyes lurks an
executioner who enjoys the sight of heads tumbling down the steps
of the Mayan temple, which is a handy trait to have in a Chicago
News Director.

"So, c'mon Syd. Y'all
don't keep us waitin'. Dish." The whiskey two-packs-a-day Southern
accent you just heard comes from Neely "Vodka" Collins, the former
hard-boiled reporter from New Orleans who doesn't smoke but
believes that Russian alcohol is to a liquor cabinet what WD-40 is
to a toolbox. If you run out of either, you'll get rusty and won't
be able to screw anything. She looks like Demi Moore, sounds like
Demi Moore if Demi Moore had been cast in
Gone With the Wind
, and therefore
logic dictates that she hangs out with younger men like Demi Moore
while running our station in Dallas. Neely first went against the
grain in the eighth grade, shoving a sixth grader into a coat
closet and giving him free tonsillectomies. Her long, dark hair and
innocent emerald eyes might lead a guy to think she's the girl next
door, but there's nothing but lust embedded in her vocal chords.
Like a good Irish Catholic she goes to confession every week, the
old-fashioned way in a booth, and must take a legal pad with her. I
can only imagine her saying, "Bless me… Father… for I have…
sinned,
" giving
sinned
three syllables
with that scratchy drawl and having some priest on the other side
breaking into a sweat while she enjoys torturing one of the few men
who can't load his gun in the state of Texas.

"I've got good news. Take a seat," I said,
as I grabbed the burgundy leather chair at the head of the long
mahogany table. Floor to ceiling windows on an entire wall turned
the room into a greenhouse, which had the air conditioning blowing
full blast. The gals sat down, all away from the sunny side of the
room, backs toward the dark green wall that was covered with
colorful posters of network shows. I grabbed a remote, swung my
chair around, and fired it at the flat screen monitor that hung on
the wall behind me.

"We want details about last night, not more
newscast airchecks," said Jillian.

"You're getting both," I said. The picture
cleared and the face of Scott Harry filled the fifty-inch plasma
screen.

"Hot damn," said Neely,
though
damn
came
out "day-umm."

"Damn hot," said Jillian.

"Fuhgeddaboudit," said
Rica. (Which, depending on your interpretation of the term, can
mean either
hot damn
or
damn hot
in Brooklynese.)

The video cut to a two shot as Scott shared
the desk with Caroline Jensen, a veteran brunette anchor with laser
beam ice-blue eyes in her early forties.

"
This
is what's getting you a ratings
spike?" asked Jillian.

"More importantly,
this
is the guy who's on
your to-do list?" asked Rica.

"Yes to both," I said. I smiled and tilted
my chin up a bit.

"
Madonne
," said Rica.

"I don't think I've ever seen a major market
anchor team where the man is that much younger than the woman,"
said Neely. "How do the demos break out?"

"They're a hit with women 18-34," I said.
"And 34-49 is off the charts. Check out our sweeps series on beach
safety." I flicked the remote and the video cut to a shot of Scott
Harry walking on the Jersey Shore in a bathing suit, talking about
the importance of sunscreen.

"You don't need sunscreen if he's providing
the shade," said Jillian. The other two still had their jaws
hanging open like the mouth-breathing shoppers at Wal-Mart as the
shot tightened up for a high-def look at Scott's pecs.

"Are the guys watchin'?" asked Rica. "Not
that it really matters."

"Incredibly, they're holding steady," I
said. "They apparently don't miss the pageant fembots. And
considering our network's prime time lineup, it's nice to see
people switching over to catch our news product."

"Yeah.
Trailer Park True Confessions
isn't
exactly a great lead-in," said Jillian, cocking her head toward a
poster that featured a rusted Camaro and a cheap blonde woman whose
roots had been dyed brown.

"Enough with the ratings," said Neely, who
was staring holes in the monitor. "Just how did you manage to hire
this young buck for our fledgling network?"

I muted the sound and turned back to them.
"His agent told me he couldn't get arrested by the big networks and
he'd do anything to get to New York. So I appealed to his sense of
ambition. Then I checked his… references."

Jillian cocked her head to the side. "Syd,
are you saying--"

"That's part of my new hiring manual," I
said. "And it's the unwritten part of his contract. If he wants to
keep his job, he stays on my to-do list."

"What made you pair him with Caroline
Jensen?" asked Neely.

"Do you want to watch women who are younger
and prettier?" I asked.

"If you could find women who are younger and
prettier than us, no," said Neely, sticking her nose in the
air.

"And what do women our age want?" I
asked.

Slowly, all three began to nod.

"So, this is our new playbook?" asked
Jillian. "Find our own versions of Scott Harry and partner him with
a competent middle-aged woman?"

"Exactly. Your guys don't ever have to
report, just read. I don't care if you find them at a modeling
agency. Hey, the men have been hiring that way for years. If I had
a nickel for every beauty queen anchoring on local television I'd
be rich. And there are plenty of talented women out there who have
been put out to pasture by the old boys club."

"Do we get the same…
benefits package… as you?" asked Neely, playfully batting her eyes.
"And do we get to check…
references
… during our job
search?"

"Of course," I said. "You don't want your
audience buying a product you haven't tried yourself, do you?"

***

Nine months later our network, Consolidated
Broadcasting, had raised several eyebrows in the industry.

The four top affiliates of
a network best known by its programming for the
sophistication challenged
(a
politically correct television term for white trash) were showing
remarkable ratings growth in local news.

Jillian had turned the
Windy City on its ear with her hire (after what she calls an
exhaustive
search) of
twenty-eight year old J. T. Farrell, a sandy-haired blue-eyed
anchor from East Deliverance, Arkansas who had put himself through
college as a male stripper. When pictures of Farrell wearing
nothing but a collar and cuffs were leaked to a local tabloid
(amazing how that happens, huh?), photos of his perfect six-foot
physique (with a discreetly added black bar) were splashed under
the headline
Chicago
Bare
. Overnight ratings jumped twenty
percent that day while "Farrell nude" became the top Google search
in the metro area.

Jillian paired Farrell
with forty-one year old Jennifer Lorton, a spunky brunette with
devilish green eyes framed by a few character lines. Lorton had
been out of the business for three years but got with the program
real quick, knocking out a three-part series titled "Sex in a
Flash" that featured three local fortysomething women and their
trophy bucks while discussing the effects of hot flashes on the
libido. As a reward, Jillian threw Lorton a bone (sorry, bad choice
of words, but accurate) by delegating the
reference checking
duties of the
current search for a weekend anchor.

I'd really thought Rica would have the
hardest problem, Southern California being obsessed with youth and
all. But the real Silicon Valley surprised me.

Since Angelinos are used to such hard
hitting journalistic fare as "Smiling Naturally White Using Botox"
and "Regaining Your Balance After Large Implants" one would think
they'd have little use for a female anchor who actually qualified
for a ten year high school reunion. But apparently Hollywood's
aging actresses (those over twenty-nine who found roles hard to
come by) saw the debut of Rica's new anchor team as a watershed
moment. Rica found a Meg Ryan lookalike named Carolyn Baynard, who
is in her mid-forties but remarkably well preserved. She's also the
master of the double entendre' ad lib, which, when directed toward
her co-anchor, sends a clear message to the viewer that the man
sitting next to Carolyn is her catch of the day. (The other part of
the subliminal message is, "Honey, this could be you.")

Carolyn's co-anchor
arrived with a built-in promotional campaign. Rica bypassed the
viewing of resume tapes and those pesky journalism requirements,
Los Angeles being what it is, went directly to an advertising
agency and tabbed well-known underwear pitchman Dirk Anderson.
Southern Californians couldn't go a mile without seeing a billboard
that featured his ripped abs being caressed by tighty whiteys that
left nothing to the imagination. Thirty-year-old Dirk had amazing
chemistry with his co-anchor, and the two were an immediate hit. On
one occasion Carolyn said, "Dirk Anderson is on
assignment
tonight," paused, raised
one eyebrow, and had every woman in LA wondering if the guy was
under the anchor desk.

His five part series, "Boxers or Briefs" was
simply a no-brainer. But teaching Carolyn how to shop for men's
underwear using a tape measure and a balloon was a stroke of
genius.

Rica, of course, said his references were
perfect, and that he made the gum fall out of her mouth when she
had an orgasm. (I'm still not too clear on Brooklyn sex metaphors,
but she smiles when she says it.)

Neely took a page out of Rica's book, but
reversed things a bit, since Texas is, after all, the beauty
pageant capitol of the world as well as the setting for weird
cheerleader crimes. For her female anchor she chose former NFL
cheerleader Dawn Mullaney, a sultry brunette Texan in her early
forties who had retained a body that still cried out for hot pants,
boots and a halter top. So Neely got them for her, then sent her to
try out for a cheerleading squad with women half her age. Her dance
moves had every cowboy wondering if the hitching post outside the
barn would be better served standing vertically in the bedroom.

Since Texans like things bigger, Neely
reached down into a tiny market and came up with Iowa sportscaster
Nick Hallinger, a twenty-nine year old former linebacker who had
blown out his knee during his rookie year with the New York Giants.
At six-foot-five and 240 pounds, Hallinger looked as though he
could bench press Toyotas, but his kind blue eyes and wavy dark
hair led you to believe he'd save a stray kitten.

Then Neely took things a step further,
deciding to ditch the traditional anchor desk and have both anchors
stand during the entire newscast. Dawn barely came up to Nick's
shoulder, and between his impressive stature and her killer legs,
they looked like the top of a wedding cake. Dawn made it a habit to
always sign off first at the end of the newscast, then turn and
look up longingly at her co-anchor who told viewers, "Have a great
night," before looking down and smiling at Dawn.

As always, a local tabloid
managed to dig up pictures of Dawn on a cheerleader swimsuit
calendar and Hallinger during a bare-chested weigh-in from a bowl
game (there are those damned leaks again!) Under the
headline
Rah-Rah and Ga-Ga
the photo splash made the anchor team hotter in
Dallas than jalapenos.

So at this point you're probably thinking,
"Hey, Syd saved her job with great ratings and women over thirty
all over the country are re-thinking their sex lives." And you'd be
right.

But given enough ointment, there's always a
damned fly.