Scoop (14 page)

“I swear I don’t.”

Roarke fell back into the couch. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Who?”

“It’s crazy. It’s totally insane to think I could get a woman like that. Besides, she’s not who I thought she was.”

“She’s not?”

“I think it’s over,” Roarke said, shaking his head. “I just don’t think we were made for each other.” With a hefty shove, he got himself off the couch and went to the TV, turning it off. “I don’t think I’m in the mood for ultimate fighting, okay? I’m just going to take a nap or something. I’ll see you at work later on.”

Roarke padded down the small hallway of his apartment toward his bedroom. “Push the lock before you close the door,” he said and disappeared.

Ray threw up his hands, though no one was around to see him look utterly confused. Who
was
Roarke’s dream woman? The one woman he’d almost landed a date with three years ago was right out of college, a strawberry blonde with freckles. After that, Roarke hadn’t seemed interested in anybody else.

Ray listened to see if he might change his mind and come out, but the apartment was silent, so Ray took the popcorn to the kitchen, dumped it in the trash, and left.

H
ugo didn’t really need to get into work early. He couldn’t do anything to salvage last night by arriving early today, but it was a good excuse to get out of bra shopping with his daughter.

Somewhere in some stupid parenting magazine, Jane had read that fathers and daughters can bond by doing things that mothers usually do with their daughters. Over the years, Hugo participated in tea parties, Barbie games, nail-polish fun, and more recently, hair salon trips. But bra shopping was an entirely new level of gender mixing that Hugo was not at all comfortable with.

Not that anybody would ever ask him, but Hugo was a little tired of all the gender mixing he had to do. He couldn’t actually say it out loud. To anybody. But sometimes he longed for the day when women were secretaries and housewives and men were breadwinners and, well, men. It wasn’t that Hugo minded running the sweeper every once in a while or that he minded the idea of a woman boss much. He’d worked for them over the years. It was just that everything seemed to be getting so mixed up.

Jane was hardly home anymore, and though he certainly supported her work endeavors, he sometimes dreamed of a day when she would be waiting for him to come home from work and they could have dinner together. A roast. A homemade apple pie. He wondered what it would be like to dole out fatherly advice to his young daughter rather than paint his toenails to show he adored her. Hugo never thought of himself as a terribly smart man, but he did have good instincts. Something told him that the world might be halfway to right again if he wasn’t forced to take his daughter shopping for bras.

So after his doctor’s appointment, he’d arranged for Kaylin to go to a friend’s house since it was an in-service day for teachers at school, and he’d explained to Jane his need for getting in to work to put out fires. Jane understood. She’d seen the previous night’s broadcast.

But there weren’t any fires to put out. Nothing to do but sit at his desk and hope for the best.

At some point last night Chad had left. When the monumental broadcast had fizzled, Chad was no where to be seen. And the nine-to-six man wasn’t in his office yet today either. Hugo could only imagine he was meeting with the GM to decide who would be the next executive producer.

Hugo glanced up and since he could see that Hayden was about to knock at his door, he waved her in. In one hand she held a cup of coffee; in the other, some papers.

“Here you are, Mr. Talley,” she said in her cheerful voice.

“Is Mr. Arbus in yet?”

“No, not yet. I’ve gathered the information you requested.”

“What did you find out?”

“Well, nothing too definitive. There’s no way to know exactly when Gilda’s face will return to normal—”

“We don’t want normal. We want the capability of serious expression without the furrow.”

Hayden glanced at her notes. “Doesn’t furrow, by definition, mean there’s going to be a crease between the brows?”

“Yes. But it doesn’t have to stay.” Hugo sighed. “So what’s the bottom line?”

“The bottom line is that there’s really no way of knowing how long the paralysis will last. It’s possible that the doctor injected too much Botox and that Gilda will stay that way for several weeks.”

Hugo dropped his head into his hands.

“Also, I have several letters, e-mails, and faxes complaining about the show last night.”

Hugo didn’t look up. “I can only imagine what they say.”

“You don’t have to, sir. I’ll leave them here on your desk to review.”

A foul mood began to simmer inside Hugo. He glanced up at Hayden, who looked as if trouble didn’t exist in the world.

“What else can I do for you, Mr. Talley?” she asked.

“I’d like to discuss one more thing with you. Why don’t you take a seat?”

She sat like she was being invited to have lunch on the terrace. That kind of phrase would strike fear in most people, but Hayden seemed oblivious to Hugo’s tone. Hugo pushed his eyebrows together and lowered his chin to make sure she knew this was serious.

“I want to talk to you about last night. We were in the middle of quite a crisis when I noticed you praying in the back of the control room. Now, I realize that you don’t often see the side of me that you saw last night, but there’s not often a circumstance like we saw last night either. And Ms. Hazard, I won’t lie to you. Your praying made me uncomfortable. I realize that there were certainly many different ways I could’ve conducted myself, but the fact of the matter is that I had to react to the situation, and sometimes there’s no time to stop and think or to formulate a response. Not that I couldn’t have used some divine intervention. I am certainly no atheist, and I happen to have gone to church as a kid. I’m simply saying there seem to be appropriate times for prayer and, more specifically, appropriate days. Like Sundays. Do you understand?”

As he spoke, Hayden looked like she was trying to follow every word he was saying with great interest. When he finished, he sighed and waved her toward the door. She got up and was about to leave, when Hugo said, “Hayden, wait.” He didn’t want her feeling badly. She was a nice person, a rarity these days.

“Yes, Mr. Talley?”

“Look, you’re welcome to pray for me, okay? Just not in public.” Now
she looked embarrassed. Great. He’d sufficiently made a complete donkey’s behind of himself.

She lowered her voice. “I’m sorry, Mr. Talley. I wasn’t praying for you. I was praying for them.”

“Them?”

“The people at the sewage plant. I was praying they’d all be okay.”

Hugo offered a terribly awkward smile, one drenched with grievance for the fact that the words “donkey’s behind” did not come close to describing him.

“Right. Of course. Well, um—”

“But I will be very happy to pray for you, Mr. Talley.”

What kind of beast would he look like now if he declined? He’d had his fill of feeling like the rear ends of animals.

“Thank you,” he said meekly.

She smiled and left.

Hugo could feel the tremors of fear running through his body as the minutes ticked by. The afternoon meeting would be dreadful, at best. He pulled out his desk drawer and stared at his new bottle of Blue Pills. If he took an extra one, he would be short a pill at the end of the month, and who knew what kind of day the thirtieth would be. He slowly closed his drawer and picked up a pen, hovering it over a folder on his desk, secretly hoping that Hayden Hazard was some kind of saint and her prayers for him would be answered.

In the conference room, the afternoon meeting was about to begin. Gilda rarely made an appearance at the meetings. Still, he wanted some assurances that this evening’s broadcast might resemble normalcy. He just wanted to see Gilda frown. That wasn’t asking too much, was it?

Chad Arbus sauntered in, a look of disapproval smeared across a face already crowded with superiority. He eyed everyone as he took his seat and the room grew quiet. Hugo bit his lip and tried to prepare himself. He wanted to come across as a professional. They’d had a bad night. It happens. Of course, in the history of broadcasting it had never happened this bad, but nevertheless, they weren’t going to bounce back if Hugo looked as desperate as he felt.

Hugo called the meeting to order, which seemed a little stupid since everyone was already staring at him. He folded his hands together and stretched a smile across his face.

“All right, everyone. I think we all understand what kind of position we’re in. We’ve got to do better tonight, and we can’t afford any mistakes.” Hugo remembered to breathe. “I believe in everyone in this room. I know what we’re capable of. So it’s time to rise to my highest expectations of you. Let’s ponder what—”

Chad stood. “Hugo, stop the namby-pamby string of manure that’s running from your mouth. There’s a word for what happened last night. Do you know that? I had to leave. I couldn’t even watch it! We are the laughingstock of local news now!” Chad’s voice rose and his face glowed red. “You want to hear my expectations? My expectations are that if you don’t show me something extraordinary tonight, you’re all fired!” He slapped his hand down on the table, causing everyone to jump except Hugo. Thanks to the Blue Pill, he was incapable of being startled.

Hugo cleared his throat. “All right. Let’s get to business. Obviously our top story is the sewage plant. So Roarke, what’s the update?”

“One man remains hospitalized, though they’re not releasing his condition at this time. Right now, the only information we have about what caused the explosion is that it…well, it was caused by one of the chemicals that’s used to purify our…you know, sewage.”

Hugo said, “Okay. Jill, what do you have?”

“I’ve got two eyewitnesses ready to talk on camera about what they saw. One lives nearby and was driving home, and the other works at the sewage plant.”

“Wastewater treatment plant,” Roarke corrected.

“Anyway,” Jill said, rolling her eyes, “both will be good angles. I’ve already confirmed with them that they’ll do interviews today.”

“Good,” Hugo said.

“The deputy director of the plant is giving a press conference at 6:00 p.m. tonight,” Roarke added.

“Good. Trent, why don’t you cover the press conference?”

Trent looked relieved. He’d spent an hour in Hugo’s office earlier apologizing profusely for last night. “Thank you, sir.”

“What about me?” Ray suddenly said. “What am I going to cover?”

Roarke said, “We have footage of Mr. Green leaving jail, and apparently he’s been making some pretty bold verbal threats against our station.”

Hugo thought for a moment. They could bring this story back to life with some careful maneuvering. Petey Green was making sure it didn’t just slip away.

“Ray, I want you covering the Green story.”

“Me?” Ray asked. “I thought I was the story. How can I cover a story about myself? Have Trent cover the Green story. I’ll do the sewage plant.”

Hugo shook his head. “I think there’s something to be said for a reporter who is facing the man who nearly beat him to death.”

“He didn’t nearly beat me to death,” Ray protested. “He shoved me, and I hit my head. There’s a big difference. Won’t it seem a little awkward to talk about myself in the story? I mean, do I refer to myself in the first or third person? It doesn’t work.”

“I think it works great,” Jill said, avoiding Ray’s intense eyes. “It gives a real personal side to the story that this story wouldn’t have otherwise. Plus, it shows that Ray isn’t scared of Green.”

Ray sighed loudly, but Hugo noticed Jill smiling at Ray like they were best buddies. “All I’m saying,” Ray said, “is that we might seem a little more objective if someone else covered it. Like Trent.”

Hugo held up his hands as everyone started to chime in an opinion. “Folks, we’re going to have to see how this Green story plays out. If he’s still making threats to the station, then we’ve got to cover it. And Ray, you standing there with that bandage on your head will be a grim reminder to all our viewers of what a dangerous job reporters have.”

“Are you saying you want that to be the angle? That our jobs are dangerous?” Ray asked.

Hugo shrugged. “I kind of like it. People don’t think about what you do as being dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous,” Ray said.

But Beaker disagreed. “They take for granted that we go out onto a dark street in a rough neighborhood to cover a story they’re itching to see. These pictures don’t just shoot themselves.”

Ray said, “I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Why not switch me and Trent? Trent is perfectly capable of handling this story.”

“I’m perfectly capable of handling the wastewater treatment plant story too. I was there yesterday. You were recovering from being beaten up, remember?”

“I didn’t interview a rival station’s employee!” Ray’s temper quieted the room. “You want the best tonight, right? Then you want your best reporters on the top story.”

Hugo wavered. Ray was one of his best and he tended to get the interviews the others couldn’t. But Jill seemed on top of this one. There was a fire in her eyes that Hugo hadn’t seen before. It was as if everyone had always accepted that Ray was the top reporter, and now they were seeing that they might have a chance to slide into that position. It wasn’t really true, but if they thought it was true, maybe Jill and Trent would give a hundred and ten percent.