What's a Girl Gotta Do (2 page)

“Hey, little girl,” he said. “Wanna sit in my
lap and play with Mister Microphone?”

“Who are you supposed to be?”

“Ted Bundy.” He pushed a button and smoke
came out of the helmet.

“You are an evil genius, Louis.”

“Thanks. Who are you?”

“Ginny Foat. Say, Louis, have you seen my
husband sliming around tonight?”

“Not that I know of,” he said. “What’s he
coming as?”

“I dunno. I couldn’t find out.”

“I did see your second favorite person,” he
said. “Jerry Spurdle.”

“What did he come as?”

“Himself.”

“He came as a bucket of larvae?”

Spurdle was my boss in the Special Reports
unit. I “belonged” to Jerry Spurdle, as he liked to remind me. He
was part of my humiliation, my punishment, my artistic
suffering.

“No. He came as Richard Nixon,” Louis said.
“He came as a dick. Get it?”

“Har har,” I said slowly. “Just like Jerry to
pick a story that was over before the network ever went on the
air.” An exclusive radio interview with Nixon in 1972 had made his
reputation—Jerry’s, not Nixon’s—and he liked to remind people of
it.

“I’m sitting with some of the writers,” Louis
said. “Why don’t you join us?”

“Bless you. I will—later. First, I think I’ll
do some recon. Map out all the people I want to avoid.” And try to
make contact with my mystery man.

“Come sit with us. We’re up in the balcony,”
he said, and motored away.

I circulated, waiting for the man who knew my
secrets to approach me, while at the same time keeping an eye out
for Burke and Amy.

This being a costume party, it was hard to
tell who was who without reading name tags. Everyone was in
disguise with a few highly visible exceptions, including Dr.
Solange Stevenson, ANN’s psychologist with a talk show, whose only
nod to whimsy was a photo button showing her rival, Dr. Sonya
Friedman, with a large red X through her face. Also not in costume,
our fearless leader, Georgia Jack Jackson, chairman of the board of
Jackson Broadcasting System, our parent company.

Solange was simply too dignified to wear a
costume (“the soothing Solange Stevenson”—TV Guide). But dignity
was something Georgia Jack didn’t worry about too much. Since he
considered himself his favorite news story he came as . . .
himself. Legitimately, I might add. In the 1980s Georgia Jack
unleashed an entertainment empire on the world, built a
twenty-four-hour news network against the odds, dated half the
women in the Screen Actors Guild, and created a great deal of
controversy by buying up classic silent films and adding sound and
dialogue to them, which filmmakers decried as mutilation.

Jackson was huddled at one end of the
ballroom with the cream of the correspondents, the mediacrats, the
cool kids at the prom who excited my envy.

The network’s premier anchor and talk-show
host, “avuncular” Greg Browner, was dressed this night as an MX
missile. Greg was a prince of the Jack Jackson church, and ruled an
autonomous fiefdom within the kingdom. His highly rated call-in
show had taken on Larry King and made a respectable showing. Greg
then moved his show up an hour to beat King to the punch, and was
taking away huge chunks of the traditional call-in audience.

Next to him was “dispassionate and
professional” Joanne Armoire, dressed as the late great Lucy.
Beneath her red wig, Joanne was blond and beautiful in a Lufthansa
stewardess sort of way. Her career had been meteoric. She’d been
one of the few Western women to go into Afghanistan with the
mujahedin and she’d taken a bullet in her leg when she was covering
the ethnic war in Sarajevo.

This is who I thought I would be: a brave,
trench-coated figure, looking serious and beautiful, standing in a
war zone in some picturesque country, bringing the world my own
brilliant and illuminating insights on the news. I saw myself as a
hard-hitting correspondent, taking on world leaders, asking them
tough questions, Oriana Fallaci in Rita Hayworth’s body, bad men
cowering and good men swooning in my wake.

That’s who I thought I would be. This is who
I am: a slightly rumpled, third-string reporter with ink stains on
all her blouses and a small run in her stocking, who sneaks around
with a hidden camera looking for seamy stories and petty scandals.
The National Enquirer—in Rita Hayworth’s body.

Joanne and I had started out at ANN around
the same time, in similar lowly positions, and we had both been
writers for Greg Browner when he was the anchor and managing editor
for the six o’clock. Her hitch on the six had gone somewhat better
than mine, in small part, at least, because she knew how to handle
Greg’s constant advances and his big ego. She knew when to speak,
when to hold her tongue, and how to be diplomatic.

I did not. I told Greg to go fuck himself and
was promptly given a new assignment—a better assignment,
actually—another report on my “bad attitude” comfortably ensconced
in my thick personnel file.

I watched Joanne trade bon mots with Mark
O’Malley, a devilishly handsome business reporter wearing a barrel
marked “1987 stock market crash,” and Tom Charing, who wore an
upright open coffin and a bad suit with a hammer and sickle on the
lapel to represent a generic dead Soviet leader. Off to the side
was Madri Michaels, a brunette anchorwoman with a premolded plastic
kind of beauty who came as Madonna, wearing Mylar. So obvious.

These were the reporters and anchors who
always dominated the A block—the first ten minutes or so of a news
show—and brought prestige and respect to ANN. The Pantheon. They
took risks, they knew how to use their sources, and they knew how
to tell an exciting story. Because of this, they had considerable
influence with lawmakers all over the world. Everything they did,
everything they said, every movement of their heads, every earnest
furrow on their brows said “Emmy.”

God, I wanted to be one of them.

The pathetic thing is, I had been well on my
way. I’d had the crime and justice beat, covering big Manhattan
murder trials and other cases for the network. It was a
second-string beat, but I didn’t mind. It fascinated me and I knew
it could lead to bigger and better things.

Then I got my big break. I was sent to D.C.
on a temporary assignment to fill in as weekend White House
correspondent. All right. It was only weekends and it was only
fill-in, but it was that all-important foot in the door to the
Washington power establishment—and the big stories. I could have
parlayed that into a regular spot in the A block, guest appearances
as a panelist on Brinkley, a column in the Washington Journalism
Review, a Maxwell House commercial.

But I had this little problem, you see. I
couldn’t seem to keep myself from fucking things up.

After half an hour of mingling, nobody had
approached me and I was beginning to think the guy who called me
was just an old high school boyfriend playing a practical joke. Old
high school boyfriends. There’s a depressing subject. I needed a
drink.

Traditionally, the New Year’s drink at ANN
parties was Jonestown Punch, which was not only in bad taste but
was bad tasting, a sickening, strong concoction of grape juice and
vodka. That was free. Anything else you wanted you had to pay for
at the cash bar.

Which is where I found Jerry, one arm over
the bar, his Richard Nixon mask pulled down around his neck, trying
to offend a young bartender/actress.

I stood behind him and heard him say, “I’ll
have a slow screw up against the wall. Know what that is?”

The bartender gave him a shriveling look.

“Sloe gin, OJ, and Galliano,” she said.

That’s Jerry for you. He drinks slow screws,
a drink whose only purpose is to shock cocktail waitresses and lady
bartenders. So out of touch, that Jerry. Doesn’t know that the new
generation of drinks—Sex on the Beach, Safe Sex, Oral Sex,
Orgasms—makes the old slow screw quaint and old-fashioned.

He didn’t see me standing behind him, so he
proceeded unwisely.

“I’m well hung,” he said to the skeptical
brunet. “Oh, I apologize. I suffer from a mild case of Tourette’s
syndrome. Do you know that disease? It makes me tell the truth all
the time.”

He thought he was so funny. The woman just
stared at him.

“Just a mild case. I’m a producer. I could
get you a job in TV. Nine inches. Oh, there I go again.”

Yes, all Jerry’s best lines sounded like
they’d been picked up from liars in locker rooms. I wanted to tap
him on the shoulder and say something smartass—I was spoiling for a
fight—but Burke was going to be here later and I was saving myself
for him.

Anyway, the lady could take care of
herself.

“Get away from me, or I’ll call security,”
she hissed.

Jerry turned and saw me there.

He hated that I’d just witnessed his
humiliation at the hands of a female.

“Look, it’s another member of the PMS Sewing
Circle,” he said, as he pulled his Richard Nixon mask up over his
face and pushed past me.

I could tell he was really drunk, otherwise
he’d never have had the nerve to talk to a pretty young woman like
the bartender. Jerry has this little problem relating to women, you
see. It’s a very common problem. When he’s sober and he comes face
to face with a woman in a social setting, he tends to become
focused on her breasts and can’t look her in the eye. If she moves
from side to side, his head moves from side to side too, like a dog
watching a tennis ball.

I ordered a shot of lemon Stoly and downed it
with a grimace and then grabbed a plate of hors d’oeuvres and went
up to the balcony area overlooking the dance floor. Louis waved me
over to a table by the railing.

There were about a dozen writers crammed
around the rectangular table, one in Woody Allen wig and glasses
clutching a doll, another as a giant condom made of papier-mâché,
complete with ribbing and reservoir tip, the whole thing
articulated into segments so the wearer could bend and sit. The
rest were a mixed bag of Scud missiles, presidential pets, the
usual buffoonish congressmen.

They looked up and said hi, and then resumed
an argument I’d apparently interrupted on the moral imperatives of
Bewitched.

“Look at it as an allegory about marriage,”
Helen Lalo said. “This young woman comes into her marriage with
exceptional abilities, which her husband tries to stifle. He tries
to make her conform, to sacrifice her natural gifts, her
specialness. Endora, on the other hand, encourages her daughter to
express her special talents.”

I couldn’t get into this conversation, so I
sat down and watched people waltzing on the dance floor below,
waiting for my anonymous source to make himself known. Just then,
my husband danced into view with Miss Amy Penny.

What a cute couple—Burke as Oliver North and
Amy as Fawn Hall. I thought maybe Donald Trump and Marla Maples or
Jimmy Swaggart and a generic truck-stop prostitute might be more
appropriate costume couplings. But even as I was sneering, I felt a
painful twinge. Burke looked really good, like a younger, shorter,
blonder Peter Jennings, and that snappy marine uniform didn’t hurt
a bit.

Burke was a lucky guy. With his sunny looks,
he could only age well. As a woman, I fought crow’s-feet, but no
crow’s-feet for him. Unh-unh. What he had, the television
columnists called “an endearing correspondent’s squint.” My worry
lines robbed me of a little bit of youth and diminished my on-air
worthiness, but his gave Burke a look of authority. Personally, I
think the best revenge is aging well, and in that respect, Burke
had me beat, hands down.

I was quite sure young women would always
find him attractive, young women like Miss Amy Penny, who sparkled
tonight as Fawn Hall. Unaware that I was watching, she looked up at
him as they danced and he looked back and their eyes glistened,
full of each other. They looked like they were in love, but I
couldn’t tell—was it with each other, or with their own reflections
in each other’s eyes?

I blinked back tears and watched through the
blur as Greg Browner brought George Dunbar over and introduced him
to Burke. Dunbar was president of ANN. Burke shook his hand
energetically and said something. I don’t lip-read too well, but I
knew Burke’s spiel for media bigshots. Look them in the eye, smile
warmly, say, “I really respect your work,” and then quote them back
to themselves (“I liked what you said to the National Association
of Whatever about blah blah blah”). But he never gushed and the
technique worked for him, talented sociopath that he is. He was a
rising star at Channel 3 and being groomed for network, or so the
buzz went.

These golden people were standing almost
directly below me but Burke still hadn’t seen me. For a moment I
had a childish urge to do something cartoonish—drop a flower pot,
anvil, safe, or grand piano on him. Not having any of those items
at hand, I threw a cocktail peanut at him instead, which bounced
off his head and landed at his feet. He looked up.

“Sorry!” I hollered down. He gave me that
condescending look of hurt I know so well. It’s the look a
progressive parent gives a demon child when child psychology has
failed. I am very disappointed with you, that look says. You’ve let
me down. But you’re hurting yourself more than me.

Burke didn’t say anything, he just moved out
of peanut range. I could see Amy still, talking to Greg in this
hyper way. She was a nervous little thing, but nervous in a way
other people (other than me) find attractive. It’s a mildly
gushing, eager-to-please nervousness.

The men exchanged business cards and all
shook hands, the ritual networking farewell. When the band started
up again with Glenn Miller, Burke and Amy went back to the dance
floor, the better to display their unbridled love for each other to
the whole world.