Gloss. Jennifer Oko
on the edit, promos was demanding more snake footage and my video editor was all bitchy because he only worked until six, per union rules, and he refused to do any overtime. And the piece aired tomorrow. It was 5:55 when the word came down that Carl was finally in his office, ready to screen. Carl Van Dunt—he was my supervisor. So up I went, tape in hand.
Many correspondents didn’t have the time to sit through screenings, but Natasha took a pride of ownership in her work and tried to make a point of it, so I stopped by her office to grab her to come with me.
“Shh!” she said, vigorously waving for me to enter.
“What’s up? We have to go to Carl’s—”
“Shh! Listen.”
Natasha’s office was directly across from Tom Tatcher’s, the EP’s. He had a corner window and she had no windows, but from a power perspective, it was a great place to be. The building was erected in the seventies, apparently a time when not a lot of attention was paid to soundproofing.
“He’s in there with a team from legal.”
This was weird. Legal hardly ever came up to our floor. Why would they? People don’t regularly sue over diet fads and celebrity interviews.
We leaned forward intently. I couldn’t hear much, but I was pretty sure I heard my name. Then they said their goodbyes.
The door opened and four men walked out. All in suits, Tom included. Down to the elevator bank and gone for the day.
“You heard my name, right?” I said, whispering.
“Don’t be stupid. That wasn’t you they were talking about.”
“Do you know any other Annabelles here?”
“Maybe they said Isabel? You know, Isabel, the new girl?”
“She’s an intern.”
“So?”
“Well, what were they talking about?”
“I don’t know. I just caught the tail end of it.”
“Maybe I should talk to Tom, tell him about the calls?”
“What could he do? It’s been almost a week and they haven’t called back, and you have no idea what the story is, anyway. I’m sure he has other things to deal with.”
Which was true. It was incredibly hard to get the attention of the boss, and you had to be judicious about it. Tom was a nice guy and tried to be welcoming, but his job was just too nuts. I used to think I wanted to climb the network ladder, perhaps run a show myself one day, but when I watched my supervisors, and especially the executive producers, I really started to question my career track. The stories, the guests, the competition, the overly ambitious young staffers, the hotheaded anchors, the egocentric correspondents, the late nights, the early mornings, the ratings, the marketing, the press, the promotion, the spin—it all fell on their heads, 24/7 (you can forget about a personal life), and the job security was as good as the weekly Nielsen Report. The American public could, essentially, vote you off the island on any given day, contracts be damned. We were the number one morning show, but only by a few ratings points. Should one of the other two network programs start creeping up (which they seemed to be doing), it was an invitation to a beheading.
“Let’s go see Carl,” I said. “My editor is about to bolt.”
Neither of us liked Carl, and he didn’t really like us, either. Carl was in the twilight of his career, recently fired from a big job at a different network, only to be hired by ours (word was he was golf buddies with the suits at the top). Carl had a big title for years and years over there, running one soon-to-be-canceled show after another, but the rumor was that for the past decade or so no one over there ever knew what he actually did. They said he spent so much time standing in the lobby, seeing and being seen, that everyone joked he should accept the dry cleaning deliveries so at least he would be of value.
Things didn’t change much when he came to New Day USA. He had a big, beautiful office with big beautiful paintings, but most of the time he wasn’t there; he was out in front of the building, modeling his stylish suits, which were decades too young for him, laughing loudly so everyone could see he was having a good time. He just seemed to be one of those people who kept fluffing his feathers and somehow charming the right people enough that he failed up and up.
The sad thing was, once upon a time, Carl was actually worth what they paid him. Word was that in the early days of his career, he was breaking stories right and left. He spent years covering war zones, telling stories that no one else would tell. But somewhere along the line, things changed. He started doing more and more pieces filled with style and less and less filled with substance. He was one of the first producers to mandate that every edit should be a dissolve, that more time should be spent worrying about the lighting and the correspondents’ haircuts than about the questions they were asking.
Purists didn’t like what Carl was doing, but the audience did. And as the ratings went up, so did Carl’s stature in some parts (the money parts) of the industry. In fact, a lot of people credit Carl with the softening of the network news, but I think that might be a little too generous (or malicious, depending on your view of the world).
Anyway, you might think that someone who had been around so long would want to nurture younger staffers like us, maybe try to relive his proud and productive early years, but the truth was it often felt like he resented us. Understandably. We took up his time with our petty needs when he could otherwise be schmoozing with the people who actually could impact his career and his wallet. Never married, never really appearing all that happy, he had only his job and his authority, and in the end, there was no security in that.
Word was, after years of him doing pretty much nothing, the suits in our front office had seen the light and were now trying to push him out, make room for some younger, less wrinkled, less expensive blood, and Carl was holding on for dear life, making dealings with him more uncomfortable than ever. Up front he was as charming as all get-out, but he routinely took credit for other people’s work, gossiped incessantly (well, we all did that) and, worse, liked to change our pieces just to put his fingerprints on them. In fact, he was sort of a tyrant; he enjoyed tearing producers (and especially associate producers) to shreds. He would never raise his voice, but would say things like “this makes absolutely no sense” and “who wrote this shit?” and “how did you ever get a job at a network, anyway?” Usually he was comparably easy on me, but not always; he was the first and only person ever to make me cry at work.
But he was a sucker for celebrity.
“Annie has a date with Mark Thurber tonight,” Natasha said before we even sat down.
I should have been pissed, but I knew Carl would be impressed (I was a bit impressed with myself, after all), and, more importantly, I knew that he would be nice to me in the hopes that I would return with good gossip tomorrow. And, hope of all hopes, he probably figured if a relationship took root and Mark and I became an “it” couple, he could claim us as friends, one of whom was in a very powerful place.
Carl spoke to us while simultaneously consulting his BlackBerry, periodically typing a few things, putting it down, picking it back up again, as if to remind us of his importance, acting disinterested while inquiring about how Mark and I met, where we were going, what I thought might happen.
I stifled a sneeze. Carl’s office was saturated with a musky male cologne (I could have sworn he shared it with Franklin); the scent trailed Carl wherever he went. It was so strong that some people would take the stairs if they saw him waiting for the elevator. It was weird, and made me wonder if smelling sensitivity toughens with age.
“Excuse me,” I said, and grabbed a tissue off his desk before offering up a little more information, just enough that we got the desired response.
“Did you make the changes we discussed earlier?” Carl asked, referring to his meddling with our snake piece.
“Of course.” I blew my nose.
“Then I don’t