Star Time (4 page)

Wichita was the fourth station where she had worked, always moving to a bigger city, always able to show a better reel and more experience than before, always able to point to a ratings increase during her tenure.

"And most times there was a guy in charge who had a chip on his shoulder about women in news. There are a lot of women on air, but most of the time a woman has to work twice as hard to get the job and be twice as good. That's just the way things are." Her words contained no conceit, but rather simply acknowledged prevailing attitudes.

During the last few months, she had become convinced that she was ready for a big city. "Not the network yet," she said. "That's still a few years away.
And someday anchoring the network news."

She said it so matter-of-factly that Greg required a moment to detect the powerful ambition infusing the words. No hint of doubt invaded them. No self-deprecating smile was proffered to sand their edges. This morning she had demonstrated that she was indeed willing to work harder and longer and maybe even better than other reporters to get where she was headed. And she had just made clear that she knew exactly where that was.

Ambition exposed so nakedly startled him. Ambition motivated him as powerfully—he, too, was as hungry to ascend to the top of his profession—but he kept it to himself, locked behind a tactful, courteous manner to mask an aggressiveness he had learned early in his career could arouse his colleagues’ wariness. Newswomen had been mouthing the slogans of equal opportunity for a decade now.  A number had become nationally prominent in TV news.  But they invariably seemed demure about their success, restrained, as if they had been fortunate to draw a winning ticket. The attitude might be a careful pretense, but it preserved the appearance of decorous on-air femininity. And yet, he noticed, this young woman's eyes
sparkled
no less nor did her mouth and jaw set any harder.

During dinner she revealed that she was the youngest of three children. Her father, an inflexible, argumentative newspaperman who had accumulated journalistic awards but been fired just as often for insubordination, seemed to have dominated her childhood. Although she idolized him and had taken his pugnacious virtue as a model for her own,
Greg also sensed resentment: Her mother and the rest of the family seemed to have paid a heavy price for his principled stubbornness, moving often as he changed jobs, until their last stop in a small Wyoming town, a part of the West that still honored mavericks. There he had bought a marginal newspaper with a small down payment, became his own boss, and Chris was finally able to put down roots. She worked at the newspaper afternoons and weekends.

She had skipped a year in grade school and was graduated four years ago from the state university.

Where you were probably homecoming queen," Greg guessed.

"I really didn't have time for any of that. I worked at a newspaper to help pay my way and at the university’s TV station for the experience." 

Determined to break into television reporting after graduation, she had found herself confronted by politely masked prejudices against women on camera. One offered to hire her as the “weather girl” if she took a year off to get “some kind of degree in Meteorology.” She finally took a job at a tiny TV station in rural Montana, the only one that offered to hire her as a reporter. The husband and wife who owned it became a second family to her and eventually convinced the owner of a bigger station to take her on. By the time she left that second job, she was anchoring the local news broadcast, which rose to number one in its market. That had happened at her next stop as well and most recently in Wichita.

"Your father must be proud of you."

"He thinks television's a cartoon version of the news for the retarded

sorry, the developmentally challenged" she replied. "But then my first mistake where he was concerned was being born a girl," she added with some vehemence.

"Is that why you picked news?
Because your father's in it?"

A smile broke across her face. "
It's
lust, pure and simple—absolute, unreasoning obsession. I read three or four papers a day and constantly scan the wires. When I'm not at work, my TV set’s always tuned to the news or a discussion show or I’m reading a news magazine or just talking about the news."

She fell silent for a moment, trying to give her feeling expression. "I want to make sense of the world for people—or at least tell them why it doesn't make sense. I want them to know they can rely on me for the truth. If we let ourselves compromise on that, the whole democratic system fails."

"Why TV?
Newspapers do that, too."

"They're impersonal. Print reporters are just names hardly anyone notices under the headlines. This would sound like heresy to my father,
but people can skip over something in a newspaper, wrap their garbage in it."

Her voice grew urgent with her ardor. "On television I speak right to them. I'm the one—
my
words,
my
nuances,
my
tone—
who
makes them understand what's happening and why it's important to them."
Then a hint of defiance.
"They can't ignore me."

Greg thought he discerned traces of stubbornness, self-righteousness, and indignation bound up with a demand for respect. Maybe that's what a calling is, he thought, recalling that afternoon’s conversation with Stew. At that moment he decided she was beautiful.

She interrupted his thoughts. "Tell me about yourself."

"There's not very much to tell." He was determined not to repay her confidences with his own.

"Are you married?"

"That sort of thing, you mean."

"Men who don't say much about their backgrounds often are." The words were straightforward, but he could sense guardedness behind them.

"Not married.
Never have been."

He thought he detected a slight widening of her smile.

"I come from a small city in western Pennsylvania," he continued. "My dad raised me after my parents broke up. He died two years ago. My college education was paid for by a tennis scholarship, although the school would never admit it gave out sports scholarships. I worked at a TV station in Pittsburgh before I came here."

Buried beneath the brief biography were years of childhood pain and of struggling to create the person he had now become, ultimate secrets he entrusted to no one.

She gazed as intently as a prosecutor, intrigued by his discomfort. "It would have been a lot safer to stay put than to come to L.A. What drives
you,
Greg
Lyall
?"

He started to shrug and form an answer that would fend off the question, but her eyes appeared ready to mock such caution after her own candor.

"I don't want to be ordinary," he snapped, startled at having made the admission.
In for a dime, in for a dollar.
"You
know,
someone life tosses around, someone who just tears the days off the calendar until he dies. Even more than the money and all the other things that go with making it in TV, I want to sit in the driver's seat and be one of the guys who gets to steer the world."

She was serious now. "You sound like you really believe you can make it."

"Someday.
If I want it enough."

She tried to sound casual.
"Anyone special in your life right now?"

Let’s cut this off right now. "I make it a policy not to date women who work at the station."

"That's not what I asked."

"I thought it should be out in the open.
Dating a co-worker just leads to complications."

The long hours, the trips, and the camaraderie produced casual affairs in news departments as prodigiously as a microwave pops corn. Stew forbade romances among staff members, believing they sowed divisiveness among a news team that must work closely together, and had early appreciated Greg's discretion, his attention to propriety in a sensitive profession. Greg revealed no secrets, kept his own counsel, and restricted his social life to women Stew had never had to meet.

"Don't emotions enter into it?” she asked. “You know, the blistering heat of unbridled passion crushing your noble resolve?"

He laughed. "Complete with ripped bodices and a full symphony orchestra during the steamy sections? Most people are more calculating about relationships, don't you think?"

She did not answer, and silence closed in around them. When the waiter went by, Greg asked for the check. He rejected her offer to pay her share, reminding her that he had asked her to dinner.

She smiled impishly. "Then I guess you've just broken your rule about not dating someone from work."

He drove her back to the garage near the station where she had parked. Then her car followed behind his as he led her through the unfamiliar streets to the small hotel where she was staying. He waved good-bye through the open car window and drove to his apartment.

Late that Saturday afternoon, after his own tennis match had ended, Greg sat on the terrace of his date's country club watching her play the third set of a hard-fought match. In the distance small figures moved in carts along green fairways or clustered on the oval swatches at the ends.

The Los Angeles friends Greg had made at Yale and at tennis competitions had eased his move west, gladly inviting him to their houses and their country clubs, where he met others in their prosperous circles. College had been his true finishing school. The small-town boy's diligence in unlocking the metaphors of John Donne and the economics of Adam Smith was rivaled by his study of affluent, cosmopolitan classmates. His tennis success and ingratiating manner permitted a socializing that his provincial background might otherwise have denied him. What set him apart from most of his classmates had been self-assurance about who he was or wanted to be. He had chiseled away
what was extraneous to that identity to become the image of his aspirations.

Friends were mystified when he announced at the end of his college years that he had chosen television for a career and not law or investment banking, as they were doing. Half a decade later, his occupation endowed him with
a certain
glamour; he seemed wired to what was happening. And that was enhanced by the image he fashioned: He had grown up determined to own good things and live well. At college he learned to dress and carry
himself
with style; he saved until he could buy just the right sweater or jacket. Finding himself unable to afford the new Mercedes convertible he coveted in L.A., he bought an older model of a superior year, which provided panache of its own. Captivated by the ocean view, he took the tiniest of one-bedroom apartments and furnished it with a few excellent pieces of furniture.

The last few days had been hectic ones for Greg. Now was really his first opportunity to consider Stew's statement that his youth might prevent his being named executive producer. Greg was in a hurry and his sights were set very high. The executive producer's job would be a real step up in responsibility and prestige, and he wanted it badly. The increased salary was important; he could pay off the credit-card debt he had incurred to get a running start on the L.A. life-style—debt of any kind made him uncomfortable. But he could only sit and wait.

When his date's match ended, they and several friends moved into the lounge for drinks. The television set above the end of the bar remained on for the local news after an FBS sports event. Greg's eye kept wandering to the screen. Ten minutes into the news broadcast, Chris
Paskins
appeared, microphone in hand, a street intersection behind her; because the station was short-handed she was working Saturday. He moved to a stool at the bar. The story was about a child injured in a hit-and-run accident in the Valley.

"That your station?" A male friend had joined him at the bar.

"Yes."

The screen switched back to a shot of Chris at the intersection for her closing standup, her final on-camera comments.

"Is she that good-looking in person?" the other man asked.

"Better," Greg heard himself saying.

"Can you fix me up with her?"

"She's . . . going with someone."

"Shame."

The man moved away.

Greg was as annoyed by his friend as he was surprised at his own reaction. Another story came on, but Greg gazed unseeing at the screen.
Then, abruptly, he strode to the pay phone at the other end of the bar and called the newsroom.

The desk assistant who answered the call transferred it to Chris.

"Hello," he heard her say.

"That piece . . . the one you just did," he began, stumbling over the words, "the piece on the hit-and-run victim . . . I just wanted you to know I liked it."

"You saw it?" She sounded pleased. "I figured everyone in southern California would be out doing southern-California things on a weekend. . .
.
you
know, surfing or playing tennis or barbecuing."