The Last Good Night (5 page)

 

O
N THE NEWSCAST
that evening, Quinn leaned forward with a veneer of interest across his famously taut face and asked me a complicated question about the exact percentage of proposed cuts in Medicare under the President's proposal, but I was ready for him. Everyone agreed that there was a level of energy, of concentration, almost a feverish competence to my work. If I sweat, it didn't show. And I certainly didn't banter. Jerry called right after the broadcast to say I was beginning to look more relaxed, beginning to look like I belonged.

I left the building at 7:46.

I saw the studio's black town car waiting for me by the curb. Relieved, I pushed open the glass doors and walked across the three yards of sidewalk to the car. At my approach, the uniformed driver got out of the front seat and stood holding the
back door open for me. I was just bending my head to get in when I felt a tug at my arm.

I looked up, startled.

Jack returned my gaze and tightened his hold, squeezing my arm beneath my heavy coat.

The driver stepped up to protect me. “Hey,” he said loudly. “What do you think you're doing?”

I swung around, fearful of loud voices, of commotion, attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the matte gold network logo looking down on us. “It's okay. I know him,” I said, smiling wanly to reassure the driver. “We just need to talk for a minute.”

The driver stood still for a moment and then walked reluctantly around to the front of the car and got in.

I straightened up and looked at Jack. His lips were tucked into his teeth and the lightly tanned skin of his cheeks fell into deep creases.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home.”

“What about us?” He held my arm with one hand, the open door with the other. “We need to talk.”

Through the building's glass doors and windows, I saw the receptionist watching me intently.

“Not here.”

“That's what you said yesterday.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Café del Petore,” I answered without thinking. I wanted only to be in the car, the door closed, moving away from him. “It's downtown. Look it up.”

“When?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“All right,” he said, and held the door open, watched me get in, and then closed the door behind me.

I leaned forward and told the driver to go.

 

T
HIS IS WHAT
I thought later: How quick, how ready he was to believe me, to believe that I would meet him, after everything, after all.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I was working at my desk when Carla buzzed to remind me of the production meeting for the new magazine show Quinn and I were going to start doing the first Wednesday of every month. It was in my contract, in his. Actually, ever since the networks discovered how cheap and profitable magazine shows are, it's in just about everyone's contract.

Everyone was already sitting in the conference room when I got there—Berkman, the director, Barry Fried, Quinn, Quinn's agent, my agent, Jerry Gold. A platter of donuts and bagels sat untouched in the center of the table.

“Are you ready?” Berkman asked as I sat down.

I nodded and they ran the videotape of the new graphics, set, and music.

Though the show, to be called
In Step,
had been in the planning stages for months, long before they settled on me as the co-anchor, there was still some uncertainty about its precise tone and pace, whether it would be mostly taped or live, and what the balance between hard and soft news would be. Often, it can take months on-air for a magazine show to find its rhythm. None was successful right off the bat, not even the hallowed
60 Minutes,
if anyone cared to go back that far, and a network had to be patient for it to pay off. Berkman had hoped for at least a year's commitment from the brass for our show, but he hadn't gotten it. Still, ads had begun to appear in magazines and on the sides of buses: “Get
In Step
with Quinn Hartley and Laura Barrett.”

Berkman got down to his list at hand. Though we'd leave a slot for late-breaking stories, the first show was slated to include an investigative report into welfare reform, an interview with Tom Hanks, and a talk with the secretary of state about the progress of peace talks in the Middle East. While Quinn and I would share the anchoring duties, other network reporters would contribute pieces. Everyone hoped a good scandal or a particularly sexy news event would happen our first week, but we had to be prepared if not.

Berkman looked down at his yellow legal pad. “We've decided to go with Olivia Redding for the secretary,” he said. Redding was the network's veteran Washington correspondent who was rumored to be furious I'd been granted the nightly anchor spot instead of her.

Jerry leaned forward. “I think Laura should do the secretary.” He spoke in a gruff Bronx-ridden voice that clashed with his cashmere turtleneck, tweed jacket, and well-pressed jeans. His accent, purposefully unrefined, perhaps even exaggerated, was one of his trademarks, along with a year-round tan that he swore was natural.

“I thought she was doing Hanks,” Quinn protested.

“She can do the star part next time. This time she'll do the secretary.”

“Redding has the contacts,” Berkman countered in an uninflected tone.

“And she's obviously been lobbying hard,” Jerry retorted. “The competition among reporters at your own network is worse than with their rivals. If that works for you, fine. Far be it from me to tell you how to run your news division.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gold,” Berkman replied.

“But,” Jerry continued, “the best way to showcase Laura as an anchor is to prove her news mettle. She should do the secretary.”

Berkman leaned back. “I'll think about it. Quinn, tell us what you've lined up. Do you think you'll be able to get a quote from the President on welfare?”

“I have a tentative commitment from the White House,” Quinn answered. “Especially if we get the timing right and this airs the week the Senate votes on it.” I sat back and doodled in my pad while Quinn outlined his piece, riddled with numerous illustrious sources. “I'd like to do most of it live,” he said. “We can get a satellite hook-up between the senators, the White House, and at least one welfare recipient grilling them. That way, fireworks will be inevitable,” he finished up, and everyone nodded approvingly. It is a measure of success of any magazine show not just to report the news but to make it, to be quoted in the next day's newspapers and broadcasts.

After the meeting, Jerry followed me to my office and sat down.

“Why didn't you speak up?” he asked. “You don't win any points for niceness. Look, they want to give you all the celeb shit, there's nothing wrong with that. But not just yet. We've got to show you can do the hard stuff first. And you can, you know. You're not some fucking Twinkie. I didn't groom you through twelve years of street reporting so they can put you on the woman's page.”

“Why did you?”

He frowned slightly. “Because you have talent. Real talent. Do you know how many people send me their demo tapes every week? Every two-bit reporter from Podunk, Ohio, to Bumfuck, Egypt. Every goddamned weather girl dreaming of the big time. Every horse's ass with a journalism degree. Do you know how many have real talent? I can count them on one hand.”

I looked at him steadily. “There is no woman's page anymore,” I said.

He leaned back, smiling. “Don't kid yourself.”

“I know.”

“So?”

“I thought you told me not to make waves.”

“Some waves, honey, you've got to make some waves or they
won't respect you. The trick is to look confident even if you're not. Fake it. No one's gonna believe the news from someone with a quivering voice. On-air or off.” He sighed and ran his hands over his stubbled chin. He began talking, talking again, talking about something, but I did not hear the words. Finally, he leaned forward. “Am I boring you, Laura?”

I smiled apologetically. “No. I'm sorry. But I'm late for a lunch appointment. I've got to run.”

 

M
Y EYES ADJUSTED
gradually to the dark lighting, absorbed by the wood-paneled walls and low ceiling of the Café del Petore. The only brightness came from the spotless white linen tablecloths.

I was twenty minutes late but only two tables were occupied. The restaurant, on a scruffy side street, did not do a big lunch business, which was why I had chosen it. Jack was sitting at a table in the back room, drinking a scotch. He was wearing a blue and white seersucker suit and a crisp white shirt, a southern gentleman's outfit, mildly absurd but somehow touching in the somber northern air. He drank slowly, shifting his gaze between the front door and his watch.

I saw the relief in his eyes as he followed my progress in his direction.

“I wasn't sure you'd come,” he said softly when I reached his table.

I smiled despite myself. “Neither was I.” I felt a part of myself, caked on, encrusted, fall away in one large sheet. We had been youngest together.

“But you did.”

“Yes.”

“You look good,” he said, studying me. “Different, but good. I never thought of you as a blond.”

I felt my face flush, embarrassed suddenly by the artifice that I had grown so used to. When the waiter came, I ordered a glass of wine, something I rarely do at lunch.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I saw your picture in
People
magazine. It was a fluke, really. I only bought it because there was an article about a cartoonist I admire. I wasn't even sure it was you at first, but there was something in the eyes. I woke up in the middle of the night seeing them in front of me. I got up and went back to the kitchen where I left the magazine.” He paused to take a sip of his drink as he remembered. “I was terrified of turning on the lights and looking at the picture again. I was terrified I was wrong.” He looked up. “But I got a Magic Marker and darkened your hair, then I changed the shape of your face with a pencil. I pulled out an old photo of you and there was no question. Marta, you had to know I'd find you once you had your face in the magazines and on TV. Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you just because you have a different name and a new nose?”

“I don't know. So much time has gone by. Sometimes I don't even recognize myself.”

He looked directly at me. “Maybe you wanted me to find you.”

I didn't answer.

“Have you been here in New York this whole time?” Jack asked.

“No. I think I've lived in half the cities on the East Coast, and some in the middle. At least it felt that way. I didn't make it back to New York until three years ago.”

“And now you're a big success.”

“I guess.”

“You don't sound sure.”

“I don't know. Sometimes it feels like it doesn't have anything to do with me.” I stopped abruptly. “Where do you live?”

He laughed, and it was not entirely pleasant, not entirely benign. “Flagerty.”

I looked at him curiously. “You never left? Even afterwards, later?”

“No.”

“I'm surprised.”

“Are you?”

I didn't reply.

“Maybe I thought you'd come back,” he said. “Maybe I was waiting for that all this time. Waiting for you.”

I flinched. “I'm so sorry, Jack.”

He swirled the ice about his drink. “Are you?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly.

Our eyes locked. There was a faint relief map of lines about his, and I nearly reached to trace it with my fingertips.

“I guess waiting became something of a habit,” he said. “I almost stopped noticing it. And then suddenly, when I saw your picture and I realized you were actually within reach, the waiting stopped.”

The waiter returned with my wine and took our lunch order, stealing lingering glances at me as he wrote in his little white pad.

“Tell me about your life,” I said when he had gone. “What is it like?”

He leaned back. “How can anyone ever really say what their life is like?”

“Are you married?”

“I was. I'm separated now.”

I was surprised at the pang I felt. “Who did you marry?”

“Carol Hendricks. Maybe you remember her? She was two years behind us in high school.”

I shook my head no.

“She certainly remembers you.”

“Do you have children?”

“I feel like I'm being interviewed.”

I smiled. “Sorry. Professional hazard.”

“No, there were no children. Carol wanted one desperately, but it never happened. We spent three years and almost all of our savings seeing every fertility expert in the state. Even after they told Carol she couldn't conceive, she kept on trying every shady cure she could find. Everything from Chinese herbs to lighting candles. She was obsessed with it.” He took a sip of his drink and carefully put the glass down. “She thought I left because she couldn't have a baby, but that was never really it.”

“What was it?”

His leg skimmed mine under the table. “The truth was, I was in love with someone else,” he said. He stared at me unabashedly, with none of the feints and sidesteps of politesse. It was one of the things I had once loved about him, though it unnerved me now. I looked away.

“You have a baby, though,” he said. “I read it in the magazine article. A girl, was it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That must be nice for you.”

I nodded. I'd been drinking quickly, nervously, and I felt the wine begin to form a hazy scrim across my mind. I played with the edges of my large linen napkin, staring at Jack's hands resting on the table, his long, thin fingers knobbier, more callused now.

“Tell me about Flagerty,” I said. “Has it changed much?”