The Last Good Night (8 page)

He laughed. “That's why everyone wants it. Even me. It's such a fucking joke. This job is supposed to be the pinnacle of television journalism and it has nothing to do with journalism at all. It's all about the illusion of power. Hell, it's all about the illusion of journalism. In England, they call us news readers, did you know that? So much for the fourth estate. So much for the fucking sacred trust.”

His unhappiness leached out across the table as he took a sip of his scotch and motioned for another.

“I used to be a real reporter,” he said.

“So was I.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Maybe with me at the desk beside you, you'll be freed up to go out into the field more,” I suggested.

“That's the party line, isn't it? That's what they say when they want you to step to the side.”

“No one's asking you to step aside.”

He raised one eyebrow. “I didn't say aside. I said to the side. There's a difference.”

We were heading onto dangerous ground and I tried to change the tone. “You'll be able to do real reporting on
In Step
.”

“Yes.” Then he added, “The ninety percent that isn't shaped by producers will be all ours.”

Our meal came, monkfish for me and liver for Quinn, and we began to eat.

“How's the piece on welfare reform going?” I asked.

For a moment his face lit up. “It looks like the Senate will be voting the week following our broadcast. So not only does everyone suddenly want to be on it, everyone wants to know what the other guy is going to say. Even the President realizes it's a great platform. I've got a welfare mother in Detroit who wants to go back to school so she'll be more qualified to find a job. One of the proposed changes in the system will make her lose her welfare check if she does. I'm going to have her question each party on their plan for her. With any luck, even the President will agree to talk to Miss Gina Marks.”

“Careful,” I said. “You're sounding suspiciously like someone who cares.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. You still think what we do matters.”

For an instant his eyes turned steely and sure. “Of course I think it matters.” Then he leaned back and smiled that lopsided no-teeth smile. “And so does my accountant.”

When the waiter brought our coffee, Quinn turned to him before he walked away. “See that couple over there?” He pointed to the rock star and his wife, still tangled up in each other's arms, their food untouched. “Send them a bottle of Dom Perignon. On second thought, make it two. And put it on Frank Berkman's tab.”

We watched as the bottles were brought to their table. “He was always the less talented of the duo, anyway,” I said.

Quinn smiled. “All the more reason for alcohol.”

The cold air assaulted us as we stood out on the street a few feet from the restaurant's entrance, figuring out how to extricate ourselves from each other, from the evening. “This has been very nice, Laura,” Quinn said as he held his hand up for a cab, “and I for one will be sure to thank Berkman first thing tomorrow morning for the brilliant idea. But I've got to tell you something. I'm not looking for a new best friend. There's no goddamned job opening
for that particular post.” He paused as a taxi pulled up by the curb. “Then again, I don't suppose that's the job you're after.”

He reached for the door and climbed in. “Goodnight,” he said, as he shut it with a persuasive slam.

 

B
ERKMAN DID NOT
ask us how the dinner went.

If there was any of the desired result evident on-screen, he did not mention it.

He only tracked the ratings and took notes.

For the rest of the week, I went in early and spent every moment when I was not preparing for the broadcast working on my segment of the magazine show.

There were nights when I dreamt in print, the simple block letters of the TelePrompTer playing across my mind, though I could never quite figure out the words.

There were nights when I dreamt of the coffin.

There were nights, too, when I dreamt of the minor rock star and his wife, dreamt of their lips coming close, touching, melding.

Though it wasn't them at all, of course.

 

F
AME IS AN
odd thing.

It sits just outside your front door, waiting for you, and the moment you step from the confines of your home, it wraps itself about you, a cloak, a shield, a magnet, and sticks to you like glue, just like fucking glue, so that others can only see you through its gauze. Try as you may, you can never quite see it yourself, your fame, only feel the effect.

On Thursday night, I had to go to a black-tie dinner honoring Lloyd Parker, who was retiring after twenty-eight years with the
network. The sportscaster was everything I despised about television journalism, a showman with a cigar caught permanently between his teeth who had, in the last ten years, been elevated to doing interviews with heads of state, as if his celebrity alone granted him the expertise. Nevertheless, network orders had come down for me to make an appearance. I was, after all, their latest inductee.

I raced home after the broadcast to change clothes. David was standing before the full-length mirror on his closet door, straightening the jacket of his rented tuxedo. At six-foot-three, it wasn't easy to find the right fit.

“Why don't you just buy one?” I asked as I slipped out of my suit and into a Calvin Klein dress that cost more than anything without an engine and wheels that I had ever bought.

“Because it'll be like that baseball field in, what was that movie? You know, build it and they will come. Buy it and I'll have to use it. It will just attract more invitations like this one.”

“To say nothing of attracting the ladies.”

“I can hardly handle the one I have.”

I smiled. “Seriously, you look great.”

“Isn't that supposed to be my line?”

“I'm waiting,” I replied.

“You don't look half-bad for Mom.”

I poked him in the ribs. “Thanks a lot.”

“You look simply gorgeous,” he said theatrically. “Better?”

“Better. And so heartfelt.”

“I try. Now that we've agreed on our mutual attraction, I don't suppose you'd want to stay home and put it to good use?” he asked.

“I'd love to, but you know I can't.” I leaned up to kiss him. “Thanks for doing this tonight.”

“I haven't done anything yet.”

“You will. Wait till later.”

“Promises, promises.”

The studio had offered to send someone over to do my hair but I refused and, frustrated, I pulled the bobby pins out of my latest attempt at a chignon and decided to wear it down.

“Ready?” David asked.

“Ready.”

We stepped out into the cold night.

And there it was, that cloak, sliding on so silkily that I didn't even feel it at first.

When we got to the midtown hotel where the reception was being held, a horde of paparazzi were waiting at the entranceway beneath the international flags flapping in the wind. As each limousine pulled up, they turned to see who emerged, their immense cameras raised hopefully, their down-coated arms waving for attention, a single dark mass punctuated only by their yells and the blinding flash of their cameras—was that Paul Newman? Peter Jennings? Don King? Jane Pauley? Cindy Crawford?

We got out and headed up the velvet-roped path to the ornate gold-leafed doors while the lights, the clatter swirled about us. David took my arm, muttering as he hurried our pace. The commotion thickened and I thought there must be someone behind me, a model, a star, whose glare we had somehow gotten caught in. But I heard my name and realized it was me they wanted.

I turned around, turned to that name, my name.

I saw him just before my eyes were blinded by the white light of the cameras.

Jack, deep inside the crowd, standing completely still in his seersucker suit, staring at me.

The flashbulbs exploded.

When I refocused my eyes, Jack was gone.

“Come on,” David said, urging me inside.

By then, the cameras had moved on to someone else.

 

W
E WERE SEATED
at a table with an aging Hollywood actress starring in a Broadway revival, a network producer, a Wall Street junk bond king and his fourth wife, and a model from the seventies who now had her own talk show. David was at the opposite end of the table and the insistent nattering of small talk came between us, the brittle chatter of strangers united only by a sense of privilege. I let it swell about me for a minute and then I gave myself up to it, desperately, rebelliously, as if it could erase Jack's face in the light. I heard my own voice mingling with and rising above the others, high and shrill, only vaguely recognizable.

I glanced over at David and saw him picking at the first course of carpaccio, while he smiled and bantered obliviously with his neighbors. I turned back to the Wall Street raider's fourth wife. I'd seen her picture in the society pages before. She was famous for the blackness of her hair, the extreme slightness of her waist, and the vastness of her apartment. I've always been fascinated by women like her, women who'd grown up plumbers' daughters in Iowa or Indiana, who'd worked as stewardesses or panty hose models, but through sheer will, sheer determination, reinvented themselves as arbiters of society and devoured the city whole. She pushed the food about on her plate without actually putting any of it in her mouth. “We must get together for lunch,” she said. “I'd love to talk to you about co-chairing the benefit for the Cancer Institute.” She was leaning forward to me, the me ensconced in the cloak of fame.

David was deeply enmeshed in conversation with the woman seated beside him, his hazel eyes unwavering, the hair behind his ear curling over his stiff white shirt. I watched closely and then returned reluctantly to the fourth wife and her gossip about the love lives of clothing designers I had barely heard of.

It was during the lull between the last course and the start of the speeches that I saw Olivia Redding walking in my direction. She stopped in front of me.

“I see they hijacked you, too,” I said—we are in this together, we can be in this together if we choose.

“We all love Lloyd.” She smiled. Her hair, of that particular cool shade of blond that can be found only on television, was sprayed into a perfect helmet. Her chiseled cheeks and hooded eyes somehow managed to project both sex appeal and authority, an unlikely combination that undoubtedly added many thousands to her network contract. Of course, she also had phenomenal contacts in the Pentagon, Congress, and the White House. “I just came to congratulate you personally for winning,” she said.

“You make it sound like a contest.”

“Well, it was a contest, wasn't it? There aren't enough good slots for women for it not to be.”

I nodded. “You were probably just too good at what you do in Washington. They knew they couldn't replace you.”

“We'll see. New York never really pays attention to what goes on in Washington anyway. So,” she said, “I see the overnight ratings fell a half-point. Well, I wouldn't worry about it. They were inflated to start with. That always happens at the beginning. People tuning in out of curiosity, boredom.”

“I'm not worried,” I said.

“Good. I was just telling Quinn the same thing. I only wish he was as relaxed about it as you. I don't know how you do it. In your place I'd be much more nervous. After all, you'll get all the blame if the ratings fall.” She straightened her long black sheath dress. “By the way,” she said, “I hear
Vanity Fair
is doing a profile.”

“How did you know that?”

“Oh, they've been calling everyone. Alex always does her homework.”

“Alex?”

“Alexandra Harrison.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I should get back to Wyatt,” she said. “We see little
enough of each other as it is. Of course, I've always believed that's the secret to a successful marriage, don't you?”

I watched her walk back across the floor, an army general in Chanel pumps, waving to people as she went, until she came to her own table. She sat down next to her husband, Wyatt Hargrove, the columnist for the
Washington Post
. Together they were one of those brainy and ambitious couples whose dinner parties are comprised of the most important names in politics and media. One or both of them always seemed to turn up on the Sunday morning news shows, and there were rumors of standing tennis dates with the Vice President. It was hard to imagine them fighting over the dishes, it was hard to imagine them making love.

They both bent their heads to talk and it was then that I noticed the third head in the huddle, Quinn. All three had their hands over their mouths to cover their laughter. Of course, there was no reason to think that it had anything to do with me.

As soon as the speeches were over, I motioned to David that I wanted to leave. I was suddenly exhausted by it all, the noise, the smiling, the effort it took to be one of them. David, too, was ready. The woman he was talking to had left to find her husband.

The paparazzi were gone when we stepped back out into the night.

There were no faces in the light.

There was no one there at all, just a lineup of bored drivers standing before the strand of shining black limousines.

We found a taxi and rode the first few blocks in silence.

“Who was that woman you were talking to?” I asked.

“She's on the City Planning Commission. She's overseeing the renovation of the Hudson River piers.”

I nodded.

“She knows my work,” he said. “Remember my work?”

“Of course I remember your work. I'm sorry, David. I had to do this tonight.”

“I know.”

The cab pulled up to our building and David paid the driver.