Page 27 of Making It Live!

I didn't look at the control room during broadcasts.I had never looked, because the glass wall was a boundary, and I'd built my entire professional existence around the maintenance of boundaries.Jimmy Goodman was sitting in a chair frowning at a monitor, and some treacherous part of my brain had decided it must see that.

The package ended.I turned to Camera Two and delivered the transition with the mechanical perfection of a man overcompensating for a mistake nobody had seen.

Except someone had seen it.

Marla St.John was sitting three feet to my right with an eyebrow raised.Marla had been reading co-anchors for over thirty years, and the woman missed nothing.

She picked up her pen and made a small note on the pad she kept beside her water glass — the pad she used for broadcast notes she never actually referenced — and then she set the pen down and returned her attention to the camera.

I couldn't tell whether she was writing something relevant or simply letting me know she'd noticed.With Marla, the two were often the same thing.

The broadcast continued with Jimmy's voice in my ear.I did not look at the control room again.

"Smooth close tonight, Nelson.Take it home."

I delivered the close and held for three.The red light died.Then I removed my earpiece, placed it on the desk, and resisted the urge to drop it to the floor and crush it under my heel.

* * *

Harry was waiting in the hallway."Overnight numbers from the week," he said, falling into step beside me.He handed me a coffee and a single printout.

I glanced at it.The numbers were up.Not marginally up — measurably, defensibly, send-an-email-to-the-board up.Viewership had climbed every night since Tuesday.The 25–54 demo — the number advertisers cared about, the number that determined whether the network could charge premium rates — had jumped four points in four days.

Jesus.

It had taken Greg Fletcher four months to lose six, and it had taken Jimmy Goodman four nights to gain four.The math was obscene.

"Bruce has already seen them," Harry said."He's been walking around the building like a man who just found out he won the lottery and is terrified someone's going to take the ticket back."

"Bruce should be terrified."

"Of you?"

"Of the conversation I'm going to have with him about hiring decisions made without my input."

Harry was quiet for a few steps.Then: "Nelson.The numbers are up."

"I can read."

"The numbers are up, the show is better, and the Vasquez interview is the most talked-about segment we've aired in a year."He paused at the door to my dressing room."If you go to Bruce right now and demand he fire the EP who just delivered these numbers, what do you think happens?"

I knew what happened.Bruce would adjust his tie twenty-seven times and then explain, with the sweating eloquence of a man who had survived years in the news business by avoiding confrontations, that the numbers made it impossible.He would say things like "the network is very pleased" and "we need to give this time" and "I understand your concerns, Nelson, I really do."

Bruce wouldn't fire Jimmy.

He would not even consider firing Jimmy, because Bruce cared about one thing above all others, and that was his continued employment.Jimmy Goodman was currently the best thing to happen to Bruce's quarterly report.

Jimmy was staying.The numbers had made sure of it.His voice would be in my earpiece tomorrow night and the night after that and every night for as long as those numbers held, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

"You're smiling," I said to Harry, and his grin flatlined.

"I am not smiling."

"The corner of your mouth is doing something."

"That's just my face."He opened my dressing room door for me."Goodnight, Nelson."

He left.I sat at my desk with the printout and the coffee and the quiet understanding that I had lost a battle I hadn't even been allowed to fight.