Page 40 of Making It Live!

"I'm being honest in a bodega doorway on Tenth Avenue.This is not how I pictured personal growth."

Jillian laughed — a real laugh, warm and surprised."Okay.So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing.I'm going to do absolutely nothing.I'm going to go back into that building tonight and produce the broadcast and keep my voice professional and not think about the fact that—"

"That Nelson gets hot and bothered when you talk in his ear?"

"Jillian."

"That your voice apparently does things to his body that—"

"JILLIAN!"

"I'm just saying, Jimmy.You can't un-know this.You've seen it on your little monitor thingy, and now you know what your voice does to him.Nelson's going to be sitting behind that desk tonight with that earpiece in, and you're going to open your mouth and give a direction, and both of you are going to know exactly what's happening, even if neither of you says a word about it."

Jillian was annoyingly, devastatingly right.I couldn't un-know what I'd seen on the playback.I couldn't un-feel what my body had done in response.Tonight I would sit in the EP chair and speak into Nelson's earpiece with the full knowledge that my voice was doing something to him, and that he was doing something to me.And damn it, I'd have to produce the broadcast anyway.

"What if I made it worse?"I said quietly."What if I've been — without realizing it — what if the way I've been talking to him in the earpiece is part of why his body's reacting?What if I've been doing something with my voice that I didn't know I was doing?"

Jillian was quiet for a long moment."Do you think you have been?"

I thought about it.Really thought about it, with the honest brutality I'd applied to every story I'd ever investigated.

"I don't know," I said."I've been telling myself it's just producing.That the way I talk to him is just — how I produce.But I don't talk to Ray that way.I don't talk to the graphics team that way.When I'm on the earpiece with Nelson, something in my voice—" I stopped."I don't know if I'm doing it on purpose or if my voice is doing it naturally.And I don't know which one is worse."

"Neither one is worse, Jimmy.It just means you're human.And that you're attracted to the man you work with — which, newsflash, you have been since sophomore year."

I looked up Tenth Avenue, at the traffic and the crosswalk and the ordinary river of people who were not, at this moment, coming apart in a bodega doorway.A bus sighed past.Somewhere a horn blared and gave up.

"What am I going to do tonight, Jillian?"

"You're going to go in there and do your job.Jimmy Goodman is going to produce the best broadcast on cable news.And you're going to pay attention — really pay attention — to what happens between you and Nelson through that earpiece.Because whatever this is, it's not going away.And sooner or later, one of you is going to have to say something about it."

"It's not going to be me," I blurted.

"Famous last words."

ChapterSeventeen

Nelson

Iwas wearing a track in the carpet.

Back and forth.Vanity to the door.Door to vanity.Nine steps each way — I'd counted, because when you're a man who controls every variable in his environment, counting your own pacing is the kind of thing you do when the variables have started controlling you.

The dressing room felt smaller than usual.The cool grays and clean surfaces that normally soothed me were doing nothing tonight.My reflection kept catching my eye in the vanity mirror as I passed — hair and makeup already done, the emerald-green shirt I'd chosen hanging on the rack beside the charcoal jacket I'd wear over it.I looked exactly the way I was supposed to look.Composed.Prepared.Ready.

I was none of those things.

Something was wrong with me, and I couldn't name it, and the inability to name it was making me pace faster.For the first time in years — maybe the first time since I'd sat behind the anchor desk — I did not feel in control.Not of the broadcast, not of the building, not of the tight, restless energy coiling in my chest like a spring wound one turn too many.I was Nelson Mackenzie.I controlled rooms, cameras, conversations, editorial meetings, and the emotional temperature of every space I occupied.

I could not control this.

This being the fact that in approximately two hours, the earpiece would go in, and Jimmy's voice would arrive inside my body, and my body would do what it had been doing for days — responding, betraying, staging its quiet mutiny beneath the anchor desk while millions of people watched the surface and saw nothing.

I turned at the vanity.Nine steps to the door.

Harry walked in without knocking, which meant he'd knocked twice and I hadn't heard it over the sound of my own agitation.He carried a manila folder in one hand and a garment bag in the other, and he looked unreasonably cheerful for a Wednesday afternoon.His tie was new — navy with a subtle geometric pattern — and his hair was doing the thing it did when he'd just had it cut, which was looking even more annoyingly precise than usual.