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Wallingford couldn't quite tell what it meant--why had they sent only one producer to talk to him? But the choice was predictable; they'd used her before when it struck them that Wallingford needed a pep talk, or some other form of instruction.
Her name was Sabina. She had worked her way up; years ago, she'd been one of the newsroom women. Patrick had slept with her, but only once--when she was much younger and still married to her first husband.
"I suppose there's an interim replacement for Fred. A new dick, so to speak? A new news editor ..." Wallingford speculated.
"I wouldn't call the appointment an interim replacement, if I were you," Sabina cautioned him. (Her vocabulary, like Mary's, was big on "if I were you," Patrick noticed.) "I would say that the appointment has been a long time coming, and that there's nothing in the least 'interim' about it."
"Is it you, Sabina?" Wallingford asked. (Was it Wharton? he was thinking.)
"No, it's Shanahan." There was just a hint of bitterness in Sabina's voice.
"Shanahan?" The name didn't ring a bell with Wallingford.
"Mary, to you," Sabina told him.
So that was her name! He didn't even remember it now. Mary Shanahan! He should have known.
"Good luck, Pat. I'll see you at the script meeting," was all Sabina said. She left him alone with his thoughts, but he wasn't alone for long.
When Wallingford arrived at the meeting, the newsroom women were already there; they were as alert and jumpy as small, nervous dogs. One of them pushed a memo across the table to Patrick; the paper fairly flew out of her hands. At first glance, he thought it was a press release of the news he already knew, but he soon saw that--in addition to her duties as the new news editor--Mary Shanahan had been made a producer of the show. That
must have been why Sabina had so little to say at their earlier meeting. Sabina was a producer, too, only now it seemed she was not as important a producer as she'd been before Mary was made one.
As for Wharton, the moon-faced CEO never said anything at the script meetings. Wharton was one of those guys who made all his remarks from the vantage point of hindsight--his comments were strictly after the fact. He came to the script meetings only to learn who was responsible for everything Patrick Wallingford said on-camera. This made it impossible to know how important, or not, Wharton was.
First they reviewed the selected montage footage on file. There was not one image that wasn't already part of the public consciousness. The most shameless shot, with which the montage concluded by freezing to a still, was a stolen image of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. The image wasn't entirely clear, but she seemed to be caught in the act of trying to block the camera's view of her son. The boy was shooting baskets, maybe in the driveway of the Schlossberg summer home in Sagaponack. The cameraman had used a telephoto lens--you could tell by the out-of-focus branches (probably privet) in the foreground of the frame. (Someone must have snaked a camera through a hedge.) The boy was either oblivious or pretending to be oblivious to the camera.
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg was caught in profile. She was still elegant and dignified, but either sleeplessness or the tragedy had made her face more gaunt. Her appearance refuted the comforting notion that one grew accustomed to grief.
"Why are we using this?" Patrick asked. "Aren't we ashamed, or at least a little embarrassed?"
"It just needs some voice-over, Pat," Mary Shanahan said.
"How about this, Mary? How about I say, 'We're New Yorkers. We have the good reputation of offering anonymity to the famous. Lately, however, that reputation is undeserved.' How about that?" Wallingford asked.
No one answered him. Mary's ice-blue eyes were as sparkling as her smile. The newsroom women were twitching with excitement; if they had all started biting one another, Patrick wouldn't have been surprised.
"Or this," Wallingford went on. "How about I say this? 'By all accounts, from those who knew him, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was a modest young man, a decent guy. Some comparable modesty and decency from us would be refreshing.'"
There was a pause that would have been polite, were it not for the newsroom women's exaggerated sighs.
"I've written a little something," Mary said almost shyly. The script was already there, on the TelePrompTer; she must have written it the previous day, or the day before that.
"There seem to be certain days, even weeks," the script read, "when we are cast in the unwelcome role of the terrible messenger."
"Bullshit!" Patrick said. "The role isn't 'unwelcome'--we relish it!"
Mary sat smiling demurely while the TelePrompTer kept rolling: "We would rather be comforting friends than terrible messengers, but this has been one of those weeks." A scripted pause followed.
"I like it," one of the newsroom women said. They'd had a meeting before this meeting, Wallingford knew. (There was always a meeting before the meeting.) They had no doubt agreed which of them would say, "I like it."
Then another of the newsroom women touched Patrick's left forearm, in the usual place. "I like it because it doesn't make you sound as if you're apologizing, not exactly, for what you said last night," she told him. Her hand rested on his forearm a little longer than was natural or necessary.
"By the way, the ratings for last night were terrific," Wharton said. Patrick knew that he'd better not look at Wharton, whose round face was a bland dot across the table.
"You were great last night, Pat," Mary added.
Her remark was so well timed that this had to have been rehearsed at the meeting before the meeting, too, because there was not one titter among the newsroom women; they were as straight-faced as a jury that's made its decision. Wharton, of course, was the only one at the script meeting who didn't know that Patrick Wallingford had gone home with Mary Shanahan the previous night, nor would Wharton have cared.
