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"I'm going to the football game," Wallingford told her. He looked at Wharton, who looked away; then he looked at Sabina, who stared with feigned neutrality back at him. He didn't so much as glance at Mary.
"Then we'll fire you, Pat," Mary said.
"Then fire me."
He didn't even have to think about it. With or without a job at PBS or NPR, he'd made quite a lot of money; besides, they couldn't fire him without making some kind of salary settlement. Patrick didn't really need a job, at least for a couple of years.
Wallingford looked at Mary for some response, then at Sabina.
"Okay, if that's how it is, you're fired," Wharton announced.
Everyone seemed surprised that it was Wharton who said it, including Wharton. Before the script meeting, they'd had another meeting, to which Patrick had not been invited. Probably they'd decided that Sabina would be the one to fire Wallingford. At least Sabina looked at Wharton with an exasperated sense of surprise. Mary Shanahan had got over how surprised she was pretty quickly.
For once, maybe Wharton had felt something unfamiliar and exciting taking charge inside him. But everything that was eternally insipid about him had instantly returned to his flushed face; he was again as vapid as he'd ever been. Being fired by Wharton was like being slapped by a tentative hand in the dark.
"When I get back from Wisconsin, we can work out what you owe me," was all Wallingford told them.
"Please clear o
ut your office and your dressing room before you go," Mary said. This was standard procedure, but it irritated him.
They sent someone from security to help him pack up his things and to carry the boxes down to a limo. No one came to say good-bye to him, which was also standard procedure, although if Angie had been working that Sunday night, she probably would have.
Wallingford was back in his apartment when Mrs. Clausen called. He hadn't seen his piece at the Ramada Plaza, but Doris had watched the whole story.
"Are you still coming?" she asked.
"Yes, and I can stay as long as you want me to," Patrick told her. "I just got fired."
"That's very interesting," Mrs. Clausen commented. "Have a safe flight."
This time he had a Chicago connection, which got him into his hotel room in Green Bay in time to see the evening telecast from New York. He wasn't surprised that Mary Shanahan was the new anchor. Once again Wallingford had to admire her. She wasn't pregnant, but Mary had wound up with at least one of the babies she wanted.
"Patrick Wallingford is no longer with us," Mary began cheerfully. "Good night, Patrick, wherever you are!"
There was in her voice something both perky and consoling. Her manner reminded Wallingford of that time in his apartment when he'd been unable to get it up and she'd sympathized by saying, "Poor penis." As he'd understood only belatedly, Mary had always been part of the bigger picture.
It was a good thing he was getting out of the business. He wasn't smart enough to be in it anymore. Maybe he'd never been smart enough.
And what an evening it was for news! Naturally no survivors had been found. The mourning for the victims on EgyptAir 990 had just begun. There was the footage of the usual calamity-driven crowd that had gathered on a gray Nantucket beach--the "body-spotters," Mary had once called them. The "death-watchers," which was Wharton's term for them, were warmly dressed.
That close-up from the deck of a Merchant Marine Academy ship--the pile of passengers' belongings retrieved from the Atlantic--must have been Wharton's work. After floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, train wrecks, plane crashes, school shootings, or other massacres, Wharton always chose the shots of articles of clothing, especially the shoes. And of course there were children's toys; dismembered dolls and wet teddy bears were among Wharton's favorite disaster items.
Fortunately for the all-news network, the first vessel to arrive at the crash site was a Merchant Marine Academy training ship with seventeen cadets aboard. These young novices at sea were great for the human-interest angle--they were about the age of college upperclassmen. There they were in the spreading pool of jet fuel with the fragments of the plane's wreckage, plus people's shopping bags and body parts, bobbing to the oily surface around them. All of them wore gloves as they plucked this and that from the sea. Their expressions were what Sabina termed "priceless."
Mary milked her end lines for all they were worth. "The big questions remain unanswered," Ms. Shanahan said crisply. She was wearing a suit Patrick had never seen before, something navy blue. The jacket was strategically opened, as were the top two buttons of her pale-blue blouse, which closely resembled a man's dress shirt, only silkier. This would become her signature costume, Wallingford supposed.
"Was the crash of the Egyptian jetliner an act of terrorism, a mechanical failure, or pilot error?" Mary pointedly asked.
I would have reversed the order, Patrick thought--clearly "an act of terrorism" should have come last.
In the last shot, the camera was not on Mary but on the grieving families in the lobby of the Ramada Plaza; the camera singled out small groups among them as Mary Shanahan's voice-over concluded, "So many people want to know." All in all, the ratings would be good; Wallingford knew that Wharton would be happy, not that Wharton would know how to express his happiness.
When Mrs. Clausen called, Patrick had just stepped out of the shower.
"Wear something warm," she warned him. To Wallingford's surprise, she was calling from the lobby. There would be time for him to see little Otto in the morning, Doris said. Right now it was time to go to the game; he should hurry up and get dressed. Therefore, not knowing what to expect, he did.
It seemed too soon to leave for the game, but maybe Mrs. Clausen liked to get there early. When Wallingford left his hotel room and took the elevator to the lobby to meet her, his sense of pride was only slightly hurt that not one of his colleagues in the media had tracked him down and asked him what Mary Shanahan had meant when she'd announced, to millions, "Patrick Wallingford is no longer with us."
