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on rye with Russian dressing isn’t for me.”
    â€œWow, how did you know that’s what I packed?”
    Helen became skittish. “Well, you told me—a few minutes ago. Don’t you remember? Of course you do. Besides, I already ate.”
    â€œWell then maybe we can just get a drink or—”
    Then Helen began gagging.
    â€œAre you okay?”
    She looked terribly embarrassed but couldn’t stop herself. I was about to call someone for help when Helen finally coughed up a small pellet. It flew past me and landed on the floor.
    I turned around, then reached down to look at it. The pellet consisted of dried hair and bone material. I immediately recognized one of the tiny bone shards as that of a young muskrat tibia.
    â€œHelen, are you sure you don’t need to see a—?” But when I turned back around, Helen had vanished, flown the coop in a flash.

7
    Vanity Fair and Balanced
    Â 
    Candy was right. That night everyone who was anyone turned out to fete Laurie’s fifty-two weeks on the
Times
best-seller list. Washington’s ritzy Anderson House, home to the Society of the Cincinnati, was packed to the gills with stars of every stripe—from front-page politicians to Page Six celebs—and the sidewalk was crammed with camera-toting gawkers. Fox News was covering the event exclusively, though Eric had ordered me to try to get a piece of the action. But when Phil the cameraman and I showed up, we were told that we would not be welcome past the velvet rope. We would have to shoot from across the street.
    Fox’s Jimmy Olsen–like Carl Cameron was just outside the mansion wrapping up an interview with Senate majority leader Bill Frist and
The Simple Life
’s Nicole Richie, who’d just finished addressing a Senate panel on the need for increased ethanol subsidies, so I waited patiently before pleading my case. “Come on, Carl, can’t I bring the crew inside just for a second?”
    â€œSorry, Mo. Mr. Ailes is in there,” he said, “and he just wouldn’t allow it.” Carl lowered his voice. “Look, why don’t you just shoot me interviewing some of the arrivals? I’ll pretend I don’t see you doing it.”
    Covering Fox News’s coverage of its own event didn’t feel journalistically right, but as everyone in cable understood, there was only so much breaking news to go around. On the bright side, maybe one day someone from CNBC would cover my coverage of Fox News’s coverage of . . . you get the idea.
    Of course before we could do anything I needed to get Phil’s attention, but he was back on the phone: “So, Norma, just guess where the President is campaigning tomorrow. Okay, I’ll tell you.
Carlisle,
Pennsylvania. Coincidence? I think not.”
    Naturally I wanted to get this done as quickly as possible so that I could get rid of Phil.
    Once we got our shot, I decided to stick around. I wanted to see inside this Washington power shindig for myself. With a nod from Carl to the doorman, I was waved through.
    It was Hollywood on the Potomac. An imposing Roger Ailes sat in a giant thronelike armchair chomping on a cigar. A newly platinum blond Greta Van Susteren, looking more like Jean Harlow than ever before, sat on one arm; Barbara Stanwyck look-alike Mara Liasson foxed it up on the other.
    The mixture of power and glamour created a cocktail so heady that artificial barriers—like network affiliation or party membership—evaporated. Bill O’Reilly, author of
Stickin’ Up for You: Lessons from a Working Class Non-Partisan Populist from Levittown
(#3 on the best-seller list) shared a drink with Senator Hillary Clinton, whose sequel memoir
Living More History
was stuck at #4 on the list. Both knew they didn’t stand a chance of knocking Laurie off the top spot.
    Nor did Bill Clinton (#2 on the list), who seemed especially upbeat. Grinning ear to ear this night, the forty-second