canât believe Iâm here. I made it.
What if Iâm not up for this?
I walk over to where Curtis told me Ronâs crew is located and spot her waving at me from her desk. âI want that interview,â she says when I reach her. At first I think sheâs talking to me, but then I notice her mobile headset. âThrow in a book deal if you have to. Just get it. No, I donât want her talking to OâReilly or Couric.â
Curtis is wearing faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt, a brown corduroy blazer and sneakers. Her skin is ghostly pale, as though she hasnât seen the sun in months, and sheâs not wearing any makeup. Her dirty-blond hair is tied back in a haphazard ponytail. Iâd peg her as mid-to-late forties. She told me sheâs been working with Ron for ten years. Sheâs the one who discovered him and brought him to TRSN to begin with. This show is her baby.
âGet her to talk to us. Do you hear me? I want the kidnapped girl. I donât have time for your pathetic excusesâ¦.â
As she berates whoever is on the other end of the phone, I look around the room and think about how I almost didnât make it here. As a kid, I had wanted to be an anchor (my dad used to tell me I had a face for television), so I decided to major in broadcasting when I applied to Arizona State. But when I got to school, I realized that everyone wanted to be an anchor and that the real power was behind the scenes, producing, so thatâs what I focused on. The summer of my junior year, I interned at the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, but decided that after I graduated I would move to New York. I donât know where my obsession with New York came from. Maybe from years of watching Law and Order , maybe from too much romanticizing about Sex and the City . All I knew was that I wanted to have a zip code that started with 1. The spring before I graduated, I applied to every available and not-available entry-level job in Manhattan and flew down for informational interviews, where I was told again and again, sorry, weâre hiring the interns from last year, why donât you work at a local station outside the city? When you have more experience, when youâve grown your contact list, when, when, whenâ¦So I returned to Arizona, my tail nestled firmly between my legs, and took a full-time job there.
My new boyfriend Cam told me it was for the best since New Yorkers were crazy, and anyway, he wanted me on this side of the country. I jokingly warned him not to get too attached. At my graduation ceremony, I figured I would be in Arizona another year, tops. I took typical hat-throwing pictures with Lila, with Cam (who had just graduated from law school), with my mom and with my dad. (He had come even though Iâd told him not to bother, not because I believed it wasnât worth the trip, but because I dreaded the fight that he and my mom would have if he did show up, which they had, and which I did my best to ignore.)
Lila and I kept our two-bedroom apartment in Tempe. (I had moved out of my momâs place in Scottsdale freshman year when Goodwin, husband Number Three, moved in. Lilaâs dorm room was right next door to mine. We became best friends at first by proximity, and then by habit. We moved into the two-bedroom sophomore year.) Even though I was earning decent money, I figured there was no point getting my own place, since I wasnât planning on sticking around.
I started the new job, liked the job and got promoted from assignment editor to producer eleven oâclock news, to producer 6:00 p.m. news, to executive producer 6:00 p.m. news. I was good at my job. I could smell a story. Maybe smell is the wrong word. When something big is going on, my mouth gets zapped dry. I donât know why, but thatâs what happens, thatâs when I know Iâm onto something. My dry mouth has never been wrong. Anyway, I bought the Jetta, Cam made me a bookshelf, and after
What if Iâm not up for this?
I walk over to where Curtis told me Ronâs crew is located and spot her waving at me from her desk. âI want that interview,â she says when I reach her. At first I think sheâs talking to me, but then I notice her mobile headset. âThrow in a book deal if you have to. Just get it. No, I donât want her talking to OâReilly or Couric.â
Curtis is wearing faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt, a brown corduroy blazer and sneakers. Her skin is ghostly pale, as though she hasnât seen the sun in months, and sheâs not wearing any makeup. Her dirty-blond hair is tied back in a haphazard ponytail. Iâd peg her as mid-to-late forties. She told me sheâs been working with Ron for ten years. Sheâs the one who discovered him and brought him to TRSN to begin with. This show is her baby.
âGet her to talk to us. Do you hear me? I want the kidnapped girl. I donât have time for your pathetic excusesâ¦.â
As she berates whoever is on the other end of the phone, I look around the room and think about how I almost didnât make it here. As a kid, I had wanted to be an anchor (my dad used to tell me I had a face for television), so I decided to major in broadcasting when I applied to Arizona State. But when I got to school, I realized that everyone wanted to be an anchor and that the real power was behind the scenes, producing, so thatâs what I focused on. The summer of my junior year, I interned at the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, but decided that after I graduated I would move to New York. I donât know where my obsession with New York came from. Maybe from years of watching Law and Order , maybe from too much romanticizing about Sex and the City . All I knew was that I wanted to have a zip code that started with 1. The spring before I graduated, I applied to every available and not-available entry-level job in Manhattan and flew down for informational interviews, where I was told again and again, sorry, weâre hiring the interns from last year, why donât you work at a local station outside the city? When you have more experience, when youâve grown your contact list, when, when, whenâ¦So I returned to Arizona, my tail nestled firmly between my legs, and took a full-time job there.
My new boyfriend Cam told me it was for the best since New Yorkers were crazy, and anyway, he wanted me on this side of the country. I jokingly warned him not to get too attached. At my graduation ceremony, I figured I would be in Arizona another year, tops. I took typical hat-throwing pictures with Lila, with Cam (who had just graduated from law school), with my mom and with my dad. (He had come even though Iâd told him not to bother, not because I believed it wasnât worth the trip, but because I dreaded the fight that he and my mom would have if he did show up, which they had, and which I did my best to ignore.)
Lila and I kept our two-bedroom apartment in Tempe. (I had moved out of my momâs place in Scottsdale freshman year when Goodwin, husband Number Three, moved in. Lilaâs dorm room was right next door to mine. We became best friends at first by proximity, and then by habit. We moved into the two-bedroom sophomore year.) Even though I was earning decent money, I figured there was no point getting my own place, since I wasnât planning on sticking around.
I started the new job, liked the job and got promoted from assignment editor to producer eleven oâclock news, to producer 6:00 p.m. news, to executive producer 6:00 p.m. news. I was good at my job. I could smell a story. Maybe smell is the wrong word. When something big is going on, my mouth gets zapped dry. I donât know why, but thatâs what happens, thatâs when I know Iâm onto something. My dry mouth has never been wrong. Anyway, I bought the Jetta, Cam made me a bookshelf, and after
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