Read Online Morning Glory by Diana Peterfreund - Free Book Online

brilliant?”
    I paused the DVD. On the screen, Mike Pomeroy held a news sheet and looked gravely into the camera.
    “Becky?”
    I studied the image of Mike Pomeroy, a glimpse of a real newscaster tacked on the end of the audition tape of a wannabe. The juxtaposition wasn’t doing Punxsutawney Putz any favors.
    “Earth to Becky,” Lenny said as Mike began interviewing the secretary of state. “You there? What was so funny? Did you put Seabiscuit back on?”
    “No,” I said, as Mike grilled the official about enriched uranium. “But I think I found a thoroughbred.”
    And I hurried right out to share the news. Jerry Barnes’s secretary said her boss was attending some charity event at the Met, and I found him, tuxedo-clad and impatient, waiting to enter with his impeccably preserved blond wife. He was, it turned out, totally unimpressed by my brain wave.
    “You have to be kidding me.” He looked at his wife, who started tapping her designer heels against the pavement. “I’m beginning to suspect that Oscar’s sending you to me was some sort of practical joke.”
    “You have Pomeroy under contract already, right?” I argued. “It wouldn’t cost anything.”
    “It wouldn’t necessarily solve anything, either,” said Jerry. “He’s useless.”
    “He’s a world-caliber newsman.”
    “He was supposed to do stories for our magazine shows,” said Jerry. “We couldn’t use anything he pitched us.”
    “Nothing?” I asked. Not utilize the hell out of the likes of Mike Pomeroy?
    Jerry’s expression turned sour. “An eight-part series about the United Nations, an interview with a Pashtun warlord, a piece on microfinancing in Asia? Come on. Who cares?”
    Well, no one …  yet . But they hadn’t heard it the way only Mike Pomeroy could tell the story.
    Jerry’s wife went from heel-tapping to pointed sighs of impatience. “Jerry—”
    He held up a finger. “One second.”
    “Of course it will be,” she drawled, unconvinced. She leveled the stink eye in my direction.
    “So you’re paying him just to sit there?” I asked. “There must be millions left on his contract. A reporter of his talents—”
    “Becky,” Jerry said. “Is the stress getting to you already?”
    “Pomeroy has reported on every major story of the last three decades with integrity and courage. He was your only anchor to go down to Ground Zero that day. I looked at his Q ratings. They’re unbelievable. And you’re already paying him.”
    Jerry looked at me for a long moment, as if assessing the degree to which he thought I’d gone nuts. “I have to go,” he said at last, turning to walk away. “We can discuss this in the office tomorrow.”
    “I want to look at his contract,” I insisted. “But I need your approval to do that. Just let me see if there’s something there. Please.”
    Jerry paused.
    “Come on,” I wheedled. “What have you got to lose?”
    He faced me again. “No, the correct question is what have you got to lose? I’m going to go inside to this charity dinner. My wife bought a table worth a year of tuition at that college you never bothered to graduate from. Maybe if you had taken a few more broadcasting courses, you would have learned that you can’t run a show without an anchor. Maybe you’d have figured out how much lower your precious morale gets when you’re running one without an anchor.”
    How much worse could it get? And I felt like I should point out to him that we still had Colleen. Though of course, it couldn’t stay that way. I didn’t need to go to college to know that morning shows needed two hosts—that the banter was a big reason the audience tuned in. But that wasn’t Jerry’s point, and it didn’t solve my problem anyway. Better I just make nice and get what I want.
    “ I’m going to drink rail liquor and act charitable all night. And you want to spend the evening looking over a contract that, even if you can find your precious loophole in it, isn’t going to do