Read Online The Fortune Quilt by Lani Diane Rich - Free Book Online Page B

newsroom. Something big.”
    Christopher and I exchange looks. As we head down the hall, I feel his hand lightly graze the small of my back, and the touch makes my heart rate kick up. At first I feel hopeful that the response is a good sign, and then I wonder if it’s a bad sign that I’m so desperately stretching for good signs. I glance up at him and smile but he’s looking at the crowded newsroom, which is humming with people whose expressions range from angry to totally freaked out.
    Oh. This can’t be good.
    “Everyone quiet down!” I hear Clayton Pall, the station’s General Manager, yell from the corner of the room. He steps up behind the assignment desk, which is on a raised platform in the east corner of the newsroom. His neck tie is loose. Clayton’s neck tie is never loose. Christopher and I exchange looks; this is definitely not going to be good. In a few moments the newsroom is deathly quiet, which never happens. It feels eerie.
    “I have some news,” Clayton says from his perch behind the assignment desk. “Before I tell you what’s going on, I want you to know that the management team is all here,” he motions to a Rockette line of suits standing to the right of the desk, “to answer your questions as best we can, but understand that we still don’t have all the information at this time.”
    I hear someone behind me whisper something about Reginald Davies. Reginald is the station owner, and I’ve met him exactly twice in the five years I’ve worked on Tucson Today . I wonder briefly if Reginald has died or something.
    “It appears that Reginald Davies has left the country,” Clayton says, then clears his throat. “And it also appears that he has taken the bulk of the station’s assets with him.”
    “Holy shit,” Christopher breathes behind me. I hear someone behind us say something about Buenos Aires.
    “People,” Clayton says, raising his hands to quiet the rumbling that’s running through the floor of employees. “At this point, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen—”
    “Will there be layoffs?” someone yells from the back.
    The answer is clear in Clayton’s face: Yes .
    “We don’t have any answers to that at this time,” he says.
     
    ***
     
    Christopher and I get our tacos, then hole up in the edit booth and work until six o’clock. When we finally return to the Tucson Today office with our finished tape, we find Victor waiting for us. I sit at my desk while Victor takes Christopher into his office, which has an actual door, so I can’t hear what’s being said, only the tones of their voices, which are grim. Christopher emerges a few minutes later, giving me a hopeful smile, and then Victor calls me in.
    “We’ve been canceled,” he says before I’m even settled in his squeaky guest chair.
    I don’t absorb this right away. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean,” Victor says, his voice tired, “we’re all being laid off. Well, the producers, anyway. News is going to absorb the camera crew starting Monday.”
    “So,” I say, “do you still need me to oversee the show tonight or…?”
    Victor shakes his head, explains that they’ll be running canned shows for the rest of the week, then replacing Tucson Today with M*A*S*H re-runs starting next week. No more live episodes. No more hanging out in the control room, giving the director time cues for the segments and taking shit from Billy the graphics guy, who calls up every graphic with, “Are you sure this is spelled right, Car? You’re sure? Looks wrong to me.”
    And, ha, I think, as I recall the rundown for tonight’s show, for all the trouble that quilt has caused me, the stupid story isn’t even going to air.
    Victor sits back in his chair and pokes his thumbs into the pudgy center of a stress ball. “Reginald Davies is a fucknut. Clayton was talking about, if the losses are covered by insurance, or whatever, that they might be able to get Tucson Today back on the air but… pfffft . It was