Jennifer Oko - Gloss

We didn’t kiss again that night. We just talked and talked until the sun started to rise, and then we both fell asleep on the bed, fully dressed.

When I woke up, there were two pink peonies on my pillow. Mark was in his hotel-issued, white terry-cloth bathrobe, watching me.

“I stole them from the breakfast spread,” he said, pointing his chin at the flowers.

There was a cart with coffee and pastries at the foot of the bed. He poured me a cup and sat down next to me. I sat up to take it.

“Peonies are my favorite,” I said. “And lilacs.”

He smiled.

I smiled.

It was a little awkward again. And there was no alcohol in this brew.

“You have beautiful hair.” He gently touched my brown tangled nest.

I worried about my morning breath.

“What time is it?” I said, looking for the television remote. Found it. I turned on my show. “I have a piece on at 7:44.”

“Cool.” Mark looked at his watch. “We have thirty seconds.” He put his arm around my shoulder, giving me a quick squeeze, causing me to spill a bit of the coffee on the sheet.

It is an odd thing to watch someone watching your work, especially when it’s someone you have a crush on. And, if I could have chosen it, this certainly wasn’t the first piece I wanted Mark to see.

“Wow,” he said when the story was over and Natasha was showing Faith and Ken some of our purchases. “That was totally disgusting.”

“You don’t like snakes?”

“Remember, I work in Washington.”

I laughed. “It was pretty gross. The place smelled like a subway toilet.”

“I think I might have fainted if I got anywhere near one of those pits.”

“I did faint,” I said, quickly regretting admitting that.

“You did? From the smell?”

“No, I…I don’t really know why.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, I had gotten a disturbing call, and it kind of made me unbalanced. And maybe that, with the smell, I don’t know…”

Mark looked at me as if I was nuts. But in a sweet way. And I don’t know why, but I guess I needed to talk about it with someone, so I told him the story. About the piece, about the calls.

“Wow,” he said again. “I saw that story. I was there the day it aired, remember? It was a really nice piece, but what’s the big deal?”

“I know. But Natasha said that the second caller specifically mentioned it when calling me all sorts of horrible things.”

“Like what?”

It was too embarrassing for me to spell out how he had phrased in hideously derogatory terms that I was a weak journalist, a lazy hack, that reporting like mine was part of the problem, and that I might as well be producing Nazi propaganda and working for Leni Riefenstahl at the rate I was going. It had really hit a nerve.

“He just said stuff about the story being totally wrong and misleading, and basically blamed me for the downfall of society,” I said. “There were some threats about needing to get it right, or else.” It sounded funny when I summed it up like that. Now I wasn’t even so sure why I had gotten so upset.

“Or else?”

“Or else. I’m not really sure what.”

“Well, who do you think it could be?”

“Honestly? My best guess is that it was some whack-job viewer. We do have a few, and they do make strange phone calls from time to time. But the weird thing is that I don’t know how they would have my cell number. Unless some idiot intern forwarded the call. I suppose that could happen. But it was still upsetting.”

“And they haven’t called again?”

“No.”

“Will you let me know if they do?”

“Okay,” I said, relieved that I could talk about this with someone, that he didn’t seem to think I had overreacted.

And then we got up because I had to rush home to shower and change, and Mark, well, he had a country to help run.

Dear Faith and Ken,

I have been watching your show for over five years, but after your interview with the family of the runaway, I am turning the dial. It was completely distasteful to harass the parents in such a way. At least on Sunrise America they just spoke to the siblings.

Disdainfully,

A Disappointed Viewer

EVERY WEDNESDAY AT 10:00 A.M. WE HAD our weekly staff meeting. It was usually a fairly staid affair in which we would pile into the conference room (walls decorated with the ever-present mosaic of monitors and posters from our network’s sitcoms and reality shows). We crowded around the ferry boat–sized conference table, coffee in hand, sometimes a bagel, stragglers standing in the back. Tom would read off the previous week’s ratings, usually getting overly enthusiastic if he had anything positive to say about ours, which was becoming rare. The staff would give tentative feedback (the grumbling happened out of Tom’s earshot), and then we went on to tear apart the competition:

“June and Jack looked like they were about to hit each other yesterday, did anyone notice that?”

“I know! It’s so obvious they hate each other!”

or

“How stupid was that segment on Sunrise about the toe therapy? They are really getting desperate, aren’t they?”

Of course, what no one ever said is that, as we all knew, our own Ken and Faith were so jealous of each other they wouldn’t even speak to one another unless the camera was rolling. Or that we had done a similar toe therapy segment the week before.

But the best part of the meetings was when the bookers regaled us with their latest war stories from the field. Not travel bookers, guest bookers—the people who line up all of the live talking heads you see on the shows—the Elizabeth Smarts, the families of infants who fell down wells, the best friends of the latest soldier to die (especially if the soldier had an interesting story to tell, that is, like if he were previously a famous baseball star). People loved this stuff, and that was why morning shows made more money for their respective networks than any other news program that aired. No one under the age of sixty was watching the evening newscasts anymore, and morning was the only growth market on the dial, so the pressure was on. But because morning shows fell under the news divisions, there were rules. Of gravest importance: no one was allowed to pay for interviews. But no one ever said anything about offering overnights at five-star hotels and tickets to Broadway shows. Or mind games. Most bookings were made over the phone, with our (mostly female) bookers sweet talking the intended guests into believing that by coming on our show, their lives would improve dramatically. But if the story was big enough, armies of bookers would descend upon the home of, say, some teenage girl from Arkansas who had miraculously escaped a traumatic weeklong kidnapping. Scores of New York City bookers would camp out at the Holiday Inn closest to her small, rural town, each one striving to become the family’s new best friend, convincing them that by going on her show (as opposed to the other shows), it would be therapeutic, inspiring to others, good for the girl. And fun, so much fun. Bookers had been known to take such girls shopping in the mall, out for ice cream, and give her all sorts of candy (never money!) so that she would pick, say, Sunrise America and not New Day USA for her first interview. Of course, while said girl might give one show the first interview, she would more often than not appear on all the other shows a few minutes later. Often, the cameras would be lined up outside her house, with a slightly different angle for each program. As soon as she finished talking to, say, Faith (via remote), she would be escorted a few feet to talk to, say, Sally.

Sometimes bookers were known to lie outright, claiming to be from a show they were not, telling the guest the interview was canceled or moved. Tom forbade our staff doing that and generally asked us to toe an ethical line, to make sure we could all face the mirror in the morning. And that might be why our ratings were slipping a bit. Joe Public was getting savvy, and potential guests would ask things of our bookers that we wouldn’t, but other shows sometimes would, provide.