Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

ON THE short riser that was the newsroom set, Richard sat in a director’s chair and strained to see the last few minutes of the football game on the live-feed monitor at the foot of camera one. He could hear the game audio, along with an occasional comment from Toni in his earpiece; he liked the way her voice insinuated itself in his ear, its quiet assertions of her authority. She’d remind him to sit on the edge of his suit jacket and lean forward slightly, to show 10 percent more of his left-side profile, to look not at the camera but the camera operator, which kept viewers from regarding him like a portrait that hung over the fireplace in an old Vincent Price movie. He imagined her saying these things to all her guests, the occasional ex-president, celebrities major and minor, the neighbors with human-interest stories to tell, the owners of the dog who traveled two hundred miles to return home, the teachers of the year, lottery winners, hero cops, hangers-on with memoirs to sell.

He looked up after an incomplete pass, and Richard could see Toni, behind the soundproof glass of the control booth, talking into a telephone, her hands darting to extract her cell phone from the pocket of her slacks and then typing into the keyboard on the broadcast command console. Around him, people began with the electronic setups for the upcoming news broadcast.

Another voice, from network control, in his ear, saying, “We’ll be live after the next break,” followed by the return of the audio feed of the football game, the familiar baritone of the sportscaster announcing the game’s final time-out and promising a doozy of a finish right after these commercial messages.

Richard’s opponent for the day, a backbench Republican congressman from Orange County, strode in and greeted him. “I can’t believe you take this shit so seriously.” The fact that the guy wasn’t home in California over the holidays meant he’d decided against running again, was busy lining up clients for his turn through Washington’s revolving door as a highly paid adviser to Fortune 500 companies.

Richard knew little about the congressman other than that he was a John Bircher. The shake was perfunctory, Richard worrying about whether his palm felt clammy; in the closeness of the greeting he thought he could smell booze on the congressman’s breath, the aftermath of New Year’s Eve. He hadn’t known the congressman as a drinker, but then again, the guy was a bachelor and rarely traveled, so it would’ve been unlikely for Richard to run into him in steakhouses or on congressional fact-finding trips to tropical locations or other places he might drink. Rumor had it that he slept on a foldout sofa in his office in the Rayburn Building. Other rumors said that the congressman, when he was a member of the California state assembly, had been known by the nickname Steam Room Sammy. The most noteworthy accomplishment of his four undistinguished terms in the House was that he had never missed a vote, a fact the congressman would inevitably work into the argument.

A production assistant got the congressman settled into his chair, wired a lavaliere microphone to its battery pack. The monitor showing the live network feed broadcast a commercial for light beer, then went to black. Next came the preview of Richard’s appearance that he’d taped just a few minutes before, and Richard had the disconcerting experience of watching his own face appear onscreen. He heard the network announcer begin the pre-recorded setup: After the game, what happens when an underground newspaper hits too close to home? Taking sides, with Richard MacMurray from the left, and from the right, Congressman Sammy Bickley.

“That’s a total Star Trek moment there,” the congressman offered, and when Richard raised an eyebrow at him, the congressman scooted forward and pointed back at the monitor. “Sorry. It’s the kind of thing you see in the movies, the Sammy Bickley of the past meets the Sammy Bickley of the future.”

This concept was an idea that would return to Richard again and again whenever he thought about the events of this New Year’s Day. Perhaps he’d always been inclined to think this way. Richard had always wanted to be able to change his bad decisions into more benign events, to force things into a shapely resolution of his own making. That would be a worthy superpower. He could talk his father out of going on the trip that killed him. He could convince Cadence to stay. He’d always believed in his abilities as a persuader. That’s why he’d chosen litigation over corporate law, then television over litigation. As a child, Richard sat in the cramped stall of his elementary school bathroom and believed that with concentration, he could transport himself across the space-time continuum away from the place where six-year-old boys learned how to be sadistic and back home to the talismanic comfort of a teddy bear. He’d always been uncomfortably aware that the Richard MacMurray of his childhood might look upon his career as something inexplicable— You get paid to what? —something with no allure in the outsized dreams of a fairly average boy. He’d wanted, even then, to be part of a team, to contribute, to belong. When he got recognized on the street, he knew his feelings to be exactly what they were, discomfort, unease, an awareness that he’d become an accidental pundit and inconsequential celebrity. He never dreamed of being the Hall of Fame outfielder, turning his back to home plate and making a running grab that made Vic Wertz into the answer to a trivia question; he wanted to be a slick-fielding utility infielder, a master of the dying art of the pinch hit; he wanted to be known for his drive, his enthusiasm, his hustle to leg out the extra base, the ability to move from first to third on the meekest of base hits. He wanted to be known for playing the game the right way.

He wanted to be a man people relied on.

He’d once (actually, more than once) asked Cadence to enumerate his appealing qualities, and she’d offered his earnestness, his sincerity, his competence . He didn’t have her perspective. The discussion reminded him of a tepid letter of recommendation he’d found in his father’s papers, wherein Lew MacMurray—veteran of Korea, paratrooper, holder of the Combat Infantry Badge and winner of the Bronze Star—had been described by his commanding officer as trustworthy and loyal, appellations, Richard thought, better reserved for the family dog.

You did something a hundred or a thousand times, and it became almost automatic, and you never observed any of the artificiality of the moment. And there it was, Richard watching his own image appear and disappear before the screen dissolved into a commercial for fabric softener. He saw himself for what he was, a commercial. What did it say about him that often he could think only in terms of the image of his irretrievable past and its impossibilities? Surely there was some magic that could return him to the most crucial moments of his past, the ghost of bad decisions that could steer the university man in his second year to continue in literature, take up French, instead of following the indeterminate course of study that had herded him directly into law school, a voice that could stifle the urge to propose to the former Ellen Pritchard (his now ex-wife) after a fling with one of Ellen’s friends? He couldn’t remember her last name, Lisa something-or-other, this woman he had taken to bed six days before his first marriage, who in the false comfort of afterglow belittled his nervousness, telling him not to worry about his impending vows, since getting divorced was easier than buying a house, and he, Richard MacMurray, had already bought a house.

Now that house was four years sold, and his ex-wife, Ellen, lived in central Virginia with a gentleman farmer who planted a half acre of herbs every spring. He spent his spare time holed up in his workshop, building ever more elaborate cabinets and dining room tables and refinishing antique furniture while Ellen tended to rosebushes and grew peppers and tomatoes and three kinds of squash, putting them up in mason jars each summer. Once every six months or so, Richard and Ellen spoke, whenever a stray piece of mail floated to the wrong ex-spouse, or on the rare occasion when Richard’s work merited a mention in a wire-service story that had been copied and pasted into the morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. The truth was, they had hated each other for a while and choked it down, and now they didn’t hate each other anymore, if only because keeping up the hate had proven more tiresome. Still, the taste lingered, and required Richard to literally shake his head to push away the onslaught of memories.