Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“Violet?” Anne said, sounding out of breath. “I just got out of spin class.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you. I just wanted to tell you about the weekend.”

“Are you back from Maine? Stella made it sound like you were staying for a while.”

“That’s the thing. I’m back, but she’s—well, we got into an argument on Saturday night. A pretty bad one. I got a motel room and came back on the bus yesterday. She’s still up there. I mean, as far as I know.”

“Oh, dear. Oh, Violet, I’m sorry.”

“To be honest, Mrs. Bradley, she was seriously upset. Jamie breaking up with her… I think it came as a shock. She wasn’t taking it well.”

“I wish she had let me come up. The poor girl. She really can’t handle this kind of thing by herself.”

“I think she just wanted some space from it all, you know?”

“So she didn’t say when she’d be coming home?”

“Not to me.”

Anne sighed. “And she won’t be in trouble at work?”

“Given the ratings on the Danner story”—this, this was the one moment I felt an unsettling flare of heat in my cheeks—“I’m guessing they’ll be in the mood to forgive her.”

“You’ll let me know when you hear from her?”

“Of course. And I’m sorry, Mrs. Bradley, I don’t mean to worry you. I just wanted—”

“No, no, I’m glad you called. Thank you, Violet.”

Jamie’s desk was empty when I arrived around 8:30 a.m. He, like most people in the newsroom, tended to arrive closer to 10. But the habits of my ambitious intern days had stuck. I drank my coffee and caught up on what I’d missed over the weekend. The major newspapers had all covered the Danner story. Danner’s spin machine was in high gear, spokespeople reinforcing the message that the CEO had delivered in his interview. They were conducting an internal investigation; they would implement rigorous sexual harassment training; they would make sure this never happened again.

An e-mail pinged in my in-box. My chest tightened when I saw the sender—Willow, the woman in Florida. She had watched the story. It wasn’t what she’d been led to believe. What had happened to her was just a footnote. Why, she wanted to know, why had I spent so long chasing her down and convincing her that she was the hinge to the whole thing?

I don’t expect you to respond to this, she wrote in her e-mail. I could see her, leaning against the doorjamb in her white living room, digging her fingernail into the orange peel, looking at us with skepticism that was, in the end, completely justified. I assume you’ve moved on and you’re already preying on some other helpless victim.

I jumped at the hand on my shoulder.

“Whoa,” Jamie said, taking a step back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, breathing hard. “You scared me.”

“You’re really pale.”

“Well, you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Let me guess. She said you’re not allowed to talk to me anymore, is that it?”

“What?”

Jamie gave me a quizzical look as he dropped into his chair. “Stella.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah. No. I mean, it’s fine, we can talk, it’s just—”

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Sorry, you’re in an awkward position. I don’t mean to put you in the middle of it.”

I sighed. “I think it’s too late for that.”

We went to the cafeteria on the third floor to get coffee, and a modicum of privacy. Everyone in the newsroom knew about Stella and Jamie’s relationship; it was ideal office gossip, self-contained and slightly illicit. We sat by the windows overlooking Sixth Avenue, people occasionally waving at us as they carried bagels and oatmeal back to their desks. As I told Jamie about the weekend, from Stella’s return to the apartment in the early hours of Friday morning to her ultimate accusation on Saturday night, it struck me: had it really happened so fast? Less than forty-eight hours from when Jamie broke up with her to when she climbed atop the bow of the boat. The triangular dynamic of the past year had proved shatteringly fragile.

“And that’s when she kicked you out?” Jamie said.

“She said I had sabotaged your relationship. That I was… jealous of you two.”

Jamie’s expression softened, briefly.

“I told her that was ridiculous, but she wouldn’t believe me. She wanted me gone.” It didn’t feel like a lie. The night in Maine had gone one way, but it so easily could have gone another. “She couldn’t stand being around me. That’s what she said.”

“Jesus.” His face had closed off again. “She is a horrible person.”

“Don’t say that.”

Jamie wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. He had removed the lid so the coffee would cool down faster. As he squeezed the sides of the cup, the liquid crept toward the brim. A taut meniscus stretched across the top. He was on the verge of spilling.

“Careful,” I said.

He let go of the cup and put his hands flat on the table. “She is, Violet. You’re allowed to get mad at her. I’m mad at her. She kicked you out? Who does that to their best friend?”

Before that afternoon’s rundown meeting, Eliza caught my eye and beckoned me over.

“So you got a little R&R this weekend?” she said.

“I’m really sorry it was so last minute. I should have told you.”

“You were up in Maine with Stella? Ginny forwarded me the strangest e-mail from her. It sounds like she’s staying up there for a while.”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

Eliza shook her head. “You know, Violet, you’re really the one who deserves the week off. You’ve been killing yourself on the Danner story.”

“Well, thank you, but I’d rather get back to work.”

Eliza smiled. “I never know what to do with myself when I’m on vacation, either.”

“I heard you once called into the control room from Maui,” I said.

“It was Oahu,” Eliza said. “It was our honeymoon. It’s a good thing I did. This guy from the Council on Foreign Relations had hijacked the interview. Rebecca was like a deer in the headlights. They should have pulled her out of there. She seems so in control, they can’t always tell when she needs help.” She arched an eyebrow. “But I can.”

By now, the conference room had filled with the other producers. “Okay,” Eliza said, clapping her hands for order, taking a seat at the head of the table. “Let’s make this a quick one. Jamie, where are we on the quote from Sec Def’s people?”

“No comment at this time,” Jamie said. A former DoD employee was suing for discrimination—a man who claimed his female colleague had undeservedly taken the promotion he was in line for. He was, he said, a victim of affirmative action.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t offer comment on that clown, either,” Eliza said. “What else?”

The meeting only lasted ten minutes. It was one of those days when Frontline ran like a well-oiled machine, no last-minute catastrophes to derail our lineup. Our ratings had remained high through last week, after the Danner story aired on Tuesday night, and it buoyed the collective mood. On the whole, Rebecca tried to instill an attitude of indifference—“because what good is it,” she always said, “being obsessed with ratings when you’re constantly in third place?”—but even she seemed jittery as we waited for the final numbers from the previous week.

“Eliza,” Rebecca shouted from inside her office. “Am I reading this right?”

Eliza squinted at her phone. The executives had the ratings e-mailed to them as soon as they came out. The rest of us were left to guess the numbers based on their mood, or wait for the Deadline Hollywood story to go up.