Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“I heard you’re good,” Trish said, as I took the seat across from her. The corner office was new to her, but she’d been based out of D.C. for many years, and her voice was familiar to me from the control room. “Eliza doesn’t say that about everyone. Although I bet she’d hate to lose you.”

“She’s been understanding,” I said. “She knows there’s a ceiling for me at Frontline. ”

Two weeks after my dinner with Corey, it was announced that, with Bill of Rights now canceled, Trish had been hired as EP of the new Sunday morning show. She was looking for a senior producer to help revamp it. It took me a few days to work up the nerve to talk to Eliza about it, but she was unsurprised by the request. “I knew this day would come,” she said. “I won’t ask you if you’re sure. You look sure.”

“It’s a long shot,” I said. “But I’d like to try.”

“You’ll get the job,” Eliza said. She wrote, “CALL TRISH RE: VT” on a legal pad, circling it twice. “They’d be idiots not to hire you.”

On the train to Washington, that Monday morning in mid-May, I reviewed my notes. I’d crammed like this was a final exam: watching tape of Bill of Rights, noting what worked and what didn’t, studying our competition to see what we could learn from them. The other Sunday morning shows had their advantages: NBC was slicker, CBS had gravitas, ABC was wonky and worldly. CNN was able to make everything feel like an emergency, and Fox and MSNBC just covered whatever their audience wanted. KCN had been lost in this shuffle for years. Bill, of Bill of Rights, ended every show with a monologue about treating the Constitution as a living document. It was interesting if you forced yourself to pay attention, but death for the ratings.

KCN was ripping the show down to the studs. We had an empty hour, forty-two minutes of programming that wasn’t bound by any tradition. I started to think about how we might build it from scratch. I read the white papers and speeches of every halfway important politician in Washington. I studied the techniques of the great political interviewers, the Frosts and Walters and Russerts of the world. My current job kept me on my toes, but it had been a long time since I’d stretched my mind in a sustained way, forming new ideas and connections.

I had gotten this far in life with the help of existing institutions. Places and people whose language I could learn. College, Frontline, even the Bradley family. But I wanted a blank slate. I wanted to prove that I could make something happen, something good and lasting, with my own hands and my own will.

“So tell me.” Trish leaned back in her chair. “What should we do next?”

“I knew you’d kill it,” Jamie said, the next day.

“You know what you want?” the waiter barked at us, materializing next to our table with pen and pad in hand. Never mind that we’d sat down sixty seconds earlier, hadn’t even opened the laminated menus. We always ordered the same things.

“Spinach and goat cheese omelet,” I said.

“Bacon cheeseburger deluxe,” Jamie said. “And a Coke.”

Lunch was usually a maximally efficient affair, but on days when we could escape for a bit longer, Jamie and I liked to go to a diner on Ninth Avenue. After almost four years, we had finally achieved the status of regulars.

“I don’t know about that, ” I said. But I couldn’t help smiling.

“The work paid off?”

Jamie had helped me prepare for the interview, peppering me with mock questions, walking me through the hierarchy of the Washington bureau. Mr. King was not fond of D.C. and was never willing to allocate the bureau the resources they needed. “Everyone and their mother wants to be the next Woodward and Bernstein. Let them have it,” he was said to have proclaimed. “We can break stories where they aren’t paying attention.” Hence Bill of Rights lasting years longer than it should have. Hence the worn carpets and shoestring budgets. Apparently Ginny had pushed him to retrench in D.C. Why not just close the bureau entirely, if we truly didn’t care? He was so annoyed by her provocation that he doubled their budget.

I nodded. “Although I never got the chance to show Trish my impressive grasp of parliamentary procedure.”

He smiled. “It’ll come in handy someday.”

On the walk back to the office after lunch, while we waited for the light to change on Eighth Avenue, Jamie tilted his head back and closed his eyes, and spread his arms wide. It was the first hot day of the year, July temperatures in May. “Man, that feels good,” he said.

“You’re crazy,” I said. “Summer is the worst.”

He laughed. “So says the girl who grew up in Florida.”

As we crossed the avenue, a ragged-looking man walking in the other direction scowled at Jamie. One hand kept his pants hitched up, and the other hand pointed at Jamie’s checkered button-down. “Stupid shirt!” he shouted.

“I am going to miss this city,” I said.

“And me and my stupid shirt, right?” Jamie said.

“You and your stupid shirt can come visit.” It felt reckless to talk this way, as if I had the job already. But I had begun to trust my own instincts. That’s what this work did to you.

On Saturday night, Oliver and I were going to see Tristan und Isolde at the Met. Oliver would be wearing a tuxedo, which meant I had to rent a dress, because nothing in my closet was fancy enough. I took my time getting ready, a long bubble bath with a glass of wine. I preferred the bathtub in Stella’s room, which sat beneath a frosted-glass window, open to the May afternoon. The exposed parts of my skin pricked with goose bumps in the breeze, which made it even more luxurious to sink deeper into the hot water. When I moved down to Washington, I’d have to live somewhere boring and cheap. I’d miss this beautiful apartment. The night felt valedictory—one of my last Saturday nights in New York.

Later, I stood in a bathrobe in front of Stella’s mirror and laid out my makeup. My rented dress was hanging from the shower rod, wrinkles loosening in the steam. Over the wheezy drone of the blow-dryer, I didn’t hear him coming. He appeared behind me in the mirror, like a ghost.

“What the fuck! ” I said, nearly dropping the blow-dryer.

“I wanted to surprise you,” Oliver said, pulling flowers from behind his back. “Calla lilies. Your favorite.”

“Oh.” I didn’t even like calla lilies; he did. “Thank you. But Jesus, Oliver. Did you have to sneak up on me? How did you get in?”

He dangled a set of keys. “We all have keys to this place.”

“We?”

“Your landlords. Anne, and Thomas, and me.” His smile and his smirk were nearly identical. “I’m going to put these in water. Why are you in here, anyway?”

“It’s… it has better lighting. For doing makeup.”

“Good idea,” he said. “You don’t want to look garish.”

I scowled in the mirror after he left. I was tempted to wear blue eye shadow and neon lipstick, just to spite him. But when I emerged a half hour later, he said, “You look beautiful.” My makeup was tasteful and minimal. The dress was strapless, navy blue, formfitting and flattering. My hair was straight and smooth over my shoulders, and I wore a sparkling rhinestone necklace, rented along with my dress.

Oliver stared at me. Then he said, “It would look better with your hair up.”

I crossed my arms. “Hair up doesn’t work with the necklace.”

“Get rid of the necklace. Earrings go better with a dress like that.”

As I unfastened the necklace and pulled my hair into a chignon, I wondered why I was even listening to him. But the mirror confirmed it: he was right, his way was better. He and Stella both had this quality—an unerring instinct for what looked good.