Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“God,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Are you kidding?” Stella said. “That was fun.”

“She was the worst.”

“The worst. I mean, I barely know her. She was in Cap d’Antibes a month ago, same time as me. I owed her one.”

“Owed her for what?”

“We were on this guy’s yacht. He was a creep. He wouldn’t leave me alone. She made an excuse so that we could leave.”

“Ah,” I said. “That trick. Instant case of food poisoning?”

Stella laughed. “It’s just not the same without you, Violet.”

We talked for a long time that night. Stella was a natural storyteller, and traveling had given her plenty of material. The jealousy that had accrued over the past few days, listening to this girl talk about Stella (they were so much alike, they were always on the same wavelength, you know?), washed away. This was just the long-distance phase of our relationship—that’s what Stella said. We knew couples from college who had moved to different cities on opposite coasts, determined that nothing would change. “They can do it, why can’t we?” she said. “It’s only temporary.” I didn’t want to point out how much work it took. How rare it was that both people put equal energy into maintaining the relationship.

“Wait, so where are you? In France?” I asked.

“Paris,” she said. “Currently lingering on the balcony, avoiding the world’s dullest dinner party. Guess what I’m looking at right now.”

“The Eiffel Tower?”

She laughed. “How did you know? What about you, what are you doing?”

I looked down at my pajamas, at the sponge in my hand, which I was using to wipe down the kitchen counters. It was immensely satisfying to have the apartment to myself again, to restore order to it. “Cleaning the kitchen,” I said.

“That’s my girl,” she said.

It could have been a split screen in a movie, two women in opposite settings. Both of us had been itching to graduate, bored with school for different reasons. But even as Stella told me more about Paris, the shopping and the beautiful people and the dinner parties that began at midnight, it struck me that I didn’t want to be there. I missed her, but I was happy with this life in New York, this sense of succeeding on my own terms.

She wasn’t sure when she was coming home. She wasn’t sure if she was coming home. The European lifestyle suited her. This she said jokingly, but also not. Climbing into bed that night, I thought of Anne Bradley handing me the paperwork. An unusual arrangement. Luck can vanish as suddenly as it appears. If Stella never came back, would they keep subsidizing this apartment just for me?

“She wants a hard copy of the script in front of her,” one of the producers said. “Run it down to the studio, will you?”

“Rebecca does?” I said.

“Who else!” the producer barked. “Pronto.”

In the weeks since her return, I’d only seen Rebecca from afar, through the glass walls of the conference room, or coming and going from her corner office. When I pushed open the swinging door to Studio B, where she was sitting at the anchor desk, she looked up from her phone right away. “Who is that? Is that my script?”

It was hot under the bright stage lights. “Here you are, Ms. Carter.”

She had intense green eyes, the color of spring. “It’s Rebecca. Never Ms. Carter, got that? Ms. Carter makes me sound like a middle school principal.”

“Sorry. Rebecca.”

“You’re new, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“Violet Trapp.”

“Violet, could you be a hero and get me a tea? The throat-coat kind they have in the green room. I keep telling them to tone it down with the air-conditioning, but they won’t listen to me. Even though my name is on the damn set—isn’t that right, Hank?”

“That’s right.” Hank, the floor director, nodded. “Buncha assholes.”

When I returned a few minutes later, Rebecca was marking up the script. Her eye flicked to the tea I slid in front of her, but she didn’t look up. She was in the zone. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“Thirty seconds!” Hank shouted. He turned to me. “It’s you again, huh?”

“Is it okay if I stay and watch?”

He shrugged. “You know the drill.”

Rebecca straightened her papers, nodded at whatever Eliza was saying in her earpiece, tucked her phone and her tea beneath the desk. After the cold open (“Tonight, on Frontline, ” Rebecca’s previously recorded voice narrated) and the slick theme music, Rebecca followed Hank’s gesture to Camera One. “Good evening,” she said. “We begin tonight in the Caribbean, where Tropical Storm Lyle has officially become Hurricane Lyle. The storm is predicted to hit the Carolinas next week, and millions of Americans could be affected. For the latest we turn to our meteorologist—”

Rebecca had many things in common with Terrance, the substitute anchor: a warm facial expression that merged curiosity and concern, a beautiful low voice, an easy chemistry with the reporters in the field. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Rebecca. That hadn’t been remotely true when Terrance was anchoring.

“I can’t figure it out,” I said to Jamie, later that same night.

“Ah,” Jamie said. “Everyone remembers their first time.”

“But I watched Terrance that night. Remember, you were there.”

“Terrance is Terrance. Rebecca is a star. And the first time you’re up close and personal with someone like that—that’s special.”

“You make it sound like I just lost my virginity.”

“It’s an appropriate metaphor.”

I squeezed the wedged lime into the narrow neck of my Corona. “Well, it was much more exciting than losing my actual virginity, let me tell you.”

Jamie laughed, and I felt a ripple of uncertainty. Why did I say that? It sounded flirty, and I hadn’t intended flirty. We were at the bar with our colleagues, the Friday night ritual to ease the transition from week to weekend. For the workaholics who thrived at KCN, the cadences of normal life could be difficult. Some dealt with it by working all weekend. Others dealt with it by drinking and going out too much. And then there was Jamie, the rare producer who maintained a semi-normal life, and his psychological health, in addition to his career.

It was like Jamie’s wick burned slower than everyone else’s. He accepted the imperfection of the work we did, which didn’t make him love it any less. I had read once that the South was the only part of America that understood tragedy, because it was the only part of the country to experience defeat in war. This was grandiose, I knew, to leap from a calm voice in a Midtown bar to the sweep of history. But after a beer or two, my thoughts tended toward the grandiose. So did Jamie’s. That was part of the reason I liked him so much.

“What about you?” I said. “The first time you met Rebecca. What was it like?”

He held up a finger. “Let me ask you a question. Tonight, when you were watching. Who did you want to be? Rebecca, behind the anchor desk? Or Eliza, in the control room?”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Eliza.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. A gut feeling. Eliza’s job seems more interesting. And harder, in a way.”

“But you were saying that you couldn’t take your eyes off Rebecca. That she had something that made her different from Terrance. Better than him.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But whatever that thing is, I know I don’t have it.”

Jamie snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”

“Hey,” I said. “You could at least pretend to disagree.”

“You know what a producer can do? She can take mediocre talent and make it good. She can take good talent and make it very good. But she can’t take good talent and make it great.”