John Kenney - Talk to Me

Grace, for her part, wanted nothing to do with Murray. Grace was already in love but that love was unrequited because its focus—her therapist referred to it as a “neurotic obsession”—was Eddie Vedder, lead singer of Pearl Jam.

Grace had been on staff three years. “What connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman?” Murray had blurted out as they were still shaking hands on the day he interviewed her for the job. None of the previous three candidates he had interviewed had gotten the correct answer.

“Oh, ahh, okay,” Grace stammered. “We’re starting. The Strait of Hormuz. Iran to the east, Dubai, the UAE, and Muscat to the west.”

Murray was instantly drawn to Grace’s oversized eyeglasses as well as the acne that dotted her forehead and chin.

“What story would you lead tonight’s newscast with?”

“Climate change,” she had said. “I’d lead with it every night for a week. Maybe a month. Then I’d do the same with the lack of women in Congress and in leadership positions in corporate America. Then food additives that are causing cancer.”

Murray had nodded slowly the whole time, smiling without realizing he was smiling. And that’s how you fall in love.

Later, after he’d hired her, during his occasional failed attempts to flirt, he asked her questions he remembered from high school dating.

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Pearl Jam,” she’d said.

Murray nodded, not a fan. “What else?” he’d asked.

“Nothing else. I don’t listen to anything else.”

And Murray realized she was kidding. He fell deeper.

“Have you ever seen them in concert?” Murray asked. “I heard they’re good.” He’d not heard that but wanted a connection with her. In fact, he realized that he was imagining Radiohead while thinking about Pearl Jam and had no idea who Pearl Jam was.

“I have,” Grace said.

“Where?”

“A lot of places. I’ve seen them a hundred thirty-six times.”

Murray laughed. Grace didn’t.

“Wait. Are you serious?”

Grace nodded. “I met Eddie once. In an airport. He was with his wife. Well, she was his girlfriend at the time. Jill McCormick. This was a few years after he and Beth Liebling split up. That killed me because I loved Beth and thought she was great for Eddie but I’ve been super happy with Jill because now they have the kids. Anyway. It was Denver International and I saw him and it wasn’t even the Admirals Club or anything. You wouldn’t know it was him except of course you would because it’s Eddie and he’s a god. Like, a literal god. So, it’s the time of CD cases and I’ve got a little carry-on one and I go over to him and I can tell he’s not in the mood for this so I just say, ‘I’ve been to a hundred nineteen of your concerts’—this was a few years ago obviously—‘and in this case, I have room for twenty CDs and nineteen of them are Pearl Jam.’ And he fights this little smile and says, ‘What’s the twentieth?’ And I say, ‘It’s empty.’ Then he said this is Jill and then I left and it was amazing.”

Murray had been with Ted from the start. The youngest writer on his staff. The head writer couldn’t stand Murray, so he tried to make him quit. Gave him the dullest assignments. The problem was, Murray found everything interesting.

Cheese contamination? Murray came back with a piece that traced the history of cheese production, how almost nothing has changed in five thousand years, how contamination is rampant.

Fall foliage? Murray came back with a two-minute piece on the life of a leaf, from spring to fall, photosynthesis and respiration, to its ultimate end as it aged, changed color, and died. They received dozens of letters about the piece.

An alarming increase in gum disease? Murray came back with a story so potent that it was said to move the market on dental floss, which in turn resulted in Johnson & Johnson deciding to invest heavily in media on Ted’s broadcast.

And, of course, Cassini.

Murray had been assigned the story and delivered this copy to Ted just two months into his taking over the anchor chair.

“Two weeks ago, on October 15, 1997, a seemingly routine event happened at Cape Canaveral, Florida. A probe was launched. Probes are often launched. Satellites, too. We no longer stand in awe of space flight, no longer stop what we’re doing, turn the TV on for classrooms of students, stand together at the plate-glass window of a department store watching a bank of color sets as rockets leave Earth’s atmosphere. That world bores us today. But attention should be paid to Cassini-Huygens. That’s the name of this probe. Named for the Italian astronomer who first discovered Saturn’s rings, this twenty-two-foot-high marvel of engineering and ingenuity will not merely leave Earth’s orbit. It will travel nearly five billion miles into deepest, darkest space. It will reach Saturn, will orbit it for years, and send back images no human being has ever seen, revealing the unknown. What a thing. What a hopeful thing, to reveal the light in the darkness. We will follow it, of course. We will make our own journey. Earthbound. From this chair. Each evening. For all of us here, I’m Ted Grayson. Good night.”

When Ted first read the copy, he asked who had written it. He went to the newsroom and introduced himself to Murray.

“What’s a guy who can write like this doing in news?” Ted had asked with his half smile.

“Well,” Murray said, the other, older writers watching and listening. “I don’t think this is for me. Thought I wanted to be a doctor. Then a lawyer. I don’t know. I like to try things.”

“Maybe try sticking around,” Ted said, smiling.

Murray was in love. A big-brother love. An I-wish-we-were-best-friends love. A would-you-like-to-go-camping-this-weekend love.

That was almost twenty years ago.

These are some of the stories that are trending.

It was Jagdish’s job to compile the top-trending stories on the major websites and then rewrite them for the network’s site. Once, the news was what the networks told people it was. Now it was what people clicked on. People told the networks what was news, what they wanted to hear about.

During the last break, the big two-and-a-half-minute one, a graphic flashed the top five trending stories on the network’s website. This was accompanied by a sponsor’s logo. This week it was Dairy Queen. It rotated on a semiweekly basis.

A wildfire in the Los Angeles hills.

Mass shooting in Bangor, Maine, kills 12.

Terrorist attack in Baghdad.

Pixar movie tops weekend box office list.

Cheese causes cancer.

Trending. Sponsored by Dairy Queen. Is there a Royal Oreo Blizzard Treat trending in your future?

Ted was still looking at his phone, not really seeing the messages, when she started touching up his hair. He looked up and saw it wasn’t Marie. Had he not noticed this before the broadcast? Ted looked at her and she smiled shyly. He’d seen the look a thousand times, the look that said I can’t believe I’m this close to Ted Grayson . Something about this made him angry.

“Where’s Marie?” Ted asked.

“Out.”

“Who are you?”

“Natalia.”

Ted hated having his hair touched. Marie knew this and did it in a way that she’d worked out with Ted over the years. She feathered it with her fingers, never a comb or brush, never hair spray. She would blow it in little puffs, the way one did with a baby’s hair. Ted had fine, thin hair, the color of winter wheat. But he had, on the top of his unusually large head (a head made for television), an expanding bald spot that the eight million viewers of World Nightly News would never see.