John Kenney - Talk to Me

The crowd exploded, laughing, cheering.

Ted stared at Elena, who held his look. She was not intimidated. She was a bully and she wanted to bury him. To embarrass him. She wanted revenge for the Russian whore.

He was running his tongue against the back of his lower teeth. He hands tingled. He tried to speak. He was saying words. “I don’t know if that’s a serious question…”

But no one could hear him. Elena raised her hands, halfheartedly spoke to the crowd, “Please. People…”

But they were too far gone now.

“If I might…” Ted tried. But they weren’t going to let him speak.

Elena turned to him, leaned in, put her hand over her mic. “Network news. Where we’ve been. That sounds like a punch line to me, Ted.”

“Are you going to do anything about this?”

“Ted, there’s no camera here. There’s no diarrhea medication sponsors. You have no power here. And if you think I control this you’re dumber than I thought.”

He shouldn’t have, but he stood. He was so angry. So sick of this Twilight Zone existence. He stood and he took a step toward the front of the stage. He was squinting at the roar, at the chairs being slammed in a kind of rhythmic primal war cry. For God’s sake, he’d given a hundred speeches. Commencements and panel talks and interviews. He was a man used to being listened to. Just listen to me. You invited me! He held his arms out in front, trying to implore them. “Please… please,” he shouted through the storm. But no one heard him, a small cry in a tornado. It would be the photo on the tabloids and websites, Ted, wide-eyed, arms out, “like Christ on the cross,” said one website. “Except no one was hoping for his resurrection.”

And that’s when Ted saw Franny.

Franny had a seat on the aisle, ten rows back from the stage. Most everyone was standing now, many with their backs to Ted. Those who did face him chanted wildly, shouted obscenities, raised their signs in protest. Several Columbia police officers entered the back of the hall and hustled to the front of the stage. The crowd booed. Franny stepped in the aisle to leave. She wanted to leave. She needed to get away from this. And it was here that Ted saw her. They looked at each other for a time. And what surprised her, what confused her, was the desire to run to him, to get him off the stage. But she did nothing. She stood frozen.

A woman standing next to her turned and smiled. She had been cheering loudly at everything Elena was saying.

“Guy’s a dick, right?” the woman shouted above the crowd.

Franny just looked at her.

The woman noticed Franny’s small notebook, her scribbles.

“You writing a story or something?”

Franny nodded.

“Make sure you screw him over. He can’t treat women this way, right?”

“What way?” Franny said, annoyed at the woman, at her know-it-all expression and condescension, at the fact that Franny completely agreed with her, was her.

“He called her a whore.”

Franny nodded. It came out fast, hard, adrenaline-angry. “What the fuck do you know about anything?”

The woman’s expression changed as she backed off into the crowd.

Franny watched her father turn and confer with Margo Litt, who had come onto the stage. Watched as Margo spoke to the crowd, who were delirious with their sound and fury. Watched as Margo and Elena and Ted walked offstage, the women—and here Franny wasn’t sure of her own memory of it but it felt this way—walked away from Ted, ahead of him, leaving Ted alone, a final look over his shoulder at the mob.

In Midtown, Tamara was following the event on Twitter. Maxwell, her PR head, was messaging her. “This is getting out of hand.”

Tamara texted back. “You think?”

“Murray.” It was Grace.

Murray looked up from his screen, mid-sentence, still in the story he was writing. He looked at Grace, saw that Jagdish was looking at him, too.

“We wanted to say something,” Grace said. She looked over at Jagdish, and Jagdish nodded. They had gone out for a coffee after work the day before. They’d talked for an hour and a half. They felt it was the right decision.

“I’m resigning,” Grace said.

“I am also,” Jagdish said. “Respectfully, Murray.”

Murray nodded.

Grace had stayed up the previous evening and written her thoughts out.

“There is a part of me that loves Ted,” she said. “Truly. But what he said, the word he used, the way he used it. He demeaned that woman. That’s not okay. Ever. It’s 2016, Murray. If we condone this, then we are part of it. I… we… want to make a stand. We want to be on the right side of history.”

She looked at Jagdish. “What she said,” Jagdish added. “I cannot say it better.”

Murray scratched his scalp and sniffed his fingertips.

“Okay, then,” he said finally, nodding. “Ahh, just… send me an email, make it official. I’ll forward it to HR. We’ll do an ice-cream cake or something for your last day.”

He put his head back down, stared at the keyboard, and began typing. Grace and Jagdish looked at each other, confused and a bit hurt that Murray was being so cavalier.

Perhaps it was the pressure of watching Ted annihilated in the media, this man who had been so good to Murray. Perhaps, too, it was the sense of foreboding, that his job, his industry, certainly the evening news, was coming to an end, changing in ways he simply didn’t recognize or understand.

“That’s it?” Grace said.

Murray nodded, typing, staring at his screen.

Grace and Jagdish gathered their coats.

Jagdish said, “Murray. We’re going for soup. Can we get you anything?”

“If you do this, they win. Okay?” Murray said too loud.

“If we get soup?” Jagdish said.

Murray stood. “Not soup! They! They win if you do this. If you quit. Don’t you see? They win!”

“Who wins?” It was Grace. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about everything that is wrong with America, the world, us , today. Mark Fucking Zuckershit. Sergey fucking Brin douche!”

“Elegant,” Grace said.

“Just listen, please!”

“No, Murray!” Grace found her voice, her footing. “I’m done listening to men tell me—”

“You sanctimonious shits!” Murray shouted.

Their mouths opened involuntarily, Grace and Jagdish.

“I see. I see. Ted is bad and you are both good. Both so right. So you’ll walk. Simple. I get it. You’re news writers, for God’s sake. When is a story ever simple? How old are you two, ten?”

“You’re rude. I’m not listening to this.” Grace again, heading for the door.

“You’re so afraid to live.” He was talking to Grace now.

“No I’m not!”

“You have your band. You know them. But only so you don’t have to do the real work of knowing an actual person, trusting a person. Why do that when you can pretend?”

She was wide-eyed now and wounded.

“I know you because I am you, Grace. I’m just like you. And just as afraid. And I died when I saw that video of him. Because I love him. Because I believe in him. And I want to quit, too. I want to walk out that door and have cameras turned on and take a big crap on him. Because he doesn’t get to do that. But he did. So what now? I owe him this. The hardest thing about a relationship isn’t the I do part. It’s the I do when you don’t want to. Walk away now and the forces that won’t let us make a mistake win. The sanctimonious assholes who criticize him like they’ve never made a mistake win. You are so much better than that. You make him better. Your work and writing and passion. You are amazing. And without you, without both of you, this newscast is the lesser. I’m the lesser. He’s not going to survive this. It’s over soon. To walk out now is…”