John Kenney - Talk to Me

Raymond opened the door and looked at Ted. Ted shimmied over, the edge of the plane, the wind furious. He looked over at Raymond. A last look. He smiled. Raymond grinning and motioning with his head to go. And to Ted’s mind it was a kind of affirmation. See, even Raymond agrees. But he couldn’t quite move his body. He suddenly felt quite leaden. It was just… and that’s when Raymond pushed him out of the plane.

He fell. And he had no intention of opening his chute.

The camera panned down, Raymond’s point of view following Ted. At 5:16:12, like a scene in a movie, our hero surely dead, no way to save him. One one-thousand, two one-thousand. Not three seconds after Ted failed to pull his own chute, Raymond, a cartoon character, this squat, broad-shouldered man who looked like he could pick Ted up, throw him over his shoulder, and run a mile, became a human bullet, a rocket, reaching Ted, grabbing hold, pulling Ted toward him with one hand, and finding Ted’s rip cord with the other. Who are the people who can do that?

Raymond’s head fell back as he pulled Ted’s chute and Ted rocketed up, away from Raymond at a hundred million miles per hour. Or so it seemed. Raymond falling like a shot, a radar blip, a goddamned supernova. And Ted thought… just for a second but Ted thought, Oh Jesus Christ Raymond’s chute isn’t opening. But it did, so fast, silver-white explosion, old-Kodak-time-lapse film sped up of a flower opening, plumes of white billowing out of his back, ripping him up near Ted.

And here Ted looked over at Raymond. Ted looked almost directly into the camera, a thing he had done his whole life, the camera not three inches above Raymond’s eye line, and began to sob.

Ted remembered almost nothing of the drive back to the city. Apparently, he managed to park his car in the garage and make his way to his apartment, where he stood, without pants, looking out the window, high above the city.

This was a bad idea and Franny knew it. But she couldn’t stop.

She entered the office and felt the eyes on her. Or was that her imagination? She walked to her desk but the screen was gone. Her books in a box on the floor, and a woman who looked to be about twenty-two sitting at her desk.

The woman removed her headphones and smiled. “Can I help you?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

The young woman’s face contorted in disgust. Franny didn’t wait for a response. She marched to Henke’s office. He was with Toland.

Franny entered and shouted, “How fucking dare you!”

Her hands shook. They were perspiring and they shook. Inside she felt thin and breakable. Henke and Toland looked up at her, German cool, Who is this crazy Fräulein? Toland left and closed the door.

Henke smiled a condescending smile and said, “Would you care to sit?”

“No.”

Henke sat, took his time, very pleased with himself.

“I’m sorry, Frances. How dare I what, exactly?”

“Run the goddamned piece! Steal my goddamned—”

His voice was thunderous. “Because I don’t work for you!” he screamed, his face a contorted image of rage. “How dare I!? You pompous child. Because I felt like it. Because I can. Because what you write I own . Read your contract. If it’s on my cloud it’s mine!”

She had no comeback. Except rage. “Fuck you,” she said.

He snorted and nodded slowly. “Fuck me. Really. That’s the best you have? And you call yourself a writer? Perhaps that’s the real reason you’re here and not someplace with real writers.”

She had no comeback because he was right. Her throat began to tighten. Her eyes tingled. The old fear and anxiety welled. Her whole life, this feeling.

“Do you want to know the real reason I ran it? Do you?”

She waited.

“Because,” he shouted, “you never would have accepted the assignment if you didn’t want me to put it up. What daughter does that?”

It was as if he’d slapped her.

“You’re fired, by the way,” he said. “Now get out.”

The car service made its way through Midtown traffic. The driver had the radio tuned to 1010-WINS. You give us twenty minutes, we’ll give you the world. Ted would have preferred quiet and was about to ask the driver to turn the radio off but decided against it. The driver would surely tell a reporter that Ted had rudely asked him to turn the radio down. That’s how it would be reported. No. It would be worse, using only a hint of truth. He screamed at the driver to turn the radio down. No. He threatened to have the man fired if he didn’t turn the radio down . No. He was a madman, this guy. He pulled a machete and threatened to cut my penis off. It would be on TMZ. Gawker. On scheisse . CNN. It would be everywhere, even though it wasn’t true. It would seem true. Wasn’t that enough?

His palms tingled. The knots in his stomach wouldn’t subside. He was fidgety and decided to get out and walk. He was about to ask the driver to stop. He started to say it. It was four o’clock. He would remember that forever. The beep for the top of the hour. “WINS news time at the tone… beeeep … four p.m. Disgraced anchorman Ted Grayson has been forced out by his network. Sources say a leaked memo confirms the firing, effective immediately. Grayson was caught on tape screaming at a hairstylist, a Polish immigrant, calling the young woman a Russian whore. A network spokesperson declined to comment. Apple computers announced its first-quarter earnings today, topping expectations largely due to its new…”

The driver looked in the rearview mirror at Ted. The car was moving slowly. Ted opened the door. The driver hit the brakes, said, “What the hell?”

“Sorry,” Ted said, closing the door.

He was walking fast and breathing faster and for a moment he wasn’t sure he was heading in the right direction. It was the feeling of a story breaking, of a thing happening that only a few knew about, that he would report on. He wanted to sit in that chair. He wanted to tell the story himself and hand it over to a reporter standing by in the field. Then back to Ted in the studio to sum up. Then dinner out and a stiff drink to soothe the adrenaline rush. Then home to bed, only to wake and find all of this never, ever happened.

He wanted to call someone but couldn’t think of anyone. Claire. He wanted to call Claire.

The traffic was dense and car horns blared and somewhere close by a fire truck siren wailed relentlessly and Ted was finding it hard to concentrate, the bad flow starting, the edge of out of control. He cut across Forty-Ninth and started jogging for no reason, then slowed when he reached the corner of Forty-Ninth and Sixth because he had to wait for the light to change. He looked at his shoes and noticed his breath, short bursts coming fast, wiped at his brow and felt the beads of sweat at his hairline. It will be fine, he lied to himself. There’s been a mistake. This isn’t real . He looked up, turned, and saw, two blocks down Sixth Avenue, the liquid crystal display banner on the Fox News headquarters, these words scrolling by: “Woman-hating anchor Ted Grayson canned by network…”

Ted looked down to see two women in their late fifties staring at him, wide-eyed, mouths agape.

“Ohmigod!” one of them squealed. “Are you him?” Her friend was giggling, reaching for her phone.

Ted looked back to the Fox News crawl but his name wasn’t there anymore. Had he dreamed it? Now the crawl said something about a new climate change report.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” the woman said again.

“Jesus?” Ted said to the women. “Am I Jesus? Am I a prophet about to be crucified? Yes. Yes I am.”