“How long?”
“We get four to six minutes,” Gatt said.
I nodded. Six minutes was a hell of a lot of network time. “What’s the time slot?”
“Pre-prime or first half hour. They want to see if we can pick up viewers drifting from the news. You’ll produce one story a week. Schmooze the network crap as necessary.” Gatt spun the scenario without fuss. “Deliver the story to engineering before we pick up the satellite feed and that’s it. You don’t even have to cut me promos. Those assholes in promotion need to stay busy, or they start bitching about what kind of doughnuts they’re getting free every morning.”
Free? Any money bet, most of those people didn’t clear 30K a year for the privilege of working here at the crap-end of the business.
“What’s the angle?” I tried to sound like it didn’t matter. Like I hadn’t spent the last ten years building a reputation. “What kind of stories they looking for?”
“Crime, sex, local movie stars. Whatever you get that captures a ‘midwest sensibility.’” He put little air quotes around the words. “New York will help set you up.”
“The ‘midwest sensibility’ on crime, sex and movie stars?”
He shrugged, what can you do?
Sound effect: Ker-flush. That would be my reputation going down the throne in the name of health benefits and geographic stability.
I smiled.
There aren’t a handful of women in this world who make a living freelancing in international crisis scenes. It took me years to earn the respect that would buy me access. Years before I got the chance to take the picture people remember, be the one that shouts, look at this! Do something!
And one phone call is all it took to send it down the tubes.
“But-” Gatt raised a finger in the air. “I don’t care how many New York big-shits you get to blow smoke up my ass, O’Hara. You want this job? Train my new guy. He can camera for you. Drive the truck. Whatever.”
“How ‘new’ is this guy?”
Gatt made a show of adding another pair of sugar packets to his coffee mug. “First job. Got his card last month.”
“Just got his union card?” I almost laughed. “A college newbie who doesn’t know an f-stop from-No way. That’s not going to work.”
The man flopped backward in his chair. He was so short, it made him harder to see behind the cluttered landscape of his desk-three years of flip-page calendars, a dozen remotes for the monitors behind me, piles of color-coded files, a tower of old black tape boxes and a phone that could double as a NASA console.
“Let’s be honest, O’Hara.” He spread his hands. A classic how-bad-do-you-need-it move. “I’m willing to offer you a nice predictable gig, but I don’t want the station left high and dry if, or should I say when, you decide to blow.”
He had a point. “I’d have to meet this kid first.”
“Sure you do.” Gatt hit a button on his phone. Nothing happened. He jabbed at a few more, grumbled a few expletives in the back of his throat, then stood up, which didn’t really make a lot of difference to my overall view.
“Barbara! What the hell is going on here?” he shouted in the direction of the door. “Barb’s my assistant. My absolute right hand. Make her happy, she’ll take care of you. Make her unhappy, everybody suffers. Barbara! Damn it, I’ll be right back.” He walked as far as his office door, flung it wide and shouted, “Barbara!” at the top of his lungs.
I could see from where I was sitting, there was no Barbara at the nearby desk. Gatt disappeared through a side door to the WWST reception area, a time capsule of early ’80s-retro with a touch of grunge. Dark paneling and mirror tiles on the walls, olive-colored carpet with a plastic runner, and orange burlap upholstery on the lobby chairs. A stunning first impression.
The nasal drone of the receptionist drifted this way.
“I don’t care if her entire family has Ebola. You promised me coverage from nine ’til five, Monday through Friday. Either you get someone in here to answer my phones or I tell Mr. Gatt we’re doing an ex-pose-ay on a certain local weasel who runs a temp agency.”
It was a voice you didn’t forget. On the way in, the woman had looked me up and down and assumed I was a courier. Didn’t care for the biker boots or the leather pants. The boots might be a little butch, but the pants were my mother’s finest Gold Coast Goddess knock-off. What’s not to like?
“Barbara,” Gatt whined. “What the hell are you doing at reception?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? And I will tell you right now, Richard, I go on break at ten. I don’t care if this whole switchboard crashes.”
“Where’s Katie?” he asked.
“Schmed’s got her unpacking boxes.”
Gatt grumbled something I couldn’t hear. “Leave it. Go find the boy. Please,” he added, with some effort.
“You don’t pay me enough for this, Richard,” she threatened. “I am serious.”
He came back into the office rubbing the top of his shiny head. “Okay. Ainsley’s on the way.”
“Ainsley? Are you shittin’ me?”
“No, Ms. O’Hara, I am not ‘shitting’ you.” He plopped back into his chair and answered deadpan. “It happens to be an old family name. Ainsley Prescott is my sister’s kid, so I’d appreciate you keeping it clean around him.”
“Your sister’s kid?” My mouth stayed open. Possibly from the foot I’d inserted there.
Maybe it’s the same everywhere, but the majority of men in the television business seemed to have only recently evolved from the single-cell organism. Behind the scenes, we’ve got the engineer geeks who think it high-end comedy to splice beaver shots into color bar pre-roll and behind the closed doors upstairs, we’ve got skanky VP executives waving their standing invitation to lunch. Talk about something that’ll put a girl off her feed.
You learn to cope or you get out. Harassment is CDB-cost of doing business-if you’re a female in Television Land. A little garbage mouth helps. I learned early how to do the boy patter, what would help me pass and what wouldn’t. Most of the women I know in this business cuss like soldiers, skim the sports pages enough to blend and would personally scoop out their eyeballs with plastic spoons before they shed tears in public.
What was Gatt expecting me to teach this kid?
A quick knock was followed by a bright blond head around the door. “Hello?”
“Come on in, buddy.” Gatt took a swallow of his candied coffee and waved.
Welcome, Ainsley Prescott-poster child for the Aryan nation, all flaxen haired and sweet smelling. He flashed me a mouthful of sparkling teeth and popped out his hand to shake.
I turned back to Uncle Gatt. “I don’t work with stand-ups.”
The kid’s perfect smile down-shifted from eager to encouraging. The offer of his hand was not retracted.
“Ainsley’s not talent,” Gatt assured me. “He wants to camera.”
“I want to produce,” he corrected and pumped up the output on his kegel-watt grin. “But I’m willing to start with camera.”
“Sure you are.” I forced myself to smile back and take his hand.
Nearly six-foot in my boots, I’m tall as the average American man and could probably bench press him too, if he’d stick around long enough. I usually get a pretty good feel for a guy by eye-balling him in the clinch and watching for flinch.
Ainsley didn’t flinch. He tipped his head nearer my ear and in a private voice added, “Cool pants.”
Gatt beamed, the picture of a satisfied matchmaker. “Look, Ms. O’Hara, you want this job, Ainsley gives the tour, shows you to the truck and you two go get to work. Our first feed is next Wednesday. So there’s-”
“-less than a week to produce the story.” Typical.
“That’s right.” Gatt started making himself busy sorting his stack of phone messages. I was being dismissed. He had me and knew it. “You don’t want the job, say so now. I got a conference call in five minutes.”