There was another discord, as if Hal’s head had been bounced off the keyboard.
“Don’t break my calliope, Geoff!” Roach called.
“Okay, okay, okay, I’m walking! I’m walking!” Hal’s voice grew closer as Geoffrey force marched him through the ship.
A minute later Geoffrey shoved Hal toward Jane. “Spells are triggered by sound. I can’t cast if someone is making a racket like that.”
“I’ll keep him away from it,” Jane promised.
Geoffrey stomped off. Taggart drifted away to give Jane a chance to deal with Hal privately.
Hal wiped at his bloody lip. “He could have broken my nose again.”
“Why?”
“They’re going to broadcast to the entire city. Everyone will know we’re out here. They’re out here.”
He meant the Chased by Monsters team, not him. “You’re jealous?”
“No!” He looked at the blood on his fingers instead of meeting her eyes.
“Hal.”
“Okay, maybe a little. This is my city. My world. They’re going to waltz in, get on the radio, and in the end, all anyone is going to remember is that they were here on the river. Not me. No one is ever going to get to see all the scenes of me being glorious — mostly because you keep leaving me behind!”
No, he was not going to take the news that she was marrying Taggart well if this was how he was already.
“I will talk to Sean,” Jane said. “You will get on the radio. People will know you’re out here. They’ll probably even feel better knowing you’re out here. Pittsburgh trusts you. Only a few of them know who Nigel is.”
Hal gestured wildly at the river. “We should be taping! Not Chased by Monsters. It’s going to be months before anyone gets to see that. We should be taping for Pittsburgh! To get on the air right away! We should be answering questions, not KDKA.”
She locked down on a knee-jerk “no” and gave it fair consideration. It did seem shortsighted to trust other people to warn the city when they knew more than anyone else. “You’re right. We should be filming. In the past, we’ve been careful not to step on toes and kept carefully in the bounds of ‘DIY lawn show.’ We need to break out of that. We need to go bigger.”
“Hell yeah!” Hal cried.
“I’ll call Dmitri.”
“Hell no! Forgiveness is easier to get than permission. We film like normal and dump an edited episode of Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden on Dmitri too late for him to do anything about it.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Jane smacked him. “That would work for exactly one episode! Dmitri will hire a new producer. He’ll find someone hungry enough that they’d risk being set on fire by you. Probably several people to guard each other’s backs. We’d be hip deep with people who believe that they have the right to tell us what we do. If we want to keep getting the show on the air, they’d be right. You know that Dmitri doesn’t dick around.”
Hal huffed and then sighed. “Career planning was never my strong suit.”
Just as Dmriti rarely called Jane unless something had gone drastically wrong, she never called him unless it was to warn him of a possible legal shitstorm about to blow up.
Thus Dmriti answered his phone with “What did he do this time?”
“Nothing.” Just to get that over and out of the way.
“Did you tell Hal about the wedding?”
“Not yet.” Jane had her other hand over Hal’s mouth. Judging by the lack of reaction, Hal hadn’t overheard Dmriti’s question. “Things are too complicated at the moment. We want to put Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden on hiatus and film a different show.”
“You should be focusing on Chased by Monsters.”
“Yes, I know. This would be concurrent with that. KDKA is going to scoop us on yesterday’s fight with the river monsters.”
“What?” His voice went cold.
Jane explained as simply as she could about their needing a boat to find the nests and destroy them. “It will make a good segment for Chased by Monsters. More importantly, Pittsburgh would be screwed if we don’t find these nests. I needed to work with my cousins to get a boat. You know my cousin Sean Roach?”
“I understand.” Meaning that Dmitri recognized the name as one of KDKA’s top DJs.
She could skip over the rest of the explanation and get to the reason she’d called him. “We can film one segment, use both Hal and Nigel Reid as hosts, and then edit it however needed for both shows. Hal can be ‘this is what is happening now’ with the local show and Nigel will be ‘this is what happened in July’ for the network show. We’ve got a week to find these nests. Hal can have a show ready for our Sunday slot on Saturday which will be whatever we’ve managed to film by then. Nigel will have the entire hunt, start to finish.”
“It’s Wednesday,” Dmitri said.
“We’ve already have enough footage. We just need to shape a narrative. Editing will take the most time.”
“Okay. I can have production do a trailer for the change in programming. What are we calling this?”
“Pittsburgh…” That would be a nod that it was Hal’s baby and salve his ego. “Pittsburgh Here and Now.”
“That’s lame,” Dmitri said bluntly.
“Pittsburgh War Notes.”
“No.”
“Pittsburgh Under Siege.”
“No.”
“Pittsburgh Phantom Menace.”
“I don’t want an alarmist title. I don’t want the EIA any reason to pull executive power on us and have us yank it as yellow journalism.”
“Pittsburgh Predators. Wild Pittsburgh. Monsters in the Mist. Monsters in Our Midst.”
“Monsters in Our Midst. That will work.”
“Okay. We’ll have the first episode to you by Thursday afternoon.”
Dmitri hung up without saying goodbye, probably because he would have massive amount to work to do on the studio side of the production. Title credits, theme song, promotional material, and most importantly, sponsors to manage.
“Pittsburgh Monster Hunt?” Hal asked excitedly.
“Monsters in Our Midst.” Jane watched his face crash. “It’s catchier. PB&G is catchier than our original title of Pittsburgh Yard and Garden. Nigel is going to be focused on Chased by Monsters, so you’re anchor. Normal twenty-two minute format. This week’s episode will be the namazu. We’ll use what we got of Sandcastle hatchery. The swimming pools full of monsters, the first nest, the ecology of electric catfish, and the need to find the other two nests.”
“The shootout with the six monsters downtown?” Hal asked excitedly. It would make him a hero in the eyes of Pittsburgh.
“You weren’t there.” Jane reminded him. “And no, I don’t want it public knowledge that we were anywhere near that. We’ll just use Maynard telling us to hunt the namazu, which explains why we’re on the river. We can film you here on the boat for the end caps.”
“Just me?”
“Yes. You’ll need a script. There’s too much we can’t talk about. We need to film clean so we can edit fast.”
He wasn’t smiling but he was projecting excitement like a searchlight.
“Just do a practice run,” Jane said when Hal reappeared claiming he scripted out the opening of the new series. Hal saying outrageous bullshit was part of the appeal of PB&G. She didn’t trust him to actually keep tight to a script.