Dena had been back from lunch a few minutes when Sidney Capello, without knocking, walked in her office and went over and flopped down as if he belonged there. Dena looked at him with the same revulsion as if a snake had suddenly crawled into her office and curled up on her red leather couch.
Capello did not bother to look at her. “Ira wants you to run your questions by me, make sure you get it right.” His eyes darted around the room as if he were looking for flying insects. “You know, the knocked-up preacher’s wife. He wants us to work together.”
Dena stood up. “Oh, no. You and I are not working together on anything, you creep.”
Capello’s eyes darted in her direction. “Hey, I don’t have to take any lip off any bimbo. You don’t want to work with me, that’s your problem, sister.”
Dena did not hear the last sentence; she was storming down the hall. She barged into Wallace’s office. “Did you tell that slimebag he could work with me?”
Wallace was, as usual, on the phone and looked at her. He put his hand up and motioned for her to sit down. Dena sat down and waited. She was so mad her stomach started to hurt again. She took some deep breaths, trying to cool off. Wallace put the phone down. “Now, which slimebag are you talking about?”
“Sidney Capello.” Dena tried to remain calm. “Did you tell him he could work with me?”
Wallace seemed puzzled that there was a problem. “Yeah, so? I told you—I had to make him associate producer.”
“Ira, you may be able to be in the same room with him but I can’t. It’s bad enough I have to work with those other two cretins you call researchers but this guy is disgusting.”
“All right, whatever. I thought he could help you out, that’s all. You two have a personality problem, OK, no big deal. We can work it out, problem solved. Anything else?”
“How can you trust him, Ira? He may be lying about the Hamilton piece. He could have made it up.”
“He ain’t lying. We double checked. He may be a slimebag, but he’s an expert slimebag. You may not like what he comes up with but he’s the best. Trust him? Please, he’d sell his grandmother for fish bait if he thought he could make a dime, but that don’t mean he ain’t good.”
“How can you work with somebody you don’t trust? I don’t understand.”
“Hey! What’s trust got to do with work? This ain’t no popularity contest we’re in; you don’t have to trust someone to do business.”
“Well, maybe you don’t, but I do, and I just don’t feel right about asking that question.”
“Not that again. You know, kid, you disappoint me, as hard as I worked for this. And you, angling for a permanent network shot.”
“I know, Ira, but I know Peggy Hamilton and she trusts me, and her husband does, too. That’s how I got the interview in the first place.”
“Let me ask you something. She knows what kind of business you’re in, right?”
“Yes, but …”
“So business is business. They know that. Why are they doing the interview in the first place? To hustle money, right? They know the score. You’re just doing your job, they use you, you use them, business. Come on, you know better than this. You start thinking like a sap, you’re gonna have your hat handed to you and be on the first bus back to Hicksville Springs.”
Dena flinched. Wallace checked his watch and leaned back in his chair. “Let me tell you a little story. My grandfather came to this country, didn’t have a dime. He had to hustle on the streets all his life. He sold buttons from door to door; he worked eighteen, nineteen hours a day. But when he died he had saved fifteen thousand dollars and he paid my way through NYU. Do you know how many buttons he had to sell? One day I was four years old, he took me in the kitchen and stood me up on a chair. He held out his arms to me and said, ‘Jump.’ I was scared. He said, ‘Come on, jump. I’ll catch you.’ I still didn’t jump. He says, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you trust me? I’m your grandfather.’ So I jumped—and wham, I hit the floor, flat on my kisser. He looks down at me and he says, ‘That’s your first lesson in business, boy. Don’t ever trust nobody. Not even me, don’t ever forget it.” Wallace almost had tears in his eyes. “God, I loved that man and I’ll tell you something else. I never forgot it.”
“That’s the difference between you and me, Ira,” Dena said. “When I was little my grandfather did the same thing to me—only he caught me.”
Wallace said, “Yeah, well, don’t kid yourself. He didn’t do you no favor.”
Taking a Chance
New York City
1973
Dena sat in her living room at four-thirty Saturday morning eating a plate of Stouffer’s frozen macaroni and cheese. She had been up all night struggling with herself about the Hamilton piece, going back and forth trying to figure out what to do. Making a decision about her career had never been hard for her. In the past she had always been crystal clear about her goal and had kept her eye on it even if it had meant leaving people in the dust. She had quit jobs overnight to take a better one and never looked back. But this was different. There was something about this interview that made her deeply uneasy, scared her, even. It didn’t have anything to do with religion or because she thought the Hamiltons would hate her; she could always lie and say that her producers had told her that everyone knew about the first child. It was something else she could not put her finger on. Was she afraid that if she crossed the Hamiltons she would never be able to get an interview or be accepted by the right people again? Or was it simply because Peggy Hamilton was a woman and seemed so vulnerable, so defenseless? Was it because she had loathed Sidney Capello on sight? Why did she feel so threatened? She went into the bathroom and turned on the light and glanced up at herself in the mirror and was startled at what she saw. For a split second it could have been her mother’s face looking back at her.
At eight she picked up the phone. The Hamiltons’ youngest son answered and went to get his mother. Peggy Hamilton came to the phone right away with a cheerful, warm “Hello.”
“Mrs. Hamilton, it’s Dena Nordstrom.”
“Well, hello again.”
“Mrs. Hamilton, listen, about the interview. Would it be possible for us to meet, just you and I? It’s really important. I need to talk to you.”
“Of course. Come on over anytime. Or should I come to your office on Monday?”
“No, it would be better if we met somewhere else before then.”