Chapter 2
Two
Ring.
Startled, Kenny sprung up from her bed, fumbling to find her phone on the nightstand.
In a half-asleep state, she knocked over a glass of water and pulled the charger from the wall, but managed to turn off the ear-piercing alarm.
She flopped her head back on the pillow, held her phone overhead, thumbed the clock icon, and turned off the subsequent three alarms she had set.
She couldn’t remember a time she overslept and rarely hit the snooze button, but she set four morning alarms for every five minutes out of an abundance of caution.
“I cannot believe this! Again? Really? Come on!” She lamented as she lay flat on her back, staring at the high white ceiling.
She had the same dream—or cruel nightmare, as she perceived it—repeatedly.
As soon as she fell asleep, a vivid, picture-perfect glimpse of what her life was supposed to look like emerged.
It was a beautiful life. A life others envied.
She loved that life. Living that version of her life for five hours every night was the best part of her day.
Then she would wake up. And it wasn’t her life. She knew people who had that picture-perfect life, and she didn’t like to think of herself as a jealous person, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit she harbored a few resentments.
This was the type of self-reflection Kenny vowed to work on with the help of Marilyn, the therapist she had been seeing since breaking off her engagement to George three years ago.
Recently, Marilyn directed Kenny to engage in a new “rise and shine” ritual.
She was to complete three simple tasks before stepping a foot out of the bed.
With her eyes closed, she would describe an emotion she felt, choose a color she identified with, and read aloud a passage from Meditations from the Mat, a daily reflection book the therapist had given Kenny when she learned of the journalist’s yoga practice.
Kenny leaned over the side of the bed, pulled the book out, and flipped to Day 298.
“Today I am feeling frustrated, and I’m seeing black,” she defiantly mumbled to herself.
“Who wouldn’t be miserable and seeing darkness with these recurring night visions, Marilyn?
” she complained to the therapist who wasn’t there.
“This whole rise-and-shine ritual is a bunch of bullshit, by the way.”
She blinked open her eyes, sighed, and redirected her attention back to the meditation book.
“Day 298: ‘Thoughts are energy, and you can make your world or break your world by your thinking’ by Susan Taylor.”
Despite the bitterness Kenny woke up with, these words made her smile.
First, she was a huge fan of Susan Taylor.
Every female in the media industry knew her.
Taylor was a renowned, respected, and groundbreaking journalist. She was also a fellow Fordham alum.
Kenny had a soft spot for all Rams, especially those who helped pave the way in the cutthroat business they shared a passion for.
She knew she needed to change her attitude.
Grinning and shaking her head, she said, “Okay fine, Marilyn, you win. Today I will see yellow. Like an orangish-yellow over the ocean at sunrise. Not that obnoxious smiley-face emoji yellow. And I will try to be optimistic.”
She rolled out of her red down-feather duvet cover, slid into her slippers, and glided across the parquet floors of her two-hundred-square-foot apartment to plug in the percolator, reflecting on how strange dreams could be.
So much of the life she had just woken up from did hold true.
The coffee was made before she went to bed, Joe Gold was delivering a forecast for a perfect August day, and she was one murder trial away from delivering an exclusive interview with Clinton White, which would clinch WBS the top spot in the Nielsen ratings.
Then there was the significance of the twins.
Kenny’s bloated belly that looked like a 3D dart board from the dozens of hormone-filled needles served as a reminder that she didn’t have them.
Someday she would have children but, for now, they sat in a freezer in a storage unit in the basement of a warehouse in Bayonne.
At her gynecologist’s urging, Kenny recently completed a cycle of IVF so she could retrieve and preserve eggs that disappeared with each birthday she celebrated.
It was all the rage among women in their thirties, living the single life, and focusing on their careers rather than motherhood.
She was grateful for science and being able to swing the costly procedure but was still bitter.
The weeks of daily invasive ultrasounds, blood work, and multiple injections made her fat and crazy.
On her last visit before the retrieval procedure, as Dr. Lee struggled to count the number of follicles and measure the lining of her uterine wall with the transducer, the fertility specialist said, “Kenny, you need to relax and let go. Open up, girl! You just completely closed your vagina.”
“Tell me something I didn’t know, Doc! Maybe if I relaxed, let go, and opened up, I wouldn’t be here with you with my legs in stirrups for the fifteenth day in a row!” Kenny barked back.
She took this directive as an insult to her thirty-two-year-old, lonely, single, self-loathing self. Was Dr. Lee saying that Kenny’s vagina was like her heart and soul? Closed-up, hopeless, resistant to anyone trying to get in? How offensive. And could vaginas really close? she wondered.
But today was not a day to relive the poking and prodding of the last few weeks, figuratively or literally.
She was going to see yellow, think optimistically, and discuss her encounter with Dr. Lee at her next therapy session with Marilyn.
Although, after Dr. Lee successfully harvested a dozen eggs and gave Kenny the clearance to start working out again, her disgust toward “The Baby Whisperer,” as the woman of The View famously called her during an interview, began to wane.
Since her five-foot-three-inch frame was carrying around twelve extra pounds, Kenny’s physique wasn’t anywhere close to the svelte body in her dreams. She pulled out her “fat” pair of stretchy black leggings and dug around the back of her activewear drawer for the loosest fitting tank top she could find.
She dressed, washed her face, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair back in her favorite silk blue scrunchie, and scrolled through the sixty emails that came in overnight as she sipped her coffee and filled her Swell bottle for yoga.
Subject: Record temperatures sweeping the country
Subject: Tom Brady returning to the NFL-again?
Subject: Clinton White in court tomorrow-did we know this?
Subject: POTUS to Middle East to broker peace talks
Subject: Air travel at record high since COVID
Sandwiched between the president and Brady was the inevitable Clinton White message.
“Does no one read their emails?” Kenny balked. “For the hundredth time, yes! We know that Clinton White will be in court tomorrow,” she shouted, banging her head against the wooden block of furniture that served as a dining room table, writing desk, and ironing board.
She pulled out her laptop and crafted another email to the entire news division about the status of Clinton White, the case of the prominent cardiologist and head of the FDA during George W’s presidency who stood accused of murdering his former model, and now legal immigration lawyer-wife, Ada White.
Kenny had been covering the case since the previous September when Ada White, the beautiful and equally successful wife of Clinton, didn’t show up at her parents’ Yom Kippur gathering in New Canaan.
Clinton was a Southern Baptist from Georgia, but Ada was a devout Jew and would never miss the high holy holiday without explanation.
Her body was never found, but Clinton White was arrested and charged a few months later after police said they had mounting evidence against the disgraced doctor.
Kenny didn’t mind being the point person on the story.
She was getting exposure and gaining credibility among the higher ups and executives at WBS.
Her reporting had been spot-on, and she was the first to break every detail when news emerged.
She was positioned to land the exclusive interview with Clinton White when his lawyers gave him the clearance to speak to the media, but the day-to-day was getting old and taking a toll on her patience and sanity.
She spent more time working out of the Stamford Courthouse lobby than her own cube at the office.
The servers at Dunkin Donuts on West Broad Street had her large iced coffee, two Splenda, and cream prepared before she placed the order, and she logged countless hours halted in traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway commuting up north.
A small silver lining was racking up an abundance of Emerald Club points at National Car Rentals where she achieved Executive Status and had a new plastic green card in her wallet to prove it.
She needed to hold on a bit longer. Her career had steadily escalated since she started at the network as an intern twelve years ago, but this “get” would be monumental.
Landing the Clinton White interview would mean huge things for her professional life.
She would be able to write her ticket to any position within WBS or at any of the network’s competitors.
From: Kennedy Sloane
To: WBS News
CC: WBS Executives
Subject: Clinton White Coverage
Hi Team,
Reminder that Dr. Clinton White (aka Dr. Love) will be in court in Stamford tomorrow.
He will appear in Judge O’Toole’s courtroom (Courtroom 1) at 9:00 a.m. Local news station Channel 4 will be pool camera.
WBS will plug in, and feed footage live back to the studio.
White will be permitted to dress in civilian clothes for this appearance but will be shackled at the hands and feet.
We expect that White will be taken in the back entrance of the courthouse, so we’ll have a crew staking-out that door to try and catch video of him coming and going.
This is a status hearing and won’t last long—ten minutes tops. The biggest news we are hoping for is that a trial date will be set.
I’ll be in the courtroom and plan to overnight in CT. Please reach out to me with any editorial questions and DO NOT reach out directly to anyone in the White family. They are tired of the media, and we do not want to burn any bridges.
Side note: O’Toole is a real character on the stand. Made for TV, a sound bite machine.
FOR GUIDANCE ONLY: I am meeting with White’s attorneys (Luke and Lonnie Locke) tomorrow evening.
WBS is in position to get White’s one and only sit-down (fingers crossed!
!). Remember, the judge has issued a gag order so the interview will happen post-verdict.
If White’s convicted, the interview will happen in a room at the courthouse before he is hauled back to prison (no cameras are allowed in Connecticut prisons).
If he’s acquitted, the interview will take place at his home.
Thanks!
Kenny
She hit Send and pulled out her daily planner and pad of neon pink Post-it notes to begin her ever-growing daily to-do list. She realized she was behind the times by not relying on one of her many electronic devices to keep life on track, but she was old school that way.
She liked to physically write things on paper, read things from a hard copy book or newspaper, and felt immense satisfaction when crossing tasks off her lists.
Every Black Friday, Kenny ordered the following year’s case-bound daily planner from Papyrus.
This year’s version was black with pink flowers and the words Wildest Dreams scrawled across the front in gold.
Each day of the year a half page was allotted in the journal, and that’s where she would stick her daily Post-it note.
To-Do Wednesday, August 30
Book travel for CT trip—rental car and hotel (National @ Columbus Circle + Courtyard Marriott on Summer St.)
Make a reservation for dinner with White’s attorneys (Bartaco Tapas or Capital Grille)
Raid supply closet at the office (Post-its, pens, notebooks, highlighters)
Connect with crew to discuss meet-up plans for courthouse (Jim, camera operator + Sam, audio)
Journal today’s tasks for therapist
Research illustrators for Armchair Detective
Kenny ripped the square pink paper off the pad and stuck it over the box labeled with the corresponding date, grabbed her gym bag and yoga mat, and bounced out the door, down the steps of her prewar brownstone.