Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Jimmy
The restaurant had the kind of lighting designed to make rich people feel mysterious. Everything was amber and gold, the tablecloths were white, and the menu didn't list prices — which was how I knew I couldn't afford to be there.
But I was here on someone else's dime, and even that made my skin itch.
Bruce Coleman sat across from me, working through a filet that probably cost more than my grocery bill for the month.
He was a wiry man, all restless energy, and every few minutes he reached up to adjust a tie that didn't need adjusting — a tic he didn't seem to know he had.
When he smiled at me there was something in it I couldn't quite trust. Not shady, exactly.
Just… slick. The slick that comes from decades in cable news telling people precisely what they want to hear.
But that might've been me. Thirteen years of independent journalism had trained me to regard corporate news executives the way a stray cat regards an outstretched hand — with deep suspicion.
"Jimmy," he said, dabbing his mouth, touching the tie.
"When your name came across my desk, I nearly fell out of my chair.
I'll be honest — it took us a minute. All your published work's under J.
Goodman, so nobody on my team connected the dots at first. But once we did?
" He shook his head. "A Peabody winner. One of the most respected voices in investigative journalism.
J. Goodman, whose piece on civilian casualties in Yemen made Congress hold emergency hearings.
" He gestured at my barely touched risotto.
"Sitting across from me, eating risotto. "
"It's good risotto," I admitted, which annoyed me, because I wanted to hate everything about this meal.
"So let me ask you something." He set down his fork. "You've done the independent thing for years. Turned down every network that came calling. What changed?"
I almost laughed. What changed was that the documentary unit I'd spent three years building got cancelled by a Friday-afternoon email from accounting.
I was thirty-six and my body had started keeping a running tab.
Shot at in four countries. Dysentery twice.
A scar on my left shoulder from shrapnel that ached every time the pressure dropped.
My apartment had a window that didn't lock and furniture sourced almost entirely from the curb.
And the taste of instant noodles — the ten-for-a-dollar brick kind that had carried me through my twenties and most of my thirties — made me want to be sick.
I was tired of my fucking principles. They'd bought me a Peabody, a cinder block bookshelf, and had never once paid for risotto this good.
"Let's just say I'm ready for a new chapter," I told him.
Bruce nodded like he understood, though I doubted he'd ever eaten a meal standing over a sink in his life. He reached into his briefcase and produced a slim leather folder, setting it between us with the reverence usually reserved for engagement rings.
"Jimmy, I'd like to formally offer you the position of Executive Producer of Beacon News Tonight."
The primetime slot. Millions of viewers every weeknight at seven. I'd spent the better part of my career calling shows like it everything wrong with American journalism. Now I was being handed the keys to the kingdom.
"That's a significant offer," I said, working very hard to be the kind of man who said that's a significant offer instead of holy shit.
"Details are all in there." He tapped the folder. "Salary, benefits, start date. I think you'll find the compensation speaks for itself."
"I accept," I said, before the twenty-two-year-old version of me — the one who'd stood in a tiny kitchen off Morningside and told Nelson Mackenzie that PBS was where real journalists worked — could claw his way to the surface and stop me.
Bruce's grin widened. He slid the folder across with a heavy silver pen. Then the grin cooled, his hand went to the tie again, and his voice dropped half an octave.
"Now. Before you sign, I need to be very clear about one thing.
" He leaned in. "This stays quiet. Absolutely silent.
You tell no one — not your friends, not your colleagues, and especially not anyone at another outlet.
If Nelson Mackenzie finds out we hired someone behind his back, he'll be livid.
" He pointed at me with his steak knife, casual as a handshake.
"And Jimmy? Pissing off Nelson is dangerous to your health. "
I fought down a smile. I couldn't help it.
The mention of his name did something to my chest I refused to examine, and instead I let my mind drift, just for a second, to the arguments we used to have.
Nelson was something else when he was angry.
Those blue eyes flashing like blades. The way his voice dropped quieter instead of louder — which was infinitely worse, because quiet Nelson meant he was about to dismantle you with surgical precision and perfect grammar.
Sexy as hell. Not that I'd ever admit it to anyone breathing.
"I'm aware of Nelson's reputation," I said, which was the understatement of the century.
I opened the folder. The contract was crisp, heavy stock.
The salary figure on page three stared up at me like it was daring me to blink.
I thought about my cinder block bookshelf.
My Peabody. Thirteen years of sleeping on cots and eating out of foil packets.
Thirteen years of choosing principle over profit.
I picked up the silver pen and signed on the dotted line.
My handwriting looked almost obscene against the elegant paper, like graffiti on a cathedral wall. But there it was. My name. In ink. On a contract with the network where my ex-boyfriend was the most famous face in American news.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
Bruce took the folder back. "Welcome to the Beacon Broadcasting Company, Jimmy. And remember — not a word. To anyone."
After he left, I stared at the risotto I hadn't finished and pulled out my phone.
Jillian picked up on the first ring.
"Tell me everything," she said, because that was how Jillian answered the phone regardless of context. She could be at a funeral and she'd still answer with tell me everything.
"I took the job."
The sound that came through the phone was not a scream. It was a frequency only dogs and best friends could detect. I held the phone six inches from my ear and watched a waiter flinch from across the dining room.
"JIMMY! OH MY GOD! I KNEW IT! I'M SO PROUD OF YOU I COULD DIE!"
"Please don't die. I just sold my soul and I'm going to need someone to talk me off the ledge."
"Ledge? Baby, you just jumped off the ledge and grew wings!
" Her voice shifted into the register I recognized as Jillian In Command.
"Okay. Here's what's going to happen. You are going to march yourself over to the Shops at Columbus Circle and meet me at Nordstrom. We need coffee. I’m already two blocks away. "
I closed my eyes. "Jillian."
"You also need clothes, Jimmy. Real clothes. And we're doing something about your hair.”
"Do we have to do this?"
"Thirty minutes."
The line went dead.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later I was in a salon chair wrapped in a black cape, staring at my reflection like it belonged to a complete stranger.
This was not the plan. The plan had been coffee. Jillian had said coffee. She'd said "Nordstrom, meet me there," and what she had meant, apparently, was I've already booked you an appointment and you're getting your hair done whether you like it or not.
"Stop making that face," Jillian said from the chair beside me, scrolling through her phone like a woman who had not just ambushed her best friend.
Jillian Morris was five foot two, devastatingly put-together, and possessed the organizational instincts of a four-star general — which served her well at the Mayor's Office of City Legislative Affairs.
She spent her days wrangling council members and her evenings wrangling me.
Jillian was also the only person on earth who could bully me into things I didn't want to do, which was how I'd ended up in this chair instead of home questioning every decision that had led to this moment.
"What face?"
"The one you make when you're about to bolt. I've known you since freshman year at Columbia, Jimmy. I know the bolt face. Sit still."
The stylist — a tall, angular man named Dominic, shirt unbuttoned to the fourth button, cheekbones that could cut glass — had both hands buried in my hair, working through the curls with an expression that could only be called diagnostic.
Like a mechanic popping a hood and realizing it was worse than he'd thought.
"When was the last time you had a professional cut, sweetie?" he asked.
"Define professional."
He lifted a curl, stretched it out to its full shoulder length, and let it spring back like a window shade.
"Mm-hmm." He picked up another. Released it.
"Mm-hmm." Then he gathered a whole handful at the back, where the curl knotted up tightest, and held it up like a scientist examining a contaminated sample.
"And this. This whole situation back here.
The frizz, the knots — half of this is curl and half of this is neglect.
I need you to tell me which products you've been using. "
"Shampoo," I said defensively.
"Which shampoo?"
"Whatever's on sale."
Dominic stared at me in the mirror. "You have shoulder-length auburn curls — the kind rich women pay four figures to fake — and you've been washing them with whatever's on sale?"
"Sometimes whatever's in the shower."
"At a cheap hotel?"
"…Sometimes."
"Sweetie." He set down the curl with the tenderness of a man laying a body to rest. "Be honest with me. Has this hair ever, in its entire life, met an actual conditioner? Or have we been out here scrubbing God's gift with a bar of motel soap and a prayer?"
"He's been in war zones," Jillian offered helpfully. "Like, actual ones. With guns."