Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Jimmy
He knew.
I saw it happen. From behind the glass, on Monitor Three — the one angled on the anchor desk from the waist up — I watched Nelson's hand grip the edge of the desk the instant I spoke into his earpiece.
The movement was small. Controlled. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd have missed it.
I knew what I was looking for.
"Tell me he's fine. He looks fine, right?
He seems fine." Bruce Coleman was standing behind my chair.
He'd been standing behind my chair for the entire broadcast, which was approximately forty-five minutes longer than any human being should have to endure Bruce Coleman standing behind their chair.
I could see his reflection in the glass, and his hand was on his tie.
Again. I was starting to worry he'd strangle himself with it.
"He seems fine. I think he seems fine. Tell me he seems fine, Jimmy. "
"Bruce," I said, without turning around. "Please stop hovering."
"I'm not hovering. I'm observing."
"You're hovering." I pulled a pair of scissors out of the top desk drawer and spun around in my chair. "You've been pacing behind me like a man waiting for lab results, and if you touch your tie one more time, I'm going to cut it off you."
He let go of the tie. Picked up a pen instead. Tapped it against his palm. This was somehow worse.
"It was supposed to be last night," he hissed under his breath. "I was going to tell him in his dressing room before he left for the night. But he must have raced out right after the broadcast, so I didn’t get a chance. I had a folder, Jimmy. A bound folder."
"Bruce, stop."
"With your byline samples. Tabbed. The Peabody on top, because he respects the Peabody."
"Bruce—"
"And instead, he walked onto set tonight without knowing the voice in his ear belonged to the man I hired without telling him. I hid your hire for weeks, Jimmy."
"I'm aware. I was the man being hidden."
"He vetoed three EPs over the last eighteen months. Three. With memos. Memos that ended careers. Memos that sent grown men into therapy."
"I have been informed about the memos."
"And the next time Nelson walks into my office, he’s going to ask me, in that voice—" he gestured vaguely at his own throat, as if Nelson's voice were a physical object he could reach for, "—that voice — how exactly it is that his new executive producer was in his ear for an hour without his prior consent, and I don’t have a good answer prepared. I have nothing."
"Maybe rehearse something."
"I’ve been rehearsing for two weeks. I have nothing."
I looked at him. The VP of Programming. Expensively dressed, survivor of many years in a building that ate executives like potato chips, currently on the verge of crying into a tie that did not deserve this.
Some part of me — the part that had spent the last hour producing my first show in this building while a grown man hyperventilated behind me — wanted to be merciful.
That part was overruled.
"Bruce, I need you to either sit down and be quiet or leave this control room, because I'm producing a live broadcast and you're not helping."
He stood there another five seconds, mouth opening and closing like a man who had things to say but couldn't locate any of them. Then he straightened his tie — because of course he did — and backed out of the control room without another word.
The technical director — a stocky man named Ray, who'd barely acknowledged me before the broadcast — glanced over his shoulder at the closing door. "Loser."
"You said it, I didn't," I muttered. "Camera Two, tighten on Nelson for the toss."
For the rest of the broadcast I produced the show without Bruce, which was not a noticeable downgrade from producing the show with Bruce.
I made calls. I restructured the C-block on the fly because the rescue-dog segment was filler and I'd rather eat glass than let my first show go out with dead weight in the third act.
I talked to Ray, pleaded with the graphics team, and nearly fired the live reporter at the animal shelter.
I did my job.
And the entire time, on Monitor Three, Nelson sat behind that desk with the poise of a man carved from ice and delivered a flawless hour of television while I was inside his head.
His voice never wavered, and his face never changed. He took every direction I gave with seamless precision, and not once — not a single time in sixty minutes — did Nelson so much as glance at the control room.
That was how I knew he knew. The Nelson I remembered couldn't resist a fight. The Nelson on that monitor was avoiding one with every ounce of discipline he had.
Whatever Bruce was bracing for, he was bracing for the wrong storm.
He thought Nelson would be furious that he'd hired me without consent.
He thought the worst case scenario was a memo.
He had absolutely no idea what was waiting for him in that meeting, and the kindest thing I could do for him was let him keep not knowing.
The broadcast ended. Someone said "Good show." Someone else said "That C-block restructure was sharp." Ray turned in his chair and gave me a nod I recognized as the highest form of compliment a control room veteran offers a new EP on night one.
I nodded back, calmly.
On Monitor Three, Nelson unclipped his mic, stood, and walked off set without looking back.
I pulled off my headset and set it on the desk with the deliberate care of someone defusing a bomb.
It was warm from an hour against my skin, and I resisted the urge to wipe my palms on my slacks, because the crew was still here, still forming their first impressions of the man who was supposed to lead this show.
"Nice work tonight," Ray said. "You always restructure on the fly like that?"
"Only when the lineup needs it."
He made a sound that might have been approval. "Fletch never touched the C-block. Just let it run, whatever it was."
"I'm not Fletch."
"No," he said. "You're definitely not."
The crew filtered out. I stayed and watched the monitors switch to overnight coverage, and I didn't move until the control room was empty. Then I pulled out my phone and called Jillian.
She picked up on the second ring. "How was it?"
"The show was good."
"I didn't ask about the show."
Of course she didn't. Jillian Morris, professional reader of subtext, was the only person on earth who knew the full scope of what walking into this building actually meant.
"Nelson knows it's me, Jillian." I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "First direction I gave. His hand gripped the side of the desk."
"Did he look at you?"
"No. Not once during the entire broadcast."
A pause. "That's worse."
"I know."
"If he'd looked, it would mean he was processing. Not looking means Nelson is loading a weapon."
I closed my eyes. "That's a very dramatic way to put it."
"This is a very dramatic situation, Jimmy."
She wasn't wrong. I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and tried to think clearly, which was difficult because my brain kept replaying the moment on Monitor Three — Nelson's fingers curling around the desk, the only crack in an hour of flawless performance. My voice in his ear had triggered that.
Thirteen years ago, my voice used to make him smile.
"What happens tomorrow?" Jillian asked.
"I don't know. Bruce didn't want to introduce me until tomorrow, but Nelson knows someone new is in the chair, and he isn't going to wait for a formal introduction. He'll have somebody digging up my information before he's out of hair and makeup."
"By morning he'll know everything," Jillian sighed.
We both sat with that a moment. Everything meant the Peabody, and the stories I was proud of. But everything also meant the kid he'd shared a bed with all those years ago.
There would be no ambiguity. There would only be Nelson Mackenzie, fully informed and furious, and me, in the EP chair I'd held for less than twenty-four hours, trying to hold my ground.
"Jimmy?" Jillian's voice softened. "Are you nervous about seeing Nelson again? Like, face to face?"
I opened my eyes and looked at the glass wall. On the other side was the studio — dark now, empty, the anchor desk sitting under switched-off lights like an altar after the congregation has gone home. Nelson had sat there for an hour while I'd been twenty feet away.
Twenty feet and thirteen years.
"He looked incredible, Jillian," I said, and I hated how my voice sounded saying it. Small. Honest. Nothing like the voice I'd used in the earpiece. "Nelson looked like he'd become everything I was afraid he'd become, and it was—" I swallowed. "It was magnificent. He was magnificent."
Jillian was quiet for a moment. Then: "Oh boy."
"What?"
"You still think he's hot."
"I — that is not what I said."
"You said he was magnificent. And incredible. You also said he was everything you were afraid of, and it sounded like you wanted to climb him like a tree."
"Jillian!"
"I'm just reporting what I heard," she giggled.
"I'm recognizing that Nelson is exceptionally good at his job. That's it. End of observation."
"Mm-hmm." She did not sound convinced. "So you're not nervous."
"I didn't say that."
"Do you think he's going to make your life hell?"
"I think he's going to try." A little throb started up in my temple and I rubbed it with my free hand.
"And?"
"And I didn't survive multiple war zones to be intimidated by a man in a designer blazer." Even as I said it, I knew it was bravado. Jillian knew it too.
"Jillian, I have to go," I said. "I need to prep the lineup for tomorrow. If Nelson's going to come after me, I'd rather he find me ready."
"Call me tomorrow."
"I will. Goodnight, Jillian." I hung up.
The control room was silent except for the hum of the monitors.
Tomorrow, thirteen years of silence was ending, and I didn't quite know how to prepare for it.
I knew Nelson was a total professional — that much was obvious.
But given our history, would he be a team player?
Or would he use every weapon at his disposal to punish me for leaving him all those years ago?