Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Nelson
By Friday, I had developed a routine.
It went like this: I arrived at work, reviewed the lineup Jimmy had left on my desk — always early, always clean, always with that infuriating absence of anything I could reasonably object to — and spent the next hour looking for flaws.
I found them, occasionally. A sourcing question here, a timing issue there.
Small things. Things a less competent producer would have let slide, and that I seized on with the precision of a man who needed to believe he was still in control of this broadcast.
Jimmy fixed every note I gave him. Quickly, without argument, with an efficiency that made the fixing feel less like compliance and more like he'd been expecting it.
As if he'd left the flaws there on purpose, like bait, so I'd have something to correct and could go to bed that night believing I was still running the show.
I had no evidence of this, but the suspicion alone was maddening.
The show was better. That was the part I couldn't argue with, and I'd tried.
In four nights, Jimmy had overhauled the editorial approach with the ruthless pragmatism of a man who'd spent years telling stories under conditions that made a cable newsroom look like a spa.
The packages were sharper. The sourcing was deeper.
The live interviews had an edge they'd been missing for months, because Jimmy booked guests who actually had something to say instead of the usual carousel of talking heads recycling the same three opinions in slightly different neckties.
The Vasquez interview had gone viral. Not cable-news viral, which meant your mother mentioned it at brunch.
Actually viral. The clip had been viewed eleven million times on social media in three days, it had been cited in two congressional press conferences, and there was talk of a follow-up segment that could anchor an entire week of coverage.
Bruce Coleman had sent me an email about it — a breathless, exclamation-point-riddled email I hadn't responded to, because I did not respond to exclamation points.
The show was better, and it was better because of Jimmy Goodman, and I was furious about this in a way I recognized was not entirely rational but couldn't seem to stop.
* * *
Friday's broadcast opened with a Senate floor vote on a defense-spending bill. Standard fare. I delivered the A-block on autopilot — not sloppily, never sloppily, but with the practiced ease of a man who could read a teleprompter, moderate a panel, and manage his own internal crisis simultaneously.
The crisis was this: Jimmy's voice was in my ear, and I had not gotten used to it.
I'd assumed I would. Four nights of hearing the same voice give the same kinds of directions — camera calls, timing cues, segment transitions — should have been enough to flatten it into background noise.
That was how it had worked with every EP before him.
Greg Fletcher's voice had been wallpaper.
Liz Harmon's had been furniture. David Barr's had been slightly grating, like a chair that squeaked, but still fundamentally ignorable.
Jimmy's voice was not ignorable.
Jimmy's voice arrived in my earpiece the way it had always arrived in every room — with a specificity that demanded attention.
He didn't just say "toss to the package.
" He said "toss to the package, you've got a clean four seconds on the turn.
" He didn't just say "we're tight on time.
" He said "tighten up the close, we're running hot.
" Every direction specific, confident, slightly clipped — the voice of a man used to giving orders in situations where imprecision could get people killed.
I found this deeply annoying. I also found it — and this was the part I refused to examine — effective.
My delivery was sharper when Jimmy was in my ear, and the pacing was better.
The rhythm of the broadcast had changed since he took over, and I could feel it in my body the way a musician feels a tempo shift — something had locked into place that hadn't been there before, and it was making me better.
I wanted to set something on fire.
The B-block package ran. I took a sip of water and watched the monitor, and this is when it happened.
I looked at the control room.
Not a glance. Not the inadvertent flick of the eyes that could happen to anyone during a three-second package transition.
I looked. Deliberately. My gaze moved from the monitor to the glass wall, and through it I could see the blue-lit glow of the control room, the shapes of the crew at their stations, and in the center, in the EP chair, Jimmy.
He was leaning forward, one hand on his headset, the other making a quick note on a pad.
The control room lights caught his auburn hair.
He wore a dark blazer over a white shirt, and he was frowning slightly at one of the monitors — the concentrated frown I remembered from our days at Columbia, the one that meant he was three steps ahead of everyone in the room and annoyed they hadn't caught up yet.
I watched him for one second. Two.
Then I snapped my eyes back to the monitor and felt the heat rise in my chest like a flare.
What am I doing?
I didn't look at the control room during broadcasts.
I had never looked, because the glass wall was a boundary, and I'd built my entire professional existence around the maintenance of boundaries.
Jimmy Goodman was sitting in a chair frowning at a monitor, and some treacherous part of my brain had decided it must see that.
The package ended. I turned to Camera Two and delivered the transition with the mechanical perfection of a man overcompensating for a mistake nobody had seen.
Except someone had seen it.
Marla St. John was sitting three feet to my right with an eyebrow raised. Marla had been reading co-anchors for over thirty years, and the woman missed nothing.
She picked up her pen and made a small note on the pad she kept beside her water glass — the pad she used for broadcast notes she never actually referenced — and then she set the pen down and returned her attention to the camera.
I couldn't tell whether she was writing something relevant or simply letting me know she'd noticed. With Marla, the two were often the same thing.
The broadcast continued with Jimmy's voice in my ear. I did not look at the control room again.
"Smooth close tonight, Nelson. Take it home."
I delivered the close and held for three. The red light died. Then I removed my earpiece, placed it on the desk, and resisted the urge to drop it to the floor and crush it under my heel.
* * *
Harry was waiting in the hallway. "Overnight numbers from the week," he said, falling into step beside me. He handed me a coffee and a single printout.
I glanced at it. The numbers were up. Not marginally up — measurably, defensibly, send-an-email-to-the-board up.
Viewership had climbed every night since Tuesday.
The 25–54 demo — the number advertisers cared about, the number that determined whether the network could charge premium rates — had jumped four points in four days.
Jesus.
It had taken Greg Fletcher four months to lose six, and it had taken Jimmy Goodman four nights to gain four. The math was obscene.
"Bruce has already seen them," Harry said. "He's been walking around the building like a man who just found out he won the lottery and is terrified someone's going to take the ticket back."
"Bruce should be terrified."
"Of you?"
"Of the conversation I'm going to have with him about hiring decisions made without my input."
Harry was quiet for a few steps. Then: "Nelson. The numbers are up."
"I can read."
"The numbers are up, the show is better, and the Vasquez interview is the most talked-about segment we've aired in a year." He paused at the door to my dressing room. "If you go to Bruce right now and demand he fire the EP who just delivered these numbers, what do you think happens?"
I knew what happened. Bruce would adjust his tie twenty-seven times and then explain, with the sweating eloquence of a man who had survived years in the news business by avoiding confrontations, that the numbers made it impossible.
He would say things like "the network is very pleased" and "we need to give this time" and "I understand your concerns, Nelson, I really do. "
Bruce wouldn't fire Jimmy.
He would not even consider firing Jimmy, because Bruce cared about one thing above all others, and that was his continued employment. Jimmy Goodman was currently the best thing to happen to Bruce's quarterly report.
Jimmy was staying. The numbers had made sure of it. His voice would be in my earpiece tomorrow night and the night after that and every night for as long as those numbers held, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
"You're smiling," I said to Harry, and his grin flatlined.
"I am not smiling."
"The corner of your mouth is doing something."
"That's just my face." He opened my dressing room door for me. "Goodnight, Nelson."
He left. I sat at my desk with the printout and the coffee and the quiet understanding that I had lost a battle I hadn't even been allowed to fight.
The numbers were up, and the show was better. Jimmy Goodman was winning, and he was doing it in the only way I couldn't counter — by being brilliant.
I drank the coffee and stared at the printout. I thought about the moment during the B-block when I'd looked at the control room and seen him there, leaning forward in the blue light, his auburn hair catching the glow of the monitor.
I thought about how my body had turned toward him before my brain could stop it, the way a compass turns toward north — not because it decides to, but because that's simply the direction it's built to face.
I set down the coffee, picked up the printout, read the numbers one more time, and placed it face-down on my desk.
Then I turned off the lights and went home to an apartment that was beautiful and empty. After a glass of red wine, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, and I did not think about Jimmy Goodman.
I did not think about him for hours.