In The Middle of Middle America Page 11

  While she continues to tease her upcoming interviews, I decide I need another coffee in order to get through the evening without curling myself into a ball and crying. If the news can’t distract me from my own reality, maybe a dose of caffeine will.

  On my way to the kitchen, and purely out of habit, I lift up the phone and dial seven before balancing the receiver between my tilted head and my shoulder as I snatch at the kettle and begin filling it with water.

  “Hello, Lucy,” the robot barks as I turn off the tap. “You have…..” Long pause. “One dating request.”

  Four

  Sarah-Jane glanced up at the clock. Again.

  It was fortunate that she had eaten a big lunch in the hotel with Phil before their limousine driver arrived to pick them up, otherwise her stomach would likely be growling by now. She’d been sitting in one of the squared armchairs in the overly-big, carpeted lobby just outside Walter Fellowes’s office for over half an hour, only distracted by the ticking of the clock hanging high above the big brown door she sat facing.

  The secretary had raised her eyebrows at Sarah-Jane when the elevator doors had pinged open and she’d stepped out wearing a gray overcoat.

  “You’re Sarah-Jane Zdanski,” the secretary said, pointing. The secretary was bright-eyed, and wore her hair in a perfectly rounded 1960s-style beehive that was strapped down behind her thick bangs by a polka-dotted bow.

  After Sarah-Jane nodded that the secretary had gotten her name right, she was escorted to the squared armchair she was still sitting in. She had already flicked through the magazine lying on the round glass table next to her. Twice. It was a copy of Esquire, with a photo of Walter Fellowes’s jowly face sucking on a thick cigar splashed across the front page. On closer inspection, Sarah-Jane noted the magazine was dated September 1996—from over a year ago; and yet there was still a copy lying face up on each of the round glass tables next to the six squared armchairs spaced evenly around the overly large, carpeted lobby.

  She was actually staring at the large brown door under the clock when the door eventually snatched opened and, as soon as it did, Sarah-Jane immediately sat more upright, flicking the loose flap of the overcoat she was wearing over her exposed knee.

  The face that stared at Sarah-Jane when the door swept open was familiar. So, too, was the overcoat. In fact, it was an exact replica of the one she was wearing. Their eyes met, and as they did, Sarah-Jane flicked through the Filofax of faces from her high school and college days within her mind, dismissing each of them one by one.

  The familiar face turned away, swishing her overcoat toward the double golden doors of the elevator to where she held a key card against a sensor, and then stood back to wait.

  Sarah-Jane heard his disgusting throaty cough before she saw him.

  “What’s next, Barbara?” he croaked toward his secretary as he shuffled his short legs out of the big brown door, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

  He looked like a toad; not just because his hairless, wrinkled head popped out from the top of his expensive suit as if he had no neck, but because he repeatedly licked at his dry lips.

  Barbara pointed across the overly-large, carpeted lobby, and when Walter finally shuffled his old frame around, his beady eyes almost doubled in size.

  “Ah, Sarah-Jane, that’s right. I’ve got your company for dinner.”

  He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth again, as if he was salivating at the sight of his newest recruit, then held out that hand as he shuffled his short legs toward her.

  She smiled, stood, curtsied, then placed her warm hand into his moist grip.

  “Pleasure to see you again, Mr. Fellowes,” she said, beaming a fake smile.

  Walter waved her into the open brown door. Like the lobby she had been sitting in for almost forty minutes, Walter’s office was overly large. Too large. There was simply no reason at all for it to be this big—taking up almost the entirety of the top floor of CSN tower. It appeared immaculately tidy and the many awards on the shelf that ran along the far side of the room glowed as if they had been newly polished. His oak desk was mammoth and fussy, yet it looked quite minimal when placed in the center of its current surroundings. And framed on the burgundy, velvet-papered walls, hung portraits painted of the mogul himself—all at different stages of his life. Though even in the watercolor painted of him in his more youthful days, Walter still looked old. He had lost his hair by his twenty-first birthday and the combover that he grew to hide that fact wasn’t fooling anybody—certainly not the artist who painted this portrait. There was no disguising the fact that Walter Fellowes always looked much older than his years. When he was in his thirties, he looked as if he was in his fifties. And when he was in his fifties, he looked as if he was in his seventies. And now that he was on the eve of his seventies, he looked close to death’s door. He moved ever so slowly. He talked ever so slowly. Yet there was still a hint of sparkle in the pupils of his beady little brown eyes as they stared at Sarah-Jane from under his hairless, wrinkled brow while she continued to feign interest at the portraits hanging on the wall.

  When the awkwardness of him standing there, with his hands clasped, staring at her, became intolerable for Sarah-Jane, she lightly cleared her throat, then turned to face him.

  “The uh...” she tightened the belt around the waist of her overcoat, “lady who just left your office… I think I know her face from somewhere. Is she from Kansas? Originally? I thought perhaps we went to school together…”

  Walter licked his lips, then sniffled up his nose.

  “That was Robyn Sweeney,” he croaked.

  Sarah-Jane squinted while the name bounced around her brain, until it eventually dropped into her memory box. Robyn Sweeney, she realized, was the weatherwoman on CSN’s Top of the Morning breakfast show.

  “Does ah… does she have the same cheerleader’s outfit on under her overcoat, too?” Sarah-Jane said, pushing out an uneasy laugh.

  Walter cleared his throat as if he didn’t care how disgusting it sounded.

  “They’re not always cheerleader’s uniforms,” he said, straight-faced. Then he shuffled his short legs to the far side of his large oak desk, where he sat in an office chair that looked similar to the eleven thousand dollar chair Sarah-Jane would be sitting in later that night as she probed her guests.

  She didn’t know where to look after he had answered her question so bluntly, so she swiveled to take in the portraits hanging on the wall again.

  “Barbara,” Walter barked in his croaky, husky, voice, while holding down a button on his square telephone set, “We’re ready for dinner.”

  Then he released the button, pointed his whole hand to the chair on the opposite side of his desk, and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth again.

  “I’ve had my fun for the day,” he said, “so you may as well relax.”

  Sarah-Jane wasn’t sure what he meant, but she hoped he was alluding to the fact that Robyn Sweeney had done enough to satisfy him sexually, and that her own services wouldn’t be required. Not today, anyway.

  Walter had made it known, albeit not explicitly, when he had initially met with Sarah-Jane to offer her her own show that he would be expecting favors in return. He didn’t spell those favors out for her with specific words, but when he squeezed the air with both hands as if he were groping breasts and his dry lips turned into a grin, Sarah-Jane understood him to be alluding to sexual favors. Quite how far those favors were supposed to stretch, she still had no idea. But she was savvy enough to understand that this was how the system worked—not just in television, but in Hollywood, in Washington, on Wall Street... Men in high positions had been using their power to get what they wanted since the beginning of civilization. And what men wanted most of all were orgasms at the hands, or mouths, or indeed vaginas, of the prettiest women they could possibly lay their eyes on.

  He gloated and seduced her in their first face-to-face meeting, while flashing his yellow teeth though an ugly grin, t
elling her just how skilful and effortless he found her live broadcasting to be.

  “You stayed really calm,” he croaked, “in a moment of mayhem, and that makes you a naturally gifted reporter. You’ll fit into the CSN family without any issues at all. I’m certain of it. You’re gonna be a smash hit.”

  “Gifted,” or “calm,” or “smash hit” or whatever superlatives Walter was throwing her way, Sarah-Jane was no fool. She knew she wasn’t in a meeting with one of the country’s most powerful media moguls just because she could stay calm under pressure, but more so because she could stay calm under pressure while also looking inarguably beautiful.

  “Nervous?” he croaked.

  Sarah-Jane scooted her chair closer and then leaned her forearms onto Walter’s desk.

  “Excited,” she said.

  “I told ya… you’re gonna be a smash hit, kid. Howie tell you how many Americans will be tuning in to see you tonight?”

  Sarah-Jane shook her head.

  “He told me it was big, but he didn’t tell me the projection, no.”

  “Thirty million.”

  Sarah-Jane heard her own lips pop open. But just as they did, the door rattled before the sound of shoes shuffled across the carpet behind her. She was in such a state of shock, that she didn’t instinctively glance over her shoulder to see who was coming.

  Then Barbara appeared, gripping two brown paper bags with KFC logos splashed across them and a carrier carton that contained two extra-large buckets of Pepsi.

  “Thanks Barbara,” Walter croaked.

  After Barbara had shuffled her way back down the carpet and eventually back out to her desk in the overly-large, carpeted lobby, Sarah-Jane swallowed, then leaned closer to the desk.

  “Sorry… did you say thirty million?”

  Walter ripped open one of the paper bags, before stretching his short arm toward the other one, so he could push it across the desk toward his dinner date.

  “Can you believe it? America is already in love with you,” he said. “They’ve seen your teaser commercials on TV these past few weeks. They’ve been looking at your billboard in Times Square today. America loves you. And they’re obsessed with this story. Thirty million they are projecting. Thirty fucking million. It’s gonna be the most watched show we’ve ever had here on CSN.”

  He plunged a hand into the ripped paper bag, snatched at a crispy chicken wing and began to gnaw his yellow teeth into it.

  Sarah-Jane looked at the paper bag in front of her, then slid it away with a wave of her hand.

  “But your seven p.m. slot usually gets around six million viewers, right? I assumed when Howie said it was gonna be a big number tonight that he meant eight million. At most.”

  Walter sucked on his fingers, his tongue swirling and slurping.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, pointing the bone of his chicken wing toward her brown paper bag. “You one of them? One of those freaks who don’t eat no finger lickin’ chicken?”

  Sarah-Jane flicked her eyes toward the paper bag again then clenched her teeth.

  “I appreciate the dinner,” she said, “but ah… no. Fried chicken’s not for me.”

  “Ah,” he replied, before gnawing into another chicken wing, “one of those new-age vegie-tarians are we?”

  “Something like that,” Sarah-Jane replied.

  Then she leaned back in the chair while Walter dipped fries, and the tips of his fingers, into a small, plastic tub of gravy before stuffing them into his mouth.

  After brushing his hands together to rid them of excess crumbs and salt, he stood, loudly sipped from the extra-large bucket of Pepsi and then, while still chewing, walked around his oak desk.

  “You look fantastic. It’s a shame I had seen Robyn in her little maid’s uniform before dinner and I’m all out of steam now.“ I like to make the new girls happy on their first day. Anyway,” he said, before tonguing the gaps of his teeth in search of shards of fried chicken as he slowly approached his dinner date, “Lemme see you.”

  “Huh?” Sarah-Jane said.

  Walter motioned upward with his hand, and so Sarah-Jane stood as her stomach began to wind itself into a knot.

  “Come on, take off the coat,” Walter said.

  Sarah-Jane took a step away from the chair she had been sitting on, then unknotted the belt of her overcoat, before shrugging it from her shoulders. As Walter swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, she draped the coat over the chair, then interlocked her fingers while the mogul began circling her, still tonguing the gaps of his teeth.

  “Of all the girls, over all of the years, you’ve got to be one of the prettiest,” he croaked. “It’s those eyes, what color are they… silver?”

  “They change color,” Sarah-Jane said, “depending on what I’m wearing.”

  “Mmm,” he said, his breath glancing off the nub of her nose as he leaned in closer so he could stare at her eyes. Then he licked his lips, before running his hand across his mouth again. “I’m excited. Very excited.” He stretched to his tiptoes, leaned in closer, and kissed Sarah-Jane on the lips before turning and shuffling his short legs away. “I’m excited because I can’t wait to see you in action tonight. America’s gonna fall in love with those eyes.”

  Sarah-Jane looked down, past the crest emblazoned onto her chest, past the pleats of the short skirt and past her bare, unblemished legs.

  “I would hope, Mr. Fellowes, sir,” she said, “that they won’t just be tuning into look at my eyes. We’ve got an incredible and important story―”

  “Yes, yes,” Walter said, perching his ass against his desk before picking up his bucket of Pepsi so he could sip and slurp from it again. “Yes, it’s about the journalism and this story... boy oh boy... this story is something. But you delivering this story, you conducting these interviews? That’s why thirty million Americans are gonna be tuning in tonight. You’re not nervous, are you?”

  Sarah-Jane gripped the back of the chair she had been sitting on.

  “I’m not nervous, no. I don’t get nervous. But I am feeling a little uneasy about one tiny detail,” she said.

  Walter coughed into the back of his hand, then swiped it across his mouth again.

  “What’s that?” he croaked.

  “The opening two sentences… I just don’t feel as if they are appropriate for―”

  Walter held his hand up, causing Sarah-Jane to snap her lips shut.

  “I hear you’ve been a drama queen about the first two sentences ever since you received the first script.”

  “Well it’s just that it seems rather inappropriate―”

  Walter held his hand up again.

  “You will say those opening two lines, you hear me?”

  Sarah-Jane shuffled her feet on the spot, then awkwardly brushed a loose strand of hair away from her beautiful face.

  Sensing her discomfort, Walter turned, picked up his bucket of Pepsi and held it aloft.

  “Lemme tell ya somethin’… and I don’t ever want you to forget this. All you fresh-faces straight outta college, you think you’re entering the news business when you come in here. This ain’t the news business. This is the television business. And in the television business every story has extra juice to it,” he said. “My job is to find the right flavor of juice. My executive producer’s job is to find the ingredients for the flavor of juice I want. My director’s job is to pour that juice into a nice carton… wanna know what your job is, as a broadcaster, Sarah-Jane?”

  She flicked her eyes upward, to stare at his toad-like head poking out from the top of his designer suit, before shaking her head. Walter snarled at her, then crushed the bucket of Pepsi he was holding aloft until it collapsed in his grip and brown liquid began showering to the expensive carpet below.

  “Your job,” he croaked, “is to squeeze the juice.”

  MERIC MILLER

  I’m always the first student at school on Fridays. Soon as I come through the double doors at the front, I head straight here—to this tiny o
ffice at the bottom of the back stairs. When Principal Klay asked me — because at one point I told him I like to watch the news on TV — to become the school’s newspaper editor, he said I could have my own little office; told me he’d buy a brand new computer and printer for me, too. He almost kept his promise. The computer isn’t exactly new and the printer is so big that it looks like some sort of futuristic coffin for a really, really fat person. But at least they both work. And they both help me get my weekly newsletter out every Friday morning.

  I love it when the school is this quiet. I’ve often thought I’d love to come in at eight a.m. every morning and not just on Fridays. I would, too, if it meant I could go home an hour earlier. Heck, I’d do school at any hour of the day if there were no other students inside it with me. Or at least I would have preferred it that way... until she showed up. My stomach flips over as she comes to my mind again. Not that she has ever left it for too long since I first laid eyes on her. I actually wish I hadn’t had a shower from our shitty little spitty shower last night because I think I washed all of her smell off me. I hope the next time I see her she’ll just wrap her arm around me again and I’ll get that smell back. But I’m not even sure if she’ll even talk to me again, let alone wrap her arm around me. When I woke up in the middle of the night I was convinced she ran off from school yesterday to get away from me. But during my quiet walk to school in the dark this morning, I managed to convince myself she might have actually meant it when she told Stevie she was dating me now. I dunno. I’m confused. But I guess we kinda did go for a kinda date last week, even if Wendy was there, too. So… who knows? Maybe I do have a girlfriend. Which would be so super awesome. I knew going to the fortune teller would be a genius move. The thought just popped into my head when I was biking around the monument that afternoon and heard her talking to her family… Maybe you don’t need to look like Stevie or Brody to get the nicest girls in school, after all. Maybe you just need to be a bit of a genius. Though the only person who knows that I’m a bit of a genius is me. My Mom sure has no idea how smart I am. None of my teachers do, either. That’s ’cause I ain’t smart like they expect me to be smart; all interested in why X should equal fuckin’ Y or some shit like that. That’s not smart. That’s dumb. That’s the dumbest damn thing I ever heard my whole life—adding up letters. No… I’m smart in a street-smart kinda way. And that’s the best sorta smart there is. But I just keep my street-smart thoughts to myself. I don’t like doin’ much talking. I do my talking in print.