Prophet (18 page)

“What’s to settle?” asked Leslie. “We agreed on the question, we put it in the script, it was there all afternoon. You could have checked with me, given me just a little warning, but no, you had to wait until we were smack dab on the air to make up your own question and make me look like a jerk!”

John insisted angrily, “I asked you the question I was given in the
script!”

She shook her head in wide sweeps, her blonde hair waving like pennants. “No, no,
no
, just look at it, will you look at it?”

John found it. “Okay. Right here.” He didn’t read it out loud because it said, “Leslie, can we expect more demonstrations of this kind?”

His silence was rewarding for all of them. They had a glance-exchanging party right then and there.

“Well?” asked Rush.

John was nonplussed. “It said that thing about the sexual encounters and him not using a condom . . . It was right here.”

Mardell suggested, “Well, did you see it on the teleprompter?”

“Well, I think I read it here, but . . .” Rush was already back to the teleprompter table, scrolling through the long paper strip, the script that was projected on the front of the cameras. “Nope. It’s the same here.”

It was too perfect. Too flawless. Too much without any explanation. John smiled wryly and suggested, “Okay, it’s a gag, right? Who did it? What’s the occasion?”

No one cracked a smile. Least of all Rush. “Do you want the gay rights activists storming this place?”

“Rush . . .”

“You ought to see what they did to that church! You want them doing that to this place? I’m not going to have that on my head!”

Ali tried to intercede. “Rush, all right, it was a mistake, okay? Maybe it was a gag. It was a bad gag, but—”

Rush was too riled to turn back. He counted the items off on his fingers as he listed them. “They broke the windows out, they spray-painted” (Rush didn’t mind repeating the graffiti verbatim) “all over the walls, they broke a bunch of glassware in the church, and urinated” (Rush’s language was not so gracious) “all over the altar! You want those people coming in here next?”

John was shocked, disgusted. “They did what?” He looked at Leslie.

Leslie nodded.

John looked puzzled. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you know. You know what kind of garbage we’re up against every time we have to do a gay story. So use some common sense, will you, just a little common sense?”

John was not satisfied. Something was gnawing at him.

“But . . . we haven’t shown any of this. We haven’t told anyone about it.”

“You better believe we haven’t!”

John could feel some anger building. “Now wait a minute. The gays virtually ransacked a church and defaced property? . . . Was anyone arrested?”

Leslie answered, “Not that we know of.”

“Not that we know of? Did anybody ask? Did we get any pictures of the damage?”

Rush was incredulous. “Yeah, right, John, like we’re going to show everybody spray-painted profanity during the dinner hour! You want to take the phone calls?”

Leslie piped in, “John, not all gays are like that!”

Now he knew he was getting angry. He locked eyes with Rush again. “Rush . . . everything you told me, everything they did—it was happening, wasn’t it? And we were there, weren’t we?”

Rush threw up his hands and started walking away. “Oh boy. I’m outa here.”

John went after him. “No, now, Rush, don’t walk away. It was happening, and we were there, and now you’re telling me it wasn’t news?”

Rush turned and stood his ground. “Listen, we’re not here to discuss that! We’re here to discuss you fouling up, that’s what we’re here to discuss!”

John threw a question at Leslie. “Was it true?”

Leslie wasn’t ready. “Was what true?”

“Three hundred sexual encounters, never uses a condom. True?”

She thought it over, then nodded and admitted, “Well, one of his friends says he’s proud of it.” But she was puzzled. “But how did you know about that?”

Rush cut in. “John, c’mon, that has nothing to do with this story anyway.”

John didn’t buy that. “Oh? Maybe it just depends on who we’re covering, which way the political winds are blowing, who we want to protect . . .”

Rush tried to control his voice but didn’t do very well. “John, wake up and smell the coffee. We are in this business to inform, not inflame.”

John could see inflaming videos playing in his head this very moment. “Yeah. Yeah, right, Rush.” He was reaching full temper and purposely lowered his voice. “Where was all this journalistic idealism last week?”

Rush rolled his eyes, shook his head. “John, we’re not trying to hurt anybody!”

“Well, you can tell that to my father!” He started out of the room.

“John . . . !” Leslie called after him. He was just about to dismiss her with an oath and a gesture, but bumped into Carl first.

Dead air. No script. No one could think of what to say. Carl was staring at them, each one of them in turn.

As one, they relaxed. They became pleasant and smiled. They looked a bit stiff, but they smiled and chuckled anyway.

Ali came up with a quick ad-lib. “Well, Carl . . . now you’ve seen how we do it!”

CHAPTER 8

THE WARM-TONED,
low-lit, heavy-beamed restaurant known as Hudson’s offered a much needed escape, a pleasant place to get away from the station and everything that had happened that day. John often came here after work. He was known and recognized by the lady at the reservation desk, and tonight, happily, she gave him and Carl his favorite table near the gas-fired stone fireplace.

After that big mess on the Five Thirty, the Seven O’clock was an uphill morale and concentration battle all the way, and now John was tired. Spent. This had been a dreadful day after a devastating week. His mind, and maybe his life, seemed to be on the edge of something disastrous, and his career was currently careening through a minefield of bad breaks, foul-ups, and embarrassments. What a time to be sitting across the table from his son, a stranger, wondering what in the world they would talk about.

Looking at Carl, he was almost afraid to ask what was on the kid’s mind. Carl had been silent up to this point, not open to much conversation, just perusing the menu. His complexion looked a little warmer in the glow of the table candle, but he did not look happy. He seemed troubled, constantly and unrelentingly troubled; his eyes, though directed at the menu, didn’t seem to be reading it. He seemed to be thinking, thinking, thinking.

John piped up, “The prime rib is good. I’ve had that a few times.”

“Mm,” was all Carl said, nodding slowly. Up came the waitress, a
pretty black girl not too long out of high school. “Hi, I’m Rachel. I’ll be your waitress tonight.” She seemed a little tired too.
Well
, John thought,
I know the feeling.
“Are you ready to order or should I give you a few more minutes?”

John was ready and was surprised to find that Carl was too. John ordered the prime rib. Carl ordered the chef’s salad.

Rachel took the menus and left. Now there was nothing to look at but each other.

“So what did you think of the station?” John asked.

“It was . . .” Carl took time to choose the right word. “. . . interesting.”

John figured he’d better deal with that little scene after the Five Thirty. “Oh, it can be interesting all right, some days more than others. Like that conversation you came in on the middle of . . . that was another one of those things that make the news business . . . well, like you say, ‘interesting.’” Carl was looking at him and listening.
Okay, John, just maintain a flow here.
“When you’re in this business there’s a constant challenge, a question out in front of you, What is news? What’s important and what isn’t? What do the people really want to know about? It all revolves around how you define ‘the people’s right to know.’”

“It ended up on the floor,” said Carl.

John didn’t understand, obviously. “Hm?”

Carl became stronger, his voice more firm, his eyes reaching directly for John’s. “The people’s right to know. The news. I stood in the control room and watched the producer toss page after page on the floor.”

John smiled and nodded. “Sure. When all you have is a half hour, you often find you can’t fit everything in. That’s why we’ll often do some last-minute cutting.”

“So what happens to the news that gets tossed?”

“Oh, we might run it again at a later time if it’s still current.”

“What do you mean, ‘still current’?”

“Well, still happening, still . . . still news. Fresh news stories are breaking all the time, and if a story misses the train the first time, well . . . unless we can use it for a follow-up or something . . .”

“So if it gets tossed on the floor, it probably won’t make it on the
air.”

John thought for a moment, then admitted, “Well, chances are it won’t. Events happen too fast, and if the train’s left . . . I guess it’s like a contest, with winners and losers. But most of the time the stuff that gets tossed is dispensable.”

“So it isn’t really news?”

“Oh, it’s news, sure, but it’s dispensable news. I mean, to be honest, it’s news that people would enjoy, would find interesting, but they can do without it.”

Carl nodded thoughtfully, digesting that.

“But like I was saying, it’s a human business, and we all see things through different eyes. But if we’re going to do our job and gather the news in any kind of thorough, objective manner, we have to let others tell us when they see things we may have overlooked. Sometimes that leads to some fierce differences of opinion, but that’s what the information business is all about.”

“I take it they didn’t like the question you asked.”

John chuckled. “Well, right, see, that’s what I’m saying. You have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and sometimes they butt heads.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what? Butt heads?” A little joke. A dumb joke.

“Ask a question.”

John had to think a little on that one. “Well . . . I guess it helps to blend things a bit, sort of bring the anchor into the story . . . uh, it helps make the anchor look more involved in the gathering of the news, more a part of the process. And I guess it adds a human touch to the show.”

Carl seemed perplexed. “But don’t you get that question off the script?”

“Yeah, it’s a scripted question.”

“So who writes it?”

“Usually the reporter who filed the story. The reporter gives us a question, we ask it, and then they have an answer prepared, and we end the package with that.”

Carl thought about that some more. “So you’re not really asking them a question, you’re acting like you’re asking them a question.”

John was getting uncomfortable. Was the whole evening going to
be like this? “Well, sometimes the anchor can ask a question of his own, but it’s wise to let the reporter and the producer know in advance. The problem tonight was that we got the wrong question into the script somehow and the reporter wasn’t ready for it. We try to avoid surprises like that. It doesn’t look good on TV, let me tell you.”

Carl actually smiled. John guessed he was amused. “I liked your question,” Carl said. “It was yours.”

“Well, I appreciate that.” He really did. Then he reflected for a moment, just a short moment.
Hm . . . the content of that question was true. How did I know that?

But now back to Carl. Eye contact. Look into the camera. Maintain the flow. “But anyway, it’s all part of the TV news game. The technology is complex, so the policies, the whole presentation of the news can get complex. There are just so many different tools at our disposal for informing the public, and doing it in an interesting, entertaining way . . .”

“Is that why you were talking to the wall?”

This conversation wasn’t flowing, not the way John wanted it to. Too many rocks in the stream. He paused to gather himself. Very small pause, not much dead air.
All right. Now we’ll work on this one.

“Well, did you see the monitors, and how we were making it look like we were talking to Leslie?”

“But she was sitting right there behind the background. Why didn’t you just bring her in and talk to her?”

“Well, we do that sometimes.”

Carl just made a face. “I don’t get it.”

John just rested his face against his hand and stared at the table trying to think of his next line. “Well, we were—” He had to laugh. He was stuck, and it felt kind of funny. “Carl, I don’t know why we do it that way. I guess we want people to see the newsroom, or get a view of somebody working back there, somebody still digging out the story.”

“So you end up talking to the wall and pretending you’re talking to somebody who’s actually sitting behind the plywood?”

John’s voice was getting a little tense, but he couldn’t help it. “Well, what’s wrong with that? I mean, you’re an artist, you deal in a form of expression, you embody truth through how you create a painting . . . We do the same thing using technology. TV news is an art form, I think.
We use technology to paint reality.”

Carl looked away and said abruptly, “I’m sure going to miss Grandpa.”

Hey, come back here, kid, we haven’t settled this yet.
John adjusted. New subject. And now this.

“Yeah,” said John, “I’m going to miss him too.”

“I wish I could’ve known him better. It was like he knew what he believed. He knew where he was going.”

“Yeah, he did have a strong belief system, no question about that.”

“What kind of belief system do you have?”

Suddenly John knew how Leslie Albright must have felt after his “scripted” question. “Well . . . I respected Dad’s beliefs. I always knew where he stood, and that’s good. We all have to stand by our convictions, and I think Dad was a good example of that.”

Carl was still waiting for an answer.

“Excuse me,” said a lady passing by the table. “Are you John Barrett?”

Oh, good. An interruption. “Yes, hello.”

“I watch you on the news every night. Love the show.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

The lady fumbled in her purse for a small scratch pad and then sheepishly held it toward him. “Could I . . . trouble you for your autograph?”