“You know the demographics,” he added. “We need to appeal to a younger audience, a more hip audience.”
“You’re saying I’m too old?” Ali asked.
“Well, not in so many words,” Cliff answered quickly.
But, of course, he had said so in so many words. Not only had he said the revealing “hip audience” words to Ali, he had made the astonishing blunder of doing so in front of a witness, Eddie Duarte. Ali suspected that the grass Cliff had smoked while waiting for the end of the broadcast had impaired his judgment. Ali glanced toward Eddie, who seemed to be fixated on examining the shine on his highly polished shoes.
“When’s my last broadcast?” she asked.
“You just did it,” Cliff said.
Ali willed herself to exhibit no emotion whatsoever. She summoned the same strength she had used to get through the noon newscast the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. Her performance that day had been done with enough professional aplomb that it had been instrumental in getting her a job as a “pre”-Laurie Dhue Fox News Channel babe a year later. (Of course, her natural-blond good looks and flawless complexion hadn’t hurt, either.) Years later, after Ali had come to LA to assume co-anchor duties there, she had managed to remain dry-eyed and professional during the unrelenting hours of live on-air coverage in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. She was dry-eyed now, too.
“You’re not going to give me a chance to tell my viewers good-bye?” she asked.
“There’s no point, really,” Cliff said with a shrug. “Come on, Ali. When it’s over, it’s over. Schmaltzy good-byes don’t do a thing for ratings. But that’s why Eddie’s here. He’ll go with you while you clean out your locker and your desk. You’re not to touch your computer. Whatever’s on your office computer belongs to the station. And be sure to give him your ID card, your elevator pass, and your keys on the way out. Good luck.” With that, Cliff Baker turned away and sauntered, down the hall.”
“Sorry, Ms. Reynolds,” Eddie murmured.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
She went into the newsroom, where she saw that someone had taken the liberty of placing an empty banker’s box on the chair in front of her desk. As she approached it, she noticed that the other people in the room seemed totally involved in other things-studying their computers, talking on the phone. Only one of them, Kimberly Weston-the up-and-coming “weather girl”-came over to chat.
“I’m so sorry to hear about all this,” she said.
So the word had been out, Ali realized. And this little twit-the arrogant tiny-waisted twenty-something with her enhanced boobs, the bitch who had masterminded giving Ali a gift-wrapped gag package of Grecian Formula 44 on the occasion of her most recent birthday-had known all about it for God knows how long. Since long before Ali did.
With a swipe of her fist, Ali cleared her son’s high school graduation portrait off her desk and slammed it into the box with enough force that only a miracle kept the glass from shattering.
“That’s funny,” she said, “I only just found out.”
“I mean I guess I’d just heard rumors,” Kimberly fumbled, clearly uncomfortable.
“Since you seem to be in the know,” Ali said, “who’s taking my place? Are they promoting from within or importing new talent?”
“Importing,” Kimberly said in a small voice.
That figures, Ali thought. What goes around comes around.
It was the same thing the station had done to Katherine Amado, the station’s previous female anchor, when they brought in Alison. Katy Amado was let go in one day-she was forty-eight years old at the time. The very next day, Ali was down at the station filming promos for the “new” news team.
In far less time than Ali would have thought possible, all of her personal items were summarily dumped into the box. When it came time to leave the newsroom for the last time, no one came near her to tell her good-bye or wish her luck. Maybe they think I’m contagious, she thought.
With Eddie shadowing her and carrying the box, Ali ventured back into the darkened studio and retrieved her brush, hair spray, makeup, and mirror from their place in the cubbyhole beneath the shiny wood-grained surface of the news desk. In the women’s rest room, she emptied her locker of the two extra blazers she kept there. She also removed the hair dryer and curling iron that she had brought in and allowed other people to use. If someone was in need of a curling iron tomorrow morning, it was too bad. They could get their butts over to Walgreens and buy a new one.
Eddie lugged the box all the way out to the parking lot. He waited while Ali unlocked her Porsche Cayenne, then he loaded the box into the back and closed the tail gate. By the time he finished, Ali had fished out her elevator key and building pass. She handed those to him and then plucked her ID off the strap she wore around her neck.
“Here you go,” she said, handing it over. “Thanks for all the help, Eddie. I really appreciate it.”
“I heard what Mr. Baker said,” Eddie muttered. “About you being too old. He can’t do that, can he? I mean, aren’t there laws about that kind of thing?”
“He’s not supposed to be able to do it,” Ali replied with a sharp laugh. “But Clifford Baker doesn’t seem to think any of those rules apply to him.”
“Will you fight him, then?” Eddie asked. “Will you take him to court?”
“I might,” Ali said.
“If you need me to testify,” Eddie said, “I’ll be glad to tell them what he said-that it was because you’re too old.”
“You’d do that?” Ali asked.
Eddie nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would.”
“But you’d probably lose your job.”
Eddie Duarte shrugged. “I’m just a security guard,” he said. “There are lots of jobs for people like me.”
“Thank you, Eddie,” she said. “I’ll think about it.” Then she got in the car and drove from Burbank to her house on Robert Lane in Beverly Hills. On the way, she didn’t try calling home to tell her husband what had happened. There wasn’t anything Paul Grayson could have done about it. Besides, he usually came home later than Ali did.
When she turned off the 405 onto Sunset, she opened the moon roof and let the wind ruffle her hair. Turning into the driveway, she was surprised to see lights on downstairs. Her son Chris, now a senior at UCLA, lived out back in the guest house, but he often prowled the kitchen in the “big house” late in the evenings in search of food. Ali was surprised to find Chris’s Prius missing from its assigned spot in the sixcar garage. Instead, Paul’s arena red Porsche Carerra was parked at the far end. As Ali walked past it, the ticking of the cooling engine told her that he hadn’t been home long.
She found Paul at the bar off the family room mixing himself a drink. “I’m having a Manhattan. Want one?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, kicking off her shoes and dropping into a nearby easy chair. “Make mine a double.”
“So how did it go?” he asked as he delivered her drink.
That’s when Alison realized that Paul already knew she’d been let go-that he had known what was coming down before she did! He was a network bigwig, and LA was a major market. Naturally they would have told Paul about her firing in advance of their actually doing it. After all, he had been responsible for bringing Alison to town in the first place. Nepotism be damned, he was the one who had finagled his new bride her cushy co-anchor position-a maneuver that had left her open to years’ worth of sniping coworkers who claimed she wasn’t really qualified. Now, though, Paul would have had to sign off on her being booted out as well.
Somehow she managed to hold the stemmed cocktail glass steady enough that when she took that first sip she didn’t spill any of it.