Love at 11 - By Mari Mancusi Page 0,2

he want from me? Were the ratings for “Killer Clay” bad? Had he decided to replace me with a twenty-two-year-old natural blonde? (As a twenty-seven-year-old bottled blonde at News 9, I was already getting over the hill.) Or, maybe he was promoting me. Maybe for some incomprehensible reason he’d thought “Killer Clay” was Emmy-worthy and he wanted me to take Laura’s job.

Yeah, right. And maybe they’d raised the Titanic, too. The only way to find out was to go down to the newsroom. I rose from my chair, told Jodi I had to leave, and headed from our Special Projects alcove to the massive Newsplex below.

The Newsplex looked like something out of Future World at Disney World: very sci-fi, with neon lights zooming everywhere, a billion TV sets, strategically placed, and furniture that looked like something out of The Jetsons. It was a bit overwhelming, and I was sometimes glad to be stuck in tiny, overcrowded Cubicle Land on the fourth floor.

I scanned the room from the balcony before walking downstairs. The place was alive, as usual. Worker ants scurrying around to serve their queen, News 9’s main anchor Terrance Toller. (Yes, a guy, but very queen like, trust me!) Now in his sixties, the clinically narcissistic anchor defined the stereotype of male diva, and struck fear into the hearts of the young production assistants and writers who lived to serve him. One of his favorite tortures? Asking random questions moments before going live.

Example: Story is about a soldier’s death in Uzbekistan. Seconds before the commercial ends and Terrance is supposed to read the twenty-second blurb on the event, he turns from his camera-facing position and demands, “What’s the capital of Uzbekistan?” to the hapless writer who sits behind him.

It doesn’t matter that the death didn’t take place in the capital of Uzbekistan. It doesn’t matter that Terrance will never mention the name of the capital on air even if it did. (He’d never be able to pronounce it anyway.) If the poor writer doesn’t instantly have the answer to his trivial pursuit, she’s going to get it after the show. Needless to say, whenever Terrance took the anchor desk, all the writers had Google fired up and were ready to search.

I carefully made my way down the steep steps into the Newsplex. My pitiful salary didn’t afford me good shoes and I was forced to run around in ill-fitting irregulars from a factory outlet. They looked pretty cool, but the tops were already detaching from the soles. One wrong step and I’d stumble down into televised embarrassment.

That was the thing about the Newsplex. As it was the backdrop of the newscast, anything that happened behind the scenes was broadcast on live TV. I remember one time the overnight engineers set the house channel to some porn station and forgot to change it back. Let me tell you, the FCC wasn’t so happy when morning viewers got their daily breakfast news with a side of Ron Jeremy.

Richard’s door was closed when I arrived and I wondered if I should come back later. The idea was more than tempting, but I decided to brave it out with a timid knock.

“Come in.”

I slid my hand around the knob and opened the door. The news director sat behind his great mahogany desk, leaning back in an ultra-comfy executive chair. I duly noted his smile. So, this wasn’t bad news. Okay. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Hi. You wanted to see me?” I asked, hovering in the doorway like a vampire waiting for my invitation to come in.

“Sit down, Madeline,” Richard said, gesturing to an empty seat—an empty seat beside the hottest guy in the known universe, I suddenly realized.

Oh. My. God.

Was this the new photographer Jodi had been talking about? “To die for” had been the understatement of the century. More like to die for, be raised from the dead for, and live an entirely new existence based on worshiping him.

He had shiny light brown hair, clipped short in the back, hanging a bit longish over his green eyes. Well built, but not huge, he wore Diesel dark-rinse jeans and a tight black T-shirt stretched across his chest, delightfully hugging his pecs and flat stomach. He gave me a smile that nearly made me melt into a soppy puddle on Richard’s floor.

Stop staring, Maddy!

I forced my eyes away and back to Richard, concentrated on Richard’s bulgy paunch of a stomach—a definite buzz-kill—and sat down next to Adonis.

“Thanks for