could get old fast, she worried. A friend had married a prominent rock drummer, who’d talked about nothing but drumming for the first five years of their marriage. Jenna’s friend had told her that when her husband had suggested bedroom spanking, she couldn’t help wondering if he’d wanted to replace his tom-toms with her buttocks.
Dafoe saw her and smiled: toothy and ear to ear with the sweetest crinkles around his eyes. Jenna’s doubts fled. His swift, head-to-toe glance made her happy that she’d chosen her outfit with him in mind: a white, crinkled poplin dress with a scoop neck. As summery as the weather, the dress flattered Jenna in all the right ways.
They approached metal doors two stories high. Stage hands used this entrance to roll equipment, including cranes and cherry pickers, into the building. Each door was reinforced with steel plates to stop bullets and bomb fragments. To the right stood two security officers by a standard-size metal door that had the same steel-plate reinforcement. Jenna told the men that Dafoe was a friend.
As soon as they entered the building, they came to the network’s second line of defense, two security officers who worked behind four inches of bulletproof glass. The “two Joes”—Joe Santoro and Joe English—smiled broadly, which gave away their thoughts as readily as Jenna’s blush revealed her own fizzy feelings.
She swiped her ID card and looked into a screen that read her eyes. Dafoe slid his driver’s license through a narrow slot, then watched Santoro study the license, type on a keyboard, and stare at a computer’s screen, waiting to see if a crime report started flashing. Seconds later he announced, “He’s clean.”
The other Joe handed Dafoe a clip-on badge, warning him not to take it off in a heavy, put-on New York accent. “Someone, he sees ya widout it, youse goin’ down for a cavity check, and I don’t mean youse teef.” The two Joes laughed.
“Real jokers,” Dafoe said to Jenna as they hurried to the elevator along with other new arrivals.
“I don’t know about that. They’ve given me three cavity searches so far. They keep saying it’s for security purposes, but I’m beginning to wonder.”
Laughing quietly, they walked past the show’s glassed-in, street-level studio, where fans could watch the proceedings from outside. The glass was deceptively thick—seven inches that could stop bullets and bomb fragments—and extended all the way up through the third-floor set. Television in the age of terror.
Jenna led Dafoe into an elevator with the same two-story metal doors. Massive, especially by the claustrophobic standards of the city. They stepped off on the third floor, bearing left to go through another standard-issue metal door that took them into a long hallway.
“We’re entering the brain trust,” Jenna joked.
“Meaning?” Dafoe still walked with a big smile.
“This is the floor with the greenroom and all the offices for everyone on the show.”
“And there you are,” Dafoe said, pointing to her photograph, one of the many familiar faces that lined both sides of the hallway.
“How was the drive down?”
“No problem. I even found a parking spot on the street for Bessie.” His ridiculous name for his old International Harvester pickup. “I doubt anyone’s going to want to steal her.”
“You never know,” she said cheerily, smitten not by the prospect of the truck’s theft, of course, but by her own feelings for the vehicle: She liked the musty smell of old hay, and the memory of Dafoe’s arm around her shoulders when she cuddled up to him on the bench seat.
They came to yet another set of metal doors that led them past the third-floor studio, even larger than the one below. Jenna’s weather set was in view, but they hurried past the studio almost as quickly as the grips and stagehands and gaffers who raced to ready the sets. Four of them darted past the couple and ducked into the greenroom, where food for staff and guests was provided. The buffet was delicious and included something for every taste.
“You can help yourself whenever you want to,” she told him as they moved on. “Your little badge gets you in there, too.”
The really big names were never taken to that greenroom. VIPs, like Brad or Angelina, or the president, were hustled directly to a special, exclusive greenroom.
The Morning Show had more than fifty staffers, and the bustle at this hour equaled the energy of any other busy studio at midday. Jenna noticed the looks that she and Dafoe were garnering, even a few hellos from staffers generally