the crew. “Guys, Mindy, can you please hold a sec?” I stepped outside to talk. “Mindy is a tough interview, but it actually turned out great. She didn’t say exactly what you expected, but it was still touching, and very real. Some great stuff, in fact.”
“Did she say that Tasha is ruining her life?”
“Kind of. She said part of her is dying.”
“Oh. Did she say Tasha was ruining her friendships?”
“Not really. She said no one knows how sad Tasha is, except her. It was moving.”
“Hang on. Hang on a sec.”
I heard a gaggle of voices in the background. It sounded serious. Corinne came back on the phone.
“Meg wants to talk to Mindy.”
“Huh? What? Meg?”
“Meg, your big boss,” Corinne whispered into the phone sarcastically. “Anyway, she’s in my office right now and we’ve got to deal with this.” She resumed her normal volume. “Here’s Meg.”
“Hi, Jane. Listen,” Meg said in a crisp voice, “I need to know exactly what Mindy said to you.”
I described the interview and told her it was compelling. I told her that Mindy didn’t say exactly what they wanted her to say, but what came out was dramatic and sad and full of real emotion.
Meg could not have cared less. “Listen, what you don’t understand is that they need to say on camera exactly what they told us on the phone. If they don’t, we shut it down—the whole shoot, the whole story. It’s make or break.”
“But it’s a great story. I mean, here’s this woman—”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Who?”
“Mindy. Put her on.”
“Okay, but let me just explain—”
“Put her on.”
“Okay then.” I felt defeated.
Mindy listened as the rest of us sat quietly. She barely uttered a word. When she finished, she handed the phone to me like an eighth-grader being sent to detention. The gentle, friendly atmosphere I’d created was gone.
Meg was still on the other line. “She’s all set. Do it again, the whole interview, one more time. Call me if you don’t get what we need.”
“Okay,” I said.
Without another word, the line went dead.
It was ten o’clock when I finally returned to the office. The second time around, Mindy gave us a sterile version of Meg’s script: “She’s pushing me away, she’ll lose me and all her friends if she doesn’t snap out of this. . .” and so on. She’d completely changed her tune. The lines were there but the emotion was gone.
I’d just dropped the tapes off with the transcribers when Corinne grabbed my shoulder in a panic. “I need the story by tomorrow morning.”
“What?! It won’t be transcribed until morning. I don’t have an edit suite until two tomorrow.”
“It’s changed. You need to do it tonight. You transcribe. I’ll write the script. Then we’ll jog through the tapes and pick out the clips together.”
“But why?”
“Meg needs it for a mock run-through tomorrow morning.”
“Huh? Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“It’s a start-up. We have no choice.”
Grant spent our night together watching TV at my apartment with Toni. So much for make-up sex! Over the phone, I’d apologized profusely and promised to make it up to him. We both giggled.
Just as I was about to hang up, he stopped me. “Hey, I want you to know something. I’m really sorry about that morning. . . I don’t want us to be that way.”
“Me neither.”
“I want you to be happy.”
“And I you.” I took a deep breath. “You’re the best.”
“I’m here for you.”
“Thanks, honey,” I said, quietly. “Hey, is Toni behaving?”
“Like a banished puppy dog,” he laughed. “Your dinner is here—KooKooRoo chicken and mac and cheese.”
“My favorite,” I laughed, “comfort food to go with my comfort man.”
Little did I know then it would be seven in the morning before I returned home to microwave the meal he’d brought over.
The phone rang. I didn’t answer it. It rang again. I got up. It was 11:00 in the morning. Officially, three and a half hours of sleep.
“Jane, hey, sorry to do this to you.”
“Hey, Gib. What’s up?”
“You were sleeping, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. Didn’t get home until seven. What about you?”
“Three.”
“Yuck.”
“Yeah, and back at nine.”
“Double yuck.”
“Anyway, we need you here today by 1:30. Staff meeting. Mandatory. Sorry. I wanted to give you the day off after your all-nighter. But I can’t. I’ll make it up to you. Promise.”
“That sucks. But no worries.”
The entire staff gathered in the audience chairs of the newly designed studio. It was exciting to see the forum where, starting next week, it would all go down, with millions watching every day. To me, it looked very masculine/talk-showish, as if