I’m doing his job, which means technically—I quickly did the calculation—I’m a supervising producer! Wow! The little voice in my head cooed, sounding a little too Meg-ish. I hated that sound, but it was a big break and I couldn’t help the facts.
“Jane!” It was Meg standing in the doorway, looking very scary—again. “We need you to get Mr. Dean a helicopter to Vegas arriving at three o’clock tomorrow. I’ll be joining. Oh, and cancel his noon flight.” She turned toward Gib painfully, as if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. “You’ll be doing Jane’s field shoot tomorrow in Massachusetts.”
Meg clomped away. My jaw gaped wide enough for a bus to drive through.
“Can’t believe this,” Gib said with a sorry look. “Here’s the file.”
I nodded and watched him for a while, to see if he needed consoling. Gib began shuffling through papers. Unsure what else to say and not wanting to draw more attention to what was ultimately embarrassing for him, I decided to drop it.
Immediately, I tried to wrap my head around the helicopter assignment. Who knew how to find a last minute chopper to Vegas? And since when was a forty-five minute flight in business class not good enough or convenient enough for a talk show host?
There was always Pal Porter’s private chopper that got him from Malibu to the studio lot every other day. Not an option. And I didn’t dare ask Meg. That would have been un-excellent. So I did what any other seasoned producer would have done—I began surfing the web, leaving messages with every helicopter tour company I could find. With no budget limitations, chartering a chopper was the way to go, I figured.
Corinne poked her head in the doorway. “Why don’t you borrow Pal Porter’s helicopter? It’s got a mini-bar,” she snorted. “I heard the news. Good job. Oh, I want to remind you, I still need ‘The Hitter’ finished for tomorrow morning.”
“ ‘The Hitter?’ ” I said, not bothering to make eye contact, smug in the fact that I’d just been given an unofficial promotion.
“The Brenda Wambetti story. We’re calling her ‘The Hitter’! Isn’t she awful?” Corinne laughed as she strutted back to the edit suite with her Diet Coke in one hand and, in the other, an unlit cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers.
“Working on it,” I said, robotically.
I quickly muddled through the logistics of my Fat Forum shoot, left countless messages at helicopter companies, then began my draft of the Wambetti script. Corinne and the other show producers had been making fun of the woman all night. “She’s a horrible mother! She should be prohibited from having any more children!” I didn’t have the energy to stick up for Brenda. They’d already pegged her, and anything less or different would have ruined their angle. Sadly, “emotionally abusive mothers” was the new tagline for the show. The Ricky Dean team was waiting for the devil incarnate, and I was about to deliver her. It was 12:30 a.m. when I gave Corinne the final script with time-code.
“Perfect. She’s downright wicked. I love that you got so many shots of Oliver sick in bed, especially the one with the hot water bottle and the thermometer. Oliver is sick because of that evil woman.”
“Yes, I know, Corinne,” I said, not amused and just wanting her approval so I could deliver the goods to the editor.
Corinne hugged me. “It could be my best show! This is awesome!”
I handed off the approved script to my editor. It was 1:00 a.m.
“I won’t need you for a few hours. Go have a cat-nap on the cot,” my editor said sympathetically. “Come back at three.”
It would take him at least two hours to string together the interview and basic pictures. Then I would join him for final touches and an executive sign-off. Between that and a ten o’clock call time for my Vegas flight, I was supposed to get some sleep.
My phone beeped from the bottom of my bag. Grant popped into my head. It had been more than two weeks since I’d seen or heard from him. I’d hoped he might call to apologize after our argument on the boat. Part of me wanted to call him—he had been, after all, an important part of my life. But as I sat twisting my hair, thinking of the career heights in store for me, beginning with one very exciting multi-camera shoot in Vegas, I wondered if there was any room in my burgeoning career for Surfer Boy.