A discrete tip of the flask into the Starbucks cup. Then replace the lid. Return the flask to the bottom desk drawer.
It was getting to be a twice daily routine.
MacKenzie sipped and pushed the morning newspapers away, reaching for the day's production slate instead. Chuck Todd was the scheduled guest and Jose Andres was the featured chef. Todd had become something of a regular on the show, nakedly flogging his ambition to succeed David Gregory at Meet the Press. Christy and Julie, the hostesses with the most-esses, enjoyed the light political insider banter with Todd, so all in all, it should be a good show. A safe show. No surprises.
The concept was simple. Christy and Julie pitched softball questions to some D.C. insider while a visiting chef prepared the mid-day meal. Debate never got too complex or too incisive because of the frequent cut-aways to chopping and searing.
"'The View,' with vittles," was the what the reviewer at the Post called it.
She looked up at the knock to see Jim leaning in the door.
"Mac, Chuck Todd bailed on us for today. Some press thing at the White House."
So much for no surprises.
"Jim, I want you to make a note to keep Todd off the guest list for at least two months. Let him get his own damn lunch if he's going to leave us in the lurch."
"Mac—the White House. He is the correspondent, you know."
She recognized that her petulance was ill-founded but was still reluctant to let go of it. After all, she was now short a guest for today's show.
"It's going to be tough to find a replacement on short notice."
"The Talent Booker's already got a lead on someone," Jim offered in reassurance. "I'll keep you posted. In the meantime—" he dropped his chin and looked at her through a fringe of unruly bangs. "How about some fresh coffee?"
She pulled her cup back reflexively.
Jim knew. He would have been an idiot not to know. But he wouldn't risk a confrontation over his suspicion.
"No, no, I'm fine here."
Confident Jim would bail her out (but not call her out), she even toasted his departure.
oooo
At 11:50, Mac was slipping on a headset in the tiny Control booth. This was the low-rent side of broadcast television, one in which she produced, Jim handled graphics and the 'prompter, and a single union technician was on hand to coordinate camera feeds and synch.
"Jim, tell me we found somebody to replace Chuck Todd."
"Yeah—wait—" he toggled his mic pack. "Floor director says the boiling pasta water keeps fogging the overhead mirror."
"Why is this an issue today? The overhead mirror's been a staple of cooking shows since Julia Child's era. This should have been worked out a month ago."
Jim held up a hand. "Mac, I'll fix it. But you'll have to stay with the panel until we can switch to the cooking part."
"Make it fast." She turned her attention back to the bank of monitors.
oooo
On Camera 1, Christy Taylor, preternaturally blonde and more than slightly vapid, had just poured glasses of wine for herself and Julie Lord, African-American and nobody's fool, so that they could open the show with their signature white wine toast. On Camera 2, a technician was helping mic the guest.
Wait—
"Pull back Camera 2—" Mac started.
Oh. God.
Beside her, Hector, the tech, counted down the opening.
"Welcome to Lunch, your mid-day break where news and insights are always on the menu. Our chef today is Jose Andres of the new eatery Zaytinya, and he'll be here with a Mediterranean-inspired menu—"
Mac squeezed her eyes closed and turned her face heavenward.
Now my humiliation is complete.
"—But first, let's introduce our guest today—from Atlantis Cable News, host of News Night—"
What the hell was he doing in Washington, D.C.? And what kind of a sadistic deity would have sent him to her show?
"—Will McAvoy."
Still impossibly blonde and tall, seemingly unchanged after three years, he materialized on Monitor 1 as he joined Christy and Julie at the table.
""Well. Will McAvoy. We are sooooo fortunate to have you with us today. Now—let's do Lunch!" Christy gushed.
"Will, we want to get some insights from you about recent happenings in the capitol," Julie chimed in, accustomed to shepherding Christy through the scripted portions of the show.
"My—pleasure." Will returned a tight smile to them, but his gaze was fixed on the camera.
He had recognized her voice.
On the monitor it seemed as though he was glaring directly at her.
"Mac," Hector put a hand over his mic and gestured to the graphics panel. "If Jim's not here, you need to—"
Quick nod. She moved over to check the 'prompter feed.
Mustn't let him rattle her.
oooo
"We'll be back right after these messages."
"Two minutes back," Hector reminded.
Allowing the headset to dangle around her neck, she turned to Jim, who had eased back into Control. "I need you to take the rest of the show today—"
He held up a hand for silence as he listened to something on his headset.
"Mac, you're wanted in the Green Room. By name." He looked perplexed. "Do you know this guy?"
She exhaled deeply. No escape. "On my way."
Julie seized upon Mac's arrival in the Green Room with uncharacteristic ebullience, an attempt to offset the McAvoy permafrost.
"Well, here's our EP now. MacKenzie Mc—"
"We—know each other." Mac flashed a brave smile as the others exchanged glances and hastily exited. "Hello, Will." Needing something else to do, she stuck out her hand.
He looked at her without expression and did not extend his own hand.
"I thought it was your voice."
"It's good to see you, Will. I—"
"What are you doing here, Mac?"
"Needed a job. This was available."
"I'm not surprised it was available," he sniped. "But I never would've thought—"
She looked at the wall clock. "We're back in one minute, Will. Are you—" She wanted to ask if he was leaving, now that he knew she was here, without putting the thought into his head if he hadn't been contemplating that.
"Charlie Skinner—that's the news director at ACN—he sent me on this junket to D.C. Press the flesh with the D.C. bureau. Renew my street cred. Whatever. He told me about this—this show. And I wanted to see how this is done," he added, pausing to administer the coup de grace, "info-tainment. Informing the national discourse in between the appetizer and the entrée."
She folded her arms protectively. She knew she could retaliate with a zinger from the recent Vanity Fair article about News Night, but this really wasn't the best moment to antagonize him.
She eyed the clock again. "You asked for me to come to the Green Room—why? To tell me that this is beneath you?"
"More like for me to tell you." His eyes followed hers to the clock, then he reached for the mic that had been dangling from his jacket and reaffixed it to the lapel. "Relax. I won't walk out on your show."
"Back in thirty," Jim's voice warned over the speaker mounted in the Green Room.
oooo
With the steady unflappability borne of having performed the same action hundreds of times, Will eased back into his chair at the panel with mere seconds to spare.
Dodged that bullet, MacKenzie thought, returning to Control and Jim, who stared at her expectantly.
"You two know each other, right?"
"We worked together at CNN a few years ago. It—um, didn't end well."
"Yeah, well, that part seems obvious," Jim muttered. "For a minute I thought he was going to walk, but I guess you talked him down."
On the studio floor, visible on the Camera 2 feed, Will tossed back the chardonnay Christy had poured for him at the show's opening. Reaching across the desk, he grabbed the bottle and refilled his glass.
"Whoa, there, Will," Julie cautioned with a smile forced by the red light on the camera, "we usually don't open the second bottle until after the show." She and Christy laughed nervously and over-loudly.
"Jeeze—" Mac exhaled, "Hector, stay on Camera 1." Was Will planning to drink his way through the show? She couldn't, wouldn't let him make an ass of himself on TV—on her show. He still had an image to be concerned about, and she was, even if he was suddenly behaving in a decidedly cavalier manner.
Back on Camera 1, Christy flashed her thousand watt smile and attempted to continue the customary order of things by pointing to the dishes now on the table in front of them. "Chef Jose Andres just brought us two appetizers to work on while he prepares the rest of our meal."
Julie leaned in with feigned interest. "What do we have?"
"This dish to my right is Flauta de jamon—flauta bread with the lovely Iberian ham. And this—" Christy paused while the camera dollied in on the second plate, "this is Anchoas Don Bocarte—battered and fried Spanish anchovies."
Off camera, Will made a strangled laugh and drained his wine glass.
Julie checked her note cards, determined to move things forward. "So, Will, your show originates in New York—how did you happen to be in Washington today? Are you here covering a story?" Seeing that he was reaching again for the wine bottle, she grabbed his glass and poured a middling amount, obviously intending to both moderate his intake and force conviviality for the sake of the show.
He swung one leg over the other. "Well, Julie, I thought I needed to come see your show, come see the new trends in broadcast news. See how a transformative show such as Lunch can inform and foster conscientious debate. This is exactly the sort of show David Brinkley would be doing if he was still around, and I wanted to—be a part of it."
Mac squeezed her eyes closed. Why did she have to get contemptuous, acerbic Will, brimming with professional vim and vitriol?
Fortunately, Julie had detected Will's sardonic tone and sought to deflect it. "Well, we certainly enjoy News Night, don't we, Christy?" Then, in an abrupt change of subject, she added, "Will, have you tried the jamon? While you sample that—while we wait for Chef Andres, let's get to a few subjects—"
Three glasses of wine disposed of, and Will was beginning to hit his sarcastic stride. He leaned back in his chair. "Shoot."
Shoot me now, Mac thought, leaning forward and resting her forearms on a video control panel.
"First, Karl Rove was interviewed by British ITV last week and seemed to promote waterboarding as an 'appropriate' technique to obtain information from suspected terrorists. As someone who used to work for the Bush White House, do you agree with his assessment?"
"Even the most cursory Google search would have revealed that I helped write a few speeches for Bush 41, and had no connection at all to Bush 43. Or Karl Rove." Will uncrossed his legs and leaned forward.
"But do you agree with what he said?"
"What does it matter?"
Christy was really nervous now, and Julie was beginning to intuit that this might not be the usual lunchtime interview.
"Will, I just meant—you've been party to the inner workings of an administration, and as the second-most-watched anchor in cable news—"
"So you're just soliciting my opinion and trying to pass that off as something edifying for your little cooking show audience—"
"Holy fuck," Jim breathed and Mac winced involuntarily.
But Will wasn't satisfied with a one-liner. He was just getting warmed up.
"What I disagree with, what I take real exception to, is the concept of 'vox populi, vox Dei' in broadcast journalism—"
"Vox—what?" Christy contributed.
"We're way off script." Jim leaned on his mic. "Julie, please take us back to topic."
"Vox populi, vox Dei—literally, the voice of the people is the voice of God. The phrase is extracted from an old aphorism that warns about trusting popular opinion. Warns—that's the operative word, you know. Present broadcast journalism, of course, has completely dispensed with the warning and conflated it as the wisdom of the 'man on the street.' I am not the man on the street—"
"Certainly not—" Christy tittered nervously.
"—and everyone has an opinion, of course, but it may be neither balanced nor informed. And so I can't imagine why any of it would be news. In any format."
"Who is this bozo?" Jim whispered, shooting a glance at Mac.
"Have Julie throw to the chef and then take us to commercial break."
"Will, we're going to cut to Chef Andres for just a moment," Julie began but Will continued.
"—and thanks to you and shows like this one, we've begun to mistake gossip under the hair dryers at the beauty salon for news. Allowed headlines to pass for text. Do you think the people who watch this show could make it through ten column inches of the Times without an interpreter?"
"That's it," Mac said, gesturing with a finger across her throat. "Go to commercial. Now."
Hector complied and, while some pet food advert rolled across the monitor, Mac toggled her mic. "This is MacKenzie. I'm coming right down."
oooo
Will was alone and brushing nonexistent lint from his lapels when she stormed into the Green Room.
"What the fuck, Will?" Her hands went to her hips and she faced him squarely.
"You think I was just going to play ball?"
"Okay, I get that you don't respect what we're doing here—"
"Mac, you don't respect what you're doing here. So why do it?"
"Job, remember? Employment? Professional relevance—"
"There's not a thing here that has to do with professional relevance, Mac. Or professional anything. It isn't so much that you dumb down the news, but that you're equating sophistry and punditry with news. I mean, what's next, a spin-off show called Just Desserts? Revenge fantasies between the crème brulee and the cordials? Next stop, Food Network—cue Paula and Giada—"
"Stop it," she seethed. "Maybe dumbing down the news is just too familiar to you—Leno."
"Sixty seconds back," Jim's voice reminded through the speaker.
"Yeah, well." He faced the mirror, straightening his tie. "You're the one who's always been willing to settle for less than you could've had."
"You're leaving?"
"Wouldn't think of it," he smirked. "I'm disappointed, of course, and that's a word I now associate with you on several levels—but I'll drink the Kool-Aid and finish your show."
oooo
Upon return from break, Will oozed affability, completely throwing off balance Julie and Christy, who had retreated to grim determination and panic, respectively, to finish the hour. When the show tilted to the cooking portion, Will actually joined them all at the ersatz kitchen, commenting on the steps involved in the preparation of the Seafood Changurro. He charmed the chef, inquiring what local ingredients could be substituted in the sofrito and how the Catalonian wines differed from Basque.
"This guy is unbelievable," Jim whispered, his hand over his mic. "Is he drunk?"
Mac shook her head.
"Well, at least he's laying off the wine now. Whatever you said to him in the Green Room must've done the trick."
She doubted that, somehow, but said nothing and reached for her own Starbucks cup.
On the floor, Christy and Julie and Will McAvoy were seated at the ersatz dinner table, the chef's recent creations studding the red-checked tablecloth. Will continued his charm offensive, seemingly oblivious to Julie's deer-in-the-headlights look.
"Julie, earlier you brought up the president's recent Tax Relief Act. Of course, it wasn't really new legislation, it just extended short term measures that had been in place since the last administration. Short term lowering of payroll taxes. It can't help but be popular with workers—and it can't help but be enthusiastically endorsed by any incumbent administration. But what bears pointing out to your viewers is the announcement last week by the Department of Labor that employment has grown for the second quarter since the onset of the recession. That's big, and I imagine both political parties will be making hay over it."
"You're saying a Republican House will—"
"Of course. Mid-term elections in a few months, and the GOP will be happy to be associated with any kind of tax reduction."
"But—" Christy hesitated, "didn't they vote against the president's Tax Relief Act?"
"They did, but it won't make any difference. They can report to their constituencies that taxes were lowered on their watch. Doesn't matter what they actually advocated at the time."
By this time, Will had been completely rehabilitated in Julie's eyes. "Will, we're at the end of our hour—and I just want to thank you again for making time. We've so enjoyed having you visit with us today. I hope you'll come back soon."
He flashed his most winning smile.
"And—we're clear." Hector rose, shaking his head. "Strange show today, Mac."
"Well, that was a disaster," Jim sighed. "But he seems to have pulled his head out of his ass for the last part. You can bet I'll be scrutinizing the booker's list more carefully in the future."
She offered a wan smile in agreement.
Jim's hand closed around the ubiquitous Starbucks cup at her elbow. "Too late in the day for this, don't you think?" his words deliberately ambiguous but his meaning not. "I'll get you some bottled water." He took the coffee cup with him as he and Hector exited.
Jim was right. Too late—
The door opened and Will stood there.
"Thank you," she began.
"For only being a jerk for half the show?" He considered. "Mac, I didn't know this was you knee-deep in food porn—I mean, before. And when I found out, I was mad. I was sent here, and he knew, he knew—"
"Did you know that Julia Child won a Peabody in 1964—" she offered brightly before wilting under his withering glare. "What I meant to say was, thanks for not walking out, Will. It's all I've got right now." She was afraid she sounded pathetic. She felt pathetic.
"You should be doing better, Mac."
"There aren't too many other options—"
"Find one." Turning, he didn't even offer a farewell.
oooo
Back in her office, Mac fumbled through papers on her desk, finally finding a Post-It with a phone number. She considered for ten seconds before jabbing at the number pad of her cell phone.
"Good afternoon—Charlie Skinner, please—it's MacKenzie McHale. That's right—M -C-H-A-L-E. Thank you, I will—oh, he is? Would you tell him that I called. And give him the message that I—I might have changed my mind. "