The Dollhouse(15)

Tyler was happy to confess that he’d earned a master’s in journalism from Stanford on a whim, as a way to kill time until his trust fund matured. But in his preferred version of the story, he was a changed person by the time he graduated, inspired to save a dying profession from itself. WordMerge, he promised, was the answer, offering old-school reporting in a form that would appeal to modern readers. The guy was a complete prick and endlessly self-impressed, but his pitch was a winner—he had wooed Rose and many others with passion and tenacity. And yet the boy wonder was on edge these days, worried. How much of his investment had he blown through already?

No one spoke for a few tense beats.

“No, Rose. No cat videos. I’m talking about a piece about a soldier with PTSD who overcomes it with the help of his gluten-free diet. Or something about the Peruvian tea everyone’s drinking in order to find a higher plane of consciousness. It’s becoming clear that we need to marry news and entertainment to get ourselves off the ground.”

The other staffers murmured their approval.

Rose tapped her pen on her notebook. The others all carried iPads. She might as well have brought an inkwell and feather. “Look, I’m all for originality. But I thought we were staying away from trendy pieces.”

“We were, last week. But I need to increase page views. I’m meeting with some potential backers and I want to show them we have the click-throughs to grow into a major news hub. Any ideas?”

Jenna piped up. “How about two investment bankers fighting for custody of their pet iguana?”

“Iguanas aren’t photogenic. Neither are investment bankers, for that matter. Next.”

“Or I could do something on the influx of young Mexican immigrants. We’re talking kids, crossing the border alone.”

“I like that. Find me a kid who crossed because they wanted to be on reality TV. Something with a twist.”

“Are you kidding?” Rose leaned forward. “That’s impossible, and strange.”

“I’m not saying that exactly. I mean something along those lines. You know what I mean, right, Jenna?”

Jenna nodded.

“What do you have for me, Rose?”

Normally, she’d have a dozen possibilities at her fingertips, but she was so addled from lack of sleep, nothing clicked in.

Tyler sat back in his chair and began orbiting, as they all liked to call it, using a small white rubber ball suspended by a thin string from the white ceiling tiles above his desk. When he got irritated, he’d fling it in wide circles around the room, catching it as it flew by him, then sending it back around. Anyone close by was forced to weave and duck to avoid getting hit.

“Have you ever heard of the Barbizon Hotel for Women?”

Every female intern and editor nodded. Rose smiled. Sylvia Plath hadn’t died in vain.

“What about it?” Tyler asked.

“Back in the day, it was the place to stay if you were a single girl in New York City. Turns out there are a dozen or so older women who still live there—they were grandfathered in after it went condo. I could do a story about what their lives are like now.”

“I’m sorry, but why does our audience care about a bunch of old ladies?” Tyler swung the ball so violently, Rose was worried it would break free of its tether.

He had a point. Why should WordMerge readers care about relics from another century who still wore white gloves to walk their dogs?

Because she recognized a kernel of her own life in theirs, and so would other women. The pitch came to her in a flash. “There’s one with a terrible scar down her face. She was stabbed by a maid in the 1950s, apparently. The maid then fell to her death from the terrace. I could talk to her, use her tragedy to draw readers into the story.”

He stopped the ball in mid-flight and looked at her with interest. “How bad’s the scar?”

“Um, I’m not sure. She always wears a veil.”

“Get her to show her face, get photos, video, and we’ll do something about the tragedy. We’ll revisit it, and then find something that’s happened today to set against it. Find that model who got slashed in the eighties. We can compare and contrast.”

A truly ghastly idea. But Rose knew better than to say so. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Excellent. And bring in Jason for visuals.”

“Jason?”

“Freelance video guy. He’ll be able to guide you so you don’t get all mushy on me. Let’s go, who’s next?”

Rose sat back, annoyed. At least he’d finally stopped flinging that ball. And she’d gotten the green light.

After Tyler gave his usual, annoying dismissal (“Back to your cubes, warriors!”), Rose went downstairs and picked up a cup of coffee from the lobby store. She headed outside, south down Tenth Avenue, and checked her phone. Nothing from Griff, not a text, not a voice message. The morning roar of the traffic was deafening, so she turned east onto a quieter cross street and dialed.

“Rose.”

She was surprised he’d picked up, after the way she’d stormed out last night, spending a few hours with Maddy at the bar before returning to a Griff-less apartment. She had to give him kudos for facing the music.

“Griff, we have to talk.” Everything she said was preprogrammed, the litany of sentences passed on through time when one person rejected another.