The Boy from the Woods(34)
A producer shouted, “Clear.”
Saul Strauss was not a happy man. “Jesus, Hester, what the hell was that?”
“Arnie Poplin? Are you for real?” She shook her head and checked her texts. There was one from Oren sent two minutes ago:
On the way up.
“I have to go, Saul.”
“My God, did you hear yourself? You just compared me to Rusty Eggers.”
“Your lawsuit is nonsense.”
Saul Strauss put his hand on her arm. “Eggers is not going to stop, Hester. The destruction, the mayhem, the nihilism—you get that, right? He basically wants anarchy. He wants to tear down everything you and I cherish.”
“I have to go, Saul.”
Hester unclipped the microphone from her lapel. Her producer Allison Grant waited in the wings. Hester tried to be nonchalant.
“Do I have a visitor?” she asked.
“You mean that Giant Yum in the police-chief uniform?”
Hester couldn’t help herself. “He’s cute, right?”
“Welcome to Beefcake City. Population: Him.”
“Where is he?”
“I put him in the greenroom.”
Every studio has a greenroom, a place for guests to sit before they come on air. They are, for some odd reason, never actually green.
“How do I look?” Hester asked.
Allison inspected her to the point where Hester feared that she’d do a horse-purchase check on her teeth. “Smart.”
“What?”
“Having him come by right after you go on air. Makeup and hair already done.”
“Right?” Hester smoothed her business skirt and headed down the corridor. The greenroom was loaded up with posters of the network anchors and talking heads, including one taken three years ago of Hester, turned to the side, arms crossed, looking tough. When she entered the room now, Oren was standing with his back toward the door, looking at her poster.
“What do you think?” Hester asked.
Without turning toward her, Oren said, “You’re hotter now.”
“Hotter?”
He shrugged. “‘Prettier’ or ‘more beautiful’ don’t seem to fit you, Hester.”
“I’ll take hotter,” she said. “I’ll take hotter and run.”
Oren turned and smiled. It was an awfully good smile. She felt it in her toes.
“Nice to see you,” he said.
“Nice to see you too,” Hester said. “And I’m sorry about that whole Naomi thing.”
“Water under the bridge,” Oren said. “I imagine it ended up being more embarrassing for you than me.”
It had been. When it was discovered that Naomi was just playing a prank, there had been plenty of online ridicule. Hester’s enemies—everyone on social media had enemies—reveled in her error. When two days later she commented on a controversial election court decision in California, a dozen Twitter Nuts (that’s what Hester called them) pounced with a fury: “Wait, isn’t she the one who thought a kid’s prank was a national emergency?” This was the way now for both sides—and yes, she even hated the phrase “both sides”—now: Discredit any legitimate argument with something, no matter how long ago or obscure, the person got wrong in the past. As if only perfection deserved your consideration.
“She ran off again,” Oren said.
“Naomi?”
“Yes. Her father came to see me. He insists it’s more than that.”
“What will you do?”
“What can I do? I put it on the radio so if my guys see her, they’ll call it. But the signs seem pretty clear that she’s a runaway.”
“I imagine she’s been under a lot of stress.”
“Yes. That’s my concern too.”
Hester still had questions about the whole Naomi mess—notably, why did Matthew insist she get involved?—but once the ending came, Matthew shut down and shrugged it off as a vague worry about a classmate.
“So what brings you here?” she asked.
“Seems enough time has passed.”
“Pardon?”
“You said not to call too soon. It would make me look desperate.”
“So I did.”
“And being a little old school, I thought I would ask you out the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh.”
“In person.”
“Oh.”
“Because no one has a rotary phone anymore.”
“Oh.”
He smiled again. “This is going well.”
“Should I say ‘Oh’ again?”
“No, I think I got the gist. Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”
“I should probably fake indifference. Say something about checking my busy schedule.”
Oren said, “Oh.”
“Yes, Oren. I would like to have dinner with you very much.”
“How’s tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is good.”
“Seven?”
“I’ll make a reservation,” she said.
“Will I need to wear a tie?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Good.”