He made it sound so simple, but I knew it wasn’t. If they wanted me to be “down-home” and I refused, what was to stop them from hiring one of the million other women who wanted my job and didn’t mind saying “Aww, shucks” on occasion?
More than anything I wanted to ask Mark what he had refused to be that had caused them to change tack toward Snoozeville. Hip? Cool? Had Mark Irvine stood up in front of the network honchos and blatantly refused to let them exploit him as interesting?
But he wasn’t trying to be unkind, so I didn’t need to be either. He was patronizing, sure, but I perfectly understood the expression on his face and the sentiment behind it. I’d experienced it countless times throughout my career. He was helping me. Imparting wisdom. Taking me under his wing. I would never receive any kudos or straight-out gratitude for saving his butt on-air—today or in any of the inevitable days to come—but in his chauvinistic, out-of-date, out-of-touch way, this was him saying “Thank you.”
And I was expected to say “Thank you” in return.
Colton came running over to us, huffing and puffing like a man wearing Ferragamo loafers and sporting a pocket square was never supposed to. “Great work, you two.”
Two?
“I was just telling Brynn she’s been going a little over the top with the country-girl routine, but for her first week . . . not too bad. I’ll work with her to—”
I accidentally scoffed, interrupting him. I attempted to turn it into a clearing of my throat, but their eyes were already on me.
I patted my chest and coughed as believably as I could without producing phlegm. “Pardon me.” I looked over my shoulder and called out, “Greta, could you please get me a lozenge?”
Colton eyed me with concern. “We’re back from affiliates in ninety, and then you hand it over to Elena. Can you tough it out for a little longer?”
Oh, forget that. Greta reached into our midst with a tin of lozenges, but I ignored her hand. “I’m fine.” My lips tightened into an expression that I hoped could be described as easygoing—but really, I would have settled for anything this side of homicidal. “Do we have a prompter or—”
“Just wing it,” the dummy next to me answered before I could offer to break out my amateur ventriloquism skills. “Which camera?”
A voice from the control room boomed over the speakers. “Colton, we’ve almost got the feed back to the eastern affiliates. Should we key up the other—”
“No!” Colton threw his hands up in the air and spun on his heel. “When did we lose the feed?!” He turned back to us but began backing away toward the increasingly urgent chorus of his name being cried out from every corner of the room. He put the index finger of one hand to his ear and gave us a thumbs-up with the other hand. “Stick with four.”
I readjusted my position toward camera four. At least this time I had a little bit of warning and I wouldn’t have to twist around into a television broadcasting pose best described as the Linda Blair Exorcist Maneuver.
“That was a perfect example. You should have stood up for yourself.” Mark was bestowing wisdom upon me once more. “I took your credit. You should have taken it back.”
I tilted my head and studied him. What do you know? Maybe Mark Irvine wasn’t as clueless as he seemed.
“Yeah, well . . .” I tucked my ankles and knees together and folded my legs into the ladylike position Kate Middleton had taught me when I first met her at Wimbledon. (In return, I had taught her how to use apple cider vinegar as deodorant in a pinch.) “You catch more flies with honey . . . That sort of thing.”
He snickered. “Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Honey works—sometimes—when you’re climbing. I’ll give you that. But you’ve reached the top. You’re not climbing anymore. Now it’s your job to fight off everyone else who’s climbing and clawing for your spot.” He adjusted the knot of his tie and then lowered his hands back into their precise position of staged nonchalance. “Viewers might love the farm girl, but people in the business will walk all over her.”
He was right, of course. Mostly. Except that I wasn’t done climbing. I hadn’t even reached the top of the Sunup couch yet . . . although it wasn’t surprising that in his eyes I had gone as high as I possibly could. But nothing in me would ever be content peaking as Mark Irvine’s happy little sidekick.
I wasn’t Robin in our dynamic duo. Someday that would click for him. But not yet. Not today.
“Why are they so obsessed with making sure I’m beloved in the heartland?” I asked, meeting him halfway in the mentor/mentee partnership he needed to believe in. “Seriously, they act like I’m from a two-cow town in Oklahoma where Pa tilled the soil and Ma baked apple pie, all day every day.”
Everything from the dusty-rose eyeshadow that had tested well with mid-America viewers to the baby animal videos they made me pretend to be obsessed with to the way they made me talk in the early years of Sunup3 (because seventeen years in the Rocky Mountains followed by four years at the University of Southern California will totally lend themselves to developing a southern lilt) had been about making me into who they—they, they, they—wanted me to be.
Mark laughed. “Was I right? Philadelphia?”
“Thirty seconds!” a voice called out, and Mark and I focused on camera four.
I shook my head gently, careful not to mess up the cascading waves Greta had perfectly sculpted over my shoulders. “I’m from a little mountain town in Colorado called Adelaide Springs.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“No one has. It’s a tiny, insignificant blip on the map, made up of a few hundred people with about twelve brain cells and forty-two bucks among them.”
“Ouch!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true!” I giggled but didn’t move my face out of the camera-ready smile. “They’re obsessed with colonial times—” I felt his eyes snap to me for just a second before looking back to camera four, and the corner of my mouth twitched in satisfaction. Mark Irvine was interested in me, even if just for the length of a story about my crazy hometown. It was only week one, but I was pretty sure he already found me more interesting than he’d ever found Shauna Magwell-Moray. “Yes. American colonial times. In Colorado. It’s so stupid.” I rolled my eyes. “My hometown’s the worst. I got out the very first chance I had, and I’ve never looked back. So let the viewers believe I’m from Iowa or Philadelphia or whatever. Anywhere except that pathetic little town with its pathetic little people. As long as it’s all being sold by America’s freaking Ray of Sunshine, I’m sure they’ll keep buying it.”
“Cut the feed! Cut the feed!” Colton yelled from the back of the room, but his voice got closer quickly. “Go straight to the Sunup3 buffer and tell Elena she’ll need to cover the seven extra seconds.”
I didn’t want to pull my eyes away from camera four, but I also instinctively knew the red light wasn’t going to come on.
“Colton, what’s—”
He pointed at me to silence me. It worked like a charm. “Don’t talk,” he muttered, and then he yelled, “No one talk!” We all stared at him, not breathing, I’m pretty sure, as he raised his finger to his ear and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then another, and then said softly, “Nicely done, Elena. I owe you one.” His eyes rose slowly until they met mine. “Some people owe you more than that.”