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arms about me. “What was it? The same one?”
    â€œI don’t remember,” I mumbled.
    I don’t know whether he believed me or not.
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    A S SOON AS I got to work the next day, I told my secretary, Carla, that if a man by the name of Jack Pierce called not to put him through. Guilt coiled through me as I spoke, as I pictured his face, as I remembered. But I was too scared to change my mind. Carla looked up curiously, waiting for an explanation, but I offered none. She is a consummately efficient woman who believes above all in playing by the rules. In her late forties, she favors well-made knee-length tweed skirts that are never quite in style and never quite out of style, sheer stockings and pumps. Her fair skin and cerulean eyes only sometimes exhibit surprise and betrayal that, in this business at least, it is the people who don’t play by the rules who get ahead. “It’s important,” I reiterated, and walked away.
    I closed the door of my office and breathed in the thick sickroom odor of too many flowers, too much heat. On my desk,there was a stack of messages congratulating me on my debut, including one from the network news head, Thomas Greenville, as well as various other memos that needed my attention. I read a few and then I walked to the window, looking down at the street below, looking for Jack.
    He was not there.
    I returned to my desk, sat down, and punched up the NewsMaker program, waiting impatiently for its primary colors to fill the computer screen, waiting for the stories, the hum of the news wires, the ticking of the second hands on all the newsroom’s many clocks to do their work, draw me in, wall me in with the immediacy of their demands.
    The lead story so far was the President’s upcoming budget proposal, a dry report made only slightly more interesting by the scare tactics of threatened cuts in Medicare.
    I tried to make sense of the figures, but the digits remained abstract, meaningless. The story was not yet tagged “L” or “Q” and I knew that I’d better have a good working comprehension of the sums, the implications. Quinn was sure to throw me unexpected questions to make me nervous as well as expand his own airtime. I was beginning to realize I couldn’t trust him. I ran my forefinger along the screen, reciting the numbers out loud.
    I got through the entire story once before looking over the monitor at the window again.
    All that was visible was a tiny sliver of the empty street below and the beveled steel cutout of the city’s skyline.
    I crossed my legs and returned to the computer, still filled with details of the budget proposal.
    As the hours passed and I did not see Jack on the street, did not hear from him, I began to think that I dreamt the incident last night, his face beneath the street lamp, his touch.
    Or perhaps he had changed his mind, gone away, back to wherever he had come from, back to the past.
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    S USAN M AHONEY BARGED into my office without knocking. “I guess you’ve heard by now that the overnight ratings were the highest they’ve been in months. Seven point nine. That’s only a quarter-point behind second place,” she said excitedly. She didn’t mention that the reviews in the morning papers were only mixed. One critic quoted “an anonymous network source” who doubted I’d still be here in six months.
    I looked up from my computer. “People just tuned in to see if I’d screw up,” I replied.
    â€œI don’t care why they tuned in. The trick is to make sure they keep tuning in. Look, half the magazines in the country have been calling, but I think we have to be careful about overexposure right now. The only one I agreed to was Vanity Fair . We can reevaluate later and maybe hit the women’s magazines.”
    â€œYou agreed without asking me?”
    She looked taken aback. “I’m sorry. I just assumed you’d say yes. Do you know