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number to the reporters immediately put up their riot shields and began moving on the pack. We were hustled toward the entrance.
    “I wish we were covering us,” I cracked, trying to bring some sense to what had just become a completely surreal experience. We were led to the glass doors of the UN, rubbed our index fingers on the fingerprint scanners for approval, and were escorted inside into the General Assembly, where the proceedings would take place.
    We could see the Secret Service agents conferring and watched as they changed all the assigned press seats around. We were seated in the front of the press row.
    “Nice,” Dona noted, raising her eyebrows in approval.
    “You’re hot to day thanks to moi, my friend,” I replied, settling into my newly assigned seat and breaking out my tablet.
    “I stand in your reflection, baby girl. You are not just hot today,” Dona said, “you are on fire! Do you realize what just happened back there?” She turned on her cameras to get her first look at both the still photos and taped footage she had managed to shoot.
    “Will you look at this? Jee-sus! Excuse me, Lord!” she said, practically jumping out of her seat with joy. Dona was a die-hard New Age born-again Baptist, despite the fact that she had the body of a stripper and the hair of a supermodel.
    I, just as anxious, leaned over and was shocked at the kiss image.
    “I have my eyes closed like I’m being kissed by a man, I mean a lover—oh, hell, I don’t know what I mean,” I said, stunned. “What the…? I mean the guy’s a disgusting, mass-murdering terrorist! I can’t have done that,” I snapped. “Can I?”
    “You can and you did. Yikes.”
    Dona and I had been put on the very end of the row—I assumed in case we’d have to be whisked out quickly. We looked up as the doors opened, and we saw—and heard—the reporters straining like dogs against choke collars, waiting to get in.
    “Here we come,” I said, wincing, as into my “elite” row came bow-tied, bald Alex Peyton of PBS, who was seated next to Dona. He nodded his head toward us, almost a bow actually, as though we were in a nineteenth-century courtroom drama. Normally we would have dined out on that bit of foppery for a month, but not this time. I grew a sudden new respect for journos with restraint.
    The remainder of the row was then seated, and the rest of the press was led to their seats.
    TV and film crews had set up their equipment earlier (all of it had been searched and gone over with bomb-sniffing dogs and every explosive-detection device known to the modern world) and were now escorted one by one to their equipment by federal agents.
    Each form of media was given one “pool” photographer and one video and live-feed camera crew. It still added up to dozens of shooters in their flak jackets, pockets filled with assorted lenses and meters.
    “It could take the rest of our lives to get these guys settled,” Dona whined. “I mean, I don’t have all day!”
    “Yeah. You do. It’ll give you time to call your agent to start negotiating fees for my photos. Lucky you.”
    “Lucky you too,” Dona sniffed. “I’m not stiffing you, so don’t be so bitchy.”
    “I’m having a bad day.”
    “No, my sweet. You are having the best day of your life. You’re the woman with the story—and your big news is going to make us big money. And win you a Pulitzer, of course.”
    “ Et tu, Brute?! And seriously, keep your voice down. You want the entire reporter pool to hear you?”
    “Oh, sorry,” Dona snapped back. “Like they don’t know…”
    “What I don’t know,” I whispered back, “is how everything stopped. I mean, it seemed like everyone was suddenly paralyzed as he approached me before the kiss.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, pulling back in her seat to give me a hard stare. “I never saw our so-called friends and colleagues going so wild. I mean, there was rioting!”
    “What?”
    I just