If you’re going to do it, do it somewhere quiet, thought Beth Walters, watching her boss straighten his tie. I wouldn’t even chance it in a restaurant. I wouldn’t be able to do it in front of people. I’d do it in the parking lot.
‘Do you think he’ll do it? Or chicken out again?’ asked a cameraman, turning away from the lens. His fingers twiddled a gadget without looking. Muscle memory. ‘How tight in do you want to be?’
‘Tight enough to see the blood drain from his face,’ called an associate producer. ‘Fifty bucks says he pikes it.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ snapped Beth. Mr Midnight was absorbed at his desk, but if he heard them . . .
The cameraman, Geoff, now tuned back into his view-piece, ignored her. ‘I’ll take you for a hundred. If he’s going to ruin his life on national television, we may as well profit.’
‘Ruin his life?’ said the producer. ‘More like end it.’
‘Great modern attitude to marriage there, guys.’
‘Well, ain’t that something.’ Geoff leaned back. His chair was mounted to the same rig as the camera so he could swivel with it, like a machine gun turret. ‘You didn’t strike me as the type.’
‘Every girl likes a bit of romance,’ Beth fired back. ‘That said, a girl likes a free lunch even more. Hey Andy’ – the associate producer looked up from his iPad – ‘I’ll take your odds. Camera Two, can we zoom out a bit? If we’re framed like that in the monologue, we’ll lose the top of his head.’ Back to business. ‘We ready on the cue?’
The autocue operator was dressed in the classic stagehand uniform – all black, cap indoors, utility belt that put Batman to shame – and didn’t bother to look up from his screen. He flicked her a backhanded wave: Shoo, I’ve got this. Most people don’t have the confidence to swat their boss away like an insect, but stagehands aren’t most people. Beth could see from the reflection that the white text on a black background had flickered up on the screen. Good enough…
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