Chapter One
Now
Wednesday, November 7th, the day after Election Day
“Thank you all for joining us this morning. It is my privilege to be interviewing Lieutenant-Governor Susannah Evans, who woke up this morning as the governor-elect of Florida. I know you’re busy this morning, Ms. Evans, so thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, and thank you for making us your first stop today.”
“You’re welcome, Kevin. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.”
Although I can see from the hard, cold glint in Susannah Evans’ blue eyes that she’s anything but happy to be sitting here talking with me. Especially in person. But we’re live, and we’re both on our best behavior.
Frankly, I can’t blame her. Not after my run-in with her friend and former running mate, Governor Owen Taylor, during his campaign for his first term.
I never should have let the producer in my ear override my good sense that day. It was a shitty question, a stupid question, and I knew better. I hadn’t meant to ask it, not really. But I was sick from food poisoning because of bad sushi the night before, was working on a migraine and couldn’t clearly read my notes, my head was screaming at me, my mom had literally just died of cancer the week before…
And because I was trying to listen to Taylor, and listen to the producer’s voice in my ear at the same time, with a miserably throbbing headache to boot, I stupidly parroted the question my goddamned producer dumped in my ear before I’d really thought about it and processed it.
Yeeeeaaah.
Admittedly, not one of my finer moments.
Add to that the mega-ration of shit I received later from my father over flubbing it and not hammering Taylor harder.
I finally got the bastard—the producer, not my father—fired by the network for that goddamned stunt. I’d been trying to get rid of him for months, and that was the last straw.
Hell, if I could get the network to fire my father from my life, that’d be amazing and worth every ounce of bullshit I put up with from them.
Worse? They still didn’t want to fire the guy, at first. The only reason they did wasn’t because of what he did, but because even our own viewers rightfully skewered us, and we were the laughingstock of every damn network.
Even Fox News clicked their tongues at us.
That’s when advertisers threatened to pull their dollars, and FNB finally caved and released a statement blaming him and terminating him.
It was cheaper than letting me go and paying out the remainder of my contract. Especially when the rest of my crew all publicly stepped forward to support me and verify my account of the events, and then some angel anonymously released the full tape that recorded the producer yelling at me.
Doubly especially since I’d tried to get another anchor to handle the interview, but the network brass insisted I do it despite how horrible I felt and my life circumstances.
All that was on the tape, too, which had been running before I sat down with Taylor.
When the public learned not only was I sick, and in massive pain, and grieving, to boot, the pendulum of opinion swung back hard and heavy in my favor.
I’d only been at Full News Broadcasting for a couple of years at that point, and was still naïve enough to think I could create positive changes there to shift their coverage back toward center and help boost ratings. Admittedly, it was a helluva scoop, landing an interview with Owen Taylor after that school shooting.
Until I flubbed it worse than the Buccaneers on any given Sunday. It was literally the only time I ever felt thankful that Mom died, so she didn’t see me do that.
She would have loved me regardless, I know she would have. She would have talked me through it, hugged me, offered me that limitless love and pride she’d always been imbued with.
I’m pretty sure it was Lou who released the tape with the audio from the producer on it, the one that saved my ass and my job. When I asked him if he did it, he smiled and shrugged, but would neither confirm nor deny.
Doesn’t matter who, I guess. They saved my career, as well as helped win me even more viewers.
Owen Taylor got me back but good, though, four years later. I thought all was forgiven and I was being handed a scoop when I got to be the first anchor to interview Taylor and Evans early the morning after Taylor’s re-election. The walk-and-talk wouldn’t be long, just a preliminary clip we could run until we tagged them later in the day for our scheduled formal sit-down.
A sit-down that had been delayed and rescheduled several times over the previous week by Taylor’s ball-busting chief of staff, Carter Wilson.
Who also happens to be Susa Evans’ husband.
I got my walk-and-talk, all right.
Except I was left slack-jawed, as well as lambasted by network brass just an hour later, when a widely smiling Evans and Wilson went on Tampa’s WFLA morning show, alongside Governor Taylor, and broke the news that she and Wilson were expecting their first child.
Oh, and she finally officially confirmed she’d be running for governor at the end of Taylor’s second term.
It gave the local NBC affiliate the political scoop of a lifetime. Especially considering that, only months earlier, Evans had barely survived a plane crash and shipwrecking that literally killed half the Southeast’s governors and lieutenant governors, cruelly and forcibly shuffling the political hierarchy in those states forever.
Also, considering it was a given Evans would run for governor at the end of Taylor’s second term, because term limits meant he couldn’t run again, it was still a scoop because she officially announced it there first.
Fuck me.
Yeah, I guess I deserved it.
I sent Dad’s calls immediately after to voice mail and deleted the messages without listening to them, because I knew he was blasting me, too.
I’d provided one more disappointment in a lifetime of them, I suppose.
I’m Evans’ first sit-down interview early this Wednesday morning in Tampa, following her landslide victory last night due to a lot of groveling on my part. She killed it, too, a fifty-five point victory that will rightfully shake both major parties to their foundations before pundits finish processing all the numbers. Independents such as Taylor and Evans can no longer be dismissed as lucky flukes. She and Taylor both have won incredible victories, especially considering they’re Independents.
Not that the idiots in either major party will take heed. They’ll wring their hands and revert to the same ole bullshit in four years.
I’ve interviewed Evans’ father several times in my career. He’s the former Florida state senator and state GOP bigwig Benchley Evans. The man is a ball-buster, and I was supposedly on his side, politically.
I can tell his daughter didn’t fall far from the same tree. If my balls aren’t crushed by the end of this interview, it’ll be a miracle.
Her friend and Florida’s current governor, Owen Taylor, is equally difficult to interview, although that’s mostly my fault because of how I bungled my interview with him following the school shooting shortly before he won the election for his first term.
I do take a little satisfaction from the fact that my former producer ended up having to go to Brazil and manage soccer game coverage because not a single damn network in the States would touch him once they learned what happened.
And Draymond Garcia, Evans’ chief of staff, is every bit as much of a bastard as Carter Wilson.
Garcia allowed me this interview under strict conditions, obliquely reminding me of the journalistic ratfuck they subjected me to four years earlier. He also hinted that I would only get this one chance to make a halfway decent impression with the woman and return to their good graces, or my network would all but lose our press credentials with this administration for the next eight years.
In other words, they were done putting up with our shit.
Again, I cannot blame them in the slightest. After eleven years stuck in this thermonuclear circus of a network, I’m just about done putting up with our network’s shit myself. Not that I can publicly admit that to anyone.
If I didn’t need the goddamned job so fucking much, I’d leave.
Unfortunately, I have a contract that says I’m stuck here for at least another two years, unless they fire me or decide to let me go early. The list of fireable offenses is a very short one, but also one that would guarantee I’d either end up in jail on the back side of events, or unemployable by any other network.
There’s not a snowball’s chance on the sun that they’ll willingly release me from my contract early. I have the highest-rated show on their network.
If I choose to leave before my contract’s up, I can do that, sure. Problem is, I have a non-compete clause that means until my contract’s term expires, I won’t be able to get an on-camera network job anywhere in the US, unless it’s for the Golf Channel or Animal Planet or something. Or, I’d have to take an anchor position at some little tiny backwater local independent TV station for a fraction of the pay.
Before I came to work at FNB, my previous agent died. The agency I ended up hiring for my first contract negotiation with FNB was competent. But the agent who’d repped me left and went independent before I was due for renewal. Since I was repped by the agency, I let them assign me someone else to negotiate the renewal.
How was I to know there’d be a difference in representation?
Guess I got cocky, but I was in the middle of covering a series of contentious midterm elections at the time and honestly didn’t want to focus on contract negotiations. By the time I realized what I’d signed, it was too late.
I drag my mind back to right now. I’m aware of Garcia positioned off to the side, out of the shot but in my peripheral vision. He stands with his feet shoulder wide, arms crossed, and a stony look on his face as he watches us that could easily be him channeling Carter Wilson. I know there’s a connection between the men, something about Garcia’s older brother having served in the Army with Wilson, but I haven’t had time to research that tie yet.
It’s on my to-do list. I want as much deep background on the man as I can get, in case there’s anything I can use to help me suck up to him, or possibly strong-arm him, either way.
At this point, I don’t care.
“Ms. Evans,” I say, “you’ve already stated you would continue down the same path regarding education reform as your predecessor, Governor Taylor, and enacting more programs that will help improve graduation rates…”
I sense her relax somewhat during our interview as she realizes I’m not going for a gotcha.
I’m no idiot. I want these people to like me. I’m not happy with this network, but if I can drag them kicking and screaming toward more centrist political views, even a little, I know our numbers will climb once more. That’s why I’m going out of my way to present the incoming governor in as positive a light as possible, finding points that even most hard right-wingers can agree on with liberals, like education, infrastructure, and emergency preparedness.
Right now, we’re hemorrhaging viewers, especially in swing-state Florida. If the results of this election—which resulted in wins for a record number of Independent and third-party lawmakers not just across the Sunshine State but across the country—don’t shake up the network, then nothing will. Especially when looked at from the perspective that more voters than ever are either registering with smaller political parties, or switching from D or R to I. So much so that, here in Florida, there is now a large and vocal non-partisan grassroots movement to end the state’s closed primary system. They have a good chance of getting a ballot referendum passed and adding it to our state’s constitution.
Yes, I said “our.” Because I’m a native son of this batcrap crazy peninsula, which makes it even more imperative to me personally that I don’t piss off this fledgling administration before they take office.
Now if the network will actually let me do my fucking job, instead of trying to force me into bullshit tabloid territory, I might have a chance to redeem their brand if I can get enough of the other anchors on my side. I’m not the only one tired of their bullshit, but I’m also not the only one with a non-compete clause.
We’re all on a sinking ship. Unless I can get everyone to start bailing with me, we’re all going to drown.
* * * *
By the time I conclude our interview twenty minutes later, I’m sweating bullets but Evans looks chill as fuck. Like she could hold a glass of Macallan in her hand and freeze it solid with a smile.
A glass of Macallan I feel like I need to chug, right about now.
Once I’m given the sign that we’re clear and off the air, I reach back and switch off my mic pack before I drop my voice. “Governor Evans, again, thank you for today. I’m really sorry I got off on the wrong foot with Governor Taylor. It was inexcusable. I hope I can earn your trust and build a solid working relationship with you and your administration.”
Yes, it’s desperation, and I won’t even deny it. I’m tired of bending over for this goddamned network, who likes to use false balance in the extreme to pretend they’re reliable and trustworthy and representing the masses, when they’re not.
Maybe it’s time I start working for my own best interests. I regret ever coming to work for them to start with. I made a lot of money, but the trade-offs, in retrospect, have not been worth it.
Not at all.
Susannah Evans gives me another once-over. Out of the corner of my eye I see Draymond Garcia take a step toward us. Without breaking eye contact with me, Evans makes a subtle gesture toward the man, which pulls him up short.
In this way, she totally channels her husband, Carter, and I suppress an involuntary shiver.
First, she reaches back and switches off her mic pack. Then her voice drops, barely audible.
“I don’t give second chances, so keep that in mind. Today worked well. I’m not looking for preferential treatment, Mr. Markos, merely professionalism. I don’t mind tough or adversarial questions, either. That’s part of the game. But you pull a stunt on me like you did on Governor Taylor that time? You’ll regret it for the rest of your professional life.”
I nod. “Yes, ma’am. I don’t share all of my network’s views, but I have to be careful how I present them.”
I don’t understand why the corner of her mouth quirks up in a smile, but she offers me her hand. Her grip is surprisingly firm, but then again, she’s been involved in politics literally since she was a child because of her father. At forty-three she’s less than a year older than me, but she looks ten years younger and has the political knowledge, cunning, and acumen of someone twice her age.
“Then keep up the good work, Mr. Markos, and you and I will get along just fine.”
Five minutes later, she and Garcia have departed, headed for their next interview, and my crew is breaking down equipment.
Lou, my producer, walks over. “Excellent interview. What’d she say to you there at the end?”
Why lie? “I apologized again for putting my foot in my mouth with Taylor that time.”
Lou snorts. “Always hated that fucker. Katzen, I mean, not Taylor. Sorry.”
Lou was back in DC in the studio’s control booth that infamous day, working as an assistant producer. He’d immediately stood up to Katzen and tried to get my mic cut, or to switch to a commercial or promo bump, but it’d happened too fast.
“I knew what you meant.” A wave of exhaustion washes through me, an adrenaline crash, no doubt.
We’re done here, so I take a moment to duck into the lobby’s men’s room and remove my stupid contacts before I do anything else. I replace them with my glasses, which are far more comfortable. When I look in the mirror, I see my normal grey-blue eyes staring back at me. I hate the blue contacts that turn my eyes something close to turquoise.
That’s a holdover from the first on-air slot I held at my old network, FNB’s sister network USNN. My previous network insisted I needed colored contacts to emphasize my eye color, instead of wearing my glasses, and I didn’t know enough back then to understand that I could refuse to do it. I’d wanted my break too much to sink my opportunity over something as trivial as that.
I’m not fond of contacts to start with, but it was one of those battles that wasn’t worth fighting. It wasn’t in my contract specifically back then, but fuck me, it ended up in my last one, along with the non-compete—another reason I kick myself in the ass for not knowing any better when I signed it. I suppose after all these years on the air it’s easier to get along than make unnecessary waves. To pick and choose the battles truly worth fighting.
My next on-camera appearance isn’t until the noon hour, when I’ll do a short remote promo on their show. That’s in addition to a couple of bumps for my show tonight, which I’ll film after lunch, along with working on the wraparound and repackaging the interview to air portions tonight, and a full-length version at a later time.
Tonight my show is being filmed here in downtown Tampa, going live at seven Eastern time. We’re setting up in Ft. Brooke Park near the Riverside Walk, not far from the ice hockey arena. There’s a Lightning home game tonight, and the network is hoping for a large live audience presence. I’ll be interviewing Tampa’s mayor, two newly elected county commissioners, and US Senator ShaeLynn Samuels, who represents Florida.
Samuels wasn’t up for re-election this cycle, but there are rumors aplenty she’s possibly eyeing a run for POTUS in two years. Which would be huge news, if she is, because otherwise, she should be gearing up for her re-election run. Except she hasn’t formed an exploratory committee if she is going to declare to run for POTUS, and she hasn’t officially kicked off her re-election campaign. Her previous campaign manager, who helped her get elected to the Senate in the first place, was a friend of her mother’s—State Senator Marlene Samuels—and now works for the governor of Georgia.
I’ve interviewed ShaeLynn Samuels before, several times. She’s a Democrat, and rightfully views me with mistrust. Still, our previous interactions have always been professional and cordial, so I hope this one will be, too.
On the heels of my successful interview with Lieutenant-Governor Evans, I hope I can slowly peck my way back into if not the good graces of Democratic and progressive Independent lawmakers, maybe at least I can make it onto their interview calendars.
My career and future depend on it.