Update

Updates

By Kristine Kathryn Rush. Excerpt

Interviewing people. Getting in the way of her updates. She felt a tug – a pull she hadn’t felt in a long time. The calls frightened her, and she liked Holly, but for ten years Marisa had lived for the shows. They had to continue as well.

She left the booth without saying anything. The double doors closed behind her. Kamal was still at the reception desk, looking flustered. A policeman, short and a bit stout, stood at the top of the stairs.

Marisa ignored him and ran down the steps. Sure enough, three officers were in the newsroom, and no one was working.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but we have a newscast to put on”.

One of the officers turned around. He was slender, with dark eyes and a sharp chin. He held his cap under his arm, revealing tousled black hair. “You must be Marisa Turner.”

“Yes,” she said. “Look, I’m as worried about this as anyone, but -”

“I understand you took the first call.”

“Yes, but -”

“When was this?”

Updates. Photo by Elena

She straightened. She wouldn’t get sidelined. “I’ll answer questions in a moment. But I need to keep order here, too. You told lackburn to proceed as if nothing were happening. The only way we can do that is to put on a newscast in –” she glanced at the clock” – forty minutes.

“I apprreciate your problem, Ms. Turner, but -”

“No. I don’t think you do. Just give me a moment, and then I’ll talk to you.” She gave instructions in rapid fire, afraid that this officer would interrupt her, that the police would shut them down entirely. Joseph was to go over copy if she were gone; Naomi would double-check the studio; Rob would talk to Douglas at City Hall. Everyone else should continue their jobs, make sure the updates were finished and no stories were repeated. “And for godsakes, make sure Kamal knows the mayor is due at five past the hour.”

They all nodded, even one of the officers, which made her realize just how strident her voice had become. She turned to the officer who had spoken to her.

“All right,” she said, “Now I’ll answer questions, but in the office, not here.”

He raised an eyebrow, but followed her. The office wasn’t really as office at all but a number of desks placed at random in the concrete basement along with boxes of old aircheck tapes and file cabinets used as room dividers. The are was dark, the only illumination coming from the stair lights and the thin light from the newsroom.

She hit a switch, and the fluorescents fluttered on. The place looked almost normal. There was never any daylight here. In the winter she entered the station in the dark and emerged in the dark, as if she were living in a night that would never ever end.

Published in September 2000, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery magazine