"Emergency?" she asked Rick, trying to borrow some of the phony cheer from the commercial she'd just finished cutting.
"And how." Rick circled the counter and led her down the hall. As they passed the production room, he leaned in once more, barely breaking his stride. "Yvonne? Cue the next couple of songs for me in the studio, okay?"
Christie could only assume Yvonne nodded. There wasn't any time to glance into the production room as Rick herded her down the hall. "I'm going to have to run through this really quick," he told her. "The first news break is twenty-five minutes from now. Nothing like a little pressure, huh?"
He led her into the tiny newsroom that neighbored the studio. There was barely enough room for the desk, which was crowded with a computer, printer and telephone. A microphone was mounted onto the edge of the desk. "You won't be using that," Rick said. "It's been dead for I don't know how long. We do the news from the guest microphone in the studio. It works better if we're face-to-face anyway."
Christie gulped. She'd never have a better chance to screw up.
Rick pulled back the rolling chair for her to sit in front of the computer. This time, it was more like a silent order than a gentlemanly gesture. Christie sat. "You've heard the old expression `rip and read,' from the old teletype machines?" He reached over her shoulder to operate the computer mouse. "These days, it's `print and read.' "
Rick leaned over her, his head just above hers as he explained where to find the news stories on the Internet, and how to turn them into radio copy. Christie stared at the computer screen and concentrated fiercely. For a moment, Rick rested his hand on her shoulder; the next moment, he lifted it away, never pausing as he spoke. It was as if it had never been there at all.
Rick finished sketching out her instructions, then straightened. "Got it?" Christie nodded, trying not to look dazed. She must not have succeeded completely. He bent down again, bringing his eyes level with hers. "Listen, I know you're going into this cold. Just do what you can."
In nineteen minutes, Christie added to herself as Rick left. She wasted a moment staring at the clock on the room's gray acoustic-carpeted wall, then shook herself. No time to worry about how little time she had. No time for sorting out the butterflies in her stomach. Certainly no time to get worked up over a little touch from the boss. She turned her attention to the computer screen and concentrated on the headlines with all her might.
Christie did her first newscast in a near-trance, focusing studiously on the words on the paper in front of her. But a part of her couldn't forget the gray eyes she felt watching her from the other side of those pages. Despite her concentration, when it was over, she couldn't remember a thing she'd just said.
She looked up at Rick; he was nodding in satisfaction. "Not bad," he said. Christie pursed her lips to silence the sigh of relief that whooshed out of her. Rick started putting away a stack of CDs, damage control for the clutter that had accumulated in the studio during the first hour of his shift. "I'll need you back in here at five-thirty. Do you have any problem staying through the six-thirty news?"
'No."
He glanced up from sorting and shelving. "Thanks." His smile was brief, but it was genuine. She must have done all right.
An hour later, when she finished her six o'clock newscast, the heat was off. Just one more to go, and she had enough material to work with now. The studio seemed a little less frenetic at the moment, so she asked, "What happened to Jonathan?"
"Family emergency. He got a call after I went on the air. His grandmother back east had a stroke. I sent him out so he could catch a flight." By his tone, she could tell it wouldn't have occurred to him to do otherwise. Christie wasn't sure her old employers would have been so accommodating.
The phone light flashed, and Rick turned to answer it. While he did, Christie lingered a moment to take in the controlled chaos around her. She'd been working here almost a month now, but this was the first time she'd seen Rick in the studio.
What she saw was a man in his element.
Rick's studio was physically the same room she worked in night after night, but apart from that, it was a different world. The afternoon drive shift buzzed with activity. Phone lights flashed, bringing in traffic reports and listeners' requests. Newspapers, trade magazines and scratch paper with various notes covered every surface. And at the center of all this chaos was Rick-often intently focused, but never seeming rattled, even when he was doing five things at once. He always seemed to know which direction to turn to find the needed scrap of paper amid the layers that were strewn around. If she ran this show for even half an hour, Christie thought, she wouldn't remember her own name.