The Sixth Station(10)

Before I could focus, we were shoved so hard that Dona almost lost her cameras. “What the hell…” she snapped, turning around to see what looked like the entire media descending upon us.

The frenzy snapped me out of my confused state. Oh, my God. I realized I was no longer part of the pack covering the story; I was now a part of the story. No longer one of them, I was one of them—the people that people like me chased down the street.

What was I supposed to do? Give interviews? How weird would that have been? But there was no time to think, because in seconds the crowd was pushing us both, surrounding us, suffocating us.

“Hey Russo—you know ben Yusef personally?” “Ali—over here! Over here!” Microphones were shoved in our faces, and for the first time in my life, I knew how terrifying it was to be on the other side of all that need, that want—that terrible insatiable hunger of the 24/7 news machine. I, Alessandra Russo, was dinner.

We then both did what we hate for news “victims” to do: We hid our faces and tried to run like indicted Mafia capos—from our own colleagues.

The police commissioner finally gave the OK for a few cops to go in and grab us. The commissioner was proving a point: show the taxpayers that the “mainstream media” were self-serving lefties who’d eat their own young for a story.

Two plainclothes cops grabbed Dona, while a bruiser of a woman and her slightly smaller male colleague grabbed either side of me, wires clearly poking from their suit jackets into their ears. “C’mon ladies, let’s get you inside,” the bruiser said calmly.

“Stand back!” the commissioner bellowed over the electronic megaphone. “Everybody back!”

Then he said under his breath, “Bunch of animals. Real goddamned animals.” The statement was nonetheless picked up by the hundreds of mics in the hands of the hundreds of reporters, which caused a near riot. Police officers in equal 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 today 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.