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quickly bid my adieus to the Canuck.
    “Hello?” I asked cautiously.
    “Is this Becky Fuller?” asked an unfamiliar voice. “This is Jerry Barnes, from IBS.”
    IBS? The IBS? I blinked, and my mouth opened and closed a few times, like a fish that can’t figure out where all that nice, life-preserving water went and why there’s a hook in its gills.
    “Yes,” I croaked. “This is Becky.” Had I sent my resume to any HR manager named Jerry Barnes?
    “I’m an old friend of Oscar’s,” said Jerry. “We worked together in the early days, and he passed your name along to me.…”
    God bless Oscar! So he had been looking out for me.
    “Anyway,” said Jerry. “I’ve got this opening at my morning show—”
    An IBS morning show? Awesome. “Tell me more!”
    “Well,” Jerry warned, “I feel I should tell you, it’s a really tough gig—”
    “I like tough.”
    “So Oscar told me,” said Jerry. “When are you available for an interview?”
    I somehow resisted saying that now worked just fine.

 4 
    T here I was, standing before the imposing doors of the famous IBS building. You could have the totally overexposed 30 Rock, you could have the CBS building, Eero Saarinen design and all. Maybe they had more history, more gravitas. But they didn’t dominate the skyline. This glass monolith on Bryant Park was all I needed to be happy.
    As long as they gave me the job.
    I checked my reflection one last time in the glass door. No lipstick on my teeth, auburn hair still neat and sleek in its chignon. I’d trimmed my bangs this morning—a dangerous prospect, I know, but they’d turned out great. Maybe that was a good omen. Black suit. Power pumps. My mother’s tiny diamond drop pendant for luck … I was ready.
    After receiving my guest pass, I was ushered by an assistant into the sleek and very cold office of Jerry Barnes, this old friend of Oscar’s who—judging from the square footage in this room alone—had clearly done much better in life than my former boss. Jerry was tall and fit, with network exec hair and a network exec suit, set off by a surprisingly un-network-exec-like pair of brown, horn-rimmed glasses. After dispensing with the formalities, he scanned my resume as if he hadn’t already seen it, and gestured for me to sit down across from him.
    “Oscar says you’re very talented and you work incredibly hard,” said Jerry, as if he didn’t quite believe it. “Says you’re the most promising producer he’s ever fired.”
    “Well, that’s good,” I said. “I think.” Because what did that say, really? That I was good—but not as good as the other senior producer he’d hired?
    “So,” he asked, as if it was the most casual question in the world, “you’re a fan of our morning show?”
    I smiled broadly and lied my ass off. “It has many interesting—”
    “Yeah, we know. It’s terrible.” Jerry waved a hand at me. No bullshit here. “You know morning news shows are usually the cash cows. The foreign bureaus? The breaking coverage? All the political convention crap? Morning news pays for all of that. Evening news looks down on daytime programming, but it foots their bills.”
    “Great,” I said in what I prayed was a simultaneously sage and supportive tone.
    “Except,” said Jerry, “for our network.”
    “Ah.”
    “Our show is perpetually in fourth place behind the Today show, Good Morning America , and that thing on CBS, whatever it’s called.”
    Yeah, no one watched that show either.
    Jerry sighed. “The anchors of our show are difficult and semi-talented—”
    I pursed my lips and shook my head. “Colleen Peck is a pro—”
    “Hei—nous!” Jerry snapped.
    Well, at least she didn’t fall asleep in the middle of the broadcast. “Paul McVee,” I said. “Fine reporter.”
    Jerry shot me an incredulous look. “He’s foul.”
    “Look, Mr. Barnes,” I said.
    “Jerry.”
    “Jerry, I—”
    But he wasn’t finished. “ Daybreak ’s facilities are