The Last Good Night Read Online Free PDF

earpiece.
    Fifty-four seconds before we were to go on-air for the six-thirty broadcast, Quinn hurried in and sat down beside me. It’s a game to him, how close he can cut it, how fine, how dangerous. “Do us all a favor and don’t screw up,” he said.
    I looked over at him and decided to take it as a joke. “I’ll try.”
    Quinn nodded as he leaned back in his chair and began to whistle “Hard Day’s Night.” His ritual.
    I checked myself one last time in the small compact I stashed behind the desk while Al rushed up and put the last of the fresh pages of copy in front of us.
    I heard Susan whisper in our ears, “I have a good feeling about this.” And then, “Twenty seconds…fifteen seconds…ten seconds…and go.”
    I could feel the blood rush to my face and suddenly everything was gone, everything but this. I looked directly into the camera and smiled as I heard Quinn say, “Good evening. Tonight I’d like to welcome Laura Barrett to the National Evening News ….”
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    T HREE MINUTES INTO the broadcast, while film of the Paris Métro played across the screens, Susan spoke into my ear from the control room. “You’re doing great.”
    I smiled. Despite all the odds, I am one of those who flourishbefore a live camera. I can feel its magnetic particles shimmering in my pulse, my heart, my brain. I’ve known better reporters, better news people, who are not so lucky, who become dull and flat and thickened in the camera’s presence. There are many honest people who appear shady and untrustworthy, while credibility, the ultimate coin of a news broadcast, emanates from others with little effort. Luck, again.
    When the tape ended, I leaned forward and read the story of a San Diego high school hero who rescued his teacher from drowning on a class trip with more authority than I ever could have alone in my office, without so many eyes on me, without the thrilling risk.
    â€œHow come the heroes are always honor students?” Quinn asked no one in particular while a commercial played. “Even the psychopaths always turn out to be honor students. ‘He was such a nice guy, until he opened fire in the mall that day.’” He stood up to stretch, cracked his knuckles, and turned to me, his eyes piercing. “You have a drop of sweat on your upper lip. It’s been there for the last four minutes. I tried to motion to you.”
    I didn’t have time to check in my compact before Al stepped up and said, “Fifteen seconds to us, two shot, then Laura to camera four.”
    Distracted, I read the next story too quickly, skipping a line and tripping over the name of the secretary of defense. In the end, we had twenty long seconds to fill because of my mistake. There was no choice but to banter.
    â€œAnd we’re off,” Al finally announced.
    Quinn leaned back and smiled out into the dark studio. It was an odd smile, rising only on the left, baring no teeth.
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    A FTER THE BROADCAST, Frank Berkman, the executive producer, came out of his office for a brief postmortem. Berkman, whocame armed with a string of Emmys and a reputation for journalistic innovation, was brought in ten months ago from a rival network to help the show rise out of third place. I was his idea. Everyone quieted at his approach. He is an achingly thin man with thin dry lips and thin hair and thin gray skin, as if the incessant rhythm of the newsroom had eaten through his flesh. Even his sentences are parsed, thin, minimal. Unlike many in the business, he keeps his personal life out of the office and out of the press, which only adds to the rumors and the mystery about him. He is loyal, untrustworthy, brilliant, or merely lucky, depending on whom you believe. The only hard facts that had become known in the newsroom so far were that he always walked to work no matter how bad the weather, he ate lunch at his desk as often as possible, he