"You're offering me a job?"
I knew I said it too loud because Bruce Coleman blinked, laughed, and then I had to physically grip the armrests of my chair to keep from launching out of it like a bottle rocket.My brain — the part of it that still remembered how a professional was supposed to behave in an interview — was screaming at the rest of me to sit still and act like I'd been here before.
I had not been here before.I was twenty-two years old, three weeks out of Columbia with a journalism degree and a GPA that wouldn't embarrass me at Thanksgiving dinner, and I was sitting in an office on the fortieth floor of the Beacon Broadcasting Company building in Midtown Manhattan, being offered a job by the Vice President of Programming.
A job.At Beacon.An actual, salaried, entry-level reporting position at a major network.Not an internship.Not awe'll keep your reel on file.A job.
Bruce leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.He was a wiry man, all nervous energy, and he kept reaching up to adjust a tie that didn't need adjusting.Behind him, framed photographs lined the wall: Bruce shaking hands with presidents, Bruce on set with anchors whose faces I'd grown up watching, Bruce accepting some award I couldn't read from this distance.The Beacon logo — that lighthouse beam I'd been watching sweep across my television screen since I was twelve years old — hung above all of it like a crown.
"I'm offering you a job," he confirmed, and something about my excitement seemed to settle his nerves for a second."Nelson, we get four, five hundred reels a quarter from kids fresh out of J-school.Most of them are—" He waved his hand."Forget most of them.But yours?"He tapped my résumé against the edge of his desk."Yours stopped me cold."
I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning so hard my face split open."Really?"
Oh my God.Did my voice just crack?
"That piece you did on homeless vets."He shook his head slowly, the way people do when they're genuinely impressed and not just being polite."That wasn't student work, Nelson.That was reporting.Real reporting.The kind that makes people sit up on their couches and actually pay attention.You've got presence, instincts, and frankly, you've got something most people in this business spend ten years trying to learn."
"What's that?"
"You make people trust you."He said it simply, like it was an obvious fact."The camera loves you, sure.But more than that — when you're on screen, people believe what you're telling them.You can't teach that.Either you've got it or you don't, and kid, you've got it."
My mother would've told me to play it cool.To thank him graciously and say I'd need a few days to think it over.Consult with my people, as if I had people.But I was twenty-two, and I didn't have a single poker face to my name.
"Mr.Coleman, I would love that," I said, and the words came out stacked on top of each other, breathless and graceless and completely honest."I mean — yes.Absolutely yes.I'll take it."
He laughed — a quick, surprised bark of a thing — and tugged his tie again."I like the enthusiasm.Don't ever lose it."He stood and extended his hand across the desk."We'll start you in four weeks."
I shook his hand with both of mine, which was probably too much, but I didn't care."Thank you.Seriously, Mr.Coleman.You won't regret this."
"Call me Bruce."He walked me to the door and opened it."And I know I won't.Welcome to Beacon, Nelson."
I floated out of that building.There is no other word for it.My shoes barely touched the marble lobby floor.The security guard who'd checked my ID on the way in gave me a nod, and I beamed at him like he'd just told me I'd won the lottery, which, in a way, I had.
The July heat hit me like a wall when I pushed through the revolving doors onto Sixth Avenue — thick and shimmering off the pavement, smelling of hot asphalt and roasting nuts from the cart on the corner — and I didn't care.I stood on the sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan, with sweat already beading on my upper lip and the sun hammering down on my good interview blazer, and I thought:
This is where my life begins.
I wanted to grab the nearest stranger by the shoulders and say, Do you understand what just happened to me?But this was New York, and the nearest stranger was already gone, swallowed into the river of people moving up the avenue, none of them slowing for a kid having the best day of his life.
But the person I wanted to tell most was waiting for me uptown.
* * *
The 1 train rocked and shuddered as it climbed up the West Side, and I pressed my shoulder against the cool metal of the door and watched my own stupid grin reflected back at me in the dark glass.
Jimmy.
I could already picture his face when I told him.Those green eyes going wide, the way his mouth would fall open for just a second before that slow, devastating grin took over.He'd grab me and press his forehead against mine and say something like,I knew you'd get it.I knew it.
Except.
Two nights ago, we'd had a fight.Not a bickering-over-the-dishes fight or a you-forgot-to-call-me fight.A real one.The kind where voices climb octaves and someone ends up sleeping on the loveseat that was four inches too short for either of us.
Jimmy didn't want me to interview with Beacon.He'd made that clear, standing in our tiny kitchen with his arms folded across his chest, his jaw set in that way that meant he'd already made up his mind and was just waiting for me to catch up.
"PBS, Nelson.That's where real journalists work."He'd said it like he was handing down a verdict from on high."Beacon is a machine.They don't make journalists, they make talking heads.They'll chew you up and spit out some polished version of you reading a teleprompter, and you won't even notice it happening."
"It's not like that," I'd told him."They do real reporting, Jimmy.Hard-hitting stuff.And this isn't an internship — it's an actual entry-level position."