Except I was left slack-jawed, as well as lambastedby network brass just an hour later, when a widely smiling Evans and Wilson went on Tampa’s WFLA morning show, alongside Governor Taylor, and broke the news that she and Wilson were expecting their first child.
Oh, and she finally officially confirmed she’d be running for governor at the end of Taylor’s second term.
It gave the local NBC affiliate the political scoop of a lifetime. Especiallyconsidering that, only months earlier, Evans had barely survived a plane crash and shipwrecking thatliterallykilled half the Southeast’s governors and lieutenant governors, cruelly and forcibly shuffling the political hierarchy in those states forever.
Also, considering it was a given Evans would run for governor at the end of Taylor’s second term, because term limits meant he couldn’t runagain, it was still a scoop because she officially announced it there first.
Fuck me.
Yeah, I guess I deserved it.
I sent Dad’s calls immediately after to voice mail and deleted the messages without listening to them, because I knew he was blasting me, too.
I’d provided one more disappointment in a lifetime of them, I suppose.
I’m Evans’ first sit-down interview early this Wednesday morningin Tampa, following her landslide victory last night due to a lot of groveling on my part. She killed it, too, a fifty-five point victory that will rightfully shake both major parties to their foundations before pundits finish processing all the numbers. Independents such as Taylor and Evans can no longer be dismissed as lucky flukes. She and Taylor both have won incredible victories,especiallyconsidering they’re Independents.
Not that the idiots in either major party will take heed. They’ll wring their hands and revert to the same ole bullshit in four years.
I’ve interviewed Evans’ father several times in my career. He’s the former Florida state senator and state GOP bigwig Benchley Evans. The man is a ball-buster, and I was supposedly onhisside, politically.
I can tell his daughterdidn’t fall far from the same tree. If my balls aren’t crushed by the end of this interview, it’ll be a miracle.
Her friend and Florida’s current governor, Owen Taylor, is equally difficult to interview, although that’s mostly my fault because of how I bungled my interview with him following the school shooting shortly before he won the election for his first term.
I do take a little satisfactionfrom the fact that my former producer ended up having to go to Brazil and manage soccer game coverage because not a single damn network in the States would touch him once they learned what happened.
And Draymond Garcia, Evans’ chief of staff, is every bit as much of a bastard as Carter Wilson.
Garcia allowed me this interview under strict conditions, obliquely reminding me of the journalisticratfuck they subjected me to four years earlier. He also hinted that I would only get this one chance to make a halfway decent impression with the woman and return to their good graces, or my network would all but lose our press credentials with this administration for the next eight years.
In other words, they were done putting up with our shit.
Again, I cannot blame them in the slightest.After eleven years stuck in this thermonuclear circus of a network, I’m just about done putting up with our network’s shit myself. Not that I can publicly admit that to anyone.
If I didn’t need the goddamned job so fucking much, I’d leave.
Unfortunately, I have a contract that says I’m stuck here for at least another two years, unless they fire me or decide to let me go early. The list of fireableoffenses is a very short one, but also one that would guarantee I’d either end up in jail on the back side of events, or unemployable by any other network.
There’s not a snowball’s chance on the sun that they’ll willingly release me from my contract early. I have the highest-rated show on their network.
IfIchoose to leave before my contract’s up, I can do that, sure. Problem is, I have a non-competeclause that means until my contract’s term expires, I won’t be able to get an on-camera network job anywhere in the US, unless it’s for the Golf Channel or Animal Planet or something. Or, I’d have to take an anchor position at some little tiny backwater local independent TV station for a fraction of the pay.
Before I came to work at FNB, my previous agent died. The agency I ended up hiring formy first contract negotiation with FNB was competent. But the agent who’d repped me left and went independent before I was due for renewal. Since I was repped by the agency, I let them assign me someone else to negotiate the renewal.
How was I to know there’d be a difference in representation?
Guess I got cocky, but I was in the middle of covering a series of contentious midterm elections atthe time and honestly didn’t want to focus on contract negotiations. By the time I realized what I’d signed, it was too late.
I drag my mind back to right now. I’m aware of Garcia positioned off to the side, out of the shot but in my peripheral vision. He stands with his feet shoulder wide, arms crossed, and a stony look on his face as he watches us that could easily be him channeling CarterWilson. I know there’s a connection between the men, something about Garcia’s older brother having served in the Army with Wilson, but I haven’t had time to research that tie yet.
It’s on my to-do list. I want as much deep background on the man as I can get, in case there’s anything I can use to help me suck up to him, or possibly strong-arm him, either way.
At this point, I don’t care.
“Ms.Evans,” I say, “you’ve already stated you would continue down the same path regarding education reform as your predecessor, Governor Taylor, and enacting more programs that will help improve graduation rates…”
I sense her relax somewhat during our interview as she realizes I’m not going for a gotcha.
