Private Scandals

keep thinking this is a dream. That it can’t be real.”
    “Is there somewhere you can go? A friend or a relative?” Deanna scanned the trim yard, crowded with curious neighbors and determined reporters. A few feet to the left another crew was rolling tape. The reporter kept blowing the takes, laughing at his own twisting tongue. “Things aren’t going to quiet down here for a while.”
    “Yes.” After a last, sobbing breath, Mrs. Pierson wiped ather eyes. “We were going to the movies tonight,” she said, then turned and dashed away.
    “God.” Deanna watched as other reporters stabbed their microphones toward the fleeing woman.
    “Your heart bleeds too much,” her cameraman commented.
    “Shut up, Joe.” She pulled herself in, drew a breath. Her heart might have been bleeding, but she couldn’t let it affect her judgment. Her job was to give a clear, concise report, to inform and to give the viewer a visual that would make an impact.
    “Let’s finish it. We want it for Midday. Zoom up to the bedroom window, then come back to me. Make sure you get the hyacinths and daffodils in frame, and the kid’s red wagon. Got it?”
    Joe studied the scene, the White Sox fielder’s cap perched on his wiry brown hair tipped down to shade his eyes. He could already see the pictures, cut, framed, edited. He squinted, nodded. Muscles bunched under his sweatshirt as he hefted the camera. “Ready when you are.”
    “Then in three, two, one.” She waited a beat while the camera zoomed in, panned down. “Lois-Dossier’s violent death has left this quiet community rocked. While her friends and family ask why, Dr. Charles Dossier is being held pending bond. This is Deanna Reynolds in Wood Dale, reporting for CBC.”
    “Nice job, Deanna.” Joe shut down the camera.
    “Yeah, dandy.” On her way to the van, she put two Rolaids in her mouth.
     
    CBC used the tape again on the local portion of the evening news, with an update from the precinct where Dossier was being held on charges of second-degree murder. Curled in a chair in her apartment, Deanna watched objectively as the anchor segued from the top story into a piece on a fire in a South Side apartment building.
    “Good piece, Dee.” Sprawled on the couch was Fran Myers. Her curly red hair was lopsidedly anchored on topof her head. She had a sharp, foxy face accented by eyes the color of chestnuts. Her voice was pure New Jersey brass. Unlike Deanna, she hadn’t grown up in a quiet suburban home in a tree-lined neighborhood, but in a noisy apartment in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with a twice-divorced mother and a changing array of step-siblings.
    She sipped ginger ale, then gestured with her glass toward the screen. The movement was as lazy as a yawn. “You always look so great on camera. Video makes me look like a pudgy gnome.”
    “I had to try to interview the victim’s mother.” Jamming her hands in the pockets of her jeans, Deanna sprang up to pace the room, wiry energy in every step. “She wouldn’t answer the phone, and like a good reporter, I tracked down the address. They wouldn’t answer the door, either. Kept the curtains drawn. I stayed outside with a bunch of other members of the press for nearly an hour. I felt like a ghoul.”
    “You ought to know by now that the terms ‘ghoul’ and ‘reporter’ are interchangeable.” But Deanna didn’t smile. Fran recognized the guilt beneath the restless movements. After setting down her glass, Fran pointed to the chair. “Okay. Sit down and listen to advice from Auntie Fran.”
    “I can’t take advice standing up?”
    “Nope.” Fran snagged Deanna’s hand and yanked her down onto the sofa. Despite the contrasts in backgrounds and styles, they’d been friends since freshman orientation in college. Fran had seen Deanna wage this war between intellect and emotion dozens of times. “Okay. Question number one: Why did you go to Yale?”
    “Because I got a scholarship.”
    “Don’t rub your brains in my face, Einstein. What did you and I go to college for?”
    “You went to meet men.”
    Fran narrowed her eyes. “That was just a side benefit. Stop stalling and answer the question.”
    Defeated, Deanna let out a sigh. “We went to study, to become journalists, to get high-paying, high-profile jobs on television.”
    “Absolutely correct. And have we succeeded?”
    “Sort of. We have our degrees. I’m a reporter for CBC and you’re associate producer of Woman Talk on