Free Talk by Laura van Wormer Page A

now, for Alexandra, her late thirties, when she had to start looking back over her shoulder at the younger people who were determined to have her job. She had begun to wonder aloud that if it was this bad at thirty-eight, how would it be at forty-eight, fifty-eight? And just when was it she was supposed to have a life outside of DBS News?
    What was it that Jane Smiley had called it in her first book of short stories? The Age of Grief? When lifelong dreams crashed with startling velocity as the realities of reasonable expectations came so dreadfully into focus.
    Jessica understood what Alexandra was feeling. She was just four years behind her in the intensity of it.
    She wanted to say something to Will before leaving, but there was a problem in the satellite room and he had run off, unlikely to return anytime soon. And Alexandra was itching to get out of there. So Jessica left the control room, knowing that she would see Will to morrow, and on her way out, she saw the opening of her show rolling on the out-going monitor. News at nine with Alexandra Waring, Jessica at ten with heaven only knew what. That was the linchpin of DBS programming Monday through Friday. A whole different prime-time programming approach that, thankfully, still worked.
    "One good thing about my hours," Alexandra said to Wendy in the limousine as they flew out the Holland Tunnel toward New Jersey, "is that I get to miss the traffic. We leave the city around ten-thirty or eleven on Friday nights and come in at noon on Monday." She was leaning into a portable mirror, wiping the worst of her studio makeup off with specially treated towelettes.
    "Where's Slim, do you suppose?" Jessica asked, looking out the back window.
    "Over there," Wendy said from the front seat, pointing to the lane next to them.
    Sure enough, there was Slim in a dark Ford Crown Victoria about half a car length behind them.
    "Who wants something to drink?" Alexandra asked, still bending into the mirror. She glanced over.
    "Do you mind playing bartender?"
    Just because Jessica was a recovering alcoholic didn't mean she had stopped drinking more than everybody else. Only it wasn't booze anymore. While some people reached for food or tobacco or alcohol in times of stress or in search of relaxation, Jessica reached for water or juice, or, if she had a craving for a real drink, something loaded with sugar like a Coke or tonic water.
    So as they drove along, Jessica took orders and played bartender, although there really wasn't much to bar tend since Alexandra only kept Perrier, orange juice and Diet Pepsi in her limo bar.
    They drove west across New Jersey on 78, listening to Jewel's new album that Jessica had just received from the singer's publicist, took exit 18 and headed north on 206, then west on 512 toward Pottersville.
    By now Alexandra was unwinding as an anchorwoman and winding back up as a born-and-raised farm girl who was excited to be nearing home.
    Bonner Farm was small by Kansas standards (her family's farm was some fifteen times the size), but huge by suburban New Jersey's. It was a gorgeous property, one that Alexandra had added parcels to as adjacent land had come up for sale. It was now nearly one hundred twenty-six acres and, because it bordered on Hacklebamey State Park, seemed to stretch on forever.
    Alexandra did not farm the land herself, but allowed two local families to farm sixty-eight acres of it. One family also kept livestock there. The state and town, in gratitude to Alexandra and people like her who could afford to protect the land from real estate developers gave her a significant tax break on those acres dedicated to maintaining the state's agricultural heritage. On the house and immediate grounds, however, they taxed the hell out of Alexandra in the way only the tri state area could.
    The families who worked the fields of Bonner Farm kept the proceeds for themselves, but in return gave daily care feeding, exercising, grooming, cleaning the stalls to the three