Free Morning Glory by Diana Peterfreund

don’t take it, they can terminate your contract.”
    Was that click I heard Mike taking the safety off his shotgun? Do shotguns have safeties?
    “And the six million dollars you have left on it,” I finished.
    The expression on Mike Pomeroy’s face was truly terrifying. I’d seen it before. It was the one he’d worn when he interviewed the priest who’d stolen the parishioners’ retirement funds. The one he’d leveled at the manufacturer putting lead in baby toys. The one he’d used to bring the isolationist cult leader to tears on live TV.
    I straightened and tugged at the hem of my jacket. “So here’s me with an official offer: Mike Pomeroy, the IBS network is offering you the position of cohost of Daybreak .”
    Yeah, he was going to kill me. At least it would make a good story for the team at Good Morning, New Jersey . Chip would probably win a Pulitzer.
    “You can’t do this to me.”
    I lifted my chin, though I was pretty sure those hazel eyes of his were burning right through the back of my skull. “Yes I can.”
    “Do you have any idea what’s going on in the world right now? Do you know what kind of career I’ve had? And you want me to do stories on Baked Alaska?”
    “I—”
    “I don’t ever want to say the word ‘Alaska’ on television unless it’s followed by one of three things.” He held up his fingers to count them off. “Pipeline, earthquake, or governor.” He looked at his third finger. “Actually, not even that last one. I’m tired of it.”
    “You just have to be a little bit open-minded,” I said. “Sure, the morning news has a wider range of stories than—”
    “ ‘Wider range,’ ” Mike interrupted. “Nice euphemism.” He leaned in. “Your show is in the news department—don’t you get that? News is a sacred temple, and you, Becky Fuller, are part of the cabal that’s ruining it with horseshit .”
    I faltered. Mike Pomeroy had just called my entire career horseshit. I caught my breath, feeling like I’d been punched. This wasn’t supposed to be how it happened. The Mike Pomeroy I knew would never use a word like “horseshit.”
    Of course, the Mike Pomeroy I knew was broadcasting through the little box in my living room, not standing in front of me in the flesh. If he used a word like that on air, the FCC would slap him down with a huge fine. I was very quickly learning that the face Mike Pomeroy showed to the world had about as much to do with the real man as the Barbie doll Colleen Peck liked to portray.
    “That’s not fair,” I said to him, almost before I realized it. “The first half hour of a morning show is a damned good news broadcast.”
    “Half an hour,” said Mike. “Be still my heart.”
    “And we also do entertainment, weather—everything a newspaper has always done. What’s wrong with that?”
    Mike shook his head in disgust, shouldered his rifle, and sidestepped me.
    I kept up. “We’re like a well-informed neighbor, coming over to chat with people in the morning—”
    He walked faster. I matched his pace.
    “Brokaw did the morning news,” I pointed out. “And Charlie Gibson.”
    “Hmph.”
    “Walter Cronkite did it at the beginning of his career. He cohosted a morning program with a puppet named Charlemagne—”
    Mike stopped dead. Awesome: I’d finally gotten to him. I knew that dropping Cronkite into the discussion would do the trick.
    He glared at me. “Then,” he said, his voice very low, “ get a puppet .”
    Hmm. Maybe not.
    The next morning, I reflected on how it might be a good thing that Mike hadn’t taken me up on my offer. After all, I’d tried to sell him a bill of goods about Daybreak ’s being a great place for the occasional hard-hitting news story. But what were we covering today?
    Papier-mâché.
    Papier-freaking-mâché, and if the look on Colleen’s face every time the camera cut away was anything to go by, even she was unimpressed with the topic. I doubted she wanted her manicure ruined with