“Oh, Ali Bunny,” he said. “I’m so sorry. What a hell of a thing!”
She hated it when he called her Ali Bunny.
“I may take them to court,” she said calmly.
That shocked Paul, all right-shocked him good.
“You’re going to what?” he demanded, slopping his own drink down the unknotted three-hundred-dollar tie dangling around his neck.
“It’s age and sex discrimination,” she said. “The three guys that are left are all older than I am. Randall’s got to be sixty if he’s a day. Nobody’s sacking any of them.”
“You can’t take the station to court,” Paul said. “I mean, how would it look? We’re married. I work for the network. What would people say?”
“People would say it’s about time somebody stood up for women,” Ali replied. “Over forty isn’t exactly over the hill.”
“If you take the station to court, you’ll be black-balled for sure. You’ll never work in the mainstream media again.”
“All the more reason to sue them, then,” she said.
“But think what it’ll do to my career!”
Ali took another sip of her drink. “Frankly, my dear,” she told him. “I don’t give a damn.”
Paul stood up abruptly and stalked off to his study, closing the door firmly behind him. Other people might have given the door a good hard slam, but not Paul Grayson. He disdained what he called “cheap theatrics.” He considered himself above all that.
But when the heavy door clicked shut, Alison Reynolds heard something else entirely. The sound that echoed down the marble-floored hallway had nothing to do with the locking mechanism on the door and everything to do with the end of their marriage.
Ali sat for a few moments longer. When she and Paul had moved into this house years earlier, she thought herself extremely lucky. After years of being a single parent, she had been glad to have a father figure for her hormone-charged fourteen-year-old son. But things hadn’t turned out the way she expected. Paul and Chris weren’t close. Not at all. And her happily-ever-after fairy tale romance wasn’t what it had been cracked up to be, either. An exciting, whirlwind romance had morphed into a marriage where divergent jobs and interests kept them busy and apart. At times it seemed to Ali that she and Paul were roommates and housemates more than they were man and wife.
Ali surveyed the room, eyeing the opulent leather furnishings that Paul preferred. She hadn’t liked them much to begin with, but they had grown on her over time, unlike the art. The splashy modern art that adorned the walls- large pieces with gilt frames, vivid colors, steep price tags, and not much heart-came with enough bragging rights to cut it with Paul’s art-snob pals, but they didn’t speak to Ali. Not at all.
“I’ll miss this chair,” she allowed at last, “but the art can go straight to hell.”
With that, she knocked back the remains of her drink in one long swallow. Then she stood up, collected her shoes, and headed for bed.
By the time Ali got up the next day Paul was already gone, on an out-of-town trip. It was early Saturday morning. She was pulled downstairs by an irresistible smell. She found Chris in the kitchen, expertly moving an omelet from a frying pan to a plate, folding it with a gentle flick of the wrist just the way Ali’s father had taught him.
“You’ve got to learn to cook, boy,” Bob Larson had said. “If you leave it up to your mother, you’ll starve to death.”
Her parents ran Sedona’s Sugarloaf Cafe, a down-home-style diner that had been started in the mid-fifties by her maternal grandmother, Myrtle Hansen. Myrtle had left the business to her twin daughters, Edie Larson and Evelyn Hansen. Now, with Ali’s Aunt Evie gone, Bob and Edie were still running the place, which was usually packed on weekends, especially at breakfast time.
“Hey, Mom,” Chris said. “You look like hell. Hungry?”
The double Manhattan had gone straight to Ali’s head, but she hadn’t slept. She’d lain awake, tossing and turning, and she felt hung-over as hell.
“Yes, please,” she said.
“Have this,” Chris said, passing her the filled plate. “I’ll make another one.”
Ali took a seat at the island counter and then watched Chris. “I got fired last night,” she said.
Chris whirled in her direction, almost dropping an egg in the process. “You got fired? No way!”
“Yes,” she said.
“Just like that?”
Ali nodded.
“When’s your final broadcast?” Chris asked.
“Already had it,” Ali said. “They pulled the plug on me last night as soon as the news was over.”
Turning off the fire under the frying pan, Chris hurried to his mother’s side and took her hand. “That’s terrible, Mom,” he said. “I can’t believe they did that to you. Did Paul know about it? Did he know in advance that they were going to let you go?”
“Probably,” Ali said.
“And he didn’t tell you or try to do anything to stop it?”
Ali shrugged.
“That bastard,” Chris muttered.
Ali said nothing. She had arrived at much the same conclusion. Paul Grayson was a bastard.
“Which means you don’t even get to say goodbye to the people who’ve watched you for the past seven years?” Chris continued, his voice shaking in outrage.
“Evidently not.”
“That sucks!”
“Well, yes,” Ali agreed. “Yes, it does.”
“Wouldn’t you like to let people know what happened-tell them your side of the story?”
Ali laughed. “I don’t think that’s an option.
“We’ll see about that,” Chris vowed.
With that, he got up from the counter, returned to the stove, and turned the fire back on under his omelet pan.
Ali spent the day quietly. Once it was two o’clock Arizona time and the Sugarloaf Cafe was closed for the day, Ali called her parents and told Bob and Edie Larson what was going on-the job part of it anyway, not the marriage part. Bob was as outraged as Chris had been. Edie was instantly sympathetic.
“If you have time off, you should come visit,” she said. “You have your Aunt Evie’s house to stay in. Come over, relax, and give yourself time to think about what you’re going to do next.”
Ali had already decided what she was going to do next-track down the names of several wrongful termination attorneys. “Thanks, Mom,” Ali said. “I’ll think about it.”
On Sunday morning, Ali came downstairs and was surprised to find a sheaf of e-mail printouts sitting next to the coffeepot. There were dozens of them, all addressed to her home e-mail account. One by one she read through them.
Dear Ali,
I’m so sorry you’re leaving. You seem like a good friend. I’ll never forget what a wonderful job you did when our next door neighbor’s son was killed in Iraq. Please let me know where you end up. I’m hoping I’ll still be able to watch you.
Mrs. Edith Wilson,
Glendale, CA
Dear Ms. Reynolds,
How can they fire you? You’re the only bright spot on that dying news team. I hope you get a good job somewhere else and beat them up in the ratings. They deserve it.
