knew it he was running the city desk, and now here he is, my second-in-command. All of which is to say, Emma”—another bow—“the
Star
encourages rising stars, if that doesn’t sound too corny.”
He then rattled off my glories to the new assistant managing editor. “Emma won her J-school’s most prized scholarship and she had her own column in the
Daily Tar Heel.
A real crackerjack of a column, too, timely, lively, subjects resourcefully handled, witty, very witty. Her dean sent me samples. He and I were Nieman Fellows at Harvard together.”
Lou Norbright heard out Feeney’s encomium to me with the same smiling attention with which he had received his own. He was
gleamingly
at attention, you might say. His glasses gleamed, his coal-bright eyes behind the silver rims gleamed, his uncannily white shirt gleamed, his black-and-silver-striped necktie gleamed, his teeth gleamed. A thin edging of gold between his top left canine and the adjoining premolar completed the overall gleaming effect.
I couldn’t place him in any of my male categories; he seemed neither gent, mentor, obstacle, adversary, sexual attractant, useful stepping-stone, buddy-cohort, nor anything potentially personal. He was more like an emblem or an idea, but I wasn’t sure of what. He appeared perfectly cordial toward me, yet he conveyed, almost viscerally, a withholding of judgment that had the effect of shrinking my confidence. It was as if I could read his subliminal reservations in the gleaming mirror of his surfaces. What if Mr. Feeney and Dean Ligon had
not
been Nieman Fellows together? What if Dean Ligon had not been so obviously disposed in my favor? What if Paul had not talked me into traveling to Miami for the Christmas interview “because you come across so well in person.” Where would my bare talents alone have gotten me at this early stage if Dean Ligon, Mr. Feeney, and Paul Nightingale had not been the sort of mentor-gents won over by young women like myself?
“Lou will show you around the newsroom,” Mr. Feeney was saying, “and then we’re going to start you right in at the city desk.” He gave another courtly dip in my direction. “Just like the proverbial little duck being thrown into the water, if that’s not too corny.”
Lou Norbright seemed to glide along beside me rather than walk in ordinary human steps. “So, Emma,” he said, “how are you finding our Miami weather?” The bright eyes behind the gleaming glasses appeared to expect something more “in-depth” than the conventional reply and so I allowed as how I found it a little harder to breathe in Miami. “The humidity, I guess, or my blood needs to thin. Did
you
find that when you first came down here from Nebraska?”
He flashed the gold-edged canine at me and looked as though I had just confirmed his private assessment of me. “No, I can’t say that I did,” he remarked cheerfully.
I was introduced first to Pat and Ed on the copydesk, both of whom wore green visors just like in newspaper movies. Though they both laid down their pencils from their respective slashings of triple-spaced copy and gave me friendly welcomes and appreciative male glances, I was enough under Lou Norbright’s confidence-leaching spell to imagine them foreseeing exactly the kinds of trifles and inadequacies they would soon be slashing out of my prose.
Next I met Bert, a soft-voiced, cherub-faced man who doubled as book editor and religion editor; he said to let him know if I wanted to review any new books for him.
“Perhaps later, when she’s settled in,” Norbright smilingly answered for me.
Next came a disheveled reporter with wild eyebrows and a crooked red bow tie, Dave Bisbee, who cocked his head impudently up at Norbright from an appallingly messy desk and invited me to “bug” him with any questions I was afraid to bother the “brass” with.
“We’ll all try to give Emma the benefit of our best guidance, Dave,” Lou Norbright suavely countered.
At
Star
encourages rising stars, if that doesn’t sound too corny.”
He then rattled off my glories to the new assistant managing editor. “Emma won her J-school’s most prized scholarship and she had her own column in the
Daily Tar Heel.
A real crackerjack of a column, too, timely, lively, subjects resourcefully handled, witty, very witty. Her dean sent me samples. He and I were Nieman Fellows at Harvard together.”
Lou Norbright heard out Feeney’s encomium to me with the same smiling attention with which he had received his own. He was
gleamingly
at attention, you might say. His glasses gleamed, his coal-bright eyes behind the silver rims gleamed, his uncannily white shirt gleamed, his black-and-silver-striped necktie gleamed, his teeth gleamed. A thin edging of gold between his top left canine and the adjoining premolar completed the overall gleaming effect.
I couldn’t place him in any of my male categories; he seemed neither gent, mentor, obstacle, adversary, sexual attractant, useful stepping-stone, buddy-cohort, nor anything potentially personal. He was more like an emblem or an idea, but I wasn’t sure of what. He appeared perfectly cordial toward me, yet he conveyed, almost viscerally, a withholding of judgment that had the effect of shrinking my confidence. It was as if I could read his subliminal reservations in the gleaming mirror of his surfaces. What if Mr. Feeney and Dean Ligon had
not
been Nieman Fellows together? What if Dean Ligon had not been so obviously disposed in my favor? What if Paul had not talked me into traveling to Miami for the Christmas interview “because you come across so well in person.” Where would my bare talents alone have gotten me at this early stage if Dean Ligon, Mr. Feeney, and Paul Nightingale had not been the sort of mentor-gents won over by young women like myself?
“Lou will show you around the newsroom,” Mr. Feeney was saying, “and then we’re going to start you right in at the city desk.” He gave another courtly dip in my direction. “Just like the proverbial little duck being thrown into the water, if that’s not too corny.”
Lou Norbright seemed to glide along beside me rather than walk in ordinary human steps. “So, Emma,” he said, “how are you finding our Miami weather?” The bright eyes behind the gleaming glasses appeared to expect something more “in-depth” than the conventional reply and so I allowed as how I found it a little harder to breathe in Miami. “The humidity, I guess, or my blood needs to thin. Did
you
find that when you first came down here from Nebraska?”
He flashed the gold-edged canine at me and looked as though I had just confirmed his private assessment of me. “No, I can’t say that I did,” he remarked cheerfully.
I was introduced first to Pat and Ed on the copydesk, both of whom wore green visors just like in newspaper movies. Though they both laid down their pencils from their respective slashings of triple-spaced copy and gave me friendly welcomes and appreciative male glances, I was enough under Lou Norbright’s confidence-leaching spell to imagine them foreseeing exactly the kinds of trifles and inadequacies they would soon be slashing out of my prose.
Next I met Bert, a soft-voiced, cherub-faced man who doubled as book editor and religion editor; he said to let him know if I wanted to review any new books for him.
“Perhaps later, when she’s settled in,” Norbright smilingly answered for me.
Next came a disheveled reporter with wild eyebrows and a crooked red bow tie, Dave Bisbee, who cocked his head impudently up at Norbright from an appallingly messy desk and invited me to “bug” him with any questions I was afraid to bother the “brass” with.
“We’ll all try to give Emma the benefit of our best guidance, Dave,” Lou Norbright suavely countered.
At
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