Morning Glory by Diana Peterfreund Page A

for some—” Crap. Some Ivy League rich boy. Hell, Adam and Chip were probably roommates.
    “Some … ?” Adam prodded.
    Blue-blooded, overeducated, nepotistic, old-boys’ network-owing, Brooks Brothers–wearing—
    “Uh-oh.” Adam pulled out his buzzing BlackBerry. “Becky, I’m so sorry, but I have to take this. I’ve been trying to track down this source all week. It’ll just be a second, okay?”
    “Okay,” I said, relieved on two counts. First, I could come up with a new topic by the time he got back. Second, he was as BlackBerry-mad as me.
    As promised, he was back within moments, and, like the seasoned news producer I was, I turned the interview to him. But Adam was apparently every bit as skilled as I was, and repeatedly turned the conversation from anything that had a whiff of “summer house in the Hamptons” to war stories about our days in the newsroom.
    “Seriously,” he said at last. “How are things going with Mike? All the veterans from Nightly News are pulling for you, you know that.”
    “You mean there’s not a pool going on how soon I’ll crack?”
    “Well, yeah,” said Adam, “but those of us with the long odds are hoping you’ll last.”
    I laughed, and we ordered another round as we shared our favorite Mike Pomeroy anecdotes.
    “I asked him to do a piece on Trump, and he took my Diet Coke can and hurled it across the room.”
    “Nice,” said Adam, scooping up a bit of guacamole with the last of the nachos. “I asked him to cover a bumper crop of cranberries, he punched me in the face.”
    “You’re kidding,” I said.
    “To be fair, he was drunk off his ass at the time.”
    I shook my head. “No excuse. If he tried to punch me in the face, I’d lay him out flat. I’m from New Jersey.”
    Adam regarded me carefully. “Yeah, I believe it. So, has he given you a nickname yet?”
    I paused, a chip halfway to my mouth. “Um … sometimes he calls me fangirl.”
    “Fangirl?” he said.
    “Yeah, you know, to underscore the fact that I should be respecting his venerable position and worshipping the ground he walks on.”
    “Ah, right. Your little performance in the elevator.”
    I saluted him with my beer.
    “Well, it’s better than Señor Dipshit.” Adam shrugged. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he actually liked you.”
    “Maybe you don’t know better,” I said.
    “Maybe he likes being worshipped by pretty young things,” he replied.
    I threw a jalapeño slice at him. Pretty young thing, huh?
    We were still laughing when a tall blond girl approached the table. She easily had four inches on me, and that was before you counted her designer heels. Diamond studs the size of blueberries shone from her earlobes, and her outfit was one I remembered being featured on a recent segment about the newest trends from Milan.
    “Adam!” she cried, her voice musical.
    He looked up. “Oh, hey.” He stood and hugged her. They looked like a Ralph Lauren ad. Two perfect specimens of preppy northeastern elite.
    “You never called me!” The girl affected a pout.
    “Sorry.” Adam cast me a sidelong glance. “I’ve been, um … working a lot.…”
    Working a lot? Oh, I see. This was work. Even Perfect Girl here didn’t seem to view the situation as datelike. She made no move to introduce herself to me. Neither did Adam. She started talking about some of the doings in Greenwich. I swirled the dregs of my beer around the bottom of my glass. This was taking considerably longer than Adam’s all-important phone call with his source.
    Guess Perfect Girl ranked higher on his list of priorities.
    “So, I’m in the middle of—”
    “Right,” said Perfect Girl. “Maybe I’ll see you at Barton’s regatta party on Saturday?”
    Regatta? Regatta? Jesus, what was I doing here? The closest I’d ever gotten to a regatta was a story I’d once done at Good Morning, New Jersey about a rash of car thefts at the Barnegat Bay Yacht Club.
    “Yeah,” said Adam.