Sabbith in the Morning
Sabbith in the Morning
A Newsroom: Sloan x Don One-Shot
For hellolamppost17 | Yuletide 2013
Don Keefer didn’t want to be producing segments about Halloween crafts and baked goods, but it just so happened that he was damn good at it. He knew exactly how to mold ACN Morning to precisely target the hearts of middle-aged American women everywhere. Don was only an AP and he admittedly rued a little bit that he left Newsweek for this, but televised news and ACN was where he wanted to be. Well, higher up at ACN was where he wanted to be. Patience was never going to be Don’s strong suit, but he knew he wasn’t going to immediately be given the EP position for News Night or anything.
So Don was utilizing his now-realized gift for pandering to great effect. The ACN Morning EP was looking to him increasingly often for input on the program, and ratings were up eleven percent and still rising. Things were looking good.
Things were looking good, except for the face of the intern who was rushing towards Don in an obvious panic.
“There’s a problem. A big problem.”
“Let me be the judge of whether it is a problem and if it is, the size of said problem.” Don felt a small twinge of self-satisfaction that the intern came to him.
“Umm, okay. Both Maria and Mr. EP can’t make it today.”
It amused Don a little that the intern couldn’t call the Executive Producer by his name. But more relevant was that this was unlike the ACN Morning executive producer and presenter. If anybody were to be absent from the program, it would be the Morning co-presenter Tony Hart. “And why would that be?”
“Because…” The young woman looked tearful. “Oh, because I messed up. You see, I...” The intern started blabbering on about a ridiculous series of mistakes that Don did not care to hear. Don seemed to often attract girls who could best be described as childlike and perhaps a bit helpless. While he usually felt rather flattered by the obsequious attention and the subsequent feeling of superiority, he didn’t enjoy it so much when it interfered with his work. Which was what it was doing right now.
Don interrupted, “So we need to find a replacement. It’s 5 AM, first see who is around in the newsroom and report back to me.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Don’s mind scrolled down a mental list of possibilities. The ideal candidate would be female (for a sense of shared experience with the audience), personable, talented at arts and crafts, and…
“Sloan Sabbith.” The intern breathlessly expelled the name as she rushed back to him.
Not exactly who Don had had in mind. He had never met Sloan Sabbith, although he had glimpsed the beginning of her mid-day finance report occasionally. He had heard that she had two Ph.D’s in economics and was a published author of a lauded academic book and on top of that, was drop-dead gorgeous. He didn’t need to hear about that last bit; he could see it for himself.
Still, Sloan Sabbith was not quite right. Charlie Skinner had been trying to suggest to her that she should do a morning show, but Don wasn’t sure she had the versatility for morning. Sloan seemed to agree, as she had refused the last few times Charlie had made her those offers.
“She’s the only one here?”
“Yes, sir, she’s the only one of the anchors who’s here and she’s finishing up at the gym right now.”
“Which makes her the only option we have. Tell me why we are in this situation AN HOUR before we’re on the air?” Don pressed his fingers to his temple. The intern opened her mouth to again spew the reasoning behind this mess, but Don cut her off before she delayed the resolution of this problem even more.
“Just go and tell Tony that he’ll be working with Sloan Sabbith today and prepare the cue cards.”
Don trotted off to the gym and managed to catch Sloan on her way out.
“Sloan Sabbith.”
She appeared to not have heard him; she pulled her hair up into a ponytail and began to tuck it through the hole in the back of her ACN baseball cap.
“Sloan.”
Still no response as she kept on walking through the door, crossing one arm over to tug her tote bag onto her shoulder and then grabbing the Wall Street Journal poking out of the bag.
“So about that Emergency Economic Sta-”
Sloan whipped around so fast that Don thanked the stars that he had fast reflexes; otherwise, he would’ve been slapped in the face by her ponytail. Her eyes gleamed like those of a dragon that was gazing upon its hoard - full of pride in its ownership and greed for more.
“YES, someone else who wants to discuss - Wait. Who are you?”
“I’m Don Keefer, AP for ACN Morning. Listen, we need you to fill in as presenter today.”
Sloan’s face fell, and her disappointment was endearingly comical.
“You don’t want to talk about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act?”
“No, Sloan.” Don put his hand comfortingly on her arm. “Okay, let’s get you into Wardrobe and in the meantime, I’ll brief you on today’s show.”
Sloan put her hands up, knocking away Don’s arm. “Hold your horses, buddy. I haven’t agreed to this. I told Charlie I didn’t want to do a morning show. Baking little cupcakes topped with tiny marshmallows in the shape of ducklings or whatever is really not my thing.”
“Well, you’re in luck, because that’s not until Easter. All you need to do today is learn from a mommy blogger how to creatively carve a pumpkin. It’s supposed to even be safe for kids, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Sloan said as Don was ushering her out. “The only times I have touched a pumpkin were when it was in a pre-baked pie. I can talk about stock markets but I am terrible at small talk of any other sort.”
“You’ll be fine. I’ll be in your ear the entire time. Now in Wardrobe, we’ve got plenty of options - Tahari, Burberry…”
“Gucci?”
“Pardon?”
“Gucci suits make me feel powerful and awesome.”
“No no. No Gucci suits. We’re putting you in a sweet dress or a cardigan and skirt combo.” Don started to push Sloan into Wardrobe.
Sloan whirled around and stuck her hands out onto the door frame. “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“Listen, Mr. Keeler,”
“Keefer.”
“Keefer. You still haven’t given me a reason to do this other than ‘I told you so’ and you haven’t even been telling me so nicely!”
Don closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. She was right.
“I apologize. Our regular presenter, Maria Guerrero, can’t make it in today and our broadcast starts in half an hour, so we are in desperate need of a substitute presenter. You were already here when we discovered the problem and we think you could be great at it. So would you please do us a huge favor and fill in today?”
Don was tempted to put on a puppy dog pout but he knew that it wouldn’t work on her. She was an intelligent woman (probably, no, certainly more intelligent than him) and she appreciated facts. Because of this, he knew that she could very well say no and then things would really be in deep shit.
“Okay.”
“Thank you for your time. We’ll find some - Oh. Really?” Don’s eyes grew large with relief. “Thank the fucking Lord. I could kiss you right now, I’m so grateful.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I, uh. No Gucci.”
Feeling uncharacteristically tongue-tied, Don left Sloan with Wardrobe and went to prepare for filling in himself as producer.
Thankfully, Don didn’t see Sloan again until she was on the sofa in front of the camera, being introduced to Tony.
“Sloan, can you hear me? It’s Don.”
Sloan gave a thumbs up to the camera. “Roger that.”
“Okay, just remember to smile throughout. Alright?”
With obvious begrudging in her voice, Sloan responded, “Alright.”
The show began pretty well, actually. Don only had to remind Sloan to smile three times or so. Despite Sloan’s razor-sharp brilliance, she was surprisingly soft around all of the guests.
Don should’ve known better than to be optimistic about the pumpkin carving segment.
The first misstep down this path of broadcasting no-nos was mostly not Sloan’s fault. The mommy blogger was a character, and she had the hots for Tony as soon as she laid eyes on him. (Or most likely even before, as it seemed she was an avid fan.) With Tony’s charming ways, he must have appeared to reciprocate, which only fueled the fire. The mommy blogger began by demonstrating how to cut the lid off of the pumpkin and she must have thought that Sloan was getting too close to Tony. Unwittingly, Don had instructed Sloan to lean in closer, and that resulted in a swift elbow to Sloan’s diaphragm. It took Sloan by surprise and caused her to knock into the other pumpkins. One of those pumpkins happened to still be containing all of the filling and seeds of the pumpkin, which spilled out into a goopy puddle on the studio floor.
Embarrassed, Sloan attempted to clean it up subtly, but subtlety was an art that she had never quite mastered. Don hissed into his headset, “Stop! Just stop. Leave it!”
Of course, this meant that the filling that was supposed to be taken out in the next step of the process was already taken out. The mommy blogger snidely remarked, “The next step was supposed to be scooping out the filling, but I see that Miss Sabbith has already taken care of that for us. You can set aside the seeds for toasting, which are a great snack for the kids. But I guess Miss Sabbith doesn’t have kids, so…”
“DOCTOR,” Sloan growled.
“Excuse me?”
“I have two Ph.D’s in economics. So you may call me DOCTOR. Or if you’re one of my students at Columbia, PROFESSOR. One or the other.” After a pause during which Don just smacked his forehead with his hand, Sloan remembered that she was trying to remain polite. “That is. If you please, ma’am.”
Tony gave an appeasing chuckle and tried to smooth things over. It worked, at least temporarily.
Don tried to give Sloan a pep talk. “Look, Sloan, I know this woman is frustrating beyond belief, but I need you to just endure it, okay? Just get through carving this fucking pumpkin and then you’re home free.” At this point, they were supposed to be drawing their designs onto the pumpkin with permanent markers. “Draw some cute little jack-o’-lantern for me, okay? No need to get fancy. Just your good ole triangle eyes and a friendly grin. Just - what. What are you doing, Sloan. Sloan Sabbith. Why are you holding that marker like it’s a dagger you’re going to stab into the mommy blogger’s throat? Is that...? Are you drawing a graph of the STOCK MARKET?”
At about the same time, Tony asked Sloan essentially the same question.
Sloan jumped on this opportunity, and with a clearly feigned saccharine tone, she replied, “Why yes, Tony, it is. My axes might not exactly be correct, but regardless, the drop is so glaringly evident that even imbeciles like this one here can see it. You know, the Dow dropped more than seven hundred points yesterday. This was the first time in four years that it fell below 10,000. And that Emergency Economic Stabilization Act…”
“Cut her off, Tony. CUT HER OFF!”
Tony suavely interjected, “Yes, that is definitely a matter of the utmost importance to discuss. Which is why we need more time to go into detail about it, so everybody should tune in at 2:00 for Sloan Sabbith’s financial report.”
Sloan shot an angry look at the camera, clearly intended for Don.
“I’m sorry, Sloan, but now is not the time…” Don truly did feel apologetic.
Sloan did not, however, feel any sense of apology. The mommy blogger continued to make digs at Sloan and Don could see Sloan’s annoyance increase exponentially with every word. Don was beginning to feel irate on Sloan’s behalf. He was impressed with how long Sloan was lasting without beating up the other woman.
Then the knives were brought out.
“Uh oh.”
Don brought the mouthpiece of his headset closer to his mouth to make sure his words were heard loud and clear.
“Sloan. Just don’t cause a lawsuit against ACN.”
The mommy blogger was demonstrating the kind of motion to make with the knife while carving. Sloan was at the guest’s side and turned so that her extremely attentive eyes were fixed on the mommy blogger’s profile. Sloan had a knife in her hand and mimicked the carving motions repeatedly and rapidly. The mommy blogger’s enormous flowing sleeves just happened to be in the way.
The guest didn’t notice that her left sleeve had now become fringed.
Don wasn’t sure whether he was glad that he avoided that snafu or disappointed that they were missing out on a first class tizzy fit. (He got the tizzy fit later and it was less entertaining than he had hoped.)
Sloan was not finished, however. The crowning glory of Sloan Sabbith’s revenge on the mommy blogger was, in reality, a very stupid idea from the very smart woman.
Don had actually thought they were out of the woods. His voice took on a tone of finality as he said, “Alright, Sloan, we’re almost done. All you’ve got to do now is put the candle in the pumpkin and smile for another few seconds and you’ll never see that woman again.”
Sloan gave the camera a small smile that Don mistook for one of happiness at his words. Don was, unfortunately, terribly wrong.
Don hadn’t seen Sloan dispose of her cue cards into the center pumpkin in front of the mommy blogger before the candles were placed inside. What Don did see was Sloan hipcheck the table and the flame that rose slowly at first and then erupted from within the pumpkin.
At that point, Tony and the guest were standing in front, wrapping up the segment and obscuring the view. The mommy blogger’s head for a moment looked like a pineapple and the fire behind her looked like the leaves, as Don’s arms went up over his head and he shouted into his headpiece, “SLOAN SABBITH, YOU FUCKER. TONY, WRAP UP AND WE NEED TO GO TO BREAK! NOW! AND SOMEONE GRAB A FIRE EXTINGUISHER!”
Smiles stayed on until the cameras were turned away. There were some minutes of chaos as the fire was extinguished and the mommy blogger was sent on her way. Once the newsroom settled down, Sloan approached Don with a sheepish smile.
“Sorry.”
Don shook his head, “You are not in the least bit sorry. I swear to God, if I get fired because of you…”
“You won’t get fired for this, I promise. I heard you’re the best AP on the team. And I can see why.”
This didn’t feel like the kind of simpering compliment Don usually got.
“Yeah, and you’re the best economics expert we’ve got. But still, we lit a pumpkin on fire.”
“It made a great hair accessory to that horrible woman, though, didn’t it?”
They shared a laugh.
“Even so. I am never producing for you again.”