Page 106 of A Bossy Surprise

I look at the watch on my wrist. “It’s 9 o’clock in the morning. We have 12 hours. Can’t it be done in 12 hours?”

“Of course, we can do it in 12 hours, but it won’t be good. If we want to do it well, first, we’ll have to get the entire show scripted. That’s an 8,000 to 10,000 word script. I would have to have a bunch of my script writers working on it simultaneously. That will take a couple of hours. Then the script has to bevoiced and the audio will need editing. Then we have to look for relevant and engaging footage. Not all of which will be in our data bank. So we will either have to buy the footage or go out and shoot fresh footage. All this takes a lot of time.”

“So what are you suggesting? That we do it live?”

“We can do whatever you want. I’m just saying that if you want to have it prepackaged it can’t go tonight.”

“No, we have to do this tonight. We can’t be last to do an analysis of the candidates. So if we can’t have it prepackaged tonight, then it’s going to have to be live.”

“Okay, we can do that.”

“So what are your thoughts on—”

I’m interrupted by Arthur barging into my office.

“I just got the call,” he says, with a manic look on his face.

“What call?” I ask.

“The call from the Commission on Presidential Debates. We got it.”

Kayla gasps and her hands go to her mouth.

“Arthur, don’t fuck with me,” I say.

“Why would I fuck with you about this?”

Kayla and I look at each other then both shoot out of our seats. We holler and jump up and down as we punch the air in excitement.

I run around my desk and all three of us hug.

“I know we worked hard on this and that we really deserve it, but I didn’t think we were going to get it,” I say.

“Me neither,” Arthur says.

“Well, I believed enough for all of us,” Kayla says. “Which I’m sure is why we ended up getting it.”

“I’m sure it is.” I laugh.

“Anyway, we were given the first debate, which is in a month at Cleveland State University,” Arthur says.

“That’s so soon,” Kayla says.

“Get Consuela up here right now. We need to hit the ground running on this,” I say.

Arthur calls Consuela and minutes later she’s walking through my open office door.

“You wanted to see me?” she says.

“Consuela, we just got the word that you will be moderating the first presidential debate.”

She looks like a deer caught in headlights. “What?”

“You knew that we submitted your name for this, right?” I ask.

“Y-y-yes, but I didn’t think we would get it,” she says.

“Oh my God, why does no one have any faith in us?” Kayla asks.