I trotted into Studio A next door and sat down. Dane, the audio guy, was waiting for me. He clipped the mike to the lapel of my blazer, handed me my earpiece, and left. The door closed with a solid, air-compressing thunk. When you see me on television, it looks like I’m sitting in some cool twenty-sixth-floor office with a panoramic view of the Los Angeles skyline at sunset. Really, it’s just a dark coffin-size room with a printed backdrop. Claustrophobics would bounce off the walls.
And thanks to the magicians in the makeup room and a shot that catches me from only the chest up, I look like I just stepped off the red carpet. You can’t see the safety pin that’s holding my skirt together, the scuffed pumps that’ve been resoled four times, or the old coffee stain on my blouse-which is still missing the last two buttons because I can’t face up to the chore of searching through the overstuffed bag of spare buttons crammed under my bathroom sink.
I pulled out my cell phone to do one last Twitter blast.
I’m on LIVE with Sheri! Talking the Samron case: 14 Yr Old who shot her brother-tune in! #HLN
I’ve been doing the cable news circuit for about six months now. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not a paying gig, so only the young and desperate do it-or the already successful types who have the time to do it for fun because they’re paying the young and hungry to do the real work. It’s a real time suck, and if it’d been up to me, I’d have said no gracias when one of Sheri’s producers first approached me. But Michelle elbowed her way in between us and said, “She’d love to!”
I’d been pissed. “I don’t have time for that crap, Michy.”
She’d hissed under her breath. “Are you nuts? This ‘crap’ is how you snag the kinds of cases that’ll finally put us in the black. You can’t afford not to.”
So far it’s netted me only a couple of DUI cases and a lot of requests to take on pro bono work. But it is kind of fun. A limo picks me up, hair-and-makeup wizards make me look fabulous, and I get to hammer other lawyers without having to worry about getting locked up by the judge. Where does any of that go wrong?
But since it still hasn’t proven to be a cash cow, I limit myself to one or two shows a week. A lot of the lawyers who do this cable circuit are hoping to get their own show. I have to admit, I think about it, too, every now and then. It’d be nice not to have to worry about whether I’ve got enough money to feed Beulah, my ancient Mercedes, who-in addition to having a rear passenger window that no longer rolls all the way up and an ugly dent in the right rear fender (which, coincidentally, showed up the day a client got convicted of murder and his girlfriend threatened to kill me)-is a gas hog.
