My Big Break
Ross West
I snagged a reporter’s dream assignment, embedded with climate crusader Tillie McBivens and her entourage on the twenty-six-city One Degree Fahrenheit Tour. She was a sure contender for Time magazine’s Person of the Year; an indefatigable sixty-year-old woman driven by her passion to make a difference—leading protest marches, making media appearances, writing New Yorker articles and Washington Post op-eds. She delivered a hundred and fifty speeches last year all around the globe.
While she was out to save the world, I just wanted to escape the low pay and ridiculous job expectations I was enduring at Woke World, the progressive social justice eco-positive magazine/website. If I played it right, this assignment could get me out of this crap job and my crap apartment and away from my crap roommate.
I flew to Los Angeles to join the tour for a week. Ten of us journalists gathered in the lobby of the Airporter Fiesta hotel awaiting our ride to San Diego. We all wore lanyards with clear plastic pouches showing our photos and credentials. I surreptitiously read the other reporters’ badges and discovered several of them to be names I recognized from bylines. My own ID picture was a disaster; I looked like Tina Fey on the worst hair day of her life. At twenty-six I was by far the youngest and least accomplished in the group--Woke World’s senior writer had secured the slot on the tour, but his sudden case of a bad flu gave me the chance to step in as a last-minute substitute.
A white fifteen-passenger van rolled up. The driver hefted our small mountain of luggage into the back while we climbed aboard. I took one of an adjoining pair of empty seats and who should plop down next to me but Laura Chatham of CBS News—she and her flowing blonde locks. I savored the moment: two years out of J-School at a mediocre state university and here I was riding in a press van shoulder to shoulder with network news.
The driver started the motor and off we rumbled to join the other One Degree Tour vehicles in a small convoy. A silver Suburban carried part of the entourage, people I would get to know in the coming days: Tillie’s tour manager/handler, her personal assistant/dresser; and a bruiser of a security guy/driver/gofer named Dawes-Brody. McBivens herself, along with chief of staff Sigrid Neff and media relations director Les Hannifin led the procession in a gleaming black limo.
The southbound freeway traffic chugged haltingly across the endless splay of Los Angeles. After two hours we made a rest stop at a Denny’s. I set my sights on Les Hannifin, who was walking aimlessly around the parking lot talking into his cell phone. When he finished the call, I approached with a little wave.
“Abbie Dial, what can I do for you?” He did this without reading the name on my lanyard. A media relations pro like Les Hannifin would of course know the names of each of the tour’s journalists, but it still felt good to be recognized.
In the most self-assured voice I could muster, I said, “I would like to schedule a one-on-one with Tillie.”
“Sure, sure, great idea.” He tapped on his phone a few times and was poised to slot the interview. Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as I feared. But just then, something over my shoulder caught his eye. He held up a finger and said, “Just a sec,” then hurried to the aid of Chuck Protzman, a portly reporter from the Chicago Tribune who was struggling to exit the Denny’s glass doors while balancing a bulky shoulder bag, a laptop, his phone, a large coffee, and a glazed doughnut.
Once Les Hannifin had rescued Protzman, he checked his wristwatch, did a quick headcount of the passengers milling around the van, and called out for us to get back on board. We queued up, and as I filed past him our eyes met. He assured me he had not forgotten our deal with a nod and the word “Later.”
I climbed over Laura Chatham and plugged my seatbelt together, a huge grin on my face.
“Win the lottery?” she asked.
“I just scored a sit-down with Tillie.”
“Oh really?” Her voice was tinged with what might have been envy. “Is this your first…” she waved her extended and beautifully manicured index finger in a small circle.
“Embed?” I said, thrilled to be talking shop with a reporter I’d seen file stories from Afghanistan and North Korea. But in mid-thrill I had the horrifying realization that while I was saying embed she was hearing rodeo.
“Les is okay,” she said with a judicious bob of her chin and a kind look in her impossibly blue eyes. “But he isn’t going to go out of his way to do you any favors.”
Her cell rang and pulled her into a conversation that lasted for the next forty miles. I stared out the window, ego-dinged, embarrassed. Mile by mile, I tried to get over myself. Maybe Hannifin was just doing his job. Maybe it was me who needed to up my game. By the time we got to San Diego and checked in at the Hacienda Harborview I was seeing things a lot more clearly. Gatekeepers were meant to be circumvented and circumvent I would. How I would actually accomplish this was still a mystery, but I knew instinctively that if I could get close to Tillie, doors would open.
That evening in the hotel ballroom the San Diego chapter of Californians for Climate Sanity were having a fundraiser. I arrived early and took the seat closest to the stage in a section reserved for reporters, the bull pen. After some preliminaries, a choir of young schoolchildren lined up on stage and belted out a selection of what the choirmaster called “songs of the Earth,” wrapping up with a high-pitched rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” The kids bowed and marched off stage to polite applause.
The sellout crowd had come to see Tillie, and when she stepped into the spotlight, they went crazy. I’d watched her speak to excited crowds on YouTube and social media, but this was way more intense—mesmerizing, electric. I jotted down notes and recorded the talk that rose up to a stirring climax like some huge wave about to crash:
“Our fight is about self-control and austerity and the challenges ahead. About rising above. Resilience. We take the hit, we tighten our belts, we say ‘no’ to consuming in excess of our needs. And we will win. We. Will. Win.”
The audience roared. A throng rushed to the front of the stage, extending hands for her to shake, programs for her to sign. And she gave them what they wanted—autographs, a listening ear and nods of understanding, a big smile for their photos. A short distance behind Tillie stood Sigrid Neff, a dark-haired, hawk-faced woman with arms folded over her perfectly pressed chief-of-staff blazer. Sigrid said something to Les Hannifin, who whispered in Tillie’s ear, putting an end to the carefully managed spontaneity.
I made my way forward to join Tillie backstage but was stopped by a security guard as big as a football player. A flash of my lanyard had no effect. I leaned and peeked around the hulking guard only to see Tillie and her entourage, a wall of backs, receding.
“Les,” I called out.
He turned, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “A private reception,” like he was stating some immutable law of the universe, one over which he, of course, had absolutely no control. Seeing my face screw up, he said, “Tomorrow,” and made a lame effort to sweeten the promise with a grin and a thumbs-up gesture.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Laura Chatham.
“We’re going to the bar,” she said, with a tilt of her head toward a clump of our van mates. “Care to join us?”
“So that’s it?” I groused. “That’s how it goes? She’s off to who-knows-what and we’re left here?”
“It’s a marathon not a sprint,” she said with a musical laugh as charming as everything else about her. “I was on the bus for three weeks with Hillary’s campaign in oh-eight and if I heard her stump speech one more time.” She shuddered. “C’mon, a drink’ll do you good.”
~ ~ ~
The next day was Earth Day 2017 and thousands of marchers filled San Diego’s downtown streets, making their way to Waterfront Park for the noontime Climate Action Now rally. We stepped off the van behind the speaking platform at one end of the park’s large field, now a colorful sea of faces and balloons and placards.
I asked a cop how big he thought the crowd might be.
“On the record, no idea,” he said. “Off the record, I heard twenty or twenty-five thousand.”
An event staffer guided the ten of us to our seats in the press pit where we joined dozens of other journalists. The rally began and for more than an hour lesser luminaries speechified, a folkie trio strummed guitars and harmonized, and introducers introduced introducers. When Tillie finally took to the stage, the audience let loose for more than a minute with a boisterous outpouring of appreciation, support, encouragement, solidarity, and love.
Tillie leaned toward the microphone and did what Tillie does like nobody else. She expertly sliced the Earth into climate zones—polar, tundra, boreal, temperate, subtropical, and tropical—and detailed how each is careening toward eco-holocaust: melting ice sheets, cataclysmic fires, hurricanes, spreading deserts, crop failures, and famine. “With negative feedback loops accelerating the rate of devastation,” she warned, “we will very soon pass a tipping point—and beyond that point there is no return from the nightmare of an Earth made uninhabitable.”
The way she expressed herself—the pacing, the cadences—reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite identify what. Then, during one of the long intervals of applause that punctuated her talk, I remembered. When I was in kindergarten or maybe even younger, my auntie Mim would babysit me while her husband, uncle Vince, would sit in his big chair and watch an evangelist on TV. Vince was almost deaf, and he’d crank up the volume so high the whole house rattled. I was so scared by the preacher’s sweaty face and heavy breathing and all his talk of the day of judgement and the furnace of God’s wrath that I hid under the dining room table with my fingers in my ears.
“The only hope for any of us,” Tillie said, her words rising to a crescendo, “is the political will and focused effort of activists the world over demanding change. Demanding change right now. This is our calling, our fight. It’s our future—our future to win or lose.”
I looked around me at the mass of listeners, clapping, hooting, whistling. They waved their placards and ululated. Some wept. Tillie stood at the podium, radiant, nodding as the adoring multitude boiled with enthusiasm, ready to sign up for any revolution she might care to lead. A chant started up: “Yes we can. Yes we can.” Tillie joined in, her amplified voice reverberating over the throng like thunder.
Gently nudged by the stage manager, a little girl walked across the platform to present Tillie with an arrangement of flowers nearly as large as the kid herself. Tillie accepted the bouquet and raised it above her head, beaming like an Olympic champion. More kids came—a small procession—each carrying a sizeable bouquet, stacking them in a pile next to the podium.
It was over; the crowd dispersed, the intense buzz that had energized Waterfront Park all afternoon drained away as if someone had pulled a plug. We trooped out of the press pit and made our way through security to the backstage area. In the middle of the milling reporters and jostling camera crews, Les Hannifin played air traffic controller, taking interview requests and doling out precious access to Tillie.
“You’ve got four minutes,” he said to the crew from CNN.
In front of a camera, Tillie was something to behold. Focused, listening intently to each question, giving thoughtful and original answers—even though she had heard every question a thousand times. Watching her answer one interviewer after another with the same boundless energy, I jotted in my notebook, “TMB was born for this.” When the last reporter drifted off, Sigrid Neff, leaned close to Tillie’s ear and whispered. From the triumphant smiles they exchanged, she might well have said, That could not possibly have gone any better.
The van pulled up and my colleagues clomped aboard. I lagged behind and watched Tillie. Her driver held the limo door open for her, but rather than getting in, she looked around and asked to no one in particular, “What happened to all those lovely flowers?”
“Still on the stage,” Sigrid said.
Tillie frowned.
I called out, “I’ll get the flowers,” then, not sure if I had overstepped some line, added, “if that’s all right.”
Tillie gave me a grateful smile—our first eye-to-eye contact. Sigrid made a pair of approving nods, one to me, another to the stage manager, then eased Tillie into the limo.
The manager and I gathered up armload after armload of the flowers and toted them to a nearby curb. I ordered a rideshare, but they were in such high demand after the rally—go figure—that I had to wait nearly an hour. When the car finally arrived, I filled the back seat with blooms and wedged myself into the front seat hugging as many as I could, my nose an inch from an overwhelmingly fragrant tiger lily.
At the hotel, I commandeered a luggage cart, piled it high with flowers, rolled it into the elevator, and rode to the twenty-fifth floor’s penthouse suite. I knocked and soon Tillie’s outsized staffer, Dawes-Brody, opened the door. He eyed me and my cargo skeptically while I tried to explain.
Les Hannifin noticed what was happening; he took his cell from his ear and called out, “She’s okay, let her in.”
I pushed the cart into the sprawling suite that hummed with a strangely high level of activity. Tillie’s entire staff, along with several faces I recognized from the rally, bustled about, talked into their phones, thumbed messages, scribbled notes, handed each other pieces of paper, clicked away at laptops.
I parked the cart behind the sofa and asked Les Hannifin, “What’s up? Something happen?”
“The rally and speech are blowing up—TV, radio, white hot on social media.”
“Oh,” I said, a little perplexed. It was a pretty good rally and all, but--
“Trump tweeted out not one but two mean shots at Tillie,” he said with a twinkle and a grin. “Now everyone wants a piece of her.”
His phone rang and he read the caller ID. “Meet the Press.”
I didn’t see Tillie or Sigrid and I figured I was well within the bounds of acceptable behavior to find them and let them know I’d completed my errand. A hallway led away from the far side of the suite to what I thought were three bedrooms.
The first was open—and unoccupied. The door to the second was closed and I raised my hand to knock but, hearing muffled talking within, I leaned close and listened. Here’s how I recorded the conversation later in my notebook:
Neff: Nagel wants you in Aspen. He’ll send his jet.
TMB: Thank you for the tweets, Mr. President [laughs].
Neff: What do we tell the teachers?
[pause]
TMB: My sister’s kid was in a car crash—hospitalized. In Denver.
Neff: Lucky for us.
I heard steps and the door opened. Sigrid gazed at me, surprised at first, then suspicious, then worried.
“Where do you want the flowers?” I asked, feeling like a sneaky teenager pretending I hadn’t overheard a thing.
Sigrid made a sweeping motion with the single appendage that was her hand/phone and said, “Anywhere’s fine.” She squeezed past me in the doorway and moved down the hall calling back over her shoulder, “Thank you, about the flowers, that’s very—” but now a staffer had her by the elbow and waved a phone’s screen emphatically in her face.
I turned back to see that the room was not a bedroom at all, but an office set up with all the amenities—phone, computer, large monitor, printer, shredder. Behind the desk sat Tillie in the swivel chair, sizing me up.
“I just love flowers,” she said, her face a smiling mask.
“They’re out there, by the sofa.” I pointed vaguely. “On a cart.”
She brushed her hands over the desk in front of her as if she was smoothing a bed sheet. “Let me tell you something, something you might find quite interesting. It was men who went to the moon . . . but it’s women who are going to save the planet.”
Her eyebrows arched, she looked me full in the face. I thought there was more to come, but no, that was it. I didn’t know what to make of her pronouncement any more than I could read her Sphinx-like countenance—and damned if I didn’t feel stupid about it. Not knowing how to respond, I thanked her, smiled, and retreated.
Two hours later Les Hannifin sent a group text message to all the journalists on the tour: “Due to a family emergency, Tillie will be cancelling her appearance tomorrow night at the American Education Association convention in Las Vegas. She will rejoin us Monday in San Jose.”
Another announcement soon went out to all of Tillie’s Twitter followers along with a link to a breathy account of her niece’s accident, the girl’s prognosis, and a few heartwarming anecdotes illustrating their close lifelong relationship.
I knew from the detailed tour itinerary that Tillie was scheduled to participate via Skype in a venture capital conference at the Aspen Enterprise Institute—a conference at which one Eric Nagel would also be attending. Now, it seemed, she could be there in person, transported on Nagel’s private jet, cloaked with a convenient cover story.
It was all I needed.
At 6:30 the next morning the long hallway outside Les Hannifin’s room was empty and quiet. I paced around, leaned against the wall, and for about twenty minutes thought about what I had to say to him and how I would say it. Finally, the room service woman arrived with his breakfast tray. She took the tray inside and I marched in right behind her. After Les signed for his breakfast, he stood there barefoot, his hands shoved into the pockets of one of the hotel’s terrycloth robes, staring at me with a confused look on his bristly face.
“I need to see her. This morning. Before she leaves.”
He rubbed at his eye and poured a cup of coffee. “Do you have any idea how busy she is? With the president’s tweet—”
“She needs to talk with me,” I insisted.
He peered at me over the brim of his cup. “Needs to talk to you, huh?”
I nodded.
“And I’m supposed to shoehorn you into her schedule between, let me see,” he squinted at his phone, “The Wall Street Journal and Anderson Cooper?”
I repeated my resolute nod.
“You’re putting on a good show there, Abbie, but I can’t—”
“I overheard something, Les. Between Tillie and Sigrid.”
~ ~ ~
I had my list of questions and I’d double-checked that my phone was fully charged and ready to record our conversation. Outside the penthouse suite’s door I paused, took a deep breath, told myself I could do this.
I knocked and Sigrid answered, her face tight and wary. She escorted me through a set of French doors onto a balcony big enough to host a good-sized party. From twenty-five floors up, the view was incredible: the morning sun lit the sailboats in the harbor, and beyond, the blue Pacific extended to the horizon where it was dotted with a string of pearly white clouds. I expected Sigrid to stay for the meeting, but she went back inside, the door clicking closed behind her.
Tillie stood at the shady end of the balcony, leaning stiffly against the railing, small, almost frail in an everyday blouse and light sweater.
“I guess we need to do this, don’t we?” She spoke so softly I could barely hear.
I pulled out my phone. “Do you mind if I record?”
“Not just yet,” she said, a pained look in her eyes. “Later, I suppose, if necessary, but for now, I think what’s most important is that we understand each other.”
“Sure.” But I wasn’t leaving without getting my questions answered, on the record.
I find it useful to start an interview by getting the subject to agree about basic facts, so I recounted the cancellation of the Las Vegas appearance and the planned visit to Colorado. She nodded along.
“The change of plans is not the issue,” I said. “But what you told us, what you tweeted—using your niece’s accident to explain it—” I so wanted to bust her, to say, I caught you red-handed in a lie. You let us down. What do you have to say for yourself? But this wouldn’t get me anything of value for my story. I softened my voice, “You can see how this is a problem.”
She scanned the horizon, as if searching for someone or something to get her out of the mess she’d made. She shuddered and rubbed her hands over her thin upper arms.
“It’s chilly. Let’s go sit in the sun.”
We walked the length of the balcony to where some patio furniture clustered around a low table. She took the rattan peacock chair, its high back flared out in the shape of a lightbulb, its woven seat made a crackling sound under her weight. The sun fell directly on Tillie, warm and golden, brightening her face, giving the tan wickerwork that circled her head a radiant glow. I sat in a smaller companion chair, the sun at my back. Maybe we could work out a deal. She could cancel her new plans, go back to the old itinerary, and I could forget all about what I’d overheard. After all the good work she’d done, didn’t she deserve....
“This bus trip you are on with us—it’s quite out of the ordinary,” she said, her voice stronger now. “We’re doing it for show. Sigrid likes the optics.”
Her brazen words seemed intended to rattle me. They succeeded.
“For show?”
“I usually fly from city to city, continent to continent. First class. And there’s not another form of transportation that releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere—the very thing I rail so vehemently against from the podium only hours after touchdown. I suppose this shocks you.”
I sat stupefied.
“What hangs in the balance of our fight is the fate of hundreds of millions of people. Think about that. Hundreds of millions. Hence the necessity of my going to Aspen.”
The connection eluded me.
“Do you know Eric Nagel?” she asked.
“Not quite rich enough to make the Forbes 100 list, but he didn’t miss by much.” It felt good to say something knowledgeable, even though I’d never heard of Nagel until yesterday and all my knowledge about him came from reading his Wikipedia page.
“We’ve been angling to get close to him for two years—unsuccessfully. Now he wants to meet. The difference he could make. The people he knows.” Tillie leaned back, pinning me in her gaze. Her face soured. “And you come here, with your . . . piddling, sanctimonious accusations.”
I looked away. This was Tillie McBivens, angry, glaring at me with her lips curled as if she had a worm in her mouth. And I—I was used to sitting alone, typing away on my laptop in the library or Starbucks or the crappy cubicle I had access to because I volunteered at an underfunded nonprofit.
“The important question is not my behavior, but yours,” she said, her extended finger pointing right between my eyes. “Do you really want to be on the outside, throwing rocks at me? Battling editors who know in their hearts I’m right. Will you brand yourself as an obstructionist, an impediment to a necessary—a righteous—crusade? You don’t want to be on the wrong side of the greatest moral divide in human history.”
~ ~ ~
As far as my fellow journalists were concerned, Tillie’s cancelled Las Vegas appearance was a windfall, a free day in San Diego. Laura Chatham told me she was going scuba diving off a charter boat; Chuck Protzman was headed to UCLA for a Krzysztof Kieślowsk film festival. I tried not to be distracted by the sounds of people having fun around the hotel pool while I holed up in my room and transcribed notes, worked on my story, and most of all thought about what Tillie had said. Being on the tour was my big break. I couldn’t afford to screw this up.
In San Jose and San Francisco, we shuttled from one event to another, morning to night. Wednesday, we rolled into Sacramento just in time for the President Pro Tem of the California State Senate to present Tillie with a Generational Icon award. A lunch with the governor followed. That night in the city’s largest hotel ballroom, Tillie delivered the after-dinner address at the Tech and Transformation Conference. The last thing she said in her speech was:
“There will be sacrifices, there will be pain, but in the end, I believe we will be stronger, wiser, more aware; better creatures living in a world made better by our acts of courage and consciousness, of resistance and faith.”
Afterward, the ten of us waited in the hotel lobby for the van to arrive. The driver telephoned to say he was stuck at a wreck and would be delayed. I looked around at the colleagues I had gotten to know during the past week. Tomorrow morning, they would load themselves back in the van, drive north to the California redwoods where a protest group was blocking a logging operation. Tillie would use the opportunity to—well, suffice it to say the McBivens juggernaut would roll on and on and on. But minus one rider. For me, Sacramento was the end of the line.
I made a visit to the lobby restroom and was standing at the sink when the door pushed open and in walked Tillie and Sigrid. I hadn’t been alone with either of them since the penthouse in San Diego.
Tillie stopped to talk. “Les told me you’ll be leaving us.”
I nodded. “How was your time in Aspen with Mr. Big?”
“Well,” she said with a sly smile, “he asked me to join him for a weekend at his ranch in New Mexico.”
“Oh,” I said. “That sounds promising.”
“Anything can happen,” she said with a merry roll of her eyes. “Better to be invited than not.”
Sigrid cut in, “It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, Abbie. Good luck.” She put her hand on Tillie’s shoulder, the way a chief of staff does when it’s time for a conversation to end.
Tillie took my hand and held it in both of hers. “Anytime you want an interview,” she said, giving me a warm wink, “just give a call.”
The van soon arrived, and I boarded for the short hop to the hotel. When we climbed off, I approached Laura Chatham—her blonde locks somehow still in place even after a fourteen-hour day. We joked that maybe our paths would cross again on another tour. She wrapped her arms around me, patted my back, and whispered into my ear, “Time for the baby bird to fly.” Holding me at arm’s length, she gripped my shoulders and stared at me with those blue blue eyes. “Go do something great.”
My tears were starting up. Chuck Protzman was nearby and as I hugged him too—like it was the last day of high school.
“You wanna come with us for a drink?” Laura asked.
I waved off the invitation and watched her walk away. Such a pro. Nothing would faze her. Plague, revolution, World War Three—Laura Chatham’s hair would always be perfect.
As soon as I was in my room I knelt at the minibar and checked out the selection. A little airplane bottle of Gray Goose went down in a couple of swigs and I unscrewed the cap on a half-bottle of chardonnay. Walking to the bathroom for a cup, peeled off its plastic wrap, and poured the wine. I sipped, kicked off my shoes, and fired up my laptop.
There it was, the story—just as I had left it when I finished it early this morning. I reviewed it one last time, changed a word here, cut a line there. But even as I polished the prose, my mind drifted. What incredible luck I’d had—to be in just the right place at just the right time to lasso the meteor that was Tillie McBivens. What kind of a ride was I in for?
I poured the last of the chardonnay, tossed it back and acted on the impulse to throw the empty cup across the room. The story rocked. It was the best thing I had ever written—by a mile. Way too good for Woke World. I had plenty of material and would write them another story—I owed them that much—but they wouldn’t get this one. No, this story I could place someplace better, maybe a lot better. I didn’t necessarily have the contacts to get me in the door at that bigger publication, but I knew who did.
Laura Chatham answered her cell in a voice loud enough to be heard over the din of the lively bar. I told her what I wanted. Yes, she’d be happy to send me the personal email address for a guy she used to date, the editor in charge of national news at The Atlantic.
I wrote the guy a note—dropping Laura’s name and sending her warmest regards—and used the paperclip icon to attach the story document. On my laptop’s screen the cursor hovered above the send button. For some reason I paused, and there came a thought that I recognized as a gift from TMB: Surfing the zeitgeist, you make your own waves. I tapped the keyboard and off went my words under the headline “Tillie McBivens—Pants on Fire.”
Ross West
I snagged a reporter’s dream assignment, embedded with climate crusader Tillie McBivens and her entourage on the twenty-six-city One Degree Fahrenheit Tour. She was a sure contender for Time magazine’s Person of the Year; an indefatigable sixty-year-old woman driven by her passion to make a difference—leading protest marches, making media appearances, writing New Yorker articles and Washington Post op-eds. She delivered a hundred and fifty speeches last year all around the globe.
While she was out to save the world, I just wanted to escape the low pay and ridiculous job expectations I was enduring at Woke World, the progressive social justice eco-positive magazine/website. If I played it right, this assignment could get me out of this crap job and my crap apartment and away from my crap roommate.
I flew to Los Angeles to join the tour for a week. Ten of us journalists gathered in the lobby of the Airporter Fiesta hotel awaiting our ride to San Diego. We all wore lanyards with clear plastic pouches showing our photos and credentials. I surreptitiously read the other reporters’ badges and discovered several of them to be names I recognized from bylines. My own ID picture was a disaster; I looked like Tina Fey on the worst hair day of her life. At twenty-six I was by far the youngest and least accomplished in the group--Woke World’s senior writer had secured the slot on the tour, but his sudden case of a bad flu gave me the chance to step in as a last-minute substitute.
A white fifteen-passenger van rolled up. The driver hefted our small mountain of luggage into the back while we climbed aboard. I took one of an adjoining pair of empty seats and who should plop down next to me but Laura Chatham of CBS News—she and her flowing blonde locks. I savored the moment: two years out of J-School at a mediocre state university and here I was riding in a press van shoulder to shoulder with network news.
The driver started the motor and off we rumbled to join the other One Degree Tour vehicles in a small convoy. A silver Suburban carried part of the entourage, people I would get to know in the coming days: Tillie’s tour manager/handler, her personal assistant/dresser; and a bruiser of a security guy/driver/gofer named Dawes-Brody. McBivens herself, along with chief of staff Sigrid Neff and media relations director Les Hannifin led the procession in a gleaming black limo.
The southbound freeway traffic chugged haltingly across the endless splay of Los Angeles. After two hours we made a rest stop at a Denny’s. I set my sights on Les Hannifin, who was walking aimlessly around the parking lot talking into his cell phone. When he finished the call, I approached with a little wave.
“Abbie Dial, what can I do for you?” He did this without reading the name on my lanyard. A media relations pro like Les Hannifin would of course know the names of each of the tour’s journalists, but it still felt good to be recognized.
In the most self-assured voice I could muster, I said, “I would like to schedule a one-on-one with Tillie.”
“Sure, sure, great idea.” He tapped on his phone a few times and was poised to slot the interview. Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as I feared. But just then, something over my shoulder caught his eye. He held up a finger and said, “Just a sec,” then hurried to the aid of Chuck Protzman, a portly reporter from the Chicago Tribune who was struggling to exit the Denny’s glass doors while balancing a bulky shoulder bag, a laptop, his phone, a large coffee, and a glazed doughnut.
Once Les Hannifin had rescued Protzman, he checked his wristwatch, did a quick headcount of the passengers milling around the van, and called out for us to get back on board. We queued up, and as I filed past him our eyes met. He assured me he had not forgotten our deal with a nod and the word “Later.”
I climbed over Laura Chatham and plugged my seatbelt together, a huge grin on my face.
“Win the lottery?” she asked.
“I just scored a sit-down with Tillie.”
“Oh really?” Her voice was tinged with what might have been envy. “Is this your first…” she waved her extended and beautifully manicured index finger in a small circle.
“Embed?” I said, thrilled to be talking shop with a reporter I’d seen file stories from Afghanistan and North Korea. But in mid-thrill I had the horrifying realization that while I was saying embed she was hearing rodeo.
“Les is okay,” she said with a judicious bob of her chin and a kind look in her impossibly blue eyes. “But he isn’t going to go out of his way to do you any favors.”
Her cell rang and pulled her into a conversation that lasted for the next forty miles. I stared out the window, ego-dinged, embarrassed. Mile by mile, I tried to get over myself. Maybe Hannifin was just doing his job. Maybe it was me who needed to up my game. By the time we got to San Diego and checked in at the Hacienda Harborview I was seeing things a lot more clearly. Gatekeepers were meant to be circumvented and circumvent I would. How I would actually accomplish this was still a mystery, but I knew instinctively that if I could get close to Tillie, doors would open.
That evening in the hotel ballroom the San Diego chapter of Californians for Climate Sanity were having a fundraiser. I arrived early and took the seat closest to the stage in a section reserved for reporters, the bull pen. After some preliminaries, a choir of young schoolchildren lined up on stage and belted out a selection of what the choirmaster called “songs of the Earth,” wrapping up with a high-pitched rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” The kids bowed and marched off stage to polite applause.
The sellout crowd had come to see Tillie, and when she stepped into the spotlight, they went crazy. I’d watched her speak to excited crowds on YouTube and social media, but this was way more intense—mesmerizing, electric. I jotted down notes and recorded the talk that rose up to a stirring climax like some huge wave about to crash:
“Our fight is about self-control and austerity and the challenges ahead. About rising above. Resilience. We take the hit, we tighten our belts, we say ‘no’ to consuming in excess of our needs. And we will win. We. Will. Win.”
The audience roared. A throng rushed to the front of the stage, extending hands for her to shake, programs for her to sign. And she gave them what they wanted—autographs, a listening ear and nods of understanding, a big smile for their photos. A short distance behind Tillie stood Sigrid Neff, a dark-haired, hawk-faced woman with arms folded over her perfectly pressed chief-of-staff blazer. Sigrid said something to Les Hannifin, who whispered in Tillie’s ear, putting an end to the carefully managed spontaneity.
I made my way forward to join Tillie backstage but was stopped by a security guard as big as a football player. A flash of my lanyard had no effect. I leaned and peeked around the hulking guard only to see Tillie and her entourage, a wall of backs, receding.
“Les,” I called out.
He turned, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “A private reception,” like he was stating some immutable law of the universe, one over which he, of course, had absolutely no control. Seeing my face screw up, he said, “Tomorrow,” and made a lame effort to sweeten the promise with a grin and a thumbs-up gesture.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Laura Chatham.
“We’re going to the bar,” she said, with a tilt of her head toward a clump of our van mates. “Care to join us?”
“So that’s it?” I groused. “That’s how it goes? She’s off to who-knows-what and we’re left here?”
“It’s a marathon not a sprint,” she said with a musical laugh as charming as everything else about her. “I was on the bus for three weeks with Hillary’s campaign in oh-eight and if I heard her stump speech one more time.” She shuddered. “C’mon, a drink’ll do you good.”
~ ~ ~
The next day was Earth Day 2017 and thousands of marchers filled San Diego’s downtown streets, making their way to Waterfront Park for the noontime Climate Action Now rally. We stepped off the van behind the speaking platform at one end of the park’s large field, now a colorful sea of faces and balloons and placards.
I asked a cop how big he thought the crowd might be.
“On the record, no idea,” he said. “Off the record, I heard twenty or twenty-five thousand.”
An event staffer guided the ten of us to our seats in the press pit where we joined dozens of other journalists. The rally began and for more than an hour lesser luminaries speechified, a folkie trio strummed guitars and harmonized, and introducers introduced introducers. When Tillie finally took to the stage, the audience let loose for more than a minute with a boisterous outpouring of appreciation, support, encouragement, solidarity, and love.
Tillie leaned toward the microphone and did what Tillie does like nobody else. She expertly sliced the Earth into climate zones—polar, tundra, boreal, temperate, subtropical, and tropical—and detailed how each is careening toward eco-holocaust: melting ice sheets, cataclysmic fires, hurricanes, spreading deserts, crop failures, and famine. “With negative feedback loops accelerating the rate of devastation,” she warned, “we will very soon pass a tipping point—and beyond that point there is no return from the nightmare of an Earth made uninhabitable.”
The way she expressed herself—the pacing, the cadences—reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite identify what. Then, during one of the long intervals of applause that punctuated her talk, I remembered. When I was in kindergarten or maybe even younger, my auntie Mim would babysit me while her husband, uncle Vince, would sit in his big chair and watch an evangelist on TV. Vince was almost deaf, and he’d crank up the volume so high the whole house rattled. I was so scared by the preacher’s sweaty face and heavy breathing and all his talk of the day of judgement and the furnace of God’s wrath that I hid under the dining room table with my fingers in my ears.
“The only hope for any of us,” Tillie said, her words rising to a crescendo, “is the political will and focused effort of activists the world over demanding change. Demanding change right now. This is our calling, our fight. It’s our future—our future to win or lose.”
I looked around me at the mass of listeners, clapping, hooting, whistling. They waved their placards and ululated. Some wept. Tillie stood at the podium, radiant, nodding as the adoring multitude boiled with enthusiasm, ready to sign up for any revolution she might care to lead. A chant started up: “Yes we can. Yes we can.” Tillie joined in, her amplified voice reverberating over the throng like thunder.
Gently nudged by the stage manager, a little girl walked across the platform to present Tillie with an arrangement of flowers nearly as large as the kid herself. Tillie accepted the bouquet and raised it above her head, beaming like an Olympic champion. More kids came—a small procession—each carrying a sizeable bouquet, stacking them in a pile next to the podium.
It was over; the crowd dispersed, the intense buzz that had energized Waterfront Park all afternoon drained away as if someone had pulled a plug. We trooped out of the press pit and made our way through security to the backstage area. In the middle of the milling reporters and jostling camera crews, Les Hannifin played air traffic controller, taking interview requests and doling out precious access to Tillie.
“You’ve got four minutes,” he said to the crew from CNN.
In front of a camera, Tillie was something to behold. Focused, listening intently to each question, giving thoughtful and original answers—even though she had heard every question a thousand times. Watching her answer one interviewer after another with the same boundless energy, I jotted in my notebook, “TMB was born for this.” When the last reporter drifted off, Sigrid Neff, leaned close to Tillie’s ear and whispered. From the triumphant smiles they exchanged, she might well have said, That could not possibly have gone any better.
The van pulled up and my colleagues clomped aboard. I lagged behind and watched Tillie. Her driver held the limo door open for her, but rather than getting in, she looked around and asked to no one in particular, “What happened to all those lovely flowers?”
“Still on the stage,” Sigrid said.
Tillie frowned.
I called out, “I’ll get the flowers,” then, not sure if I had overstepped some line, added, “if that’s all right.”
Tillie gave me a grateful smile—our first eye-to-eye contact. Sigrid made a pair of approving nods, one to me, another to the stage manager, then eased Tillie into the limo.
The manager and I gathered up armload after armload of the flowers and toted them to a nearby curb. I ordered a rideshare, but they were in such high demand after the rally—go figure—that I had to wait nearly an hour. When the car finally arrived, I filled the back seat with blooms and wedged myself into the front seat hugging as many as I could, my nose an inch from an overwhelmingly fragrant tiger lily.
At the hotel, I commandeered a luggage cart, piled it high with flowers, rolled it into the elevator, and rode to the twenty-fifth floor’s penthouse suite. I knocked and soon Tillie’s outsized staffer, Dawes-Brody, opened the door. He eyed me and my cargo skeptically while I tried to explain.
Les Hannifin noticed what was happening; he took his cell from his ear and called out, “She’s okay, let her in.”
I pushed the cart into the sprawling suite that hummed with a strangely high level of activity. Tillie’s entire staff, along with several faces I recognized from the rally, bustled about, talked into their phones, thumbed messages, scribbled notes, handed each other pieces of paper, clicked away at laptops.
I parked the cart behind the sofa and asked Les Hannifin, “What’s up? Something happen?”
“The rally and speech are blowing up—TV, radio, white hot on social media.”
“Oh,” I said, a little perplexed. It was a pretty good rally and all, but--
“Trump tweeted out not one but two mean shots at Tillie,” he said with a twinkle and a grin. “Now everyone wants a piece of her.”
His phone rang and he read the caller ID. “Meet the Press.”
I didn’t see Tillie or Sigrid and I figured I was well within the bounds of acceptable behavior to find them and let them know I’d completed my errand. A hallway led away from the far side of the suite to what I thought were three bedrooms.
The first was open—and unoccupied. The door to the second was closed and I raised my hand to knock but, hearing muffled talking within, I leaned close and listened. Here’s how I recorded the conversation later in my notebook:
Neff: Nagel wants you in Aspen. He’ll send his jet.
TMB: Thank you for the tweets, Mr. President [laughs].
Neff: What do we tell the teachers?
[pause]
TMB: My sister’s kid was in a car crash—hospitalized. In Denver.
Neff: Lucky for us.
I heard steps and the door opened. Sigrid gazed at me, surprised at first, then suspicious, then worried.
“Where do you want the flowers?” I asked, feeling like a sneaky teenager pretending I hadn’t overheard a thing.
Sigrid made a sweeping motion with the single appendage that was her hand/phone and said, “Anywhere’s fine.” She squeezed past me in the doorway and moved down the hall calling back over her shoulder, “Thank you, about the flowers, that’s very—” but now a staffer had her by the elbow and waved a phone’s screen emphatically in her face.
I turned back to see that the room was not a bedroom at all, but an office set up with all the amenities—phone, computer, large monitor, printer, shredder. Behind the desk sat Tillie in the swivel chair, sizing me up.
“I just love flowers,” she said, her face a smiling mask.
“They’re out there, by the sofa.” I pointed vaguely. “On a cart.”
She brushed her hands over the desk in front of her as if she was smoothing a bed sheet. “Let me tell you something, something you might find quite interesting. It was men who went to the moon . . . but it’s women who are going to save the planet.”
Her eyebrows arched, she looked me full in the face. I thought there was more to come, but no, that was it. I didn’t know what to make of her pronouncement any more than I could read her Sphinx-like countenance—and damned if I didn’t feel stupid about it. Not knowing how to respond, I thanked her, smiled, and retreated.
Two hours later Les Hannifin sent a group text message to all the journalists on the tour: “Due to a family emergency, Tillie will be cancelling her appearance tomorrow night at the American Education Association convention in Las Vegas. She will rejoin us Monday in San Jose.”
Another announcement soon went out to all of Tillie’s Twitter followers along with a link to a breathy account of her niece’s accident, the girl’s prognosis, and a few heartwarming anecdotes illustrating their close lifelong relationship.
I knew from the detailed tour itinerary that Tillie was scheduled to participate via Skype in a venture capital conference at the Aspen Enterprise Institute—a conference at which one Eric Nagel would also be attending. Now, it seemed, she could be there in person, transported on Nagel’s private jet, cloaked with a convenient cover story.
It was all I needed.
At 6:30 the next morning the long hallway outside Les Hannifin’s room was empty and quiet. I paced around, leaned against the wall, and for about twenty minutes thought about what I had to say to him and how I would say it. Finally, the room service woman arrived with his breakfast tray. She took the tray inside and I marched in right behind her. After Les signed for his breakfast, he stood there barefoot, his hands shoved into the pockets of one of the hotel’s terrycloth robes, staring at me with a confused look on his bristly face.
“I need to see her. This morning. Before she leaves.”
He rubbed at his eye and poured a cup of coffee. “Do you have any idea how busy she is? With the president’s tweet—”
“She needs to talk with me,” I insisted.
He peered at me over the brim of his cup. “Needs to talk to you, huh?”
I nodded.
“And I’m supposed to shoehorn you into her schedule between, let me see,” he squinted at his phone, “The Wall Street Journal and Anderson Cooper?”
I repeated my resolute nod.
“You’re putting on a good show there, Abbie, but I can’t—”
“I overheard something, Les. Between Tillie and Sigrid.”
~ ~ ~
I had my list of questions and I’d double-checked that my phone was fully charged and ready to record our conversation. Outside the penthouse suite’s door I paused, took a deep breath, told myself I could do this.
I knocked and Sigrid answered, her face tight and wary. She escorted me through a set of French doors onto a balcony big enough to host a good-sized party. From twenty-five floors up, the view was incredible: the morning sun lit the sailboats in the harbor, and beyond, the blue Pacific extended to the horizon where it was dotted with a string of pearly white clouds. I expected Sigrid to stay for the meeting, but she went back inside, the door clicking closed behind her.
Tillie stood at the shady end of the balcony, leaning stiffly against the railing, small, almost frail in an everyday blouse and light sweater.
“I guess we need to do this, don’t we?” She spoke so softly I could barely hear.
I pulled out my phone. “Do you mind if I record?”
“Not just yet,” she said, a pained look in her eyes. “Later, I suppose, if necessary, but for now, I think what’s most important is that we understand each other.”
“Sure.” But I wasn’t leaving without getting my questions answered, on the record.
I find it useful to start an interview by getting the subject to agree about basic facts, so I recounted the cancellation of the Las Vegas appearance and the planned visit to Colorado. She nodded along.
“The change of plans is not the issue,” I said. “But what you told us, what you tweeted—using your niece’s accident to explain it—” I so wanted to bust her, to say, I caught you red-handed in a lie. You let us down. What do you have to say for yourself? But this wouldn’t get me anything of value for my story. I softened my voice, “You can see how this is a problem.”
She scanned the horizon, as if searching for someone or something to get her out of the mess she’d made. She shuddered and rubbed her hands over her thin upper arms.
“It’s chilly. Let’s go sit in the sun.”
We walked the length of the balcony to where some patio furniture clustered around a low table. She took the rattan peacock chair, its high back flared out in the shape of a lightbulb, its woven seat made a crackling sound under her weight. The sun fell directly on Tillie, warm and golden, brightening her face, giving the tan wickerwork that circled her head a radiant glow. I sat in a smaller companion chair, the sun at my back. Maybe we could work out a deal. She could cancel her new plans, go back to the old itinerary, and I could forget all about what I’d overheard. After all the good work she’d done, didn’t she deserve....
“This bus trip you are on with us—it’s quite out of the ordinary,” she said, her voice stronger now. “We’re doing it for show. Sigrid likes the optics.”
Her brazen words seemed intended to rattle me. They succeeded.
“For show?”
“I usually fly from city to city, continent to continent. First class. And there’s not another form of transportation that releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere—the very thing I rail so vehemently against from the podium only hours after touchdown. I suppose this shocks you.”
I sat stupefied.
“What hangs in the balance of our fight is the fate of hundreds of millions of people. Think about that. Hundreds of millions. Hence the necessity of my going to Aspen.”
The connection eluded me.
“Do you know Eric Nagel?” she asked.
“Not quite rich enough to make the Forbes 100 list, but he didn’t miss by much.” It felt good to say something knowledgeable, even though I’d never heard of Nagel until yesterday and all my knowledge about him came from reading his Wikipedia page.
“We’ve been angling to get close to him for two years—unsuccessfully. Now he wants to meet. The difference he could make. The people he knows.” Tillie leaned back, pinning me in her gaze. Her face soured. “And you come here, with your . . . piddling, sanctimonious accusations.”
I looked away. This was Tillie McBivens, angry, glaring at me with her lips curled as if she had a worm in her mouth. And I—I was used to sitting alone, typing away on my laptop in the library or Starbucks or the crappy cubicle I had access to because I volunteered at an underfunded nonprofit.
“The important question is not my behavior, but yours,” she said, her extended finger pointing right between my eyes. “Do you really want to be on the outside, throwing rocks at me? Battling editors who know in their hearts I’m right. Will you brand yourself as an obstructionist, an impediment to a necessary—a righteous—crusade? You don’t want to be on the wrong side of the greatest moral divide in human history.”
~ ~ ~
As far as my fellow journalists were concerned, Tillie’s cancelled Las Vegas appearance was a windfall, a free day in San Diego. Laura Chatham told me she was going scuba diving off a charter boat; Chuck Protzman was headed to UCLA for a Krzysztof Kieślowsk film festival. I tried not to be distracted by the sounds of people having fun around the hotel pool while I holed up in my room and transcribed notes, worked on my story, and most of all thought about what Tillie had said. Being on the tour was my big break. I couldn’t afford to screw this up.
In San Jose and San Francisco, we shuttled from one event to another, morning to night. Wednesday, we rolled into Sacramento just in time for the President Pro Tem of the California State Senate to present Tillie with a Generational Icon award. A lunch with the governor followed. That night in the city’s largest hotel ballroom, Tillie delivered the after-dinner address at the Tech and Transformation Conference. The last thing she said in her speech was:
“There will be sacrifices, there will be pain, but in the end, I believe we will be stronger, wiser, more aware; better creatures living in a world made better by our acts of courage and consciousness, of resistance and faith.”
Afterward, the ten of us waited in the hotel lobby for the van to arrive. The driver telephoned to say he was stuck at a wreck and would be delayed. I looked around at the colleagues I had gotten to know during the past week. Tomorrow morning, they would load themselves back in the van, drive north to the California redwoods where a protest group was blocking a logging operation. Tillie would use the opportunity to—well, suffice it to say the McBivens juggernaut would roll on and on and on. But minus one rider. For me, Sacramento was the end of the line.
I made a visit to the lobby restroom and was standing at the sink when the door pushed open and in walked Tillie and Sigrid. I hadn’t been alone with either of them since the penthouse in San Diego.
Tillie stopped to talk. “Les told me you’ll be leaving us.”
I nodded. “How was your time in Aspen with Mr. Big?”
“Well,” she said with a sly smile, “he asked me to join him for a weekend at his ranch in New Mexico.”
“Oh,” I said. “That sounds promising.”
“Anything can happen,” she said with a merry roll of her eyes. “Better to be invited than not.”
Sigrid cut in, “It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, Abbie. Good luck.” She put her hand on Tillie’s shoulder, the way a chief of staff does when it’s time for a conversation to end.
Tillie took my hand and held it in both of hers. “Anytime you want an interview,” she said, giving me a warm wink, “just give a call.”
The van soon arrived, and I boarded for the short hop to the hotel. When we climbed off, I approached Laura Chatham—her blonde locks somehow still in place even after a fourteen-hour day. We joked that maybe our paths would cross again on another tour. She wrapped her arms around me, patted my back, and whispered into my ear, “Time for the baby bird to fly.” Holding me at arm’s length, she gripped my shoulders and stared at me with those blue blue eyes. “Go do something great.”
My tears were starting up. Chuck Protzman was nearby and as I hugged him too—like it was the last day of high school.
“You wanna come with us for a drink?” Laura asked.
I waved off the invitation and watched her walk away. Such a pro. Nothing would faze her. Plague, revolution, World War Three—Laura Chatham’s hair would always be perfect.
As soon as I was in my room I knelt at the minibar and checked out the selection. A little airplane bottle of Gray Goose went down in a couple of swigs and I unscrewed the cap on a half-bottle of chardonnay. Walking to the bathroom for a cup, peeled off its plastic wrap, and poured the wine. I sipped, kicked off my shoes, and fired up my laptop.
There it was, the story—just as I had left it when I finished it early this morning. I reviewed it one last time, changed a word here, cut a line there. But even as I polished the prose, my mind drifted. What incredible luck I’d had—to be in just the right place at just the right time to lasso the meteor that was Tillie McBivens. What kind of a ride was I in for?
I poured the last of the chardonnay, tossed it back and acted on the impulse to throw the empty cup across the room. The story rocked. It was the best thing I had ever written—by a mile. Way too good for Woke World. I had plenty of material and would write them another story—I owed them that much—but they wouldn’t get this one. No, this story I could place someplace better, maybe a lot better. I didn’t necessarily have the contacts to get me in the door at that bigger publication, but I knew who did.
Laura Chatham answered her cell in a voice loud enough to be heard over the din of the lively bar. I told her what I wanted. Yes, she’d be happy to send me the personal email address for a guy she used to date, the editor in charge of national news at The Atlantic.
I wrote the guy a note—dropping Laura’s name and sending her warmest regards—and used the paperclip icon to attach the story document. On my laptop’s screen the cursor hovered above the send button. For some reason I paused, and there came a thought that I recognized as a gift from TMB: Surfing the zeitgeist, you make your own waves. I tapped the keyboard and off went my words under the headline “Tillie McBivens—Pants on Fire.”
