“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
“We create a relationship,” Kent says, as though it’s so simple. “We create a breakup. And then we create a show.”
Silence. Again.
I can’t wrap my mind around it. The pieces are there, but every one of them seems to belong to a different puzzle. Kent wants us to pretend to date—no, to pretend to have dated. My boss, Seattle radio legend Kent O’Grady, wants to pretend we had a relationship and then talk about dating on public radio.
Someone wants me to be on the radio.
“So we lie.” Dominic folds his arms across his chest. His shirtsleeves are pushed up again, exposing his lean forearms, and he jerks his head toward Kent’s wall of awards. “All of that, and you want us to lie.”
“I’ve got to keep this station afloat,” Kent says. “We need a hit show, and we need one fast. No one wants to listen to career hosts anymore. They want fresh blood, and that might be you two.” He taps the desk between us. “We don’t have the time or the budget to train two new people, or to bring on someone else’s ex. You two have the chemistry. And we’re all storytellers, aren’t we? So we tell the best breakup story. We’re not lying—we’re bending the truth.”
Storytelling. Lying. There’s a blurry line between them.
“Picture it: an hour-long weekly show. A podcast. A hashtag. Branded swag, even. We could make this big.” Kent has become a salesman. “How incredible would it be to have a show with national appeal attached to the KPPR name? WHYY has Fresh Air, WBEZ has This American Life . . . we could have whatever this show is.”
For a moment, I do allow myself to picture it: sitting in the big studio, a microphone in front of me, callers waiting on the line.
“The Ex Talk,” I say quietly.
“What was that?” Kent says.
I repeat it, a little more conviction in my voice.
“The Ex Talk . . . yes. Yes. I like that a lot.”
The way he talks about it, this show that was only an idea a few hours ago, feels almost real, like something I could reach out and touch. He’s clearly spent the day figuring out the best way to spin this. Maybe that’s how a program director’s mind works, or maybe he really is that desperate for something new.
Kent wants me to lie.
Kent wants me to host a show.
“My voice,” I say. The two men turn to me, as though they know exactly what’s wrong with my voice, but they’re unwilling to acknowledge it unless I explain it. As though it’s okay to insult someone if they insult themselves first. “What? You both know what I sound like. Me on the air would be a disaster.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Kent says. “Public radio loves unique voices. Sarah Vowell, Starlee Kine. Shocking, but there are even people who don’t like Ira Glass. And you want to be on the air.” He says it like he knows the way I gaze longingly at Paloma during Puget Sounds.
“Well . . . yes,” I say. “But this isn’t about what I want.” Is it? I’m no longer sure.
This can’t be a real conversation. We’re not really talking about me on the air—with Dominic of all people, hosting a show based on a relationship we never had. I must have tumbled into an alternate reality yesterday: Ameena’s job interview she’s positive won’t lead to a job, my mother’s engagement, my fake relationship and fake breakup with Pacific Public Radio’s newest star reporter. Any moment, Carl Kasell will come back to life and record a message for my voice mail.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Dominic says, and he looks so upset, so perplexed that I actually feel a little sympathy for him. It’s about the size of one of Paloma’s chia seeds. “The mayor resigned. We had this massive story, and now—now you want to pull me off news to do a fluff show?
“And you did an incredible job with that piece.” Kent sips his tea. “But it was also only one piece, and one piece does not a career make. Being a reporter, that’s a lot of pressure. Those investigations are exhausting. You think you can turn out piece after piece like that?”
Dominic plants his elbows on his knees and stares at the floor, a blush creeping onto his cheeks, and there’s another new emotion: embarrassment. He wants Kent to believe in him, the way he’s grown accustomed to since he started. I’m reminded in that moment just how young he is. His master’s program was only a year—he could be as young as twenty-three.
Kent offers up a sympathetic smile. “People loved you yesterday, Dominic,” he says, and this is what makes Kent a good manager: He knows exactly how to butter us up when he wants something, even if it means poking at our insecurities first. “And people would love you, too, Shay. They just have to get to know you. I didn’t want to say this to the whole staff, not yet, but . . .” He lets out a slow, measured breath. “There are going to be layoffs. It kills me to say that, it really does.”
Layoffs. The force of that word pins me to my chair. He’s talking about new programming when they’ve already planned on layoffs?
“Shit,” Dominic says, and I narrow my eyes at Kent.
“So that meeting was, what, a way for us to fight for our jobs?” I say. “Without even realizing it?”
“Lucky for you, you may have landed on some job security.”
“Lucky,” Dominic says under his breath. “Right.”
“What about my show?” I ask. The meeting’s pie charts flash through my mind. I already know what he’s going to say, and it feels like he’s shoved his desk right into my chest. I didn’t realize this potential new show came at the cost of gutting Paloma’s.
“I’m so sorry, Shay. The numbers don’t lie. It’s the lowest-performing of all our shows, and we’re going to have to cancel it. I wish I didn’t have to do this. The board has been talking about this for months, and my hands are tied. I was planning to tell you and Paloma tomorrow.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“She’s being offered a very generous severance package,” Kent says. “I hate that we have to do this. I hate the layoffs. Absolutely hate it—it’s the worst part of my job. But it’s unavoidable.” His face brightens. “If you two agree to this, I want to do whatever I can to make you happy. You can pick your producer, in fact.”
“Ruthie,” I say immediately. “She’s the one who came up with the name.”
“Perfect. I wasn’t looking forward to letting her go—she’s a good one. You want Ruthie, she’s yours.”
Dominic stands, stretching up to his full height. “The board isn’t going to sign off on this.”
“You let me take care of that,” Kent says. “Next Friday. That’s when I need an answer, or I’ll give you both glowing recommendations and you can start working on your résumés.” He gazes settles on Dominic. “Because we have to cut some reporters, too.”
Dominic lets out a sharp breath, as though he’s been punched. I want to feel sorry for him. I want to feel sorry for Paloma, for everyone who’s going to lose their job. And I do, I swear, but—
People would love you, Shay, Kent said.
They would listen.
To me.
“Forget it,” Dominic says, his shoulders rigid as he heads to the door. “I’m not doing it.”
5
I drag a paintbrush across a canvas, squinting at the photo of an apple orchard and then at my rendition of it. A few red blobs, a few green blobs. Not exactly a masterpiece.
“And then he basically insinuated you’d lose your jobs if don’t do the show?” Ameena asks, dipping her brush in forest green.
“Yep. Brutal, right?”
She lets out a low whistle. “More like borderline illegal. I should talk to some of my friends in HR.”
We’re at Blush ’n Brush, a monthly paint night at a local wine bar. We’ve been going after work for a while now as a way to relieve stress, though Ameena is much more talented than I
am. It may actually be increasing my stress. As a result, I have a handful of mediocre paintings of trees taking up space in my guest room. Who’s visiting? Why do I have a guest room? Everyone I know lives in Seattle, but I didn’t know what else to do with my house’s third bedroom.
“It’s not like that,” I insist. “He just really cares about the station. But none of it matters, since Dominic said he won’t do it.” Which means unless he has a change of heart in the next ten days, we’re both jobless.
“Shit. I am so sorry.”
The reality of the layoffs hasn’t sunk in yet. It’s only been a couple hours since our meeting with Kent, and I must be clinging to The Ex Talk like a life raft. My chance to be on the air, to explore something fresh and exciting and different, is in the hands of someone who has made it clear I’m not his favorite person. And sure, he’s never been mine, but I imagine I could tolerate him if it meant hosting my own show.
“I know you,” Ameena continues. “You really want this, don’t you?”
“I really, really do.” I let out a sigh and dip my brush into water before swishing it into light blue paint. A sky—surely I can manage not to fuck that up too badly. It’s only when I swipe it across the canvas that I realize it’s the same shade as the shirt Dominic wore today. “It’s stupid, I know. I’ve already come up with individual show ideas, and then I started brainstorming a logo on my drive here . . . but it’s pointless.”
“Hey. It’s not stupid.” She bites down on her bottom lip. “But speaking hypothetically, you’d be lying, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that a little . . . anti-journalism?”
I use Kent’s rationale: “It’s storytelling. We’d be acting, in a sense. Most hosts put on a different personality. No one’s exactly the way they are on the radio—so much of that is for show. You create this personality specifically for people to connect with.”
“Makes sense when you put it that way, I guess,” she says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “So. Dominic. You’re at least going to try to persuade him, right?”
“No idea how, but yes.”
“What is it about him that you dislike so much?”
I groan, both at her question and at how I’ve somehow turned the sky in my painting into a muddy brown mess. “He thinks he knows everything about radio, he waves his master’s degree around like it makes him some authority on journalism, and the idea of cohosting with him, being on equal footing . . . well, at least it’s better than him thinking I’m beneath him.”
“Is he cute?”
“What?” I choke on my pinot. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Ameena shrugs and glances away, feigning disinterest. “Nothing, really. I’m just curious.”
“I mean—objectively—he’s not bad-looking,” I manage to get out, trying not to think about his forearms or his height but instead about the way it feels when he has to crane his neck to look down at me. Could I really deal with that five days a week?
A slight smile curves her lips as she sips her glass of rosé.
“Shut up,” I tell her.
“I didn’t say a word.”
The instructor walks by our row and gushes over Ameena’s painting.
“Beautiful work as usual, Ameena,” she says. She turns to me and her smile tightens. “It’s coming along. You’re really improving.”
Ameena beams. I roll my eyes.
“Here’s the weirdest part to me,” Ameena says. “Are you sure you’d be okay with the idea of talking about your past relationships on the radio? Airing all that dirty laundry?”
I consider this. “I guess I’d have to be. My laundry isn’t that dirty, is it? There hasn’t been anyone serious since Trent.”
Trent: a developer with kind eyes and prematurely gray hair I went out with for three months at the beginning of last year. He was a regular pledge drive supporter, which was what made me swipe right. On our first date, he told me how badly he wanted a family. We spent every weekend together, and I got attached fast. We went to farmers’ markets and state parks and very serious plays. I liked how he held me in bed, how he buried his face into the nape of my neck and told me how much he liked waking up next to me. I assumed love was the next step after like, but when I blurted it out on our way to meet my mother for brunch one Sunday, he nearly veered off the road.
“I don’t know if I’m there yet,” he said.
We were listening to Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! and having our own contest, tallying up points based on getting the correct answers before the panelists did. I shut it off immediately, not wanting this experience to ruin the show for me.
We could still have a good time, he insisted. It wouldn’t make things weird, knowing I loved him and he didn’t. But he broke it off that night, after the most uncomfortable eggs Benedict of my life.
I’ve always been staunchly anti-brunch, and Trent confirmed that stance.
People say they want something serious, but as soon as it starts heading that way, they bolt. Either they’re lying, or they realize they don’t want something serious with me. Hence my hiatus. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to get married someday. It’s just that the “someday” sounded much further away when I was twenty-four versus twenty-nine.
“I’ve offered to clone TJ,” Ameena says with a shrug. “Not my fault the technology isn’t advanced enough yet.”
I add more red to my tree. It looks gravely wounded, yikes. I’ll have nightmares if I put this up in my house. “Honestly, my biggest worry, more than Dominic or the content, is my voice.”
“Shay,” Ameena says gently, because she knows my history with it. I even used to beg her to make important phone calls for me.
“Seriously, Ameena. Who wants Kristen Schaal when they could have, like, Emily Blunt?”
“I like a unique voice. Most of the old white NPR dudes sound the same to me. And I hate the sound of my voice, too. Voice mail is the worst.”
“It’s not just a voice mail. It would be an hour every week. And a podcast, too.”
“What would a mediocre white man do?” she asks.
Ameena and I started saying this years ago, after she had a seminar about diversity in the workplace. Ameena is Indian, and she relayed that women, especially women of color, are statistically less likely to ask for things men don’t think twice about. WWAMWMD, one of us will text the other when we need support.
“A mediocre white man would probably have a perfect radio voice,” I say. “Enough about me. What’s going on with that conservancy job?”
Ameena tries to look nonchalant. “They moved me forward. I have a second phone interview next week.”
I let out a squeal. “Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” she says, and then forces a laugh. “Still convinced they’re throwing me a bone here, but I have to admit, it was a nice ego boost.”
“And you really feel like leaving Seattle?”
“I like Seattle,” she says after a brief hesitation, “but I might be ready for a change.”
Ready for a change. Ameena might get that job, and my mother is getting remarried, and my show is disappearing at the end of next week. A change as dramatic as leaving PPR—I’m positive I’m not ready for that.
“Apparently my mom is, too.”
“How . . . are you feeling about that?”
It’s been twenty-four hours, and they’ve already set a date: July 14. It’ll be mostly family, though my mother’s family consists of me and by extension Ameena and TJ, while Phil has his kids and their spouses and their kids. I suppose they’ll be my family soon enough.
“That’s a great question,” I say. “It feels so sudden, I guess.”
“Maybe, but they’re in their late fifties. There’s no point in waiting.”
“You’ll be there with me, right? Even if”—my voice catches—“even if you have to come from
Virginia?”
Ameena swipes my nose with the tip of her paintbrush. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”
* * *
—
Home: lights on, podcast loud. I check each room, making sure I’m alone. It’s not that I’m worried someone broke in and is hiding behind a door, waiting to murder me, it’s just—well, there’s no harm in knowing for sure.
This is normal. Everyone who lives alone must do this.
Once I’ve determined my home is murderer-free, I settle into the rest of my evening: pajamas, laptop, couch. I have a home office, but I prefer the living room. The TV makes the room feel a bit less lonely, even when it’s not on. I’ll probably spend some time with my newest vibrator later, if only because the conversation with Ameena made me realize it’s been nearly a year since I’ve had sex. Going solo isn’t quite the same, but I have a routine. Lord knows I’ve had enough time to perfect one.
It’s when I unzip my laptop from my work bag that it hits me—by the end of next week, I may not have a job to overwork myself with.
Instead of opening my work email, I log on to my bank account. I have enough in savings to last me a few months, and I imagine I’d collect unemployment. However that works—I’m not entirely sure. It feels like something I should know, but I’ve only ever had this one job. Does the government just . . . give you money? God, I am a disaster millennial. I pull up the Puget Sounds archives, convinced we did a show about this at some point, but our search function is painfully outdated, and I grow frustrated with it before finding the information I’m looking for.
My next stop is the public media jobs board some of my PPR colleagues have talked about. There’s a producer job in Alaska. A reporter job in Colorado. A managing editor job in St. Louis.
Nothing in the entire state of Washington.
I knew jobs in public radio were hard to come by, but I didn’t realize it was quite this bad. I press a hand to my chest, trying to calm my increasingly panicky breaths. If I’m not in public radio, I have no idea what I’d be doing. This is all I know, all I’ve ever known. And sure, some of those skills are transferable, but I’m not ready to leave this field. I love radio too much to let it go.
The Ex Talk Page 5