The Ex Talk
Page 27
I wave my arm. “The floor is yours. Start talking.”
As though weighing exactly how to explain his betrayal, he tugs on his tie, which today is patterned with tiny microphones, each of them mocking me. Ruthie is cross-legged on the other bed, holding tight to her messenger bag.
“The show’s been doing well,” Kent says. “You and Dominic are great, and listeners clearly love you.”
I don’t bother telling him all of that should be in the past tense.
“The board has had some concerns for a while. It took some sweet-talking to get them interested in the show at first, but I was able to manage it. They were finally excited about getting something new on our airwaves, especially something that had appeal beyond our own little station.” He sighs, pulling at his tie again. “But lately, the board has started to feel as though the show verges on a bit . . . suggestive for the station, for public radio in general. That it’s much better suited as a podcast. We can’t risk an FCC violation.”
“Then fine,” I say. “Why not just cut the live show and make us podcast only?” I have a hard time believing the board isn’t made up of primarily old cishet white men.
He shakes his head. “They didn’t want that, either. In their minds, the only option was to completely dissociate The Ex Talk name from Pacific Public Radio.”
Ruthie speaks up. “But why—” She glances over at me, her eyes uncertain behind her clear-framed glasses. “I can’t get past the fact that Shay and Dominic were okay with the lie from the beginning. That you all brought me onto this show without telling me.”
“Ruthie, I’m so sorry,” I say. “I know there’s no excuse, but—I wanted to tell you. So many times.”
“We were friends,” she says, and it hurts more than anything Kent’s said.
And yet something isn’t quite adding up. “Why sabotage us, though? Why not just take us off the air? Let Dominic go back to being a reporter?” His name is sour on my tongue.
“There was . . . interest. From some big podcast distributors. I knew they’d be coming for you both and offering the kind of money we wouldn’t be able to match.” He runs a hand over his lined, weather-worn face. “I can see now this was a terrible mistake, but I didn’t want the station to lose either of you. Whatever you’re doing at the station, Shay, whether you’re producing or hosting, you’re an exceptional employee. We don’t have anyone else like you.”
Funny, he’s never mentioned this to me before, not when I asked about my grief show or back when Puget Sounds was on the chopping block. How convenient that it’s coming up now.
I wonder if exceptional really means obedient.
“And you wanted to keep Dominic.”
A guilty smile. “Well—of course.”
“So you sabotaged us, right before the biggest show of our careers. You made it so if PPR couldn’t have us, then no one could? That wasn’t your decision to make!” I’ve leapt to my feet, anger pulsing through my veins. I’ve never known rage like this. “How are you that vindictive?”
“I didn’t know it would happen like this,” he insists. He has the gall to look sheepish. “Shay, I really am sorry. I didn’t think the audience would react the way they did.”
I don’t believe him. I think he planned for it to happen exactly like this. I’ve always viewed him as well-meaning—a little pushy, but ultimately a good guy. A good guy who wanted the best for his station and the best from his staff. And yet here he is, capable of destroying my career with a single click.
A single click after months of lying that I barely questioned.
“You don’t know how rough it is to keep this station afloat,” Kent says. “You think every media outlet is as noble as Dominic wants them to be? You think everyone in this field is motivated by doing good? All people want are clicks. No one wants content anymore. This is how we stay alive, Shay.”
I stalk toward him, wishing I had at least a few inches of Dominic’s height. “No. Not everyone. I refuse to believe that. That’s not what journalism is.”
“You agreed to this. If you still have some lofty idea of what journalism is, you’re selling a lie to yourself just like you did to your audience. It’s brutal out there, and all of us are just trying to fucking survive.”
The show took that integrity away from Dominic, too. And maybe he was complicit, maybe he was backed into a corner, but he went along with it. We both did.
“What do we do now?” Ruthie asks quietly. I’d almost forgotten she was still here, and I hate myself for it.
Kent pulls out a chair and sits down as calmly as he can beneath a serene watercolor landscape. If I could redecorate this room, I’d drape it in reds and oranges, take a knife to the fluffy pillows. Tear everything apart. “This is where it gets trickier, and believe me, I hate to do this, but it’s coming from the board. I’m just the messenger here.” Another transparent fucking lie. “I can’t keep all three of you on payroll. Not with the show gone. I could find a way to use Dominic as a researcher, at least until all of this blows over, then get him back on the air as a reporter. But I could probably only use one of you as a part-time producer . . .” His eyes flick expectantly between us.
I want to burn shit down. Apparently I’m not “exceptional” enough.
“Sure, you have space for Dominic,” I spit. “Are you serious? You’re saying Ruthie and I can choose who gets your special part-time producer job? I gave ten fucking years to this station, and you’re content to give me a consolation prize, while Dominic gets this cushy job that hundreds of people would kill for? Did you ever think that maybe the station is suffering because of you, Kent, and the way you manage it?”
“I know you’re a little fragile right now,” Kent says in a level voice, like he’s trying to reason with a toddler throwing a tantrum. “We’re all feeling emotional—”
“I’m not fucking fragile, and you can take your coded sexist language all the way to hell.” I head for the door. “I’m done. Even if you had more than half a job for me, I don’t want it.”
Ten years, and I no longer matter to the station. Kent’s never had any allegiance to me.
I leave the room, ready to unleash my fury on the one person who should have.
* * *
—
He’s in our hotel room.
He’s in our hotel room, calmly packing clothes into his suitcase like our careers didn’t just implode.
“Good news,” I tell him, surprising myself with how steady my voice is. “You still have a job.”
He drops the pair of socks he’s holding and turns to face me. His cheeks are pink and his shoulders are stiff and he somehow looks so small, like he’s folded himself into the suitcase alongside his button-down shirts and travel-size shampoo.
Last night, I thought I was in love with him.
Today, maybe the worst thing about all of this is that I still am.
“Shay,” he says. “I am so fucking sorry. I—”
“I talked to Kent,” I say, because as badly as I want an explanation, I have to catch him up on the meeting he missed because he fled the stage after embarrassing me in front of hundreds of people. Thousands on social media. “He was responsible for the tweets. Turns out, the board wanted to take the show off the air, and Kent was worried about us getting poached by a distributor. So he fucked us over. But like I said, you’re still more than welcome to stay on board as a researcher, while Ruthie and I get to fight over a part-time producer job.”
Dominic’s mouth drops open. “I can’t even—what?”
I head over to my own half-unzipped suitcase on the half-made bed we slept in last night and start throwing things into it haphazardly. I’m too jumbled, too furious to keep anything organized. “That’s not even the worst part. I don’t care about the fucking show.” Tears are stinging the backs of my eyes. “All I cared about was feeling like I wasn’t alone
up there while the audience destroyed us. And you could barely say a single word!”
“I’m so sorry,” he repeats, still looking stricken, losing another inch of his height. As though if he can make himself small enough, he’ll earn my forgiveness. But the apology feels flat, empty. “I really thought I was going to be okay. We had everything planned out, and you were being so great, and then—and then it went off the rails. And I didn’t have a script. I didn’t disagree with anything you were saying. You know that. I froze up. I wanted to say something, but I just—I couldn’t. I couldn’t even breathe up there once the accusations started.”
“Neither could I!” I shout. “You humiliated me. Last night, we—” I break off, pushing up my glasses and pressing my fingers into my eyes to keep the tears from dripping down my face. “We said we were trying a real relationship. I know you’re kind of new at this, but guess what, partners don’t abandon each other like this.”
The truth is this, though: Beneath the rage, I might be able to forgive him. Eventually. He is not his stage fright, and the more space I have from PodCon, the more I’d be able to see that. I’d need time to lick my wounds, but maybe we could get back a piece of what we had. We were so good together before today. I was so certain we would last.
“I could go back, talk to Kent . . .”
“You’re going to take that job?” I ask. “You actually want to keep working for that piece of shit?”
And he just looks at me, like not taking the job is something that would never have crossed his mind.
It’s a look that shatters any hope of reconciliation. This was why I didn’t want to get too deep. I love too much, too soon, and the other person can’t reciprocate. They always let me down. They just keep finding new ways of doing it, those innovative assholes.
“I—I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe? I can’t think clearly right now.”
“No, no, you should keep it. You’re the real journalist, right? Go talk to your buddy Kent. Real stand-up guy, that one. He’s always preferred you to me, anyway.”
“Fuck.” He rakes a hand through his hair, drags it down his face. His hair is the kind of mess I’d have loved to slide my hands into yesterday. “Fuck, Shay, I just want to make it up to you. Please tell me how to do that.”
“Sure. Why don’t you go run onstage and tell everyone you were part of this too, that I wasn’t the only fucking idiot up there?” When he’s silent, I shake my head. “The worst part is,” I continue as I hurl a toothbrush into my suitcase, unsure if it’s his or mine. “I thought I was falling for you. But I guess that was my stupid heart making me cling once again to someone who isn’t worth it.”
I watch his face, some masochistic part of me searching for an indication he felt the same way. There’s a flicker of emotion, but I’m pretty sure it’s just sadness. Not love.
“I don’t know what to say.” He sags onto the bed between our suitcases.
“Seems to be a common theme with you.” I try to zip up my suitcase, but I’ve arranged everything so awkwardly that it won’t close. “Maybe this was what you wanted all along. You were the one who was so uncertain about the show in the beginning. Now you don’t have to do it anymore.”
“I might have felt that way at first,” he admits, “but I loved doing the show. I loved doing the show with you.”
“Even if that’s true, the show was a bad decision from the beginning.” Another shove of my suitcase. Come on, come on, just fucking zip. You have one job. “All of it was a lie. Including us.”
“You can’t mean that. That we weren’t real. Here, let me help—”
“I’ve got it,” I say through gritted teeth, heaving all my weight on the suitcase to force the zipper closed, my breath rushing out of me once it’s done.
I want so badly to tell him that of course I meant everything I said to him. Of course I want to climb back in bed and let him hold me until I no longer feel so utterly, hopelessly lost. Of course we were real.
But frankly, I’m not sure anymore.
“Let’s go back to Seattle and give it some time,” he says. “Can we talk about it when we’re both calm?”
“I’m calm.” I haul my suitcase to the floor with a thump. “And I’m done talking. So I guess the next time I hear you will be when you’re back on PPR.”
The tears start falling as soon as I slam the door behind me.
33
I don’t remember the ride to the airport, the earlier flight I manage to catch, or the drive home. I’m numb as I pick up my suitcase from baggage claim, numb as I collect Steve from doggie daycare, numb as I refresh social media again and again until finally I have to disable my accounts because it’s all too goddamn much.
My name is a hashtag.
I am a joke.
The laughingstock of public radio.
Dominic has the nerve to text me.
Shay, I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.
I want to make it up to you.
Can we talk?
Delete, delete, delete.
When I flip on the lights in my house, sponsorship products glare back at me from every surface. Those corn shoes, which by the way smell terrible. The custom arch support that felt great for a day but then fucked up my feet. And if I have to look at one more fruit-and-nut bar, I’ll scream.
I crawl into bed—onto my free and actually somewhat life-changing memory foam mattress—and bury my face in Steve’s fur. He seems to get that I’m feeling down because he’s a muted version of his typically energetic self. I will throw my pity party alone and without shame. No one can judge me if no one knows about it.
“That includes you, Steve,” I mutter when I catch him giving me a particularly savage side-eye.
I zombie through the next few days. I ignore texts and calls from my mother and Ameena and TJ and Ruthie, ignore more texts from Dominic. The wedding is next week, and I know I’ll have to see Ameena and explain to everyone how big of a liar I am. But I’m not ready. Not yet.
I don’t let any of my podcasts update, and I don’t turn on the radio. I know our—their—pledge drive is soon, and I can’t bear to listen to them asking for money. If you call now and pledge a minimum of twenty dollars per month, you’ll get a KPPR T-shirt . . . I used to look forward to each year’s T-shirt design. They’re all in my drawer, from least to most recent, varying levels of softness as a result of countless wash-and-dry cycles. I love those shirts. I’m going to miss them.
Oh god. How many of those Ex Talk T-shirts will wind up at a Goodwill or in a Dumpster?
I devoted my twenties to public radio, and it feels wrong for it to have turned on me like this. And yet, the wild thing is . . . when I think about not having to go back to PPR, I feel something a little like relief. Sure, it’s buried beneath the heartbreak and the humiliation, but it’s there. The show is over. My public radio career might be, too, but not having to carry that lie makes me feel like I can stand up a bit straighter. I’ve been working myself to the bone, nights and weekends for years. Zero breaks. Maybe now I’ll have the time to decide what I really want.
Maybe once the social media backlash fades, once I’m no longer going through a bottle of wine a day, I’ll be able to see that this is actually a good thing.
After all, it saved me from the biggest relationship mistake of my life.
* * *
—
Day four post-PodCon, I finally turn on my laptop. I drag it over to the couch, push aside a takeout container to make room for another half bottle of wine. Instead of going straight to social media or the work email account I’m sure has been deleted, I open up a file I haven’t touched in forever.
My dad had all kinds of recording devices, some from this century and plenty that weren’t. We argued about analog versus digital in between recording our many “radio shows.” Eventually, I uploaded everything to my computer,
tucked away in a folder simply labeled with his initials, DG. Like only two letters would make it somehow easier to look at.
The thing about losing someone is that it doesn’t happen just once. It happens every time you do something great you wish they could see, every time you’re stuck and you need advice. Every time you fail. It erodes your sense of normal, and what grows back is decidedly not normal, and yet you still have to figure out how to trudge forward.
Ten years, and I am still losing him every day.
At first it’s really fucking hard to hear his voice through my laptop speakers. Our recording equipment was too good—there’s no static, nothing that makes it sound like the audio has aged even remotely.
“This is Dan and Shay Do the News,” he says in that perfect voice, and I suck down more wine.
I hear my eleven-year-old self giggle. “No, no, you’re supposed to say my name first.”
“Whoops, sorry, I forgot. Let’s try that again. This is Dan and Shay Do the—”
“Daaad, you did it again!”
“Oh shoot, did I? One more time—”
He was doing it on purpose, of course. I can hear it now.
I listen to the two of us spar, laugh, tell stories. It tugs at my heart, it aches, but it doesn’t give me the kind of clarity I was hoping for.
Fact: I loved doing these shows with my dad.
Fact: I wanted to grow up and be on the radio.
I dreamed of telling stories that would make people feel something—the same way radio did for me. For a while, hosting a successful show felt like an answer to the questions I’d had my whole life. It was validation.
The Ex Talk gave me that, just for a while, but if I’m being honest with myself, I hadn’t felt it on Paloma’s show in a long, long time.
I keep clicking through files. I’m already at rock bottom, so what’s a little more suffering?