Ten Years Later

by Lisa Marie Latino

  “Stacy dumped me,” he howled. “I don’t care about my life. I want to DIE!” He squatted down to sit in a chair that wasn’t there.

  “Dante!” I flinched as I watched him fall hard on the wood floor. He had no reaction to bruising himself; he just took a big sip of his beer and curled up in a ball, hysterically laughing.

  I slid my arms underneath his armpits and tried to prop him up. “I know you’re drunk, but please, I need to get you to the station.”

  He took another sip of his beer. “Whatever, man.”

  After I got him steady on his feet, I went to collect the binder that I knew he kept his show notes in. When I turned back around, I saw him stumble towards the door and trip over the sneaker I had thrown at him earlier, his beer bottle shattering on impact. “Ouch,” he muttered, his right cheek planted firmly on the floor.

  “Jesus Christ!” I gasped. I inspected his face to make sure he wasn’t bleeding, but he didn’t have a scratch on him. I grabbed his left arm and again helped him up, avoiding the shattered glass. “Hold on tight to me,” I ordered, draping his arm around my shoulders. We walked slowly out of his apartment, down the stairs, and into my car. He was nearly passed out as I buckled his seatbelt. What a disaster.

  I flew down Route 1&9 towards the Holland Tunnel. Judging by the cars I left in my dust, I must have been going over 90 miles an hour. How I didn’t get pulled over was a miracle.

  “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Go faster!” Dante squealed, suddenly alive. “I feel like I’m on a roller coaster!”

  “A roller coaster ride to hell,” I replied. But at least he was showing signs of life; I had to keep him talking. “So what happened with Stacy?”

  “Oh, you mean the BITCH?!”

  “That’s the one!” I snickered, not taking my eyes off the road.

  “She couldn’t handle me being on the air and working on weekends. She’s a very jealous, immature, bad, evil girl. But I love her.”

  A chill ran up my spine as he spoke those last words. The only time I’d heard Dante utter that phrase was in song.

  “Soooo what do I do?” he slurred. “I’ve never been dumped before.”

  I chuckled. “Well, everyone’s different. But every approach generally contains crying, massive amounts of alcohol, and listening to the saddest songs ever recorded. So congratulations, you’ve already mastered the basic art of the heartbreak.”

  “You’ve spent half your life doing that? That’s a horrible time.”

  “Thanks for that,” I replied sarcastically. “But I would watch your mouth, Ezra. Remember who came to your rescue tonight.”

  No response.

  “Dante?” I looked over and saw him clenching his stomach, his face twisted in pain.

  “Pull over,” Dante moaned.

  “Um, can you wait five minutes? I’m almost in New York.” Indeed, I was about to speed through the EZ Pass lane to enter the tunnel.

  “Pull over,” Dante repeated. I noticed he was dripping sweat, and could tell he was about to throw up all over my car.

  “Un-FUCKING-believable,” I screamed, accelerating into a gas station.

  “Don’t do that!” Dante grunted. “You’re driving is making me sick.”

  I jerked to a complete stop, making Dante moan even louder. “Lose your lunch and let’s go!” I ordered.

  Dante swung the door open, and without stepping out of my car, promptly vomited all over the pavement. My hands immediately covered my nose, but the putrid smell still managed to seep into my nostrils. “You couldn’t even get out of the car? You better not be getting any of that inside!” I threatened.

  A couple minutes later, he was done. “Sorry,” he sighed, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “I feel so much better now.”

  “I’m so happy for you,” I replied, trying to dig up some gum and hand cream in my purse while clasping my nose tighter. “Now I’m going to be sick.”

  I pulled up to the station at 2:45a.m., 45 minutes after Dante was supposed to be on the air. I kicked him out of the car.

  “Just say you had food poisoning and that you were so sick you couldn’t answer your phone,” I instructed.

  “You’re not coming upstairs with me?”

  “Are you kidding me? No!”

  “But girls NEVER decline the opportunity to go upstairs with me!” Dante proclaimed, awkwardly raising his eyebrows up and down.

  “Get out!” I growled.

  His face fell. “Thanks for the ride,” he mumbled, and exited my car.

  On my drive home, I flipped on the radio to WSPS. I was scared for what I might hear, but it would serve both Dan and Dante right for being so irresponsible in their respective roles.

  As it turned out, Dante sounded as if nothing was wrong. You would never have known that minutes before, he was a drunken mess, rocking out to Lilith Fair tunes and yakking all over an Exxon station. I promptly shut off the radio.

  Starting the next morning, I would be sending my resume to every station in the country. I’d had enough.

  12

  Day 99

  I was the first to arrive the morning of Katie’s grand opening. WSPS would be broadcasting live from her shop later in the day, and I had to make sure the engineer had properly set everything up. But I would have been there early regardless; I was her unofficial head of marketing, plus Katie had shrouded the renovations in secrecy and forbade anyone to see anything but the finished product. I was dying of curiosity.

  While I’m still WSPS’s bitch, I had made good on my vow and had spent the past two weeks e-mailing and snail-mailing my resume and demo tape—the same one I cut with Dante—to nearly fifty radio station program directors around the country (contacts I never would have gotten had Laney not broken into Dan’s Rolodex). One of the programmers I contacted was Ruby Smith’s former Los Angeles boss; I knew it was a long shot, but getting a job there would have been the sweetest of poetic justices!

  I was going to cut a new tape, but I decided the old one was too good to let it go to waste. While I knew I ran the risk of (again) having these people inquire about Dante instead of me, I wasn’t sweating it. I doubted Dante would leave the bright lights of the number one market in the world to challenge me for a morning drive sportscaster position in Green Bay, Wisconsin (regardless of his being a huge Aaron Rodgers fan) or for a weekday evening host job in LaSalle-Peru, Illinois.

  I hadn’t heard from Dante since I had to swoop in and save his professional life two Fridays before. You would think I’d at least get a “thank you,” but it’s me we’re talking about here. (In my past life, I was probably a garbage receptacle.) After a few phone calls and text messages went unanswered, I decided to leave him alone. I figured he was probably wallowing in his misery over Stacy, and I certainly knew what it felt like to cut myself off from the world after a bad breakup. However, Katie had mentioned to me that she booked him to sing for the grand opening. Why he would take her calls and not mine remained a mystery.

  While we’re on the topic of being ignored…there has been nary an acknowledgment that these program directors even received my stuff. They say no news is good news, but was it too much to let me know that they were reviewing my materials? I just prayed that my packages weren’t collecting dust underneath another fifty-five submissions, or that my e-mails weren’t decaying away in someone’s inbox.

  I thought about the implications of getting that “amazing” job offer from a program director in Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula, Mississippi. Could I, a dyed-in-the-wool Jersey girl, survive in Middle America? That certainly didn’t jive with my master 10-year reunion plan, but what had lately?

  There were other things to consider. This move would mark the first time living on my own. Would I be able to handle a new job in a foreign environment while actually running a household? Then again, how much time could be spent maintaining a 500-square foot studio apartment, the most space I could probably afford? I’d work Monday-Friday, clean and do laundry on the weekends, and live off o
f wine, cereal and ramen noodles. It could work. Who knew, maybe I wasn’t given the golden opportunity because I had more dues to pay, and this was my penance. Most A-List stars came from the humbling beginnings I just described; they didn’t get their big break while commuting to auditions from Mommy and Daddy’s sprawling Colonial tucked away in the suburbs.

  Besides, I wouldn’t be staying for too long. I’d be there for six months, tops. A bigger market, like Detroit (or Los Angeles!), would snatch me up in a second, and in a year’s time, I’d be back in New York!

  Another option I was exploring was the idea of resurrecting my old college radio show, Girl in the Locker Room and starting a weekly online radio show. I had a built in audience (the WSPS Internet stalkers) and enough contacts to book two guests per one-hour show to last me ten years, so why not? Let it become a huge success, and then let Dan come back and tell me I had no experience!

  While I waited for answers, I’d also worked on marketing another entity: Katie’s Kakes, the resurrected Kettle Black. I couldn’t talk my friend out of the Kardashian-esque name, but it was growing on me. Another thing I couldn’t sway Katie on was her choice of an interior decorator. When she told me that she wanted to enlist my mother’s services, I was worried that my friend had fallen seriously ill. So many theories entered my mind. Did she have a walking concussion? Was this a sign of early onset dementia? Was she suffering from a stage four brain tumor? (She resisted all attempts to be driven to the emergency room.) In other words, who would want to pay money to hang out with Mom at her neurotic worst? But I let her win that debate; Katie wanted to have the place up and running in less than two months’ time, and there was a lot of work to be done.

  Katie paid me to help her design the logo, print business cards, format the menu and create the website. I’d publicized the grand opening event by hanging up flyers around town, taking out ads in the local newspaper, and posting about it on social media networks. Furthermore, I’d booked the mayor of Honey Crest to participate in the ribbon cutting ceremony.

  But my biggest contribution was getting WSPS involved. As a favor to me, Tommy somehow convinced Dan to let him broadcast a special one-hour Saturday afternoon show live from Katie’s Kakes (for free) while also finagling the marketing department to lend promotional support to the event (also for free). Apparently, he still felt bad about how things went down with Ruby. Why else would he be in supreme ass-kissing mode? (No complaints here!)

  “How can I ever repay you, Carla? Look at everything you’ve done. You are so good at this!” Katie gushed last Thursday when I told her the news about WSPS.

  “Maybe I missed my calling,” I replied sarcastically.

  “Maybe you did!”

  For a split second, after that conversation, I thought about returning to school and getting a marketing degree. I had a knack for it, and it was definitely fun, but radio was my true love. The marketing/public relations world didn’t give me the same rush that engulfed my body whenever we broke a huge sports story, or the awestruck sensation I felt whenever I met a legendary athlete, or the butterflies I felt whenever we did a remote broadcast from a huge event, like the World Series.

  But I had to admit; when I approached the doors of Katie’s Kakes, I felt the charge of excitement that the good parts of my job always brought. Everything we worked so hard on was about to come alive.

  When I stepped inside the café, my jaw hit the floor in astonishment. Katie’s Kakes was stunning. My mom had transformed the grungy coffee house into a modern yet comfortable masterpiece. She tossed the 30-year-old dark green shaggy carpet that adorned Kettle Black’s floors and refinished the dark wood that was hiding underneath. The walls, once painted a light brown, were now a brilliant shade of burnt orange, accented by mirrors and abstract artwork of coffees and cakes. Gone were the tattered plaid couches, and in their place were sleek, golden olive green booths that outlined the perimeter of the seating area (the drapes that hung from the windows matched that translucent color). The booths were partnered with black wooden chairs and tables, and each tabletop was lit up by a small ceramic pumpkin lamp, in celebration of Halloween, which was a week away. In one back corner, a small platform stage had been constructed, which featured a keyboard and sound system for musical acts. I saw the WSPS engineer, Gus, fiddle with the equipment in the other back corner, where Tommy would be doing his show. I gave him a quick wave before turning to examine the large glass display case that was situated on the opposite side of the room. It was filled to the brim with Katie’s various creations that sweetly fragranced the entire room.

  I picked up a black leather-bound menu from the hostess station and flipped it open. I smiled as I read its contents, not only because it was beautifully designed (if I do say so myself) but because of what was being offered. Katie took Kettle Black’s selections and ratcheted things up to the next fifty levels. While she still served all the traditional coffee house fare, she now offered zany desserts like banana cake topped with whipped peanut butter mousse frosting and bacon. Katie’s Kakes also featured breakfast, the cornerstone being the incredible pancake assortments, like brown sugar oatmeal or blueberry sour cream (I think I gained five pounds by merely reading of these creations.)

  “Carlaaaaa!” Katie sang, running around the counter to envelop me in a huge hug. Next to her, I felt very overdressed. I had on a purple sweater dress, black leggings, and peep toe pumps. My brown hair was blown out in big, bouncy curls, and I sported a face full of makeup. Meanwhile, Katie had on a black apron with an orange “Katie’s Kakes” embroidered in sprawling calligraphy and dirty white sneakers. Her strawberry blonde hair was piled in a messy bun atop her head, and she had on not a lick of makeup. Despite her ragged appearance, her face glowed as if she had just left an all-day spa. “Do you like it?”

  “This is amazing!” I exclaimed. “You don’t know how proud I am of you.” Truer words have never been spoken. I NEVER would have been able to pull off 1/16th of what Katie did in such a short amount of time. I got stressed to the point of gray hairs producing a five hour radio show; I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to oversee not only my show, but all the shows, and marketing, and accounting, and hiring, and sales…

  “Thank you!” Katie squealed, breaking our embrace. “I know you think your mom is crazy—and she is, there is no denying that—but damn, she knows her stuff!”

  “I know.” I winced. “Just be prepared for her to act as if it’s her grand opening. She’s going to be bringing in a slew of potential clients today to show the place off.”

  “I don’t care what she does or who she brings, as long as they are paying customers!” Katie roared. “Mama has a rent to worry about!” She jumped over the counter and ran into the kitchen. She fluttered back out holding a small plate. “Try this,” Katie insisted. “It’s a salt chocolate cake, infused with potato chips!”

  I quickly grabbed the plate out of her hands. “You don’t have to ask me twice. Those are my two favorite things!”

  “I know!” Katie laughed. “Imagine if my old bosses saw what I’m serving? They would have a conniption! To them, offering flan was a walk on the wild side!”

  “Yeah, and look at them now. They are rotting in white-collar jail next to Bernie Madoff’s corpse,” I quipped. Katie giggled and skipped back into the kitchen. I chuckled at her hyperness as I took a bite of the cake. I rolled my eyes back in ecstasy.

  As I took another bite, I saw the WSPS promotions crew park the station’s vehicle out front to draw attention from the passing traffic. Moments later, Tommy’s black Mercedes pulled into the parking lot. I smiled as I watched Tommy pal around with the two promotions guys, who were busy constructing a tent under the October fall sun.

  A few minutes later, I saw Tommy and the promotional staff walk towards the door. I hurriedly put down the plate and took a mirror out of my purse to make sure nothing was in my teeth.

  “Hello, Daggs,” he greeted, throwing off his shades. He leaned over to give me a kiss on the
cheek. “This place smells and looks phenomenal.”

  “Hello. Thanks so much for coming, and yes, it’s beautiful,” I gushed, throwing the compact back in my bag. I gave him a quick hug and introduced myself to Ethan and Luis, who wore matching WSPS black polo shirts and barely looked old enough to drive.

  “So promotions will be outside and inside,” Tommy began. “Where will Dante and I broadcast from?”

  I pointed to where the engineer had set everything up. “Ethan and Luis, you guys go there, and you and Dante will be next to the broadcast tab…Wait.” I caught myself, realizing what Tommy had said. “You and Dante? What do you mean?” I barely noticed the two boys scurrying away.

  “Dan figured that, since Dante is from around here, we could do the show together,” Tommy shrugged. “I didn’t realize that Dante was also best friends with the owner! Small world!”

  “Too small,” I muttered. I tried to look at the (marginal) bright side. At least Dan hadn’t thrown Ruby into the mix!

  Tommy and I walked over to his section. Promotions quickly laid down WSPS key chains and t-shirts and other trinkets to give away to the “seagulls” (the nickname we give to the people that only come to our events for the free branded swag).

  “Tommy, where are you going to sit?” Ethan asked in a cracked, barely post-pubescent voice.

  “Right there,” Tommy said, pointing to the right. I saw Ethan grab two stacks of headshots and Sharpie markers out of his blue duffle bag, and dutifully placed a set of each in their designated areas.

  Curiously, I leaned over and picked up a photo from the left pile. Staring back at me, with his intense blue eyes and broad smile, was a close-up shot of Dante. On the bottom, it read “Dante Ezra” with the WSPS logo printed on either side. Had I not known what this was for, I would have thought it was an outtake from a GQ photo shoot.

  “It’s a sin how good looking that kid is,” Tommy interrupted, peering over my shoulder.