by Jon Methven
We have managed a respectable following without ever inquiring into social media, until recently. Instead we owe our success to camaraderie: Charles Kreb and Alisson Lovato, our anchors; Melanie Trotter on traffic; and myself, Tom Pistilini, with the weather. We have been together for seventeen years. Viewers appreciate hearing about the world from the same faces, incrementally fatter and more tired and unable to secure jobs at stations for which our younger selves yearned. We are a safe bet for local advertisers wanting to sell cars or furniture or insurance, and who want to avoid major network costs.
I record the late night and early morning weather reports each afternoon, and we run the segments whenever there is something to say about the skies. I am in by nine, out before five. The past month or so, I have been suspiciously accurate in my prognostications. I am nowhere near as popular as other meteorologists. But when it comes to making conjectures about our atmosphere, as if we can predict anything so inconstant and wild, my instincts have honed.
We would go on this way, Charles and Ally and Trotter and Tom. But our tiny station was purchased by Lustfizzle Media, a pop culture company that runs a website backed by venture capital, wanting to add a television arm to its programming aimed at the millennial demographic. They have made few changes, but in the past month fresh faces roam the building, well dressed, smiling, watching. They have given their word they will not fire us—“Why would we break up the news team? It’s the reason we bought the station”—but we can smell the end, the way old dogs know when to take one last jaunt into the woods.
This morning I am joined in the studio by my producer, the little shit Whitman, a twenty-something wunderkind in charge of Lustfizzle’s innovative programming. Innovation includes blowing up a watermelon live on the Internet using only rubber bands, an event seen by nearly a million viewers. It includes dressing up interns in mascot garb and livestreaming them fishing in the East River, viewers wagering bets on who will catch the largest smelt; 1.7 million watched. I do not know if Whitman is the first or last name. Like Madonna or Prince or God, he just is.
“Over to Tom Pistilini with the weather,” says Allison Lovato. “Morning, Tom.”
“Good morning, Allison. And a chilly morning for New Yorkers. Sun’s peeking out over the East River, and we’re seeing temperatures slightly above average for this time of year. Expect some late-afternoon sunshine that’ll have folks rushing for the doors early. Guys, get those golf clubs ready. As long as you don’t mind a nippy round, this afternoon might be perfect for some warmup swings. Cold front moving in from Canada, but we’re not expecting too much rain since…” And on and on, seventeen years of atmosphere and precipitation, of telling people what hovers just outside their windows. I am sick today, wheezing and sweating, my report a congested failure. “Melanie Trotter! Good morning to you, and how’s the traffic?”
Whitman slaps my back, as if I have just completed broadcast history. He never pays attention to the Trotter Traffic Report, coming around me with a fist bump and passive aggressive flattery.
“Great job, Pisser.” We bump fists again and he produces sanitizer that he squeezes into both of our hands. I sneeze. A napkin is procured. He smiles, a pink mouth, teeth so white they seem like cartoon kittens. “That was momentous. The way you set up the sun. That thing about Canada. Working in the golf. So, so real. Like I could feel myself out there getting ready to pound one down the fairway. Dig?”
I sniffle. “Sure, dig.”
“You said, ‘Guys, get those clubs ready.’” He mocks my voice and the impersonation is superb, everything from my nasal delivery to the unintentional neck jiggle. My pocket buzzes. I ignore it. “Kind of sexist, don’t you think? Half the audience is female but you’re only talking to the men, people like you. Dig?”
It is early April. The only assholes on the golf course are men like me. Specifically, I am thinking of only one golf course, the seven holes that occupy Slancy’s western terrain just over the tree line in my backyard, where literally only assholes like me will pound balls down fairways until the weather warms. “Dig.”
“And the rain. You never mentioned it until the middle of the segment. Work that in early.” Again with the impersonation. “‘We got a stormy weekend ahead so make sure that rain gear is rocking.’”
“It probably won’t rain.”
“You said rain. Higgins, he say rain?”
“Rain,” calls Higgins, whoever Higgins is.
“All the other stations are forecasting a wet weekend.”
“There might be a passing shower, but in order for a storm we would need a cold front pushing under a warm front, which then releases moisture.”
Whitman watches me like I am a blathering idiot, a snot-spewing geriatric speaking a language unintelligible to his demographic distracted only by what is next. Up close, he can see what the makeup team covered, my splotchy skin, swollen eyes, the cut on my cheek, and bruised forehead. “You need catch phrases. Buzzwords. Teeth-chattering. Cold surge. Sweltering.”
“It’s just a mild weather day, Whit.”
“Whitman. Earthquakes, sinkholes, hurricane season. That’s the stuff that gets ratings. Give them what they want to hear. But be sensitive. Always remember, people are scared. I’m not trying to tell you your business, but work with me, Pisser.”
“You want me to talk about earthquakes? As in,” and now he’s got me impersonating myself, “The region will see a passing shower on Sunday but likely no earthquakes. In fact, we’re well below our earthquake quota for this time of year.”
Whitman claps on one leg, howls into a fist, delighted. He interrupted the Trotter Traffic Report, which will have to be redone. “That’s the shit.” He wraps an arm around my fat neck and tugs me down the hall. “You know what you’re missing, the one thing that would make the weather report thrive?”
“A death toll in the corner of the screen?” I know the answer because he told me already.
“Playfulness.” That word again, the bane of my pain in the ass life. He does a thing with his hands and then taps each side of his forehead. “If we can somehow get more playfulness into the weather report.” Hands over his head, spirit fingers. “Wow.”
I have to say this. Otherwise I am closed-minded, set in my ways, not willing to evolve, a curmudgeon. “I’ve got some ideas,” I lie.
“I need to hear those.” Another fist bump, he buttons a jacket, checks his phone, a call. “I got to take this, but your office in one and a half. We need to rap.”
I hate fist bumps. I hate sensitivity and delivering the news with a playful tone to make the rain and earthquakes seem less jarring. The good news is Whitman is too busy, too fast, his thoughts so entwined with digital domination that he has already forgotten our chat. I crumble into my office, hoping for a nap, only to discover Whitman already seated in my chair, staring at me with disturbing intensity.
I reach into my jacket and scatter a pill onto the table, wash it down with cold coffee. A few seconds pass and I feel no different, so I try another pill.
“Easy, Pisser. Those make you weird.”
Along with the erections and laughter, the blackouts are the major side effect. But there is also dry mouth, sleepy eye, a loss of hearing, intense concentration, improved lip reading, better association with the struggles of the disenfranchised. I have to defecate constantly. My nose occasionally bleeds. Luderica is currently being tested but does not have FDA approval. It contains chemicals used in pesticides, synthetic opioid, and dideoxyclosanide—a crucial ingredient in dandruff shampoo and gunpowder. Because it cannot be prescribed, I have no choice but to purchase the pills through backchannels. An anti-psychotic, anti-depressive, anti-everything, if Whitman had any idea his weatherman relied on trial pills to stay vertical, I would already be out of a job.
“How are things at home?” he says.
“Same. Iliza hates me. Gus is flunking out.”
“Laura?”
That’s Missus Pistilini to you. I shake my head. I still have two more weather reports and cannot discuss my marriage with Whitman, that I have doomed us with my negativity and failure, driven her into an emotional friendship, whatever that means.
He smiles, loves this part of our mornings, the mythic imposter and his suburbia woes. “Let’s talk chipmunk. You get rid of the rats yet?”
“Still working on it.”
“I told you already. Get a cat. Cats are smart, territorial, ruthless. They don’t take shit from items lower on the food chain.”
“I tried that.” Acting on Whitman’s advice, I went to a pet store and inquired if they sold hunting cats. The woman phoned security, informing me that pet stores now have security. “All the pets have these cards on the cages describing their personalities. Friendly, snuggly, napper, frisky. I want a cat that likes to kill things that trespass.”
“Thousands of cats nobody wants and you’re the only guy who can’t find one.” Whitman slaps the table. “Twenty strays within a block of this place.”
“Tried that, too.” I show him the scratch. He’s bent over again until we tire of each other’s small talk. And then, “Listen, Pisser, about those pages you gave me.”
Sitting in front of him on my desk, the folder open, is the new investment outline for Moveable Museums, my neighbors’ tourism company. Did I leave it on my desk? Or did I give it to Whitman, as he suggests? Laura is the intelligent branch of our family tree and reviews the fine print of financial arrangements. But Whitman is dependable, in ways I cannot quite place, and I occasionally fish for his thoughts on mortgage questions. This document, however, is extremely private. I don’t think I would have showed him.
He kicks up a leg, looks longingly into the wall to consider the question. “Why do you think you left them for me to read over?”
“This is confidential.” Standing, I push the pages into the envelope, scattering some on the floor. “You have no right to go through my affairs.”
“I think you did it on purpose.” He reopens the folder to find a segment he earmarked. “Have you read through this yet?”
“A little bit.” I was planning to read it all, which is why I brought it to work, although I am fairly certain I intended to keep it private. Whitman has me curious. “Something catch your eye?”
He seems a decade older than me as he considers the question. “You’re strange, Pisser. But you’re not strange evil.” He taps the folder. “This is diabolic.”
He turns to a page that covers the lifeblood of the new venture into novel tourism. The business plan outlines former locations of mass shootings, some of them schools. Familiar names: Newtown, Connecticut, and Columbine, Colorado. Historic locales: Bath Township, Michigan, and Austin, Texas. I know the broad strokes of the proposal. If I have left them here, open on my desk for Whitman’s perusal, I am likely hoping he will validate my belief that we are no guiltier than employees with 401ks who invest in the gaming industry, or companies that build weapons or engage in environmentally unethical industries.
“A tourism business centered around visiting sites of mass shootings.” Whitman says it aloud for our mutual consideration. “And more specifically, many of the sites are schools. This hits me as…” he pauses, wrangles that millennial mind for just the right phrase, and then unleashes, “primordial indecency.” Nailed it.
“The Sedlocks are friends,” I say, as if it matters.
“You realize how fucked this is. It could go badly for you.”
“You can’t say anything. Attorney-client privilege.”
“I’m not your attorney.”
“Well, friend-friend privilege then.”
“I’m not your friend, Pisser.” He is scolding me now. “But if I were your friend, I’d tell you to put some proper thought into whether or not this is worth it.”
I am sniffling and tired, my skin chilly and preposterously warm all at once. Part of me expects this rebuke. He tosses the pages on the desk, slaps down a hand that seems all knuckle. “Another item for your Doppler.”
He stands, stretches, insinuates a transition. I am approaching a cataclysm of something once righteous, but also time-consuming and ordinary, a career that has girded me into the being I am, lower member of the caste system to Whitman and his kind. A different, better version of me would have torn up the Sedlocks’ proposal instantly, would have ordered Whitman out of my seat.
“Lovato,” he says. “Her contract isn’t being renewed.”
“Allison?” It disappoints me to hear her name instead of my own. Allison Lovato, as honorable a news desk sidekick as there ever was. Trotter is the perfect name for a traffic reporter, so I knew Melanie would not be first. I just assumed it would be Charles or me, the two white guys. “You’re firing her?”
“Technically, no. Just not renewing her contract.”
“Seventeen years.” I do not have to ask the reason. Lustfizzle wants to bring an element of hip-hop into the newscast, which means asking Allison Lovato, a fifty-four-year-old mother of three, to occasionally rap the news. I would rather hear she was being canned than listen to even a minute of her attempt at relevance. “That’s how this works—I refuse to rhyme about tornadoes and flashfloods and I’m out?”
“I’d have fought for Allison. She chose the severance. I have to respect it.” The severance package is not an option for me. I have too many expenses, and two too many kids in need of private school and college. “So long as I got a breath in my body, Pisser, you’ll have a job. That’s a promise.” He takes a seat and leans into the desk to focus on my eyes, the frown, and holds up the folder. “But ask yourself something—why did you really leave this folder here for me? What do you need from me, Pisser?”
Kidnapping An Emotional Support Animal
The weather is brisk, temperate, just like the sweaty man on Channel Fourteen promised. A cold sun takes one last breath, tiptoes over New Jersey, and casts chilly shadows across the metropolis. Whitman sent me home. I should have gone straight to bed but I am avoiding my house, instead arriving at the golf course for a quick round. It is an abomination, swinging recklessly into sand and water and the small patch of woods that separates the course from our residential neighborhood. I am sick with the flu, my body aching with each wobble of a club. My four-iron is bent at an impossible angle, the arc a noted reminder that I do not belong among these hobbyists, where institutions such as patience and grace equate to athletic prowess.
I wait for Russ Haverly in the clubhouse. There is a matter we must discuss, although the Luderica and the illness make me forgetful and I have lost track of the content, assuming it must be my morning dispute with Toby Dalton. Russ keeps a boat in Manhattan and docks in the Slancy Harbor, which is a quick walk to the clubhouse. Some nights after lacrosse practice, we meet for golf and a drink, which is a cultured method of exchanging money for drugs. He missed our round so I sit alone at the bar, cold and raw, lonelier because I do not have a phone to check the Gopa website. Parents can post anonymously if they choose, from as many usernames as they care to enlist, which allows us to bicker and casually insult one another. My handle is ndr_cnstrctn, which is only new this week since my last username (Gopadad4) was banned for suggesting the cafeteria be segregated. I was misunderstood. What I actually wrote was the Spanish immersion students (Iliza among them) be separated from the Mandarin and French immersion students so they can practice their language skills while they eat.
Without a phone I cannot involve myself in parental disputes. I still have the device that does not belong to me, and which is no use because it is an older model. Each time my pocket buzzes I check the caller but do not recognize the numbers. After several beers it appears Russ will be a no-show. I take a walk across the fairways for home.
When I come to I am somewhere in Brooklyn. I locate my coordinates from the missing Manhattan skyline and
the relative size of the buildings. It is the southern end of Greenwood Cemetery, no one wandering the streets, which suggests I am moments away from being murdered, or mistaken for a murderer. A cage at my feet is less surprising than the articles I hold: a net in one hand, the BB gun in the other. I assimilate to the situation. This is not my first trip to the cemetery. I have my heart set on a particular tabby, a large, splotchy brown feline that makes its home in the headstones, that will not appreciate chipmunks sharing its resources. This is how I got the scratch on my face, a longer one on my neck and down my back. The net will do nothing against a feral cat this fat and angry. The gun is not meant to injure the animal, but rather to protect me if things go wrong.
I have brought along catnip, bags of it, and I shake some into the grass, placing a larger pile in the cage. Moments pass before the first cat appears, and then another, but they can see from my demeanor no catnip high is worth a confrontation. My therapy animal appears, climbing from the cemetery and stepping closer than the others, eyeing me cautiously to see how much fight I am worth. It knows what it has done, chased me from its world the past two weeks, and now it must decide whether to attack or accept my offering. Tonight it seems exhausted, chubbier somehow. It wants no fight, arching its back and creeping hastily toward my feet and into the cage. The animal is larger than I remember, its paws the size of blueberry muffins. I close the cage, trapping my beast as it claws at the bag.
I lean down and watch him watch me, either indifferent to whether I have trapped him or he has agreed to the journey, both of us accepting that the universe has melded us.
“Your name,” I tell my new pet, “is Clint Eastwood. I have work for you.”
How To Build Suburbs
In the late eighties, Theodore Slancy had a vision to create an island off the coast of Manhattan and charge real estate moguls billions to develop the property. Known as Teddy Tantrums, he also had a drinking problem and a reputation of being stubborn, believing he could defeat erosion and looking upon everyone who pointed out flaws in his plans as naysayers. An entrepreneur and somewhat shady businessman, years earlier Slancy had pioneered the Finger Lakes Dredging Company. In its heyday, it handled most of the dredging from Maine to the Carolinas. Anytime a beach eroded or a Herculean storm made landfall, Teddy Tantrums was the man to call.