I have packets for everyone, Winnifred says, standing up, as if on cue, and pulling a stack of lavender folders out of her bag. I’ll just put them on the break-room table, and everyone can have a look. Your severance is calibrated to your latest contract. There’s a number for the BCC HR department, but don’t everybody call at once, okay? Read the materials first. And, obviously, the sooner you can prepare a résumé, the sooner your transition can begin.
A crash, outside the newsroom, in the direction of the engineers’ room; everyone jolts out of a collective stupor, and a few run in the direction of the sound, just as Trevor emerges, hugging an enormous outdated computer monitor, trailing cords, like a gigantic tumor, the casualty of some botched surgery, and drops it on the hallway floor. You can take your severance and shove it up your ass! he hollers, at no one in particular. I should have known you people would stab us all in the back.
Easy, man, Mort says. He brushes past me, walking slowly toward Trevor with his palms out, and the tiniest, most imperceptible swagger, as if to say, to us, see? See what you’ve gotten us into? We’re all upset, but come on, man. Let’s not shit the bed, okay? You don’t want to do anything you’ll—
You! Trevor screams, turning purplish, the color of an unripe eggplant. Fucking batshit liberals! We had a word for you when I was growing up, you know that?
Trevor, Mort says. Trevor. You can call me anything you want if it’ll make you feel better. But not here. Let’s go down to Max’s, okay? I’m buying. I’m buying for everyone. All right? Can I buy you a beer? Let me buy you a beer.
Fuck you, hymie, Trevor says. Fuck you, kike. As he says the words, his face contorts, a mangling of grief and horror and self-loathing. He’s my age, after all, or perhaps five years older, perhaps forty; he’s probably never said these words before in his life. Even ancestral rage, I can’t help thinking, comes to us secondhand. Fuck you! He whips around and throws the 200-volt adapter, concealed like a baseball in his enormous right fist, through the soundproof glass of the broadcast booth. It spiderwebs, sags inward, as if stunned, unsure of how to respond, and then collapses, throwing shards across the monitors and desks and soundboards.
Enough! Winnifred shouts, phone pressed to her ear. I’ve called the police! Someone behind me is sobbing. I look around at an empty room: everyone has taken cover behind a desk, or rushed into my office, or out into the lobby. He could have had a gun, they’ll say later, interviewed on the Fox ten-o’clock news. It was like one of those postal-worker situations. Police sirens are howling outside, all the office phones ringing at once, the emergency band squawking under its blanket of broken glass. But Trevor is already finished; he’s sitting on the floor, cross-legged, like a child in kindergarten, and Mort is kneeling in front of him, holding his hands.
10
In a cloud of meaty smoke, whooshed away by an enormous ventilation hood, Robin Wilkinson lifts a rack of skewers out of the oven and delicately rotates each one, turning the blackened side up, the raw pink side down, adding sea salt and cracked pink peppercorns from a bowl. When she bends over the counter the front of her dress droops a little too low, revealing the top of a salmon camisole, and she flattens it, demurely, with one hand.
We have a pretty nice grill, she tells me. It came with the house, actually, and so I got really into cooking outside. Not just hamburgers, you know, rotisserie, churrascaria, pretty ambitious stuff. And then we got this stove, and I realized we can more or less do all the same things inside. Even more, in fact. I can make shawarma, if I want. The kids love it. But it has to cook for at least six hours, and the heat’s so high you don’t want to leave it on by itself. It’s not like a pot simmering on the stove. These kebabs are so much simpler, though you do have to check them. The biggest mistake most people make is putting meat and vegetables on the same skewer. Why would you do that? I’ve never understood it. Stick a cherry tomato on there and it’ll be, just, carbon. Okay, that’s it. End of lecture. As you can see, when I meet new people, I get nervous. I talk too much.
She slides the rack back in, wipes her hands, and takes a generous sip from her glass. We’re drinking a Chilean rosé, Montes Cherub, which sounds like it means swill, she said earlier, but actually it’s quite good, all Syrah, very dry, really good to start things off.
No, I mean, I say, it’s an awkward situation, I guess. Initially. I’m not just any guest. You have to feel that you’re a little on display.
Don’t you get that all the time, with your subjects?
This is kind of a new line of work for me, actually, I say. Martin may have told you. My background’s mostly in public radio—
Right. WBCC. That’s a sad story, isn’t it? Sad, but typical of this town. No one thinks big here. No one wants to innovate. A station like that, it was a resource, and what do we do but sell our resources away?
In the living room, across the kitchen island and down three steps, Sherry and Tamika are playing a tennis video game, bounding across the floor with little white wands in hand. On your toes, Martin is saying. See what Venus does? Constantly up on her toes. Your heels never hit the ground. Always ahead of the next shot.
Listen to him, she says. You’d think he actually knows what he’s talking about.
He doesn’t play himself?
No, of course he does, he’s just not, like, an expert, exactly. I played tennis at Penn. I guess I’m a little sensitive.
You’ll take over when the time comes, I guess.
No, she says, pouring herself another half-glass, no, it’s best not to learn that kind of thing from Mom. I don’t want to make it an issue in our relationship. No stage parenting here.
Spoken like a child psychologist.
Yeah, well, it’s got to be good for something, doesn’t it? Are you done with the zucchini yet? She looks over my shoulder, at the counter, and smiles. Martin, she calls out, who is this guy? What, did you decide I need a sous-chef?
I disclaim any knowledge, Martin calls back. We don’t talk about food.
Oh, yeah, right. Only the serious man stuff. Money. Power. Race. The big three. I forgot.
I had a good teacher, I say, but a limited repertoire. Half the things I know how to make I can’t, because you can’t get the ingredients here. Or if you can, it never tastes right. Wendy used to say that cooking an American duck was like cooking a big bag of fat with a little meat at the bottom.
Robin pours the zucchini chunks into a bowl, adds olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a splash of the wine, and mixes everything together with her fingers. I hope you don’t mind, she says. I like to get my hands dirty. I have to say, Kelly, you sound extremely well adjusted.
I’m not sure that’s such a compliment.
No, it’s an observation. We get to make those in my line of work. Notice I said sound. And the other observation I was going to make was: it’s a lot of change for you, I mean, this tremendous loss, leaving one job and one city, moving home, taking up another job, then leaving your entire line of work.