Better in the Morning, page 26
Quid pro quo, Dad.
I ended the email.
That’s a legal term.
Chapter 36
“Do you need to see my passport?” I asked the NewYork3News.com human resources professional, a friendly young woman named Ginger, who had a sleeve tattoo and a nose ring. “For the proof of citizenship form?”
“Oh yeah, thanks.” She bounced back toward me as I sat at a long folding table in the middle of the room. All of the junior reporters, editors, and producers sat in an open area that, many years ago, I imagined, would have been buzzing with phones ringing off the hook and cigarette smoke wafting through the air. Now, it was filled with the relative quiet of laptops, smartphones, and energy drinks being sipped.
“I suppose I’m getting trained today? How many days is it usually? A week?” I asked Vince, who was sitting next to me.
He laughed, never taking his eyes off his laptop as he pecked away. “Training? What training?”
Friendly but flaky HR staff. No office of my own. No training. I wanted to turn to an invisible dog and say, “Toto, we’re not at a law firm anymore… but it’s all good.”
Only a week earlier, I had been sitting with my mother on the couch in front of the television, watching Carrie walk out of the hospital after Natasha gashed her teeth and lamenting that I’d added too much Diet Sprite to the cucumber martinis we were drinking, when I received a text from Dave.
“Start practicing ‘This is Veronica Buccino for NewYork3News.’”
I replied “Shut up!” So professional.
“You’ll be getting an official email tomorrow morning, but I’ve been given permission to let you know informally.”
Then, my mother and I jumped up and down, and when I cried, so did she.
“Veronica!”
My stomach flipped. Like Pavlov’s dog.
I spun around to see Dave and was reminded of our first awkward meeting. I smiled as he pulled a chair out and flipped it around, straddling it so the back was facing me, and I thought, so his nether region was guarded.
We talked about two stories for me to research—one about a discrimination lawsuit filed against the city by a former police officer and one about an auction of Princess Diana’s handbags. We also discussed the upcoming March trial and my follow-up questions for Selma after the verdict. Before I knew it, it was time for lunch, which consisted of a bag of pretzels from the bodega downstairs. Then, again before I knew it, it was time to take the bus back home to Jersey. That had never happened at the law firm. At the law firm, I would look at the clock all morning, anticipating lunch, the “only enjoyable part of my day,” as I’d called it. Then, the hours between one and seven p.m. would feel like an eternity. My law firm days never whizzed by.
That was how it was every day of that first week. I knew that every day at NewYork3News wouldn’t be like that, but I liked how I felt when it was time to go home—exhausted, happy, intrigued—and it made up for the lack of privacy in the open-space newsroom.
I was beginning to realize that happiness to me didn’t mean money. Happiness, for me, was defined by how I spent my time. Spending my time engaged in material that was genuinely interesting to me made up for the lower paycheck too. So I stopped shopping at department stores and started buying clothes at the mall that I could wear on camera. The mall. I was now officially a Jersey girl again.
The courthouse was packed, and cameras weren’t allowed inside. So I sat in the courtroom for the actual reading of Dr. March’s verdict, monitoring reactions to include in my written piece later on, and Vince waited outside to capture reactions from the people leaving. Selma had called me earlier that day. She was back from another trip to Florida, and although she’d just joined a “salsa league” and hurt her hip, she didn’t want to miss this day, she’d said.
“A salsa league?” I felt a pang of sadness as I thought about how funny Syd would have found that.
Dr. March was found guilty on two of the three counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Filamina shook her head but had no tears. Throughout the trial, she’d played the part of dutiful wife and never wavered. Maybe Dr. March wasn’t holding her own indiscretions over her head in exchange for her support. It made me wonder if despite everything, despite what he’d done, despite what she’d done, maybe she really believed him in this situation, that he would never actually go so far as to try to have her killed. Maybe it wasn’t entirely black and white. I’d learned people could be complicated.
As Filamina walked out of the courtroom with defense attorneys, throngs of reporters pushed and shoved with microphones held out. I was one of them. Filamina said nothing. But she saw me. We made eye contact. And in that moment, I didn’t feel proud.
Selma, on the other hand, was ready for another moment in the spotlight. Her accusations had received a lot of attention, including the attention of prosecutors who’d called her as a witness earlier that month. She was as colorful on the stand as she had been in our interview. She was again courted by all of the news outlets, but she never forgot who’d found her.
“Veronica, dear!” She waved her hand wildly in my direction and hobbled over before speaking directly to the camera. “Of course he’s guilty. These people are not the most upstanding citizens even with their perfect hair and their perfect smiles. They cheat. They lie. They record each other on the camera. They don’t like dogs. I could go on and on. And I coulda called this from a mile away. Guilty as sin. The wife too. She’s no saint, that one. I’m glad I told the truth. But don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she wasn’t murdered. Thankfully, the good doctor and his dippy mistress didn’t succeed on that front. Even tramps deserve to live. Alrighty, well, I gotta go to bridge now! Bye!”
Later that night, I talked about it all with my mother over martinis and minestrone. I concluded that I’d felt most proud when I helped Trista Hines, and that was at the job in which ninety-nine percent of the time I’d felt shame, boredom, and angst.
Now, I was at a job where ninety-nine percent of the time, I felt proud of what I did—proud and fulfilled—except when it came to that one case that had put me on the map at NewYork3News, as Dave had put it. It was sad and ironic at the same time.
The next day, I knocked on Dave’s office door. “I have an idea. It will be extra work for me, but I don’t mind,” I said.
“Yeah? What’s that?” He was shooting a spongy basketball into a small hoop that hung from the edge of his desk.
“I will cover any story you want me to, but if possible, I’d like to do a page called ‘NewYork3News Heroes’ where we cover stories that are inspiring and redeeming.”
Silence. Part of me expected a response along the lines of, “We’re a newsroom, Veronica, not a bouncy house,” but then I remembered I didn’t work for Beverly anymore.
Dave made the shot and then said, “Sounds cool. Let’s do it.”
There was nothing to like about Sebastian Gilbert. One morning when Doug finished logging the tape from the morning’s shoot, Sebastian said, “Vanessa. I mean, Veronica. Whatever. If you don’t start talking from the back of your throat and sounding less like you’re from Joisey, you won’t last here very long.”
He resembled a cartoon bug. His eyes were two enormous globes on his narrow head. His hair was jet black and slicked back with so much goo, it looked like the roof of a car that had been waxed to perfection. He was about six feet tall and weighed about a hundred and six pounds. He wore black T-shirts every day, tucked into black pants with a belt buckle shaped like the state of Texas.
Since he was the co-producer with Dave Kennedy, he was my boss, so he saw almost every story before it went up on the site.
“Sebastian Gilbert, I know your name. And yes, I am from New Jersey, but this is not Illinois3News after all. Still, I’m working on my accent, but I’ll need you to work with me. We’re not live, so when you’re watching a taping, just stop me if it gets too bad, and I’ll do it again. Okay?”
I actually said that.
Then he said, “It’s always bad,” and stalked off.
As I turned back around, I caught Vince’s eye, and he winked.
Dealing with Sebastian was another small price to pay for finally doing something I loved. I’ll take it. And I’ll stick up for myself. You can’t change people. You can only change yourself. That, I was learning.
What I wasn’t learning so well was how to stop thinking about Syd. I’d thought about going back on Match.com, but I wasn’t interested in dating again at that time. If I went back on, it would only be to see if he was still on. If only I could text him or email him or call him. If he could see me now.
Unfortunately, all he was seeing, if anything, was Jada stalking him on my behalf on every social media platform available. She had done a cross-check of possible friends of friends and connected with them so she could get that much closer to Syd “electronically” and see what he was up to.
But despite all of this cyber-circling, she wasn’t able to glean much. I appreciated her efforts though.
“That’s what friends are for,” she said. “If I needed you to connect with Mark’s cousin’s yoga teacher and then spend hours going through all of the photos she’s liked or commented on to see if his cousin posted a picture from a family wedding and if it looked like he had a date, I know you’d do it in a heartbeat.”
I had to laugh at the lengths she went to, all for me. “In a heartbeat,” I said.
“Hi, I’m Veronica Buccino with NewYork3News.We are in Millersville, New York, about fifty miles outside the metropolitan area, but we’ve made the journey here for a very good cause. Trista’s Treats, a traveling purveyor of baked goods that local workers in office parks all over the area run to like kids to an ice cream truck, will be honoring National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in a very special way. And we’re here to find out how.”
I stood in front of the pink truck, parked in the lot of a large office building, with Trista standing next to me in a pink apron, her hair in a ponytail. She stood tall and proud as if to say, “Look at me now.”
That makes two of us. Who would’ve thought?
“Trista Hines, you are, of course, the Trista behind Trista’s Treats. What can you tell us about how you’ll be doing something a little different starting Saturday, October first?” I held the microphone out to her.
“Thanks. Sure. We’re a cupcake truck. Like an ice cream truck, except we’re cupcakes and some other baked goods. And we drive all around this area. There are a lot of office parks in this area, and we hit them all every day between ten and three. And you’d think we were giving something away most times. It’s like all these workers, they’re like little kids, they come running down when they see us pull up. It’s really funny. And well, for the entire month of October, we’re going to honor National Breast Cancer Awareness Month by giving away our pink vanilla cupcakes with a pink ribbon in exchange for a donation.”
“So, you’re giving away these cupcakes?” I looked toward her. “Why not just sell them and donate the profits?”
“Well, we feel—I feel—that I’ve been really blessed, really lucky. I’m so grateful. I want to show my gratitude to our customers. And if they feel they want to donate in return, that’s great. And we’ll send all of that money to a charity that helps the children of breast cancer patients.”
“So, tell us, why this charity?”
“Because they helped me… and my kids… when I was sick. I’m a breast cancer survivor.”
After Vince and I rode around town with Trista and her sister in the Trista’s Treats van and sampled several cupcakes, I did the closing with a sugar rush.
“And that makes Trista Hines our very first NewYork3News Hero. Read the full story at NewYork3News.com. I’m Veronica Buccino.”
“Is that a wrap?” Trista giggled.
“That’s a wrap!”
As Vince was loading the camera back in the van, I thanked Trista again and let her know the story should be up on the site the next day or the day after.
We hugged before I got in the van—me hugging the woman that my former client was suing only months ago. Life was funny. That, I was learning.
Chapter 37
Just as Jada was about to close out of Facebook one day, she had a breakthrough. Syd’s cousin’s yoga teacher liked a photo of Syd’s cousin that promoted an upcoming cancer charity bike ride. It wasn’t clear if Syd would be participating, but he also liked the photo and commented with “Thanks for sharing.”
“You’re like a social media Sherlock Holmes,” I said.
“You know it, my dear Watson,” Jada replied.
“He wouldn’t be thanking her if he didn’t have some vested interest, right?”
“Right,” Jada said. I could hear her sip her coffee on the other end of the line. “But who knows. He’s either participating, or he’s not. There’s only one way to find out. We have to go.”
“Just go and mill about? Hoping to run into him? I don’t want to look pathetic. I mean, I am pathetic, but I don’t want to actually look pathetic.”
“We’ll think of a cover story. I’ll hop on a fucking bike if I have to.”
A story? Yes! A story.
After I hung up with Jada, I walked toward Dave’s office.
Initially, I was going to say that the spokesperson for the charity asked us to cover it, but as I placed my hand on the doorknob to his office, something occurred to me. I’m sick of fibbing, no matter how small the fibs may be. It’s time to cut that out.
“I like a boy, and he’s doing a bike ride on Saturday, and I want to cover it.”
Okay, I have to work on making the truth sound a little more polished and mature. Practice’ll make perfect, or better.
But Dave didn’t miss a beat. “When is it? Saturday?” He threw the basketball toward the hoop and missed.
“Yeah, but it’s in the city so we won’t need the van. Just one cameraperson.”
“Okay, check the schedule. If there’s a free camera, I’ll approve it.” He tried the shot again and made it.
We both held our arms up in victory, for different reasons.
Game on.
On the morning of the charity bike ride, Jada arrived at the starting line in a trench coat and large sunglasses. “Do I look newsy?” she asked.
“More like a flasher,” Chuck, the new cameraman, said.
“Perfect,” Jada said.
“So, this is the plan.” I tightened the top of the microphone to the base. “Jada, walk around, cover this whole area until you find Syd. When you do, text me his location and the color of his shirt. Do not lose him. If he’s walking around, keep following him, but don’t make it obvious. Chuck, we’re going to stay put here, interviewing participants until I get the text from Jada.”
Chuck had been fully briefed on my need to find Syd. I had to be able to speak freely with Jada about the mission, so Chuck soon became a participant. Luckily, he was a willing participant. “Let’s find your dude,” he said.
Unfortunately, my dude was nowhere to be found. The race started, and we waited until every last biker rode off. I stood there, microphone by my side, disappointed.
We had enough for a complete story by that point, since I’d interviewed several participants as well as one of the organizers. So I told Jada and Chuck that we could go home. After asking them to be up at seven in the morning on a Saturday, it didn’t feel right to ask them to wait around for three more hours to see the finish on the slightest chance that Syd would come flying around the corner on a bike. Not to mention, I didn’t know how good the chance was that he would even be receptive to seeing me.
But they insisted. “I’m scheduled to work anyway,” Chuck said. “Don’t make me go back to the office.”
And Jada assured me she had nothing else to do on that Saturday, that Mark was in Miami for work. I knew there were better things she could be doing, but I was grateful for her dedication to the mission, particularly when Syd did, indeed, come flying around the corner on his bike.
“There he is! That has to be him!” I shouted.
He was wearing a helmet so I didn’t recognize him from his clean-shaven head, but he was wearing a yellow shirt that read “Syd” in black letters under his number.
How many other Syds are there in this race who also spell it that way?
Jada, Chuck, and I jogged toward the maze of folding tables, which were filled with bananas and power drinks. And that was where I found him.
With a girl.
I didn’t know if she was just a friend or another cousin—I hoped—but they hugged, and my heart fell. She had long, auburn hair and was pretty, I had to admit, even though she’d just ridden fifty miles and was all sweaty.
“Who’s that bitch?” Jada asked.
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. “But let’s interview him… I mean, them.”
Please let her be his sister.
We followed them, and as the girl was chatting with another cyclist, I tapped Syd on the shoulder.
He turned, and when he realized it was me, he smiled. “Hey, Veronica.” He leaned in for a hug. “I’m sweaty. Sorry.”
“I don’t mind.” I beamed. “Congrats on the finish.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just—” I shrugged. “Oh. Um, covering this race for my new job at NewYork3News.” I said that last part slowly and held up the microphone.
“Wow, congratulations!” He touched my shoulder.
And then the girl he’d been hugging walked over, holding a banana and a cup of water. She said, “I’m ready to wash this banana down with champagne. Brunch is at noon, right?”
