Radio Jet Lag, page 3
“It won’t! I promise!”
“I know you mean that, Susan, but we all make mistakes. And I think it’s more likely to happen in the early morning. What I’m proposing is that Steve will read everything over as soon as he gets in.”
“As I already do,” Steve interrupted.
“I know,” Malcolm said. “But what I’d like you to do now is read it all over, and then you will tell Susan as soon as you’ve done that. And then at that point, Susan, I would like you to re-read everything one more time. Okay?”
“Great idea, Malcolm!” Susan gushed. “Thank you for being so understanding!”
“Right then.” Malcolm glanced down the hall nervously. “I’d better go and put out that other fire.”
When Malcolm was gone, Steve tried reassuring his younger colleague one last time. “You know, Susan, Malcolm’s idea will help. But mistakes will still happen from time to time. It’s live radio, after all.”
“But I don’t want mistakes to happen!” Susan insisted.
Fifteen minutes later, Steve was sitting at his desk, staring at his computer screen in a daze. His eyes were still open — just — and he was sitting mostly upright. But he looked as though he could topple over, face-first, onto his keyboard.
“Right then!” Malcolm called out as he walked briskly to the boardroom for the nine-fifteen story meeting. “You all know the drill!”
Steve shuffled into the room, a step behind his half-dozen colleagues, still as tired as he’d been at his desk. He sat as close to the back of the room as he could and tried to pay attention as Sheila ran through the daily news agenda and Malcolm interrupted with questions. Almost none of what was being said stuck to his sleep-deprived brain. When Malcolm called on him, he registered the sound of his own name in his subconscious but didn’t immediately respond.
“Stephen?” Malcolm asked again, sounding concerned and annoyed.
“Yes, uh, sorry …” Steve said apologetically.
“Do you have something to contribute?”
Steve had nothing to contribute. But nothing isn’t an option for journalists who want to keep their jobs, and he knew it. So, within seconds, his adrenal glands started pumping and his mind started racing, and he blurted out a half-formed notion of a story idea. “Homeless people …” he said tentatively.
Malcolm stared at him expectantly.
“Homeless people … here in Victoria.”
“Yes,” Malcolm sighed, “I’d reckoned as much. What about them?”
“I was thinking I could go and …” What was I thinking? “You know, I was thinking I could interview some of them.”
Malcolm exhaled slowly and gave it one last try as the rest of the room remained silent. “And what would you interview them about?”
“Well, I drove past the homeless shelter in Rock Bay this morning, and I was thinking …” The thought was now solidifying, slightly, as the adrenaline started to course through his veins. “I’ve spoken to the mayor and the Coalition to End Homelessness, but I haven’t interviewed any homeless people.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Malcolm said, now looking less irritated and more nervous. “That’s an interesting idea, Stephen, thank you. Why don’t we hang on to that one for a wee bit, eh? Anything else?”
“Uh …” Steve felt his face turn red. “Not … not at the moment.”
“Right, then.” Malcolm turned back to his spiral notepad, and started going through the story list he’d just made. He assigned everyone in the room from the list of stories they’d pitched, then he pulled out a piece of paper from under his notebook and handed it to Steve. “On the topic of homelessness, Stephen, we received this press release from Certainty Preparations in Sooke.”
Steve took the paper and started reading.
“They’ve made a donation to the local food bank out there,” Malcolm said as he stood to leave the room.
“Certainty Preparations …” Steve said, as the musical radio jingle for the emergency supply company started playing in his head. “Is this the same company that advertises on the station?”
“Yes,” Malcolm said as he left the room. “But they’re doing something good for the community. It would be nice if you could put them on your program tomorrow.”
The next three hours were a blur for Steve, as the hours after his show so often were. He called Certainty Preparations in Sooke to schedule an interview for the following morning. Then he scanned the emails and online community newspapers looking for more story ideas — hoping to avoid further embarrassment at the next story meeting — drifting in and out of semi-consciousness the whole time. Slouching in his chair, eyes half-shut, mouth half-open, he looked like he could go home and sleep for a week. Occasionally, Steve would catch himself and bolt upright in his chair, imagining everyone in the open office staring at him. For the most part, no one was. But somewhere in the middle of his long drowsy desk session, Steve was shocked by George Caulfeild barking at him as he stormed through the office.
“Wake up, Millburn! Sleep on your own time!”
After that, Steve was sharp for several minutes, owing both to his bellowing boss and the fact he needed to pee yet again. That was nothing unusual; he dashed off to the men’s room at least once an hour because of the coffee he was drinking. Walking to the bathroom and back helped Steve look more alive, but back at his desk he struggled to make it more than just a few minutes before looking like he was dying. He hammered out a few lines of introduction and half a dozen questions for the interview he had booked with Certainty Preparations before shutting down his computer. Then he fell asleep with his left hand propping up his forehead, his right hand on the mouse, and his mouth open just wide enough for a thin stream of drool to start trickling out.
“Steve!” Susan spoke to him as though he were wide awake. “Why are you still here?”
Head snapping back, eyelids rising in slow motion, Steve heaved himself forward in his chair and started talking before he could see who was talking to him. “I wrote the Sooke … I mean, I Sooke the wrote … I mean, I wrote the Sooke script …”
“I know,” Susan said. “I saw the script. Now you should go home and get some sleep. It’s nearly two o’clock.”
Shit! Two o’clock! Steve searched his jacket pockets for his phone but couldn’t find it. “No, no, no …”
“What’s wrong?”
“My phone! I don’t …”
“Oh, I forgot!” Susan shouted, turning back to her desk and fetching the phone from a pile of folded newspapers. “You left it in the studio!”
“Thanks,” Steve said, more urgently than he would have liked.
He checked his text messages, and found half a dozen from Carole:
09:19 Carole
Rough morning with Noah. How did you sleep?
11:11 Carole
I need to get ready for the refugee meeting this afternoon. Are you okay to look after Noah?
11:55 Carole
We’re meeting at 2 o’clock for coffee downtown. Can you take Noah at 1 so I can have some time to make myself pretendable?
11:55 Carole
preventable
11:55 Carole
Fucking autocorrect!
PRESENTABLE!
12:59 Carole
Steve?
01:28 Carole
STEVE???!!!
Shit shit shit! He looked at the time and saw it was 01:52. Eight minutes! He jumped up while grabbing his jean jacket from the back of his chair. But he’d forgotten to take off his headphones, which were connected to the small speakers on his desk. They came flying off the desk just as Steve’s head was yanked back towards them. He banged his ear on the side of his desk, then wrestled with the headphones before escaping their horseshoe embrace. He felt a slight dizziness and wobble in his knees as he stood a second time, but he pushed on. He broke into an awkward jog while dialing Carole’s number on his phone. She picked up after two rings. Steve started to talk before she could say a word. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Where are you? I’ll come get Noah.”
There was an audible pause Steve didn’t like. But Carole put him out of his misery reasonably quickly, speaking concisely while breathing heavily. “I’m just rushing up Government Street. I’m meeting them at the Starbucks.”
“Starbucks?” Steve interrupted, regretting it instantly. “You hate Starbucks.”
“It’s really close to your office, Stephen,” she said crisply. “It would be really helpful if you could be here soon.”
“I’m two minutes away!” Steve gasped as he lurched out the front doors and into the pedestrian traffic along Johnson Street. He turned onto Government and rushed up the block, then sprinted across Pandora, against the red light, in between a cluster of slow-moving cars. One of the drivers honked at Steve, who didn’t look back but muttered something under his breath. He lurched through a crowd of elementary school students in front of the McPherson Playhouse. They were being herded into orderly lines and as Steve barged through them, he noticed their teacher’s disapproving look. I bet she didn’t wake up at three-thirty a.m.!
“Steve!” Carole called him from the corner of Government and Fisgard, waving with one arm while the other pushed Noah in his stroller.
“I’m sorry, Carole!”
“I didn’t know where you were!”
“I’m really sorry! I fell asleep.”
Carole looked at him wearily. “I can hardly blame you for being tired.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, taking the stroller from his wife. “I’m just sorry I made you late.”
“It would have been nice to have an hour to prepare. But Noah fell asleep in the stroller an hour ago, and I enjoyed the walk.” Carole lost track of what she was saying as she cracked open a small makeup mirror to reveal the reflection of her tired face. She put her shoulder-length red hair into an efficient ponytail, sighed, and snapped it shut. “I look almost as tired as you do!”
Mouth half-open, eyes a quarter-shut, Steve said nothing. He simply stared at the woman he had loved for a decade, admiring the freckles dotting her face. She gave him a businesslike peck on the cheek and turned towards the coffee shop.
Little Noah woke up from his nap just as his mother disappeared. Steve pushed the stroller brake with his foot and crouched down close to his young son. He opened his eyes wide and flashed a goofy grin. Noah paused for a second, bottom lip trembling as the infant recognized his father, then burst into an even louder cry. Steve doubled down in an effort to rescue the situation, but that only made the boy cry louder.
“Oh no!” An elderly woman’s voice came from behind Steve. “Do you miss your mama? Do you need Mama?”
“We’re just fine,” Steve insisted, covering his face yet again. “Peeka-BOO!”
Noah was now hysterical. The trembling in his lip had migrated to his whole body and his face was darkening from red to crimson.
“I don’t think peekaboo is helping,” said the voice from behind.
“Listen!” Steve snapped, turning around. “If I wanted someone to …” He stopped abruptly when he saw the familiar face of Maude Fulton, the longest-serving member of Victoria City Council.
“Oh,” she said in surprise. “It’s you! The new fellow at CIFU. Simon, is it?”
“Stephen, actually,” Steve corrected, more embarrassed than annoyed.
The elderly politician was embarrassed too. “Of course, it is! I’m sorry, Stephen! My memory isn’t what it was. To be honest, I usually listen to CBC. Nothing to do with you, of course. But they don’t have any advertising.”
“Yes, well …”
“I’m sorry,” she said, as Noah screamed beside them. “I should let you look after your son.”
“Thank you,” Steve said, turning away from the councillor and struggling to rescue Noah’s outstretched arms from the stroller straps. The boy’s little body loosened as he snuggled into his dad. The silence that followed was the most welcome sound Steve had heard all day. He knew it wouldn’t last as Noah would want milk, and Steve would have to find the bottle of fresh breast milk that his wife would surely have stored in the diaper bag. He held the boy with one arm, crouched down again, and fished in the bag for a bottle with his other hand. Fortunately, Carole was every bit as organized as Steve was discombobulated. She’d left the bottle right in the middle of the main pouch.
Steve put the silicone nipple in the baby’s mouth and relaxed a little more when Noah started drinking eagerly. The post-nap meal lasted the better part of ten minutes, with Steve standing at the edge of a busy sidewalk for all of it, his gaze fixed on his son. Somewhere in the corner of his eye, Steve thought he saw the mayor, but his attention was quickly drawn back to his son. Noah’s tummy was rumbling loudly by the time he was done, and Steve knew he would soon need to change a dirty diaper. The change tables inside the Starbucks would normally be a good choice, but he didn’t want Noah to see his mother and interrupt her meeting. He stuffed the diaper bag back into the stroller, held the boy in his left arm, and pushed the stroller with his right hand.
They crossed Government Street and walked under the large red Gate of Harmonious Interest, which marks the entrance to Canada’s oldest Chinatown, and under the stern gaze of one of the stone lions guarding the base of the gate. Steve stepped quickly under the swaying red lanterns outside a gift shop and veered past the fresh produce stands in front of a small market. But he had a harder time steering the stroller through a crowd of coffee lovers in the entrance to Bean Around the World.
He headed straight for the bathroom and laid Noah down on a plastic change table, while he reached into the diaper bag. Noah looked cherubic, and stared back at his father with big round eyes and rosy, red cheeks. And then, an unexpected parenting milestone: Noah smiled at his dad. This was the first time. The weary father was ecstatic. Carole had seen it a few times, but no one else. Steve took off the wet cloth diaper and set it aside, then reached down into the diaper bag in search of a clean diaper. He kept his eyes on Noah as he did, entranced by the boy’s angelic smile. Amazing! But the magic of the moment was soon interrupted by the lack of a clean diaper. Steve put his palm on Noah’s stomach to prevent him from falling and peered down into the bag. His eyes were still adjusting to the dark interior of the bag when he felt something wet on his cheek. He briefly thought it was his own sweat before realizing the boy had peed again.
Noah giggled sweetly, and Steve managed to laugh, still buoyed by his boy’s pleasant demeanour. He took off Noah’s sleeper and stuffed it into a pissy pile with the wet diaper, then reached back into the diaper bag. But he couldn’t find another diaper, and the feeling of irritation returned just as Noah’s expression changed from delight to focussed concentration. The child then grunted. Then he groaned. No, no, no! Steve flipped the diaper bag desperately and dumped the contents on the bathroom floor. Both the diaper and baby blue sleeper fell out in a pile of spit cloths, soothers, empty bottles, wet wipes, and blankets. But it was too late. The boy let out an even louder grunt at the same time as he emptied his bowels.
“Sweet Jesus!” Steve cried.
“Is everything okay in there?” A disembodied voice came through the wooden washroom door. “There’s quite a lineup out here.”
“I’m just changing a diaper,” Steve shouted. “I might need a few minutes. Can you use the other bathroom?”
“It’s closed,” came the reply. “We’ve called a plumber, but there’s only one for now. And there’s a few people out here waiting.”
Steve stared at the door for a few more seconds, unwilling to look down at the filthy mess he now needed to clean up. And then he felt the fatigue washing over him again; a light-headed swoon, followed by a strong dose of nausea, topped off by a dizzy spell that felt like his brain was performing a slow-motion backflip inside his head. He put his other hand down on the change table to steady himself, but inadvertently plunked it down right in the middle of the fresh baby poop.
Noah was happy once again and now started to kick to express his enthusiasm. His little feet were covered in poop within seconds.
Steve looked back at the pile of diaper-related paraphernalia splayed out on the washroom floor and spotted an old plastic shopping bag in the mix. Holding Noah with one hand, he stretched with the other to grab the bag. He stuffed the bag into his shirt pocket, then reached again to pull a long line of toilet paper from the washroom dispenser. He crumpled the toilet paper into a giant wad and used it to mop up most of the mess. Steve had changed a few hundred diapers in the last four months, but the consistency of this one made him gag. He pulled out wet wipe after wet wipe, trying to clean his son. When the boy looked reasonably clean, Steve flushed the toilet with his foot, shoved the messy detritus into the plastic shopping bag, and tied a knot in it.
There was another knock on the door as Steve was putting a clean diaper on his son. “You almost done?”
“Almost!” Steve strapped Noah back into the stroller and washed his hands vigorously in the sink before opening the door. He pushed the stroller and kept his eyes down as he passed three waiting people. He caught a whiff of pee mixed with sweat that could only be coming from him and decided coffee could wait. He passed the queue and rolled out to the reduced scrutiny of the sidewalk.
Steve was so relieved to be out of the hot café and away from prying eyes that he reverted immediately to autopilot and started walking his usual mid-morning route back to CIFU, which involved a sharp left turn into Fan Tan Alley, the impossibly thin pedestrian thoroughfare that connects two busy streets. Four-storey brick buildings and a sliver of sky loomed high over the pedestrian lane, less than three feet wide at its narrowest. It had been one of Steve’s favourite parts of Victoria ever since he moved to the city, and he walked through it most weekday mornings. It was always a sensible shortcut with only a coffee cup in hand, but Steve soon realized it was a mistake with a stroller. Half a dozen steps into that mistake, as a steady stream of hipsters squeezed past him in the tight passage, he decided to turn around. But that proved much harder than he would have hoped. He slowed down and waited for a gap in the oncoming foot traffic. When the gap didn’t materialize, he turned the stroller assertively in front of a young woman with short blonde hair and high stonewashed jeans. She paused impatiently as Steve tried to navigate the tight turn back and then sighed loudly when he stopped in his tracks. He was faced now with a throng of tourists in sun visors and ponchos following a stout woman with a telescopic stick sporting a small, red, triangular flag. As she led her troop into the alley, she lowered the flag and pointed it straight in front of her. She walked towards Steve purposefully, leading the troop of elderly tourists. Steve paused for another frustrated second and tried another about-face. The hipster in high jeans behind him bumped into him just as he was swinging around to beat the tourists.
