A Second Bite at the Apple (3 page)

As Charles reads through the e-mail for a fourth time, our bureau chief Linda McCoy—a woman I have spoken with a grand total of two times in my four years of working here—walks into the newsroom, dressed smartly in a black suit, baby-blue shell, and pearl studs. She is not smiling. The entire newsroom stares at her, none of us smiling either. We know why she's here. There's no need to pretend.

Linda smoothes her brassy bob with the palm of her hand and pulls on her suit jacket. “I just got off the phone with Andrew. I take it all of you have seen his memo.”

We all nod, slowly and almost imperceptibly. No one wants to stand out. No one wants to let his or her anxiety into the open, to give off a vibe that says,
I'm nervous. I know I'm hanging by a thread.
But that's what we're all thinking. We're also thinking,
Don't get rid of me. Get rid of her. Or him. But not me
.

“I think it would be best if I spoke to each of you one-on-one to discuss your future here, and the future of
The Morning Show
.”

She drags her eyes across the newsroom and back again, until they land on me.

“Sydney,” she says. “Why don't we talk in my office?”

As much as I try to tell myself that everything will be okay—that she wants to discuss the new duties I will assume and the cuts to my 401(k) match—I know from the pitying look in her eyes that we will not be discussing any of those things. We will be discussing something far worse. And everyone in this newsroom knows it.

“Have a seat,” Linda says, gesturing to the smooth, gray chair across from her desk.

I lower myself into the chair, gripping the cool, metal armrests for support.

“As you know, the network is going through some major changes,” she says. “And one of those changes is to consolidate operations in the Washington bureau.”

I nod soberly as my throat begins to close.

“They have decided to combine several of the producer and reporter roles and enhance our digital presence. As such, they are eliminating all of the associate producer and producer positions for
The Morning Show
.”

A wave of nausea crashes over me. “All of them? Then . . . who is going to produce the morning segments?”

Linda presses her lips together and clears her throat. “Charles.”

“Charles?”
Linda nods. “What about Melanie?”

“Melanie will maintain some of her production duties, along with helping to maintain
The Morning Show
's digital presence. It's where the business is heading.” Linda folds her hands together and places them on her desk. “But, unfortunately, this means your position here is no longer needed.”

A second wave of nausea knocks me over the head. This can't be happening.

I strain to speak through the ever-shrinking opening in my throat. “Is this . . . is this because I let Charles wear skis this morning?”

Linda rumples her brow and stares at me quizzically. “I—sorry?”

“The live shot this morning. When Charles knocked over the camera.”

Linda slowly shakes her head, and from her expression I gather she did not see Charles's skiing fiasco. “No,” she says. “This is purely a business decision. I hope you understand.”

I try to come up with a response, but at the moment I cannot construct complete sentences. Besides, what am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to affirm her declaration, to say,
Yes, of course I understand?
That would be a lie. I don't understand. I've worked my butt off for four years. Frankly, if it weren't for me, Charles would probably have the network embroiled in some nasty lawsuit.

“You'll need to clear out your desk and leave the building within the hour,” she says.

I look at my watch. “Within the
hour?
”

“I'm sorry. This isn't my decision. It's company policy.”

I start to get up from my chair, but then I remember something I read for a recent unemployment story we did. “What sort of severance package should I expect?”

“Unfortunately, due to the financial strains on the network, the severance isn't as generous as it once was. You'll receive payment for your work through today, and then one month's salary—a week for each year you worked here.”

I do the math in my head. That's barely enough to cover my rent, especially given how far behind I am on payments, thanks to some absurdly expensive oral surgery two months ago that my insurance didn't cover. Forget spending the money on anything else, like food or heating or other such luxuries.

Linda reaches into her file drawer and hands me a thick packet. “You'll find information in there regarding allocation of the severance, as well as a primer on unemployment insurance and resume building.” She pushes her drawer shut and shakes her head. “I'm sorry about this. It isn't what any of us wanted.”

I flick through the packet and then give Linda one last probing look, hoping there is even the slightest chance she will realize she's made a mistake. But Linda simply stares back, her lips pursed.

Finally, she reaches across the desk and grabs my hand, shaking it firmly. “Be well,” she says. Then she gestures toward the door. “Please send in Abby on the way back to your desk.”

 

Be well?
Be well?
No, I will not
be well,
Linda. I will be very, very unwell, thank you very much. I had misgivings about this job, but somehow that makes losing it even more painful. It's like being dumped by someone you don't like. All you can think is,
I should be the one dumping YOU
.

As I walk back into the newsroom, everyone's eyes follow me to my desk. I catch a glimpse of Charles, who still isn't wearing proper pants and yet is one of two people in this room who will still have a job in an hour. This has to be a sign of the apocalypse.

“Linda wants to see you,” I say to Abby, dropping the unemployment packet on my desk. I yank open my top file drawer and begin stacking my folders in a pile next to my computer.

“What happened in there?” Melanie asks.

“I have an hour to clear out my desk. I'm toast.”

Charles taps his pen against the side of his computer. “Did Linda say anything about the rest of us?”

“I'm not at liberty to discuss our conversation.”

“Puh-
lease,
” Melanie says. “We're all going to find out within the hour anyway.”

I turn to the Queen of Gossip, the only producer among us left standing. “Then you can wait.”

 

The meetings are brief and orderly, and by the time Linda has finished speaking to everyone, the atmosphere in the newsroom approximates that of a funeral. Even Charles and Melanie, the two of us who still have jobs, look as if they've lost their childhood puppy and best friend on the same day. I don't blame them. They'll now be doing the jobs of two or three people for less money and fewer benefits, and neither of them signed up for that.

I manage to load all of my folders and tchotchkes into a large cardboard box I found in the storage room, the only downside being that the box now weighs approximately six hundred pounds, there are multiple feet of snow outside, I live twelve blocks from the office, and there is no one to help me.

“Would either of you mind if I stored this under your desk? I'll pick it up when they've done a better job clearing the streets.”

“I don't think you're supposed to come back in the building,” Melanie says. Then she waves me toward her desk. “Throw it over here and call me when you want to pick it up. I'll bring it down to you.”

I shove the box behind her desk, give her and Charles each an awkward hug good-bye, and then say good-bye to Tony and the few other friends I have at the network.

“Where are you off to now?” Melanie asks as I throw on my jacket and gloves.

I give one last look around the office, pull my fleece hat over my head, and clap my gloved hands together. “To get drunk.”

The problem with getting laid off at noon on one of the snowiest days in Washington's history? There is nowhere
to
get drunk, other than your own apartment. And when the only drinkable alcohol in your apartment is a half-empty bottle of vodka and a few airplane miniatures of gin—well, let's just say the situation is less than ideal.

A high-speed wind whips at my face as I stomp through the piles of snow in my fat snow boots, my chin tucked tightly against my chest as the tears stream down my face. Renting an apartment twelve blocks from the office sounded like a fabulous idea when I signed my lease six months ago, in the balmy days of early June. Twelve blocks: a touch too close to justify public transportation, but more than a ten-minute walk. I told myself the walk would be my daily exercise, as if exercise had ever been a priority. Plus, the rent was surprisingly cheap—though, apparently, not cheap enough when combined with my payments to Dr. Larry Gopnik, DDS. But now I wish I'd spent a little more money on an apartment closer to a Metro stop, because between the wind and the snow, I cannot feel my face and may have permanently lost the use of my left index finger. Also, I now live twelve blocks from an office I will no longer visit.

My apartment sits on Swann Street between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets, in a semi-undefined neighborhood sandwiched between Logan and Dupont Circles. For years, Fourteenth Street was known, informally at least, as Washington's “Red Light District,” more famous for drug trafficking and prostitution than for organic markets and independent art galleries. But over the past decade or so, the neighborhoods have gentrified, and now Fourteenth Street is one of Washington's hottest areas, with a new restaurant or café seeming to open every week.

My street stretches from west to east and is filled from end to end with brightly colored town houses, all squashed together like crayons in a Crayola box, lying just beyond the red brick sidewalk. Unlike the towering, three-story row homes in Dupont Circle, the houses on my street are squat, two-story affairs with square, flat roofs and modest front stoops. Some of the homes lodge a single owner, but many, like mine, are broken up into separate apartments. I occupy the entire second floor, whereas the first floor houses a wiry, forty-something recluse named Simon.

When I arrive at my building, a butter-yellow house sandwiched between a maroon town house to the right and cobalt blue town house to the left, I find Simon shoveling the front walkway beyond our wrought-iron gate, humming what sounds like a slow dirge. Given the day I've had, I should probably join in with a funeral song of my own.

“Hi, Simon. Need any help?”

Simon looks up, his pale face blank as he stares at me with hollow eyes. “No. I'm fine.”

“You sure?”

He digs into the snow with his shovel and tosses a heap over his shoulder. “Yes.”

Simon was already living in the downstairs apartment of our town house when I moved into the second floor. We rarely see each other, given the private doorway to his apartment and the private, locked stairway leading to mine, so most of our interactions involve my saying hello and Simon's grunting an unintelligible reply. He looks a little like a rodent, with his pointy nose, bleached-blond hair, and beady eyes, the whites of which are often tinged with pink. But in a previous life, I lived in an apartment in Georgetown next door to a bunch of rowdy college students, and I would take a quiet introvert over a frat boy any day.

I march up the front steps and check my mailbox, where I find a folded piece of yellow paper. When I open it, I find, in bold capitals, a message from our landlord, Al:

 

 

Perfect. As if this day weren't already a kick in the ovaries.

I stick the note into my coat pocket and let myself through two sets of doors before trudging up the stairway that leads directly into my living room. As soon as I reach the top, I dump my coat and bag on the floor, kick off my boots, grab a handful of miniature gin bottles from the cupboard, and collapse onto my plush gray couch.

My feet propped on the armrest, I sip the gin straight from the toy-size bottles and reflect on all the ways in which this situation totally blows. I never even
wanted
to work on a morning news show. I wanted to be a food journalist, to write about the connections between food and culture, to interview chefs and bakers and food enthusiasts who would clue me in to new cooking techniques and food trends. That's the stuff that turns me on, the stuff I could read about for days. One time in college, I was so engrossed in Ruth Reichl's
Tender at the Bone
as I rode the “L” into Chicago that I missed my stop and ended up back where I'd started in Evanston. I loved immersing myself in her writing—the way I could almost taste the food she described through the pages—and I wanted to explore food and cooking through writing the way she did.

The problem, of course, was that I couldn't find a job like that after college, or at least not any job that paid anything. The only offers I got were “unpaid internships,” which I couldn't afford to take without my parents' help, and I knew my parents didn't have the money to support me, so I didn't even bother to ask. I did interview for one job at a small online startup, but it was located in Fort Lauderdale, which, after four years of long distance, was farther away than I wanted to live from Zach, who was set to start law school at Columbia in New York City. I often wonder what would have happened if I'd taken that job: if I'd be the food writer I'd dreamed of being, or if that dream just isn't meant to be.

No other paid food-writing jobs came along, so I took the best journalism job I could get and figured with a little finessing, I could make the transition from general television journalist to paid food journalist. Naïve? Probably. But I thought I could make it work. Whenever I had the chance, I pitched
Morning Show
stories with a food angle—a piece on farm subsidies that would take us to Loudoun County, or a story about the cupcake craze hitting the nation's capital. Sometimes I felt as if I were trying to jam together two puzzle pieces that belonged to two entirely different puzzles, but I did my best to make the job and me fit. It wasn't a perfect match, but it was close enough, at least until I found the food-writing job I'd always wanted. Which, of course, I never did.

And now I'm unemployed.

Not just unemployed—unemployed in the only industry for which I have any real qualifications, which, as it happens, is also an industry that is hemorrhaging positions by the day. The other major networks have either already laid off hundreds of staff members or are planning to do so in the coming weeks. Where am I going to go?

I gulp down the last of the gin from the mini bottles and nestle myself into the couch cushions, determined to come up with a plan to pull myself out of this funk. All I need to do is close my eyes for a few minutes while I figure things out. Or, at the very least, forget why my life is a bit of a mess.

 

Four hours later, I jump as my cell phone hums and buzzes on the coffee table. A four-hour nap? This has not happened since I had mono freshman year of college.

I grab the phone and see it's Heidi Parker, one of my best friends from Northwestern who has been living in DC as long as I have.

“Hello . . . ?”

“Uh . . . hi,” Heidi says. “Did I . . . wake you?”

I clear my throat and stretch my mouth wide to wake up my lips. “Kind of. Not really.”

“Sleeping on the job? That's not like you.”

“I'm at home. I got laid off today.”

Heidi goes silent. “Oh my God,” she eventually says. “Syd, I'm so sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as I am at the moment,” I say, breathing my stale, gin-laced breath into the phone.

“We need to get you out of that house. You need a drink.”

I laugh. “Already have a head start on the latter.”

“You've been drinking alone?” I don't answer. “Okay, we're calling in the troops,” she says. “Bar Pilar is running some sort of blizzard special on beers for happy hour. Meet me there in twenty minutes.”

“But I . . .”

“Ah, ah, ah—no objections. You're coming. End of story.”

I contemplate interjecting with one more halfhearted protest, but I realize there is no point. Heidi will come to my apartment and physically drag me to the bar if necessary—probably by my hair, as she has done before—and in one day, there is only so much humiliation a girl can take.

Before I leave, I poke my head into the refrigerator to see if there is anything I can eat before I meet Heidi, since continuing to drink on an empty stomach will surely end in disaster. My choices consist of the following: a container of two-week-old Chinese leftovers, some bottles of mustard and ketchup, and several half-eaten containers of fruit preserves. I'm not sure what I expected to find. Ever since I landed a job on
The Morning Show,
work has consumed most of my waking hours, and I barely have time to do laundry, much less cook.

I haven't cooked much since Zach and I broke up, anyway. Cooking was our thing. Even if it was just a bowl of spaghetti and box-mix brownies, we would try to make dinner together every weekend in high school. Zach's mom, Alaine Pullman, is a famous Philadelphia caterer who regularly put on events for the mayor and other local celebrities, so while she was out on Saturday nights preparing filet mignon and arugula salads for Philadelphia's finest, Zach and I would raid her well-stocked pantry and whip up our own mini feasts. I developed an early fondness for candied walnuts and a definitive aversion to stinky cheese and learned there is, in fact, such a thing as too much cheesecake and that amount is equal to three slices. We made our own fun, even when that fun involved breaking a bottle of his mom's truffle oil from Piedmont, an incident that was not without consequences.

Once we left for college, seeing each other became more difficult, with him in New Jersey and me in Illinois, and our dorm kitchens lacked the swanky equipment and ingredients of his parents' kitchen. But we tried our best to make it work, even toward the end, when his heart wasn't in it anymore. The last meal we cooked together, on the night everything went wrong, was spaghetti carbonara, and to this day the smell of crisping bacon makes my stomach turn.

I slam the refrigerator door shut and decide I'll buy something at Bar Pilar, where the offerings will be more appealing than Chinese leftovers that smell like roadkill. I throw back one more airplane miniature of gin, pull on my coat and boots, and stumble woozily down the front steps, where once again I run into Simon, who is now beating our bushes with a meat mallet.

“Um . . . Simon?” I watch as he thrusts the tenderizer into the bushes again and again. “What are you doing?”

Simon whips his head in my direction, his vaguely rodent-like eyes glassy and pink. “Saving them.”

“Saving . . . whom?”

“The bushes,” he says. “This snow and ice will kill them. There's too much of it.”

“Oh. Right. Do you need my help?”

He turns away from me and rattles the mallet around in one of the bushes. “No.”

I wait for him to add a “thank you” or a “thanks for the offer,” but he doesn't. “Well . . . have a nice night,” I say.

And as I push past him onto Swann Street—me unemployed and soaked in gin, him beating at a bunch of shrubs with a meat mallet—I wonder which of us is the sadder case and how the contest ever got this close.