Unwifeable(5)

“He’s like the literati, right?” I asked. “I think he gets written about in Page Six sometimes.”

Steve just looked at me, amused. I was such a dumb child—in the body of a thirty-year-old.

“Do you like working for the Post?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “I should have come to New York a long time ago.”

“Well, don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t expect anything. I’m going to move home to California and become a comedy writer.”

“You should,” he said.

“Besides,” I continued, “I just read in Bloomberg that the Post loses fifteen to thirty million dollars a year.”

I paused, then kept going, “I have a little tattoo that says that, actually.”

This time Steve laughed out loud.

“So I suppose I couldn’t interest you in a features-writing position?” he interjected.

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said.

“Okay, so how many stories a week?”

“About one,” he said. “More or less.”

My brain was melting down. I knew I shouldn’t appear too desperate.

“Can I think about it?” I asked. “I mean, I haven’t written for newspapers in years.”

“Yeah, but you can write,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

I smiled, my face glistening now with the confidence of not only sex and drink but also New York and career.

“Yep,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”

And that was that.



* * *




NOW, TWO SHORT months later, I am face-to-face with Steve again, still unable to believe that he is taking such a huge gamble on me. I want instantly to prove myself to him and to anyone who has ever doubted me.

I want to conquer the city, the newspaper, the industry as a whole.

“So here I am at News Corp!” I say to Steve grandly, giving him a hug.

“Corp,” he says, deliberately pronouncing the p—and correcting me.

I know that. Shit.

“So . . . where are you living?” Steve asks as he leads me through the security-guard-protected gates, the automatic metallic arms swooshing up when he presses his yellow badge down to the electronic red sensor.

“Oh—Brooklyn,” I say. “Park Slope. With two lesbians.”

“Nice,” he says. “And Park Slope, that’s a great area.”

Walking into the building, past the giant Christmas tree on display in the lobby, I see the huge signs reading FAIR AND BALANCED and recognize faces I was watching on TV the night before. There’s Greta Van Susteren, bitching someone out. There’s . . . holy shit, is that Geraldo? That’s totally Geraldo.

We take the elevators up to the tenth floor, and my swimming eyes absorb the electrified newsroom, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking down on Avenue of the Americas as put-upon reporters balance their phones with one shoulder while their whirring hands type at breakneck speed, scrambling to meet the day’s 5 p.m. deadline.

“Mandy, meet Katherine Pushkar, my new deputy editor,” he says. “You’ll be sharing an office with her.”

Katherine smiles up at me, kind and relaxed, and sticks out her hand to shake mine. She is in her midthirties, beautiful, with shoulder-length brunette hair and warmth that radiates. She swoops her hand around her to welcome me into what is not so much an office as a converted coat closet, but I have never felt more grateful. It is a room to call—at least partially—my own.

“Call HR, get all the paperwork taken care of,” Steve says, “and Katherine can get you set up on the computer. I’ve got to go deal with tomorrow’s cover.”

When Steve retreats into the newsroom, I can feel my nerves starting to rattle. Katherine whips around.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” she says. “I don’t know anyone either. I just came over from TimeOut.”

“Really?” I ask. “Oh that’s so rad.”

“Rad?” she repeats.

“I’m from California,” I say. “So yeah. You’re definitely rad, dude.”

Within the next hour, I make my way up to the fifteenth floor to meet with a tiny white-haired HR lady with huge black fashion eyeglasses to fill out a stack of forms. I look them over and realize that for the first time since I got married in 2000, I will now be marking “single.” Emergency contact? I have none. After running through the options (my ex-husband? my new roommates? my editor?), I finally scrawl my parents’ number in San Diego, 2,433 miles away. Screw it. If something happens to me, they can deal with it.

I hand the forms back. Then it’s off to another floor for my photo ID. The bored office worker snaps my picture and prints out my canary-yellow ID badge. I hang it around my neck. In the picture and on my face right now, I am beaming with pride.



* * *




I TAKE THE F train home that night, interrogating strangers on the subway to look for any anecdote I can cannibalize for content (“Hey, so, what are the latest trends? Got any celebrity gossip? Oh, you just want to be left alone? Sorry about that.”). Everywhere I go, I am a heat-seeking missile on the prowl for story ideas, rumors—any kind of dirt. Until I arrive at the Seventh Avenue stop in my new yuppie neighborhood, which is the epitome of spotless—a health food store and yoga studio on every corner.