Whose side are you on?
“Great, I’ll be in touch,” Sabrina says, then hangs up.
I’m still not sure what type of game she’s playing, and I definitely don’t know the rules. If staying quiet about this lands this interview, I’ll play along, but I’m still stuck on two words. Murder. One.
The weight of the secret settles in my gut like a sinking stone, slowly, and then boom, it’s lodged there, a part of me. Before I can even drop the phone from my ear, Scotty is bellowing my name. What now? Bart comes jogging over, eating a banana, because Bart always seems to be eating a banana. “Hey. Bad car accident on 676. Scotty wants us there stat.”
Scotty’s voice booms across the newsroom. “Riley, get there, now! I want you first on scene. Be ready to go live at the top of the show.”
I dash around grabbing what I need, as efficient as a firefighter readying for a blaze. Coat, hat, heels, makeup bag in hand, and I’m climbing into the news van in under four minutes. Bart takes off before my door is even closed and then guns it like the NASCAR driver he once confessed he’d always wanted to be, racing through the neighborhoods, avoiding the clogged freeway until we’re closer to the accident.
More than a decade in local news and I’ve seen my share of accident and crime scenes, blood and guts and dead bodies. It’s easy to harden yourself to it all—sometimes it bothers me just how easy. As we pull up to the snarl of twisted metal, I take in the dark circles of bloodstained pavement, the one blue tennis shoe lying on the road, the acrid smell of burning oil and rubber. I try to focus on gathering the facts from the officers on-site. I’m happy to see Pete on the scene. He and I have crossed paths a few times on the job. At twenty-one, he seems more like a kid playing dress-up than an actual cop. The viewers in Joplin must have thought the same thing about me at that age, seeing me on their TV screens, a kid dressed up as a newscaster. It’s amazing anyone can have a first job and be taken seriously; it’s like we’re all doing the career equivalent of walking around in our mothers’ high heels.
I’m not a fan of most cops, but I like Pete, and the feeling seems to be mutual. He’s always eager to help, unlike some of the other officers I’ve met on the job, who like to lord their information and access over me, make me work for every little scrap. He tells me there are two dead on scene and two going to the hospital. Paramedics work feverishly on an unconscious woman sprawled on the pavement, her shabby bra and fleshy belly completely exposed. Then I hear a sound I can’t ignore, a hysterical shriek.
“Is that a baby?” I ask Pete.
His eyes dart over to the ambulance. “Yeah, three-year-old’s about to head to the hospital. He’s okay though. He was strapped into the car seat. It flipped but held him in. He’s just scared. That’s the mother.” He nods at the woman on the ground. “She’s touch-and-go. Other driver en route to the hospital may have been drunk. You can’t report that until I get confirmation that I can release it.”
“Will you have it by the time we go on air?”
“How long?”
“Maybe five minutes?”
“I’ll do my best.”
I race back to the van to touch up my makeup and get mic’ed, giving Scotty an update all the while.
“When it bleeds it leads, as they say, so we’ll throw to you at 5:03, 5:04.” He’s already barking orders at someone else before he hangs up.
There’s five minutes of downtime before I go on air, long enough to check my email. I then spend the next four minutes and fifty seconds regretting that decision.
“You have to be fucking kidding me.” I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Bart looks up, shocked.
“An f-bomb from Riley Wilson. Whoa. What’s up?”
“Nothing, nothing, it’s fine.” I tug at the scarf around my neck, which suddenly feels like it’s choking me. I yank it off and open the passenger door to the van, toss the phone into the passenger seat like it’s delivered an electric shock. Maybe by the time I pick it back up, the message won’t be there anymore. It will be some trick my mind played on me. That name no longer at the top of my in-box.
Corey.
I accepted that he was never going to get in touch again, and why would he? Especially since I was pretty sure he’d moved on. I let myself look at his Facebook a couple of months ago. There was more than one picture of him and some girl, the exact kind of woman I’d imagined him with—an artsy bohemian type, judging from the peasant dresses and asymmetrical haircut; perky, white. All the things I’ll never be.
So why now? Maybe they’ve broken up? Maybe he saw my interview with Tamara? Or maybe something’s wrong with him? He has cancer, needs a kidney? I briefly allow myself to entertain a much more dangerous thought. Or maybe he never stopped loving me?
“Time to get the show on the road,” Bart says, and releases a long, low belch.
“You’re a pig, Bart.” I muster a wobbly laugh.
It’s a blessing and a curse that live TV stops for no one. I slam the van door shut with my phone inside, the email away and out of mind for now. I attempt to smooth my bangs, pressing them close to my forehead, taking one last look in the side mirror to make sure my makeup is in place. It’s a miracle: I look serene and composed; only my shaking knees would give me away.
As I get in place in front of the camera, Pete gives me a thumbs-up, letting me know I can report on the drunk driver in the broadcast.
It can be either invigorating or exhausting, switching to the on-air sparkle for the cameras. After all these years, it’s become second nature to me to be able to turn everything else off and focus only on the three-inch camera lens ten feet away. It’s taking a stage and the only thing that matters is delivering my lines, which happens now as I assume the position—mic held tight in gloved hand, eyes directly forward, back straight, warm gaze—and begin sharing the gruesome and tragic details of the car accident when Bart cues me in. Less than three minutes and the segment is over. In my earpiece, Chip and Candace move on to a story about a house fire in Point Breeze. My work here is done.
I don’t let myself look at my phone the entire ride back to the newsroom even though it takes twice as long with Bart following the speed limit. And I don’t look when I’m back in the dressing room, wiping off my makeup. It remains tucked deep in the reaches of my tote bag as I walk home. It starts to rain on the way, a freezing drizzle, and I don’t bother to cover my hair. Umbrellas, weather, my hair, it’s all irrelevant.
In my apartment, I change into sweatpants as if it’s a normal evening. My phone lies on the counter while I assemble the ingredients to make a vodka tonic, dragging the process out as long as possible, even cutting up a slice of a shriveled lemon that’s been languishing on the counter. By this point my anticipation has become a sort of frenzy, almost euphoric. It’s an exquisite torture to delay the inevitable, to speculate about what Corey might say, rather than to actually know.
I let the vodka do its job as our three-year relationship plays out in my mind like a short film. In fact, it started exactly like a movie, complete with the sudden rainstorm I wasn’t supposed to get caught in. I’d been in Chicago for an NABJ conference. During a break, I’d walked a few blocks from the hotel to grab a pastry at a bakery on Michigan Avenue that everyone had raved about, and the skies opened up out of nowhere and I was stuck without an umbrella, a true catastrophe, considering my freshly straightened hair and the panel I was supposed to attend in twenty minutes that would be filled with top network producers.