The Wing Girl: A laugh out loud romantic comedy. Nic Tatano
me it was safe to go.
What happened next nearly made my jaw drop.
Because just about every man crossing in the opposite direction had his hanging open.
They gawked. They flat out stared. A young, hardbodied bike messenger heading around the corner stopped, tipped his sunglasses down for a better look, and said, “Whoa.” A cabbie going the other way gave me the classic blue-collar compliment of “Hey, baby” as he honked his horn and beat his hand on the side of the car door. A utility worker ten feet off the ground in a cherry picker got distracted and sent his bucket into a telephone pole. A man twisted his neck like an owl as he crossed the street in the other direction. I heard a clang and an expletive only to turn and see he had walked into a mailbox and was hopping around on one leg.
I reached the other side of the street to find Ariel laughing hysterically as she put down her phone.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’re now officially a smoking hot babe.”
***
The video rolled for the fifth time in slow motion, filling the giant flat screen in my living room.
“I love the look on the guy’s face when he hits the mailbox,” said Ariel, leaning back into my overstuffed beige couch while sipping a glass of red wine. She fired the remote at the screen and froze the video as the man cringed.
“I still can’t believe that’s me,” I said. “It’s like watching a stranger.”
Roxanne grabbed the remote from Ariel and started the video again, this time at half speed. “Look at that hair bounce. Am I good, or what?”
“It’s like there are invisible electric fans following her,” said Serena. “Rox, you’ve outdone yourself.”
“She didn’t just stop traffic, she made it back up.” Roxanne smiled and hit the pause button, then pointed a finger at me. “And I don’t want you touching your hair tomorrow. I’ll be here at seven to give you a comb-out.”
“Seven?” I said. “I sleep till eight.”
Roxanne shook her head. “Not any more. Beauty takes time. No more rolling out of bed and directly into a cab wearing a toothbrush as an accessory. Yeah, I’ve seen you do that.”
“Guess I need to start going to bed earlier.”
“Hopefully you’ll be doing that for reasons other than sleep,” said Ariel.
I looked at myself on the screen and it hit me. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh what?” asked Serena.
“I just thought of something. I’m not sure what the reaction will be at work.”
Ariel furrowed her brow. “Seriously? You work in TV. The new look should be worth bigger ratings. They’ll be thrilled.”
“There’s more to it than that. I realize my business is superficial but it’s hard to be credible if a viewer’s first impression of you has to do with how you look. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never fixed myself up.”
“The other reason is that you had no idea how to do it,” said Roxanne.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna get some flak for this.”
Ariel waved her hand. “Pfffft. They’ll love it.”
“You don’t know Harry.”
Harry Coyne likes to use the phrase “back in the day” when describing the halcyon days of broadcasting. No computers but typewriters, and not the electric kind but the kind where the letter “e” got stuck fairly often. No printers but carbon paper. A huge black metal wire service machine that spit out an endless roll of copy and had to be “stripped” every twenty minutes by the low man on the totem pole. (Only because there were no women on said pole. Their poles could be found in strip clubs.) Ribbons had to be changed, film had to be developed, phones had hold buttons that flashed. And actual human beings answered them when they rang. People smoked in newsrooms and every reporter had a flask filled with something a hell of a lot stronger than Dr. Pepper stashed in his desk.
And back in the day, as Harry puts it, “A newsroom sounded like a newsroom.” Watch any movie about the news business made before 1980 and you’ll hear the journalism heartbeat of the past: the loud banging of the wire machine, the incessant tapping of typewriter keys, the spinning of the typewriter platen as paper was ripped out. The wire machine is now a boat anchor, replaced by digital news delivered to your laptop while reporters gently write stories on nearly silent keyboards.
I say nearly silent, because today as I arrived in the newsroom I couldn’t hear them.
Same deal as crossing the street. Everything stopped. Jaws dropped open. Hal, the kid producer, walked into a file cabinet. Audrey the newsroom secretary spilled coffee all over herself. I left surprised looks in my wake as I entered the conference room for the morning meeting, adorned in a stunning short emerald-green dress that matched my eyes, which Roxanne had worked on after my morning comb-out.
The loud conversation that usually filled the room every morning came to a screeching halt as everyone looked in my direction.
Jenna Scanlin, our thirty-something five o’clock anchor with the supermodel body broke the silence. “Oh my God! You look … fantastic!”
“Thank you,” I said, sitting down in my usual spot at the far end, opposite the head of the table, newsroom “mom” to Harry’s “dad.”
Stan Harvey the feature guy couldn’t stop staring. “Excuse me, but … who are you and what have you done with Belinda Carson?”
“Just thought it was time for a little change,” I said, twirling a lock of my hair.
“Little change?” said Stan.
“I’d give you a compliment but I see Inhuman Resources lurking in the newsroom,” said Bob Evanson, spotting the troll on one of her regular spy missions. “So I’ll just ask if someone can turn up the air conditioning in here.”
“You look amazing,” said Audrey, still trying to dab coffee off her blouse.
“Thanks.” I looked through the glass and saw Harry headed our way. “Nobody say anything. I wanna see if he notices.”
Harry blew through the door as he always did, dropped a bunch of manila folders and a yellow legal pad in front of his chair, took a seat, banged his chipped red coffee cup on the table and spilled a bit of it. He pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and looked up. His brow creased as he noticed me, then he turned to his perky brunette assistant who sat to his left. “Audrey, you’re supposed to notify me in advance when we have a guest in the morning meeting.”
Audrey, who’s my age, bit her lower lip, trying her best not to laugh. “She’s not a guest, Harry.”
People snorted, laughs were stifled. Harry slowly turned in my direction, pulled his silver reading glasses down to the tip of his nose and stared over them at me. “I’m sorry, do you work here?”
“Every weekday for the last eight years,” I said. “Maybe you recognize the voice.”
His eyes suddenly widened in recognition. “Cupcake?”
I smiled and nodded.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Harry, you’re a real charmer,” said Jenna.
“In my office after the meeting,” he said.
***
I