‘ Well, Troy,’ I said, and as soon as I said it, Dickie whipped around to face me, his expression a complete panic.
‘ We’ ve got dead air!’ he hissed. ‘ I can’ t hear you!’
Not knowing what to do, I continued, ‘ I’ d tell them-’
But Troy’ s voice cut me off. ‘ I mean, besides get out and walk. Heh, heh. Right, Fat Boy?’
‘ What the f-’ Deedee began, but stopped short. I could hear her voice in my headset. She figured it out at the same time the rest of us did. Her mike was on, and mine wasn’ t.
Dickie picked up the wires leading from the controls to us. We must have switched the headsets when we took them off to eat the doughnuts. I froze with panic: What should I do? Troy put a finger in the air to say, Wait& and then he said, ‘ That’ s a good point you’ re making there, Fat Boy.’
With that, Deedee sat up straight and bleated into her microphone, ‘ June here! You know what, Troy? I always say that traffic is a lot like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything.’
Troy didn’ t miss a beat. ‘ So true. And what should they do?’
‘ For starters,’ she said, her eyes wide with excitement as she continued, ‘ they should carpool. I mean, if they’ re lucky enough to have a car. Especially since gas is, like, a million dollars a gallon.’
‘ Remind me not to go to the same gas station you do,’ Troy joked. I was a wreck, but he seemed to be taking it in stride. Dickie reached back and gave Deedee’ s arm an encouraging squeeze.
‘ Bus,’ I mouthed to her.
‘ And if they don’ t got a car,’ she continued, ‘ then they can take the bus. Shoot, my mom is blind, so she’ s gotta ride the bus everywhere, and she does fine.’
‘ Good for her,’ Troy said.
I’ d reached into my purse and grabbed a pen, and I quickly wrote the company’ s 800 number on the back of the doughnut bag and held it in front of Deedee.
‘ Yeah, so I don’ t want to hear nobody complaining that they can’ t do it. If she can ride the bus and she can’ t even see, then somebody who’ s got everything going on ought to be able to do it, too.’
‘ I can’ t tell you how glad I am that you came to share that with us today, June,’ Troy said. He could hardly hold back his grin. He was enjoying this!
‘ You’ re welcome,’ Deedee said proudly. ‘ Oh, and if they got any questions, they need to call 1-800- RIDESHARE. Which is more than seven numbers, but I guess it works okay anyway.’
Troy wound up the report, thanked the sponsors, and then the radio came back in my headset again.
‘ Deedee, that was great!’ Troy exclaimed. ‘ You’ re a natural.’
Dickie slapped her leg in congratulation.
I tried to sound enthusiastic when I said, ‘ You did better than I would have.’
‘ Can I do another one?’ she asked eagerly.
Dickie shook his head. ‘ Let’ s not press our luck.’
‘ Shoot. I wanted to give a shout-out to my girlfriend Rebecca.’
To round out the tour, Troy whipped along the beach, deserted save for a few surfers at this early hour, and over the giant Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier.
After we landed and climbed out of the helicopter, it was all I could do not to kneel and kiss the ground. Good old terra firma! Fun as it had started out, I’ d never been so glad to have something over with. The people of Los Angeles now thought my mother was blind and that I’ d use double negatives, but that wasn’ t even the problem.
I’ d blown it. Again.
In the moment that we realized my microphone wasn’ t working, it was Deedee who’ d stepped up with a plan. Left to me, it would have been the longest silence in radio history. Only after the fact did I realize I could have simply leaned over and talked into her microphone until we had a second to switch headsets.
I moped and tried to appear as if I weren’ t, as the others seemed amped from the ride.
‘ Besides being on the radio, the best part was seeing that car accident,’ Deedee chattered on. ‘ They looked like toy cars. And that one was totally upside down. It was so awesome.’
‘ You know what’ s interesting,’ Dickie told her, ‘ is that most traffic reporters don’ t use the term accident. You’ ll notice they call it a ‘ crash’ or a ‘ smash-up.’ Saying ‘ accident’ makes it sound as if it can’ t be helped.’
‘ I never thought of it that way,’ Deedee remarked.
As he spoke, I’ d exhaled a breath but seemed to have forgotten how to draw it back in. Then everything started to collide inside me. The taco soup& my talk with Deedee the night before& seeing Troy Jones and not having enough sleep and eating only sugar for breakfast and blowing the interview and Deedee was pregnant and why didn’ t I just talk into her microphone and all that coffee and there’ s no such thing as an accident because they’ re crashes and smash-ups but not accidents because somebody must be at fault and the worst, worst, worst part of all& Troy’ s glance sliding over to me because he’ d heard what Dickie said, too. And in his eyes I saw the one thing I couldn’ t take-the thing that was as good as pouring lighter fluid on the smoldering fire of my emotions. I saw pity.
‘ Pardon me, I need to& ‘ I gestured toward outside, as if there were important errands I’ d remembered I needed to handle. I hurried out, and as soon as I was beyond where they could see me, I ran the rest of the way to the side of the building.
Then I threw my back up against the wall, and the waterworks began.
My chest heaved to gasp air. Tears hurled themselves from my eyes as I let loose racking, heaving sob after sob. I knew the noise I was making-I’ d heard it before when I’ d visited San Francisco’ s Pier 39, where dozens of sea lions played on the docks. In my case, it was a bark of awful, confused misery. It was Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show when she used to cry in her falsetto, ‘ Oh, Rob!’ It was the girl screaming in a slasher film. It was a Mack truck’ s brakes squealing on the freeway. It was ugly and undignified, and I couldn’ t make myself stop.
