“O?” she asked. Surely there was some kind of electrical gremlin that had made it look like she was LIVE, ON AIR, right now because there was no other explanation for why that light would be lit. “Oh fuck.”
Omar looked from Ellie’s finger over to the other side of the booth and promptly leapt across the board to cut her audio and the live video feed. She stood up and tried to walk out of the line of the camera, forgetting that she was still wearing headphones that were plugged into a soundboard, and was immediately yanked back down to her seat. The right earpiece rotated off her ear and landed squarely in the middle of her mouth, smearing her Charlotte Tilbury gloss in Candy Darling pink up to her nose. That was when she ripped off the headphones,thrashing her wrist directly into the iced coffee, turning herself into a caffeinated Rorschach. Ellie’s mouth, still smeared with gloss, hung open as a pool of cold liquid collected in a divot in the seat cushion of her chair. She was 100 percent certain that it was about to soak through to her underwear if she didn’t stand up immediately. Still, her legs were stuck in cement.
Clusters of people passing through the lobby had stopped to see what was going on inside the fishbowl since the broadcast was audible through speakers planted along the ceiling. Those, plus the ten monitors set up around the lobby, never failed to capture everyone’s attention, especially when the famously composed Dr. Beltrami just ripped an expletive through the studio and the airwaves beyond. Omar flipped a switch on the soundboard to continue the broadcast, but the screens stayed a cold black, reflecting the disaster back to her.
“Well, everybody, there you have it. Dr. B and I were just messing around a bit—trying a new segment, you know? A little behind-the-scenes for you here today, but it probably won’t make the cut I think, ha ha.” Even through the glass, Ellie could see a sheen of sweat glimmering on Omar’s bald head. “So, we’re off for the next couple of weeks, but don’t forget to tune in for season seven ofGames Overstarting in August where we have a lot of great guests lined up like—” He shuffled through a notebook, threw it down, and hovered over his computer. “Uh… Like, ah—” he tried, jabbing at the keyboard, searching for something, anything, to right the ship. “And also Dr. B is very excited to share more great…” He trailed off, giving up.
Ellie didn’t remember much after that. She could hear Omar close out the show and then lots of yelling from inside the booth while the show’s outro music blared from all directions. She heard a “Coño” and a “Me cago en diez” and some other expletives as Omar screamed hisway through the forensics of trying to understand what went wrong, but she was too dizzy with shock at that point to do anything beyond close her laptop, slide it in her bag, and walk straight out of the fishbowl.
But leaving the scene wouldn’t be easy. Not only hadGames Overmade Ellie a star, but it had also turned the plaza outside of the building where the studio was located into a permanent press box for paparazzi to hang out and wait for whatever A-lister was featured on the show. When the doorswhooshed open, revealing the illustrious Dr. Beltrami in smeared lip gloss and a stained suit, the flashbulbs would start popping. Ellie was too numb with humiliation to think about finding a creative way to cover up the mess. There was nothing between her and certain social media implosion but the clear blue sky and sunshine.
Maybe Dougie Baylor wasn’t hot enough to draw the cameras. Maybe the live feed was messed up and none of the paps heard the last two minutes of catastrophe. Maybe one of those massive sinkholes would open up like the one on 89th Street last summer and swallow her whole.
“Hey, Dr. B! Do you really hate athletes?”
As she stepped outside, a bearded guy with a camera lens jutting out aggressively from his face snapped Ellie’s brain back into focus. He didn’t even wait for her to answer before repeatedly hitting the shutter button on his camera. She ducked her head and marched straight toward the curb like she hadn’t heard him, but the clicking sound was inescapable. It would have been smart to call an Uber, but she couldn’t think of taking even one extra second to pull up the app. Right now, she was better off just looking for a taxi. She had to get off the street by any means at all. More time in public meant more chances to getphotos of her from every possible, messy angle. A yellow car edged toward the curb with the center light lit, and Ellie did not hesitate.
“Forty-Fourth and Second,” she said, sliding into the back seat as her phone rang.Mom. That was fast.Ellie sighed as she answered. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetie, are you home?”
“No, not yet.”
“Oh. Well, can you talk?”
“Yep. Listen, it’s fine, say what you have to say,” said Ellie, bracing for criticism. She pictured her mother standing in the kitchen, her laptop open and streaming the show like Ellie had taught her so she could listen back home in California. It was sweet of her mom to be polite and all, but it was better off if she just let her have it like she normally did. Ellie’s only question was how much worse it sounded streaming into everyone’s phones and laptops versus in person.
“Well… okay, then, you must be very busy. I understand. Let me come right out and say this since you deserve to know what’s going on.”
Ellie was pretty sure she knew what was going on because it was going on all over her suit. “Mom, I’m not going to panic yet—”
“Well, good, sweetie. I know we can all get through this. The truth is, your father and I are getting a divorce.”
Ellie felt lightning shoot across her chest and down into her fingertips. Human bodies were not meant to contain this quantity of stress hormones. Today was going to require a higher grade of recovery than what she normally planned after a big interview. Usually, she decompressed with comfortable clothing and a walk around Central Park with a new audiobook or a favorite podcast, but there was no way a little stroll was going to cut it now. When she felt this torched, there was only one option—lights low, air conditioning on,tea within reach, and lying down in bed with optional Netflix. If she could just levitate the taxi over midday Midtown traffic, everything would be fine.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘divorce’?”
“I mean exactly what I said, Ellie-Belle. We’ve come to the conclusion—well, your dad and I have decided, together. We think we would be better off on our own at this point in our lives.”
“Mom. You’re both over sixty.Thispoint? What are theotherpoints? Isn’tthisthe point?” Ellie said, trying to ignore that her mom only called her “Ellie-Belle” when she was trying to sugarcoat something. Her mom had used it for things like suggesting that her brother, Ben, take her to the father-daughter dance since Dad wasn’t going to make it back from yet another coaching trip in time, so the name wasn’t her favorite thing to hear.
“Well, that’s not very fair. We are not too old to be happy, Ellie.”
“Who else knows? And where’s Dad? Did he already move out?”
“No one knows, and no, Dad didn’t move out,” she said, sounding insulted. “He’s right here.” Ellie could hear her mother pull her mouth away from the phone. She could practically see her dad leaning on the counter in the kitchen in his faded USC T-shirt. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“Does he want to talk to me?”
The cab stopped at an intersection three blocks from her apartment, but Ellie was too antsy to keep sitting. She tapped on the glass to tell the driver she’d get out and pulled out her credit card to swipe.
“Well of course he does, sweetie, why wouldn’t he? Hon—George? Here, talk to Ellie.” She heard muffled sounds as her mom passed the phone to her dad. Ellie exited the cab, and even though the air was thick with exhaust fumes, she finally felt like she could breathe.
“Coccinella.”
The tightness in her chest pulled again. “Ciao,Papino. What the hell are you guys doing over there?” She stood on the sidewalk staring at her reflection in a shop window that had been papered over from the inside for construction and pulled her tote bag off her shoulder because the scarf she’d used to protect her suit was now getting ruined by that very suit. She held the bag away from her body like it contained a bomb, nearly whacking a tiny woman in a turquoise turban and a matching paisley caftan. The woman yanked her twin Yorkies in pearl necklaces out of the way, setting off a chorus of yips in protest of such a violent change in direction.
“Well, it’s what your mother said—we think that being apart is the right thing to do.”
