Page 105 of Cut Off
I touch the leaf. The plant is real. The plant is on the desk. The desk is mine.
“You’re going to love it here,” Mel says in the doorway, half out of it already, eyes on the hallway because someone has just walked past who needs her. “It’s a lot the first week. I know. Just—dive in. Sink or swim. You’re a swimmer.”
“I’m a swimmer.”
“Also, breaking thing on the city council budget fight. Shonda is sending you the file. I need a two-minute segment by twelve-thirty. You good?”
I’m not good.
“I’m good,” I say.
She grins. “Knew it. Welcome, Lane.”
She’s gone before the door closes.
I do the segment. Because the good thing is I know how to do this. I’ve been doing it since I was twenty-two, and the muscle memory is honest, and the city council fight is the same one I’ve produced eight hundred versions of.
I cut it together in an edit suite that is so quiet I can hear the building’s HVAC. Two monitors. A chair that, yes, has a name. The keyboard shortcuts are different from what I’m used to, and the producer software is a newer version, and I figure it out in fifteen minutes because that is what you do.
The whole time I’m cutting, Eli is in the room with me. Jonah too.
I don’t know how else to say it. They are just—there. In the corner of my eye. Eli, setting up the chessboard again, without a word. Jonah, the way he could envelop me and make me feel like everything was going to be okay. Great even. How he touched me like I was a masterpiece, and how I felt like we’d known each other our whole lives.
The councilman opposing the shelter expansion is talking, in my headphones, about fiscal responsibility, and I’m thinking about whether Gwen’s house has a six-inch closet rule. I’m thinking about whether Gwen knows that Eli can’t sleep without the hallway light on. I’m thinking about whether Gwen will let him keep Flash on the pillow, or whether she’ll decide nine is too old for action figures and put Flash in a box on a shelf where Eli can see him but not reach him.
I render the segment and then send it to Shonda. She replies within thirty seconds: thx, perfect.
I sit in the edit suite for a minute longer than I need to.
My phone buzzes. Ms. Hernandez, who’s been keeping me updated in the careful way of a woman who is bending several rules but is not going to admit which ones. The text is short.
Lily Hernandez:He’s in anger management now. He and his lawyer are fighting. Thought you should know.
Good. Great. I picture Eli in Gwen’s rundown house. In the old Buick that’s probably not that safe. I picture Gwen doing what she did to Rosie, and I have to push it out of my mind.
I type back:
Me:Let me know if the lawyer needs anything. Thanks.
I cut a second segment. Mel sends me a third one before I have finished the second. It is, technically, what I asked for.
This is behind the scenes, the place where I thrived. Except since I left W2Beaver, I’ve been doingZoe Knows, andshowing my face. And it’s been good. I’ve been good. Great even, and I’ve enjoyed it.
I get off shift at seven. The rain is still doing its thing, and I’ve not eaten since a granola bar in the edit suite at two p.m. My stomach is making noises and aching.
I walk four blocks back to my hotel, the city pulling me along, and eventually I see a ramen shop with steam fogging the front window and people sitting at the counter inside, and that decides it.
The menu is on the wall, and I order tonkotsu because I don’t have the energy to make a real decision. The cook nods. The bowl arrives in four minutes, steaming, perfect, the broth so rich it makes my eyes water.
The two women on my left are talking about a wedding. The man on my right is on the phone, laughing at something every twenty seconds. The cooks are calling out orders.
I eat my ramen. I taste, I think, about thirty percent of it.
Dickens has over eleven thousand people. My barista at the diner knew my order before I sat down. The woman at the gas station on Main called me Zoe-honey. The mailman at Jonah’s house waved at me through the kitchen window every morning.
I didn’t appreciate any of it. At least, not the way I do now. I wasn’t opposed to living in a big city, but I wasn’t dreaming about it either. I’d hoped to stay home, but then getting out felt like it was something that would be good for me.
And maybe it will be. But right now, it doesn’t feel that way.
