Nic Tatano - The Wing Girl - A laugh out loud romantic comedy

He looked to one side, flashed a crooked smile. “Geez, lady, turn it off.”

“Turn off what?”

“The investigative reporter thing. What’s next, hot lights and thumb screws?” He downed the rest of his drink and stood up. “Look, I don’t think this is gonna work. It was nice meeting you, Belinda.” He shook his head and smiled. “Wait till I tell the guys at the office I got interrogated by the Brass Cupcake.”

Yeah, that’s my nickname in the Big Apple, courtesy of those clever headline writers at The Post . Great for journalism, a killer when trying to meet men.

The colors returned to normal in the trendy watering hole. Half the crowd leaned against the brass rail running the length of the dark oak bar, while the Tiffany lamps above the small round tables provided subdued light to the other half. My best friend Ariel Baymont slid her tall, willowy frame into the next chair and quickly noticed the previously occupied seat at our table was now empty. “What happened to the total package who was here five minutes ago?”

I exhaled, shook my head and looked down into my nearly empty glass.

“You did it again, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, then slugged down the remainder of my rum concoction.

“Trying to drown your sorrows?”

“I would, but the little bastards have learned how to swim.”

She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and I leaned my head on hers. “Aw, sweetie, we’re going to have to work on your bedside manner.”

“You’re assuming a man has been remotely close to my bed.”

She pulled back and gave me a soulful look with her ice-blue eyes. “Well, all is not lost. We’ll try again this weekend. Anyway, the cute guy who was hitting on me earlier wants to go someplace where we can talk .”

“So you’re taking him home.”

She shrugged, then started to twirl her honey-blonde hair with one finger. “We can talk there as well as anyplace.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Talk. Right.”

“You know, I can see why you’re such a good reporter. You really are a human lie detector.”

“Yeah, I might as well change my name to Polly Graph.”

“Cute. Anyway, we still on for Saturday night?”

“Thanks to my aforementioned bedside manner, my dance card is clear.”

She leaned over and kissed me on the side of the head. “Great. I’ll see you then. Hang in there, Wing Girl.”

***

Before we go any farther, I should explain the “Wing Girl” concept and how it applies to me, since that is my current after-hours nickname.

As most women know, a good-looking guy will often cruise the bars with a “wing man” at his side, the theory being that men in pairs can separate women in mismatched pairs (one attractive, one not), using a divide and conquer tactic designed to liberate the good-looking woman from the skank. This presumes that the hot girl will not take off and leave her unattractive friend to fend for herself. The wing man swoops in like a dog after a pork chop and takes one for the team, chatting up the skank while his friend moves in on aforementioned hottie, who no longer feels obligated to keep her homely friend company and is thereby freed to engage in extracurricular activities.

It’s a little different for those without a Y chromosome, and totally opposite in my case. Here’s the deal. When it comes to attracting the opposite sex, I am to my friends what a puppy is to a single guy.

Ariel and my circle of friends have dubbed me “Wing Girl” because I end up taking one for the team every time. However, the strategy my friends use is backwards. Since I am a very recognizable member of the media, it’s a case of moths, meet flame. I’m not sure if it’s the fame thing or the challenge of possibly nailing the Brass Cupcake, but it works, drawing in attractive men who I naturally turn off, leaving my friends with very delectable leftovers. My friends always end up with positive results while I finish the evening without so much as a request for a phone number. My Wing Girl moniker started out as a term of endearment, something fun, but lately it’s beginning to wear thin.

I don’t mean to repel men like a Star Trek force field. Really, I don’t. But as I approach the big three-oh, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be able to drop my “prosecutor from hell” persona when I’m off the clock. And I really want to. Before that other clock, the biological one that’s ticking louder every day, strikes twelve.

Because, and don’t ever tell my boss this, beneath the brass lies a real cupcake looking for her perfect icing.

***

“Cupcake, you really nailed the Senator last night.”

My boss, the grizzled Harry Coyne, whose face is so wrinkled it would tie up a dry cleaner for a day, smiled as I took a seat at the conference room table for the morning meeting, his daily sit-down with the dozen reporters on the dayside staff.

“Thanks,” I said.

Now, before we get the PC police involved in this, let me explain a little about newsroom language. We usually call each other by last names or, in my case, nicknames. And you might think that a man calling a woman “Cupcake” in the office would violate a litany of sexual harassment laws and cause thousands of dollars of “emotional stress” to the recipient of said nickname. But since I’m cool with it and the rest of the staff knows it, it’s not a big deal.

Of course, the first time Harry called me Cupcake, the human resources troll happened to be within earshot and her harassment-sniffing dogs confirmed that this improper term of endearment was, in fact, being used by men in the newsroom. I explained to her that it originated in The Post , we all thought it was funny (as well as dead-on appropriate), I actually liked the nickname, and considered it a compliment. The troll, a two hundred pound fireplug, actually typed up a release form, which I had to sign saying I approved of the term and would not sue the station nor hold anyone accountable should I suddenly decide to become offended. That night after the troll went home, one of our photographers went down to her office with a chisel and added the prefix “In” to the “Human Resources” nameplate outside her door. Now she had the nickname “Inhuman Resources,” which spread through the station like wildfire and stuck like superglue.

Back to the original comment, in which Harry highlighted the fact that I nailed the Senator. While this might have meant something sexual had I been a Washington, DC intern in a blue dress, the term “nailed” in the news business meant that I exposed some serious shit about a politician, in this case a New York State Senator.

And you have to understand where Harry’s coming from. He broke into the business in the dinosaur age, when smoke-filled newsrooms were populated by nothing but men and the only women in the building were secretaries. When the women’s movement was making inroads into the biz, the men lived by the mantra “keep the broads out of broadcasting” as they fought an unsuccessful battle. Harry is still old-school on the subject of equality in the television news industry, thinking most women are simply eye candy, but he loves me because he says I’m “one of the guys.”

You beginning to see my problem?

Harry just turned sixty, and doesn’t look a day over seventy-five. The shock of white hair and the closely cropped matching beard doesn’t help. His gray eyes are framed by a flock of crow’s feet. He’s short and stocky, maybe five-six, with a bay window from too many trips to the tavern across the street for a cold one after the newscast. The trademark red suspenders harken back to a bygone era. He paced around the glassed-in conference room channeling DeNiro with that baseball bat in The Untouchables , whacking a ruler into his hand as he recapped the previous newscast. “Yessir, damn fine reporting.” Tap, tap, tap. He stopped behind the reporter who would be this morning’s victim, fortyish general assignment reporter Bob Evanson, then rested the ruler on the man’s shoulder like he was knighting the guy. “She woulda done a better job on your piece last night.”