Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

And before you say anything, Winnifred says, beaming again, yes, this is hush money, and yes, we will sue you if you so much as utter a word out of turn to anyone .

Ron pulls at his collar, his Adam’s apple protruding, as if he’s just swallowed a golf ball.

Who wrote the checks, I’m wondering, and how was it disguised? Perhaps Winnifred has political ambitions and a PAC of her own. Who is PureLine Communications, at any rate? If I were the muckraker I’m pretending to be, this would be the story, and I would be wearing a wire. It all feels so ordinary, so matter-of-fact, this transaction, this yielding up of the comparatively innocent, the unprepared, to the profiteers of this small, small world. Who would have thought that a tiny public radio station you can’t even get clearly in half the city would be any kind of a prize? Or, on the other hand, perhaps the scandal is that there is no scandal. BCC needs money. WBCC is underperforming. Winnifred is fulfilling her fiduciary responsibility, and who could say otherwise, if WATB really does become student-run, a low-wattage flight simulator, so to speak? Surely that’s what WBCC was in the beginning. In that case the real scandal is us , the eternally subsidized, the overeducated, undermotivated, the preachy, those who hide their resentments in lectures, who think that the world — in the form of a university, a government office, some fragile and temperamental nonprofit — owes us a living.

Kelly, Winnifred says tenderly, reaching across the table to touch my hand, given the circumstances, I’m sure you understand that we need to have your decision before you leave here.

I realize, only now, that no one has offered me coffee, tea, a baked good from the tray, and my stomach is clawing at me to eat. I’ll get something on the way out. Winnifred, I say, I’ll be there, but you’ll do the talking. After that I’ll take the six months. But I’m not signing anything until after I hear you tell them what you’ve decided.

Fair enough, Walter says.

Winnifred appears to have risen slightly in her seat, though it may be just a trick of my perception. You took the job, she says. I warned you it might be rough going. And now you want to wash your hands. That’s not the mark of a leader.

Winnie, Walter murmurs, you know the man’s right.

I’ll let you work it out, I say, rising. You know my terms. Good to meet you, Ron. Best of luck.

It’s almost as if I could do this, too — I could be a dealmaker, a manipulator. Or is it just a role we all learn, now, watching TV? I walk along Charles Street, trying to remember where I parked, feeling a little dizzy, short-footed, as if I’m leaning over to one side, and slightly shrunken, as if I’ve just shed a skin.

In my life I have never heard, never imagined, the sound an office makes when everyone in it is fired at once. Here it is the sound of the live feed burbling over the speakers — Joe Giamelli’s taped show Once Upon a Garden —and occasionally the automatic scritching of Barbara’s fax machine, and the squawk of the walkie-talkie back in the engineers’ room, and the emergency frequency beeping every minute or two at Sully Parker’s news desk. The machines speak, and I look from one face to another, willing my arms not to cross my chest protectively, to remain open, in a receptive, listening posture. No one looks at me. I count them, once, twice. WBCC has seventeen employees, and they are all, mercifully, present — no one on vacation, no one with a sick uncle in Denver. They are all staring at Winnifred, who has just made the announcement, in a convincingly shaky voice, and now wipes her eyes with a tissue. There is no better defensive weapon than a tissue, it just now occurs to me. Not for nothing does she work in public relations.

How much time do we have? Sully asks.

Winnifred seems in no shape to answer, so I pick it up: Until what, Sully?

You know. Until the final decision is made. Until the ax falls.

Sully, I say, I’m so, so sorry to say this, but the final decision has been made.

Bullshit, Mort says. That’s so much self-serving nonsense, and you know it, Kelly. It ain’t over till it’s over, right? He looks around the room, gathering the troops, but there are only one or two muted yeah s, a few murmurs, and otherwise silence, thick as before. It’s going to be a lawsuit, then, he says. Jesus Christ, Winnie, you sold us down the river, didn’t you?

Don’t you dare use that expression with me, Winnifred says. That’s disgusting. You ought to know better.

Well, okay, good, Mort says. I guess you can say you’re firing me for cause. Because that’s the only way you can do it. Our contracts all say that we have ninety days’ notice if our employer files for bankruptcy or goes out of business. That’s standard boilerplate.

But WBCC isn’t going out of business, Winnifred says patiently. As I’ve just explained. We’re in a transitional period.

Were we just not popular enough? Diane Mackintosh, our pink-sweatered musical consultant, asks, her face already red and raw, a shred of tissue clinging to her nose, too. I mean, is that what you’re saying here? Basically BCC is giving up on us because we’re not marketable anymore? Because I have a few things to say about that. Take this off the air — she flaps a hand around the room, at no one in particular — and it disappears. I could show you the stacks of letters saying that we’re people’s lifeblood . That’s what I care about. Not about ratings . I went into radio to change people’s lives .

No one is saying the station isn’t an amazing resource, I say. It’s distinctive. There’s so much here to be proud of. And all of you can go on to offer the same content in other formats. Internet radio. Podcasts. Blogs. There’s a hundred different venues that didn’t exist ten years ago.

That don’t pay anyone a salary.

No, I say, you’re right. Not yet. The industry’s in transition. But public radio was never about institutional support; it was always about listener membership. And WBCC never had the membership dollars, the sponsorships, to work properly, in any case. BCC was footing too much of the bill. It was unrealistic, to be honest. In a down market something like this was bound to happen.

Shut up, Winnifred is signaling me with her eyes, all but mouthing the words.

We had six weeks of pledge drives last year, Sully says. You’re telling me we didn’t try ?

I’m telling you that we were in the wrong position in the marketplace.

This capitalistic language, Diane says. It’s making me ill .

I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry! I wish I didn’t have to be saying these things. Someone should have said them a long time ago. From my perspective, this station has had very poor leadership. Very poor strategic planning. I know it doesn’t help now. I just wish I’d had more time. It’s a huge waste. I’m so, so sorry.

No one appears to be listening, save for Winnifred, who stares at me with such concentrated fury I can feel it radiating from her body. For a moment I wonder whether she could construe what I’ve just said as talking to the media, a violation of my agreement, but she cuts her gaze away, flicking me off the table of her mind, and I know how insignificant I am, thank god, how justifiably an afterthought and a minor irritation.

We go to the papers first, says Michelle Berkowitz, who’s young, not even thirty, with a communications degree from Northwestern. I’ve never quite known what she was doing here. There’s going to be a firestorm, she says. You’ll see.

We can’t stop you from doing that, Winnifred says. We can’t stop you from doing anything . This is a station committed to public discourse, and discourse is what there will be. But in the end it’s likely that things will still come out on the college’s side. I say this as a matter of sheer practicality. I would encourage you all to think of this as a transitional period to new employment—