CHAPTER 3 JACKSON #2
“Sure,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a cloud of dust. He swivels back and forth in his chair, one hand perched under his chin, the other curled around his frozen drink. He brings it to his mouth and takes a loud slurp from the orange straw, his bloated cheeks wobbling.
Delilah exhales a short, frustrated sound from the corner.
I know Keith. Everyone in Baltimore knows Keith.
He had a successful broadcast career in the early nineties before taking on a senior administrative role with the station.
They used to call him the Face of Baltimore, but I’ve always found his face to be largely insufferable.
His personality too. He’s arrogant, self-centered, and he uses way too much hair product on far too little hair.
Two years ago, he led a one-man campaign to rename the road that leads into the station after himself.
The city denied him, and when he tried to petition the public for grassroots support, they denied him as well.
He seems determined to hold on to his glory days, despite being almost three decades past.
I have no idea why we’re giving this guy our time. It’s not like Maggie to entertain the antics of an asshole.
“Keith,” Maggie says again, some of her endless patience beginning to slip. “If you don’t mind, we have a broadcast of our own to get back to.”
“Ah, yes.” His smile is condescending, his too-white teeth glinting under the fluorescents. “Your little radio show. Wouldn’t want to be late for that.”
Maggie’s answering smile is as sharp as her response. “Our little radio show has almost three times the organic reach as your little news station. It is the reason, as you recall, we are having this conversation.”
Keith’s eyes flash. He sets his coffee to the side.
“Too right,” he snaps. “Jackson. Delilah. You’re here as part of a new proposed partnership between 101.6 LITE FM and YBAL News.”
“What?” I ask at the same time Delilah blurts, “Why?”
Keith finally turns his head to look at Delilah, his lip curling. “To report the weather.”
“Like . . . together?” She glances at me and points one fin in my direction. She’s been tugging them on and off her hands since we sat down at this meeting. “As in, the both of us?”
“Yes, that is the plan.” Maggie clasps her hands in front of her on the table. She’s in negotiation mode while I’m playing catch-up in the seat next to her. My brain is stuck on the word partnership—as in two people working together toward a common goal.
The only thing Delilah and I have ever been aligned on is chaos. The only thing we’ve ever worked toward together is mutual destruction.
“Jackson,” Maggie says. “What does the Farmers’ Almanac say about February?”
“Um.” I blink away from Delilah and press my glasses up my nose. “It says we’ll see colder than usual temperatures this winter, which has held true.”
“And the storms?” Maggie asks, not looking away from Keith. “What does it say about the storms?”
“It says we should expect historic snow conditions.” I frown. “Though the storms Maryland has seen this winter have been right on par with previous seasons.”
“You just . . . have the Farmers’ Almanac memorized?” Delilah asks.
Her tone makes it clear that rote memorization of the almanac is not something to be proud of. I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s helpful information.”
“For all those . . . crops you have at home?”
“Farmers aren’t the only ones who use that almanac,” I defend. “It has plenty of helpful applications.”
“Sure.”
“I get a copy every year. It’s—” I huff. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Do you get a copy of the Yellow Pages too?” Her lips lift at the corners. “Do you have a Rolodex?”
I do have a Rolodex that sits on the corner of my desk at the radio station where I keep all my contacts. I like writing things down on paper. It makes it easier for me to find them. But over my dead body am I going to admit that to Delilah.
Apparently, I don’t have to. She studies my face for the span of three seconds, then descends into a bright, cackling laugh.
“Oh my god, you do. You have a Rolodex.”
I turn and look at Maggie. “This isn’t going to work.”
Any partnership I have with Delilah will result in us at each other’s throats. I can’t work with someone so fundamentally different from myself. She probably uses a map and a set of crystals to predict the weather. A Magic 8 Ball.
Maggie pats my forearm gently. “It’ll be fine. Just listen, and we’ll talk through the rest of the details later, okay?”
“What details?” I bite out. “What, exactly, are you suggesting?”
“Is it alphabetized?” Delilah volleys from her side of the room.
I slant my eyes in her direction. She’s practically vibrating in her metal folding chair. “Is what alphabetized?”
“Your Rolodex. Do you keep it alphabetized?”
“How else do you suggest I keep my Rolodex?” I’m not a goddamned monster.
She presses her lips together. “I really can’t tell if you’re joking right now,” she whispers.
I pointedly turn my attention to my boss, who is gazing at the tabletop as if she’d like nothing more than to be absorbed within the wood grain. “What, exactly, are you suggesting?”
“We’ve pulled together some weather projections and run them by the folks down at the National Weather Service,” Keith offers, somehow managing to sound both smug and stupid in the same breath.
“We’ll obviously know more in the coming days, but there’s a snowstorm heading our way that could bring record-breaking snowfall. ”
I’ve seen similar markers in the models I’ve been watching, but it’s far too early to tell if it’s a passing low-pressure system, or the start of a massive storm barreling down over the mountains.
Delilah’s amusement evaporates. “You sent in those projections? The ones I gave you last week?”
“By the looks of it, Western Maryland is about to get walloped,” Keith says, not bothering to acknowledge Delilah or her question.
She might as well be a pretty picture on the wall for the amount of attention he’s given her in this meeting.
“It’s too early to issue any warnings, of course, but all the ingredients are there. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime storm.”
“When I brought you those projections, you told me they were garbage,” Delilah says. The legs of her chair screech across the floor as she tries to keep their conversation private. “You said they weren’t usable.”
Keith flicks his fingers. “Because they weren’t. Megan at the National Weather Service gave us usable data.”
“But it was my report you used. I laid everything out. I collected the data and I drew out the projections. I—” She pauses and swallows heavily. “That was my work, Keith.”
“That was the station’s work. I was the one who coordinated everything with the NWS.”
“But it was my analysis. The low-pressure system over the Rockies and the precipitation coming up from the Gulf. I—”
“Used station resources aggregating it,” Keith says, his voice sharpening.
“Have you been waiting for your shiny gold star, Delilah? Congratulations. You did your job.” He rolls his eyes and shifts so his back is to her, wedged in the corner of the room.
Something twists in my gut, even as I try to come to terms with the fact that Delilah apparently doesn’t use a cup of sticks to predict the weather.
“What model did you use?” I ask.
Delilah reluctantly lifts her eyes to mine. “The European model.”
“Ah,” I say, satisfied that I didn’t miss something. “Okay.”
Her mouth pinches and pink brushes across the tops of her cheeks. “Is there something wrong with the European model, Jackson?”
“The Global Forecast System model is better.”
“Not in the winter, it isn’t.”
“When you’re looking at a lead of longer than five days, your best bet is—”
“The point remains,” Keith interrupts, sounding like he’d rather drown himself in the harbor than listen to us talk about weather models for another second, “a storm is coming and if we hope to maximize engagement for both of our stations, we need to coordinate our efforts now.”
“Coordinate? Why would we coordinate?” I ask. I turn halfway toward Maggie. “Do you see this impacting the radio station’s weather updates?”
“This will be all the region is talking about, Jackson,” Maggie says. “It’s going to be bigger than the weather update. We hope to dedicate a whole segment to it for the duration of the storm.”
“Oh, that’s fine.” I try to catch Delilah’s eye. “Feel free to double broadcast, or whatever it is you intend to do. No hard feelings from me.”
She blinks at me, the corners of her mouth turned down. “Even though I use an inferior model?” she snipes.
I crack a smile. I like her rattled. “Even then.”
“We had something else in mind, actually,” Maggie hedges. I stare and wait. This entire meeting is twenty questions, apparently. I wish everyone would stop talking in riddles and just explain what the hell is going on.
Maggie must be able to sense my growing frustration because she straightens her shoulders. Fixes me with a severe, unrelenting look.
“The two of you are going to cover the storm with joint broadcasts for the duration of the snowfall. We’re sending you to Garrett County, Jackson.
You’re going to cover the storm live, right where it’s supposed to hit the hardest.” She gestures across the table at Delilah. “And you’re going to do it together.”