The Ex Talk

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “Does a new show mean we’re getting rid of one of our flagship shows?” Mike asks.

  Kent shakes his head. “I don’t want anyone jumping to conclusions. This is solely an idea-generating meeting.”

  A brainstorming session with producers, hosts, and reporters usually goes a little like this: The hosts and reporters take control. The producers stay quiet. It’s not easy to speak up in a room full of people whose job it is to speak.

  “What about a news roundtable?” Dominic says. “We could invite local politicians and other leaders on every week to give updates on what’s going on in their lines of work.”

  Snooze.

  Isabel, bless her, shuts him down, which I underline in my notes. “We tried that fifteen years ago. It lasted, what, a few months?”

  “It was a different market fifteen years ago,” Dominic says.

  “Exactly. It was easier.” Isabel thrusts an arm toward the screen, and the pie chart that shows how Puget Sounds’ listenership has dropped over the years. It’s not a nice pie chart—Puget Sounds has had the steepest drop of all the flagship shows. “Now everyone and their grandkids has their own podcast. There’s too much out there. It’s impossible to stand out.”

  “Something focused on the environment,” Marlene suggests. “Everyone in the Northwest cares about the environment. Each show could focus on small actions people could take to reduce their carbon footprint. I already have a whole bunch of tape about sustainable farming.”

  “We’re not thinking big enough,” Kent says. “We’re too hyper-local already.”

  Mike suggests a cooking show and Paul suggests a storytelling show, which I love. But Kent says it sounds too much like The Moth, which is probably why I loved it. Dominic throws out a few more newsy ideas that somehow manage to sound less interesting than his first one. A real triumph.

  “What about a dating show?” I mutter, more to a button on my corduroy skirt than to the group, assuming no one will pay attention to PPR’s lowliest senior producer. It’s not something anyone’s talked about yet, and after my mother’s engagement and my phone’s reminder that I’m very single, it’s been on my mind.

  But Marlene hears me. “Public radio doesn’t really go there. And for good reason: FCC regulations. Anything juicy would be tough to dig into.”

  “It’s absolutely possible to do something about dating without pissing off the FCC,” Paloma says, and I feel a burst of pride at her defense of me. “Last year we did a segment about reproductive health, and another one about sex education in high schools.”

  “Yes!” Isabel says. “But something new. Something fresh.”

  Across the table, Dominic rolls his eyes so hard I fear for his vision. Surely a dating show doesn’t fall within his master’s-degree- in-journalism idea of what public radio should be.

  “What about a dating show hosted by people who are dating?” Paloma says.

  “It’s been done,” Kent says. “About a dozen times on a dozen more podcasts.”

  “A dating show hosted by exes,” I say, half as a joke.

  The room goes silent.

  “Go on,” Paloma says. “A dating show hosted by exes?”

  I didn’t mean for it to sound that exciting—it’s just a potential fresh take on a dating show. But maybe it’s not a bad idea.

  “Um,” I say, feeling my face grow warm, the way it always does when I’m on the spot. Even in a room of people I know, people with incredible voices, I’m more conscious of the sound of my voice than ever. It’s more high pitched, more nasal than usual. These people don’t say um or like. They don’t stumble over their words.

  Dominic is watching me very intently, as though I’m the news ticker on a cable network. Even when he’s sitting down, his posture is so stiff, the cut of his shoulders so sharp, that his muscles must ache when he gets home every day. I wish, not for the first time this meeting, that he hadn’t picked the seat directly opposite mine.

  “Well.” An excellent start. I clear my throat. This is just like pitching a segment in my team’s weekly pitch meeting. I can do this. They’ve all heard me speak before. No one’s judging the way I sound, and if they are, they’re not going to make snide comments about it. “A dating show hosted by exes. It’s . . . exactly what it sounds like, really. We’d get the listeners invested in their relationship, in how they got together, and how it fell apart. We’d get them invested in the two of them as friends, as cohosts, as whatever they are now that they’re broken up. It would be part storytelling and part informational. Each episode, they could share more about their past, and they’d also explore dating trends, or interview dating experts, or even do some live counseling on the air to figure out what went wrong.”

  And I’m surprised, hearing myself talk about it, that it actually sounds like something I’d love to listen to. Public radio can sometimes be fun averse, but something like this—my dad would have gotten a kick out of it. It would be like This American Life meets Modern Love. We could do a show that follows each side of a Tinder date, or one tracking down people who’d ghosted someone.

  That’s when I have to stop myself. I’m using we in my head, like I’m the producer of this show. I already have a show.

  “Like Kent said, there are tons of relationship shows out there, plenty of them hosted by couples,” I say, gaining more confidence. My coworkers, my fellow senior staffers plus Dominic, are still listening—to me. “But . . . but what if we really try to figure out what goes wrong in relationships by having two exes work through their issues? Because that’s what people want to know, right? What they did wrong?”

  It’s a question I’ve had plenty of times. I allow myself to grin, to relax back in my seat.

  “I kind of love that,” says reporter Jacqueline Guillaumont, after the chatter in the room dies down. “I’d listen to it.”

  “It’s unconventional,” Mike says, “but I have to say, I like where Shay’s head is at. Maybe that’s what we need, something out of the box like that.”

  “We’d need two exes to host it,” Isabel says. “But I guess we could figure that out?”

  Paloma reaches over and scribbles on my notepad: Great job, and I feel myself glow from the inside out.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how it would work,” Dominic says, popping that bubble of pride. A wrinkle appears between his brows.

  “Why not?” I’m so focused on him, on this sudden desire to press my thumb hard into that crease between his brows, that I can barely hear Paloma scraping the bottom of her yogurt next to me. The one time I get the courage to speak up in a meeting like this—a meeting he should never have been invited to—he rips apart my idea.

  “It’s not exactly groundbreaking reporting.”

  “Since when does everything need to be? It would get people talking, and it would have appeal beyond our regular listenership. Maybe it would even increase contributions to the station.” I look directly at Kent when I say this. “We can’t oust mayors every day.”

  “No, but we should at least conduct ourselves with a modicum of respect,” Dominic says, spitting out that last word as he leans forward, gripping the edge of the table. “Exes bickering about why they broke up? Giving out relationship advice?” He scoffs. “This sounds like something on satellite radio, or god forbid, commercial radio. It sounds . . . tawdry.”

  “And exposing the mayor’s private life isn’t?”

  “Not when it’s news.”

  The rest of the room seems oddly captivated by us. Kent has been scribbling on his notepad, uncharacteristically silent. I’ve never seen anyone argue like this at a meeting, and I’m convinced he’s going to let us have it. When he doesn’t, I keep going.

  “You think public radio is only this one thing, but it’s not,” I say, clutching my pen as tightly as I can. In my head, the cap flies off and splatters his chest with black ink, wrecking
the shirt he must have picked out so carefully this morning. It drips down those blue stripes and onto his jeans. “And that’s the beauty of it. It can be educational, but it can also be heartbreaking or thrilling or fun. We’re not just delivering facts, we’re telling stories. You’ve worked here four whole months, and you think you have this industry all figured out?”

  “Well, I do have a master’s in journalism. From Northwestern.” He says the school name so casually, as though it wasn’t at all difficult to get into or didn’t cost sixty grand. “So I happen to think that degree hanging by my desk does qualify me to talk about journalism.”

  Finally, Kent lifts one hand, indicating for us to calm down.

  “A lot of food for thought,” he says, and then with two words, makes me lose all hope. “Other ideas?”

  * * *

  —

  After another twenty minutes, Kent calls the meeting to a close, doing his best to reassure us about the future of the station.

  “This is early stages,” he says. “We’re not making any programming changes quite yet.”

  Still, it’s hard to ignore the subtle sheen of worry on my coworkers’ faces as they leave with their mugs of cold coffee. I linger until I’m the last one out of the room, hoping to avoid Dominic. Unfortunately, he’s waiting in the hall, ready to pounce.

  “Jesus Christ,” I say when he startles me, holding my notepad over my skittering heart. “What, you didn’t finish educating me on the job I’ve had for ten years?”

  That wrinkle reappears between his brows, and he looks softer than he did in the meeting. “Shay, I’m—”

  “Dom! Shay!” Kent interrupts, and I’m a little annoyed because for a second, it seemed like Dominic was actually about to apologize.

  But that would be about as likely as Terry Gross stepping down from hosting Fresh Air.

  “Kent,” I say, ready with an apology of my own. “I’m so sorry about what happened in there. It got out of hand.”

  All he says is, “I have a few meetings to get to, but I want to talk to both of you at the end of the day. Can you meet me in my office at five thirty? Great.” With that, he turns and heads down the hall, leaving me with Dominic.

  “And I’ve got an interview to record.” He half smiles before he morphs back into his demonic self and adds: “Booth A. In case you were wondering.”

  4

  Kent’s office is a veritable public radio shrine. There are photos of him shaking hands with every major NPR personality, rows of framed awards, and a shelf filled with antique audio recording equipment.

  I’ve been distracted all day. Ruthie eventually pulled me into a sound booth before lunch, desperate for gossip after hearing murmurs all morning. I told her about the morning’s emergency meeting and, with some reluctance after my argument with Dominic, my idea.

  Her eyes grew wide behind her clear-framed glasses. “A show like that is just begging for a catchy name. Something like . . . The Ex Cast, or The Ex Talk.”

  I snorted, but I kind of immediately loved it. “Like sex talk?”

  “Exactly. Too risqué for NPR?”

  “Maybe,” I said, but truthfully, I didn’t know. And it’s only an idea I threw out in a brainstorming meeting, unlikely to become more than that. Public radio can be slow to innovate.

  Once we’re seated in the chairs in front of Kent’s desk, he excuses himself to brew another pot of tea. Dominic gets to his feet and begins pacing.

  “You’re making me dizzy,” I tell him.

  “You don’t have to watch.” Still, he stops beneath the photo of a very young Kent sandwiched between Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Car Talk guys. He settles into a lean—of course. We get it, you’re tall. “Nervous?”

  I shrug, not wanting to let on how uneasy this meeting makes me. I have no idea what to expect when it comes to Kent. He used to intimidate me, and while we’re far from friends, we’ve always gotten along. Or at least I’ve always done exactly what he’s asked of me, and we’ve never had a reason for prolonged interactions. I picked up extra pledge drive production shifts at his request, and back when I was still eligible, I never bothered him about overtime pay even when I worked late into the night. Now those late hours have become a habit I can’t break.

  “I’ve been here for almost ten years. I don’t get nervous anymore.”

  “Ten years, and you’re still doing the same thing,” he says. “You don’t get bored?”

  “Fortunately, you’re here to shake things up. It’s not boring to have to reschedule a guest at the last minute who we booked months in advance and who missed out on business of her own as a result.”

  “Oh,” he says, as though this thought truly never occurred to him. “I didn’t realize. Shit. I’m sorry about that. Is she upset?”

  “I was able to smooth things over,” I say, thrown by his response. Was he about to apologize earlier, too? “We’re going to do a whole show dedicated to animal behavior next month to make up for it. And before you can say anything about it, yes, I know it’s not news, but those shows are really popular. Especially during pledge drives.”

  He holds up his hands. “I wasn’t going to say anything. We had a class in grad school about how to grovel if you pissed off a source.”

  I pause. “Wait, are you serious?”

  Then his armor cracks, and he lets out a laugh. A sharp, breathy ha that would sound distorted if he did it into a microphone. Number of times I’ve heard Dominic laugh in the past four months: fewer than ten. News is never funny, apparently.

  “No, but you definitely believed me for a second.”

  Huh. It’s an odd moment of self-awareness. Does he know that he brings up grad school every chance he can?

  Kent reenters with a steaming mug of tea. “Shay, Dom,” he says, nodding to each of us.

  Dominic slides back into the chair next to me, and it’s then that I notice our chairs are a little too close together. There’s only a foot of space between us. His legs are so long that his knees bump against Kent’s desk, and I can smell his cologne. Ocean salt, and something else—sage?

  It would be awkward to move my chair. I shall suffer in silence.

  Kent takes a slow sip of his tea and closes his eyes for a moment, as though savoring it. When he opens them, his face splits into a grin, and I am deeply, thoroughly confused.

  “It’s so obvious,” he says. “It’s right in front of us.” Another sip of tea, and then he presses his lips together. “It’s almost simple, really.”

  “What is?” Dominic asks, a note of irritation in his voice. It’s slight, but it’s there.

  “The two of you. Cohosting Shay’s dating show.”

  There’s a brief silence before we both burst out laughing. Nothing about Kent’s declaration makes sense, and yet he says it with an air of nonchalance. My heart leaps at the word hosting, but this has to be a joke. Producing, he must have meant.

  I chance a look at Dominic, and it might be the first time I’ve seen him look genuinely amused. He’s usually so serious, so stoic, every bit the objective reporter. There’s an openness to this new expression of his.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Dominic says between laughs, and okay, now it’s becoming excessive. He doesn’t need to laugh quite that hard about the show idea, does he? “Is this a joke?”

  “Not a joke,” Kent says, and maybe all three of us have lost our minds. “What do you think?”

  “Aside from the obvious, like Shay never having hosted a show . . . we’ve never dated,” Dominic says, and though I take some offense at that, he’s not wrong. There are a thousand holes in Kent’s suggestion, but despite the content of the show, I’m not a host. I don’t have the right training or the right experience or the right voice.

  “You’ve never hosted a show either,” I point out.

  “But I’ve been on the air.”


  I don’t want to spar with Dominic in front of Kent, but I can’t deal with his smugness. “You were live for the first time yesterday.” I give him some exaggerated applause. “I guess you picked up everything about journalism in one year of grad school, and then everything about live radio during a single hour-long show. Yeah, that checks out.”

  Kent’s grin is terrifying. “See? This is it. This is what I’m talking about. This . . . thing you two have. It’s fascinating. I see the way you two act around the newsroom. I know I spend a lot of time in this office, but I’m perceptive. You two have this great chemistry, this natural conflict. Dominic is all about the news and the hard facts, and Shay, you like the softer, more human-centered pieces.”

  I don’t love the way he says softer, as though implying what I like is more feminine.

  “Listeners are going to take one side or the other,” Kent continues. “Team Dom, or Team Shay. We could get some hashtags going, really capitalize on the social media angle.”

  “But I’m a reporter,” Dominic says. “A damn good one, based on what’s happened over the past couple days.”

  “And I know you can do human interest, too,” Kent says. “That piece you wrote in college, that personal narrative? We all read it when you applied here. It was compelling, and it was beautiful.”

  He must be talking about Dominic’s most lauded piece, a story about traveling to South Korea and meeting his grandparents for the first time. I didn’t cry, like everyone else in the newsroom did, but I kept a box of tissues next to me. Just in case.

  “I think we’re missing the biggest issue here,” I say, too much of a snap to my voice for a conversation with my boss, but I’ve also never talked to a superior about my dating (or non-dating) life. All of this is surreal. “Dominic and I aren’t exes. We’ve never had any kind of relationship.”

  Kent waves his hand. “You two are private about your lives at work, which of course I appreciate. And HR does, too. But anyone who’s been around you both wouldn’t be surprised to hear that you’ve been dealing with the aftermath of a breakup. Especially after what they saw in the conference room.”