Fic:: Hear The City Breathe [Sports Night]
So, when lgbtfest prompts were open for submission, I submitted this:
2871. Sports Night, Natalie Hurley, Natalie is not guilty, conflicted or unhappy about her queerness - no matter how much her boyfriend, her faith and her parents get in the way.
I didn't claim it myself, but I kept on thinking about it, and in the end this story happened. This isn't an lgbtfest story really - because I suspect it might have gone differently if I'd worried about sticking exactly to the prompt - but a hat-tip is in order. Writing about queer issues, guys! It's really great.
Anyway. With thanks to gamesiplay and foreverdirt for their kindness in betaing. (And so quickly, too! Thank you both very much.)
Fic:: Hear The City Breathe
by Raven
G, Sports Night, gen and slash, 4000 words. Natalie, who she is.
Natalie's had a lot of boyfriends.
In high school they're the skater types, and the sensitive guys who worked in record stores on the weekends. Later on they have their driver's licences, and later on than that some of them work in television, and most of them are assholes. Her first summer in New York, there's this one stoner guy, long hair, yellow fingertips. He thinks she's his age. His father works for Continental Corp., or so he says, walking through Central Park on a day so hot she thinks she might evaporate and die.
"Yeah, so, I could fix you up, maybe," he says. "Like, interning, or something."
"Do it now," Natalie says.
"Oh man, I just" - he motions down at himself, indicates vaguely the summer's day, the fact of its being four in the afternoon, being wasted - "you know, I'm not in a good place right now."
"Do it," Natalie says.
He dials - cellphones aren't a big thing yet, but he has one so he can call his guy who gets him his weed, and because despite the unwashed look his family have a house in the Hamptons - and goes through a secretary and a PA and maybe twelve other people before he's saying, "Yeah, Dad, so you know I have this girlfriend, and, she wants to work in television or whatever." A pause. "Oh, uh. She can make coffee and copy shit, I guess. I don't know."
"Excuse me, Mr. Zelner," Natalie says, taking the phone. "My name is Natalie Hurley, and I have a journalism degree from Northwestern. I'm bright, articulate, and I learn very fast." A pause. What the hell. "I'm a very good influence on your son. You will not regret giving me this chance." She listens to his answer. "Thank you very much. I'll see you Monday."
He's staring at her, jaw hanging slack. "So are you, like, a prodigy or something?"
"I'm twenty-two years old, asshole," she says, and afterwards she doesn't feel bad about it. She does have to make coffee on the job, and copy all kinds of shit, and stay late and come in early, and it isn't like they're paying her and a couple of weeks into it they cut off the electric in her apartment, but it's okay. Later in the summer Natalie meets Dana for the first time, and she's kind of strange, and when she's pissed she yells really, really loud, but when Natalie comes in late and shivering for the fourth day running, Dana lends her a gym membership card - "Put your thumb over the picture, it'll be fine" - and tells her to go get a hot shower.
A week after that they go out to Indianapolis for a couple of days to cover the Indy 500, and she sends stoner guy a postcard. "Wish you were here" - but she has everything she wants, and it's a lie.
*
Natalie's had a lot of shit.
She's sitting there, in Dana's office, not doing much of anything. Isaac wanders in, and says, "How are you doing, baby?"
She doesn't mind when Isaac calls her that. "I'm fine," she says, and it sounds a little hollow, but it's true. He nods, and touches her shoulder on her way out.
Dana says, "Natalie, you don't have to do the show tonight. You can go home."
"No," Natalie says, "no, no I can't, because I worked damn hard to get this job, and I worked hard to keep this job, Dana."
Christian Patrick might be going to jail, he might not. The sentencing hearing is in two weeks, and Natalie didn't cry when she gave her evidence. It's been a long day and it isn't five o'clock yet.
"You started out as a summer intern, you copied, you made coffee, you even dreamed of being a sports journalist when you were a little girl." Dana could have said it sharply, but she just sounds tired. "Natalie, I've heard it. I've heard it, I get it. I get it, okay? I'm not Dan, I'm not Casey or Isaac or Jeremy, I get it. You don't have to prove anything to me. Go home. Go home and get some rest and eat ice-cream and just..."
"Watch Sports Night?" Natalie smiles a little, gets up, shakes out her feet. She wore her favourite shoes today. She wonders if she'll ever wear them again.
"Yeah." Dana grins at her. "Watch Sports Night. I can swing by later, if you want?"
"Bring beer," Natalie says, and walks out of the office. She tries not to make eye contact with anyone, but Jeremy gets his face in her way and she has to stop, and tell him that it was okay, that it went okay, and it's not as if he doesn't know already from Isaac and she's so tired. He means well and she's so tired.
On her way out of the building, down the street, down into the subway, she thinks about going home with him, curling up in his unexpectedly comfortable bed, wearing his sweaters. He's a kind man, and a good one, and he's not who she is any more.
With a noise like a thousand rivets straining, the subway train rattles into her stop. She climbs the steps out of the station, enjoys the rush of fresh air on her face. It's a quiet blessing. Her grandmother used to say, "When the Lord closes a door He opens a window" - so she opens all the windows in her apartment and lets the sounds of the city in.
By eleven, she's cried a bit. But Dan and Casey make her laugh when they talk about Tampa, and when Dana arrives, she's thinking about tomorrow.
*
Natalie's getting over it.
It's nearly two am. Dana's slipped out for something from the all-night deli two blocks up. Dan and Jeremy are at the bar, with Jeremy slipping into his beer and Dan propping him up, and Kim's with a guy at the next table and she's probably having more fun than anyone else in the joint. Maybe than anyone else in New York.
"Hey, sugar," says a woman with pink hair in spikes across her head as she slips into Dana's empty seat.
"Hi," Natalie says. "Hi, I don't think I know you. But if you're gonna stick around I think you should know I'm pretty drunk right now. I mean, I'm not so drunk I don't know my name, or anything, but when I get drunk I kind of shout about HOW JEREMY IS SUCH AN ASSHOLE - sorry, Jack," she adds, nodding at the bartender. He waves, tolerantly.
"Jeremy's that guy?" Pink Hair points at the bar.
"Yeah. He's drunk too. Asshole should never have broken up with me in the first place. Though I broke up with him first."
Pink Hair nods. "You're pretty cute, sugar."
"Don't wanna be cute," Natalie says, morosely. "I would've killed to look like you do, when I was in high school."
"Hell, I would have killed to look like this, in high school." She touches her hair, a little self-consciously. "Why didn't you? Shy?"
"Catholic school," Natalie explains. "Uniforms, and nuns, and everything."
"Little skirts and black shoes?" Pink Hair raises her eyebrows.
"Yeah, it wasn't how it looks in porn." Natalie sighs. "Much more Bible reading and Hail Marys before bed."
Pink Hair smiles. "I'm lapsed."
"I try to," Natalie says thoughtfully. "I try not to believe in God, but then He keeps yelling at me. Where the hell is Dana? She only went for pastrami and rye, or something."
"Dana's the woman you were with?"
Natalie nods. "She's kind of my boss. She's my friend."
"Sure." Pink Hair nods, and whips out a pencil from her pocket. She scribbles something on a napkin. "You sober up and remember this, give me a call."
She's gone out into the night before Natalie has a chance to react. Jeremy and Dan haven't noticed; Kim's still having a really good time. Dana collides with the door on her first try - she's been drinking, too - but she makes it through, swinging a plastic bag.
"They were out of sandwich meat," she says happily. "And also vegetables, and, uh, bread. Kind of like it's two am or something. But I got olives!"
"Olives," Natalie says, goes to reach for the tub, remembers the napkin screwed up in her hand.
"What's that you've got there?" Dana asks. "I also got cheese. I'm ravenous."
"Nothing," Natalie says, and presses the napkin to her mouth in a perfect lipstick kiss.
*
Natalie's pretty awesome.
"What am I, Casey?" she says, coming in through the door. Sometimes she feels like this, with fizz in her blood, like she can't take a single step wrong. Sometimes she gets up at ten in the morning and thinks, she gets to get up at ten in the morning, she gets to spend her whole day counting down to one hour like a rocket's blasting off, every day. It's the best job in the world.
"Far too full of morning pep and vigour for someone who habitually works till midnight," Casey says. "No, seriously, Danny, you are wrong. There are not words for how wrong you are."
"She's hot," Dan says. "Natalie, don't you think Lucy downstairs is hot? I shared an elevator with her all the way up, and she smiled at me and then I felt all tingly."
"Stop feeling tingly, this is a place of work." Casey grins. "Also, you think Hillary Clinton is hot, shut up."
"Dan, what am I?"
"Awesome," Dan says, and he gets the smile.
"Rundown in ten" - and she slips out, waves to Kim on her way across the room, remembers the night before, trips over a snag in the carpet, hits her head on the desk and rolls to the floor feeling small but not nearly as insignificant as she'd like.
"Natalie," Dana says, "this is no time for taking naps."
She sits up and hits her head on the underside of the desk. Then she gets up again, cusses out everything under her breath and shouts, "Dana!"
"What is it?" Dana asks, and she doesn't stop walking, and Natalie's out of breath.
"Nothing" - and she turns around again, and heads up towards Isaac's office, and changes her mind and goes back to her desk, and she thinks she sees the dent her head left in it so she goes back to Dan and Casey's room, which now only has Dan in it, and she steps in and then she steps out and then she's spinning on the spot.
"Natalie…" Dan says, and he looks actually worried.
"I'm fine," Natalie says, and goes back to her desk. She sits down, reaches for her purse and pulls out the napkin, and after only four false starts, she calls the number.
"Smith and Chang Web Design" - but it's her: it's her voice, and Natalie lets out a breath.
"Hi," she says. "It's... uh, it's me. Natalie. Uh, I never told you my name, did I? It's Natalie. Uh, I'm..."
"The cute girl in the bar, sure. I'm glad you called." She sounds amused; not at all like strange women call her in the middle of the day and gibber.
"Hi," Natalie says again, and thinks maybe she should just slam her head into the desk a couple more times. "Hi, I don't, I don't want a girlfriend right now. But I kind of. Uh, I kind of need a friend. Is that okay?"
"Sure, honey" - and at the warmth in that, something inside Natalie melts.
*
Natalie's got faith. There's good left in the world, Dan and Casey can do shows without pants. Some day the Red Sox will win the World Series. She's got faith that it will all be all right.
Dan's sitting there, still, quiet, and she's terrified. "Natalie," he says, gently. "What is it?"
Natalie looks at the ceiling and then at her shoes. She blurts: "I made a friend."
Dan looks confused. "Well, that's good. Everyone should have friends. I myself have many friends. Sometimes we get together and have a few beers, talk about sports. Sometimes we do that in front of millions of people. "
"Dan, shut up."
Dan shuts up. He sits down on the couch - someday Natalie is going to have an office with a couch in it - and waits expectantly.
Natalie shuts the door and starts pacing up and down while she talks. "I met her in Anthony's. She's got pink hair. Like I wished I had, in high school."
"Natalie, I hate to hurry you along, but I kinda have to be on TV in less than two hours so can we, you know." He waves a hand. "So, unless you're dating this woman..."
Natalie sits down on the couch next to him and says, "Whatever you were going to say next, Danny, please don't be an asshole."
"Hey." Dan looks at her. "Natalie, are you - are you really..."
"No." Natalie looks at her hands. "I'm not dating her. Her name is Chang and she hit on me in a bar and I was going to tell her I don't date women and then I hit my head on something hard. And it turns out maybe I do. Want to date women, I mean. I mean I never even thought about it before. And I called her. And we went to a club."
It had just been a club. Natalie loves to dance; she loves sticky overpriced drinks and music so loud it thunders right down into her bones. It had just been a club, and she'd just been dancing, and there were other women there and she'd just been looking, and maybe that was it, but afterwards she stepped out on the street beneath the glowing lights of the city and felt that fizzing feeling in her blood, and maybe it wasn't.
Dan is still looking at her.
"And maybe I danced, kind of, and… you know. We're not dating. But I'm..."
"You're thinking about it?" Dan asks, after a while, and when she nods, "Natalie, did you think I was going to be weird about this?"
"Maybe." Natalie sniffs. "You're always weird."
"Yeah." Dan frowns. "Your girlfriend's name is Chang?"
"Everyone calls her by her last name, and she's not my - wait, that's what you're worried about?"
Dan shrugs. "I fixate on tiny details, it's endearing. Natalie..." A pause, while he looks at her, and puts a hand on her shoulder and then quickly takes it away. "Who else knows?"
"No one. Yet. Dan, you can't tell Dana."
"I can tell Casey?"
"Sure, whatever. But I have to" - she's standing up, she's pushing down the unaccountable urge to kiss Dan on the cheek, she's heading to the door - "I have to. You know."
"Yeah," Dan says, and he gets up and goes with her to the door.
*
"You should come up and see where I work, sometime," Natalie says.
Chang looks sideways at her. She's growing her hair out, and it's starting to curtain over her eyes. Natalie thinks it's cute.
"I'd like that," she says, but she sounds unsure. They're walking down towards Central Park, the traffic giving way to those little horse-drawn carriages. Natalie still turns when she sees one, which is how she knows she's not a native New Yorker.
"You don't have to, or anything," Natalie says quickly. "I mean… I guess not everyone likes sports."
"I like sports fine." Chang grins. "It's just... work, personal stuff..." She waves her hands around. "When you were growing up, did you never think you might be a dyke?"
"Because I like sports?" Natalie laughs. "No. Other people might have, I guess. Maybe not." She indicates herself with a gesture. "I guess I never looked the part? Too... little."
"What are they like?" Chang asks, curiously. "The people you work with?"
Natalie thinks about it, watches the little kids running up and down the path, shouting about the horsies. "I love them," she says.
Chang grins. "Well, I guess I'll come and see where you work sometime."
Natalie grins back. "Great. Speaking of work" - she looks at her watch - "I gotta go, lunchtime's up."
"I don't think I'll ever understand how you can have lunch at five o'clock." Chang grabs at her hand, and Natalie almost, but doesn't quite, kiss her. "Sure you don't want to date me?"
Natalie's still grinning, and thinking about kisses. "Are you going to ask me that every time I see you?"
"Yes," Chang says, composedly, "but no pressure. See you, sugar."
Natalie laughs, and does blow her a kiss before running down the little path, back towards the street. She's sure she's going to be back late for the next rundown, but something puts wings in her feet and she walks into the newsroom with five minutes to spare.
Dana's grabbed her before she's quite got her bearings. "Did you have a nice lunch? Can you go find out what Dan and Casey thought I meant when I said I needed to see their scripts as soon as possible?"
"I will," Natalie says, and before she loses her nerve: "Dana. Do you have a minute? In your office?"
"Sure," Dana says, but she looks surprised. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Natalie says, and takes a minute to say it again before what comes next. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just have something I wanted to tell you."
They walk back across the newsroom, but Natalie's calm, she's happy, and the sound of her people talking, of sports on TV behind her, is balm.
*
Natalie's got an antique silver fountain pen. It was given to her by her maternal grandmother, and she uses it for special occasions: thank-you notes, college applications, signing her contract for Sports Night. She's been staring at it at the whole day, and because she works in prime-time television, the day is rapidly becoming the night. Jeremy smiles at her, running through the newsroom on the way to the studio. It's dark outside. She needs to get a grip.
She unscrews the cap. She writes, Dear Mom.
Two weeks later her mom is in New York City, standing at the window of her apartment watching the traffic pass below. Without turning around, she says, "Natalie, you never mentioned this before."
Her voice is faintly disapproving. Natalie sighs. "Mom, I didn't know this before. I'm just trying to be honest with you about who I am."
"I had hopes for you, Natalie." Her mother at last turns around, with the sounds of the city drifting in through behind her. "I had considered grandchildren. And Jamie..."
"Jeremy."
"Jeremy was, for all his faults, a nice young man. He could have been good for you, Natalie."
"Mom." Natalie takes a deep breath. "He's a good guy, but it didn't work out. I'm not doing this to, I don't know, to spite you."
Her mother sighs. "Maybe if you didn't work such unsociable hours… and I never have liked that girl, what's her name?"
"Dana," Natalie says, gritting her teeth, "and she's my boss, and I don't know what she has to do with this."
Her mother breathes another deep sigh. "Well, Natalie, you're in the hands of God now."
"Thanks, Mom," Natalie says, losing her temper all at once like she did as a teenager, "thanks a bunch, that's really great, really reassuring." She takes a step forward, a step back. She's tired of this and it's late. "You can take my bed tonight, Mom. I've got the futon."
But she can't sleep. Her mother snores a little, now she's older, and Natalie can hear her sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Natalie tosses and turns on the little futon, watching the lights on the clock and TV blink red. Everything feels a little distant, a little unreal. After an hour of it, she gets up, pads quietly into her room to get her clothes and her sneakers, and in a few minutes she's stepping outside.
It's a beautiful night. Sports Night went off the air three hours ago - she had the night off, for her mom's visit; no wonder she's cranky - and it was raining then. It's dried off now, but the summer dust has settled and the air feels washed through, clean.
Around her, the city dozes, the traffic intermittent and soothing. She walked through a night like this with Chang a week ago, kissed her under a red and white smokestack. They're still not dating, but Natalie's looking at women in the elevator a different way and something inside her is changing. "Budding" is a crappy metaphor, but the kiss was like flowers blossoming in her mouth.
Suddenly, she's running. She used to go for morning runs before she started working late nights, and she remembers the feeling like flying, through the stillness, through the air charged with the dawn. She's running, picking up speed as she goes, thinking about the sidewalk cracks as ridges in a palm. If these are the hands of God, then she's doing okay.
*
Natalie's had time.
She's danced with women in clubs, she's watched them wonderingly on the street and she's felt tingly next to them in the elevator. She's stood up straight and prayed her voice wouldn't shake and asked them for dinner, for coffee, to stay for breakfast. She wasn't afraid of sex before and she isn't now. She works in television, she isn't afraid of broadcasting the truth. Her mother's still weird about it. Her grandmother sends her old clippings of Vera Lynn.
Chang gave her a pep talk at lunch. It had sports metaphors. Natalie was grateful.
And now Dana's standing in the doorway to her office, looking inside and liminal, with her hair tossed over her shoulders and a preoccupied expression. She's talking about being short in the twenties, about hockey, about how she's going to go in and see Dan and Casey any moment now and they'd better be wearing pants. She's beautiful.
Natalie walks across the newsroom floor and says, "Dana."
Dana turns to look at her. She's about to say something, but Natalie moves forwards and holds up a hand to stop her. She reaches up, takes a breath and then kisses her, deeply and sweetly. She holds it for a moment, then draws back.
There's a moment of absolute silence. On the TV, a puck slams into the back of the net.
And now Natalie's walking back across the newsroom and Dana is looking at her, looking after her, her lips are parted to say something and Natalie's walking, she's walking, there are the sounds of the city in her and the sound of cheering around her, she works in sports where anything can happen, and whatever happens now she'll be ready.
finis
2871. Sports Night, Natalie Hurley, Natalie is not guilty, conflicted or unhappy about her queerness - no matter how much her boyfriend, her faith and her parents get in the way.
I didn't claim it myself, but I kept on thinking about it, and in the end this story happened. This isn't an lgbtfest story really - because I suspect it might have gone differently if I'd worried about sticking exactly to the prompt - but a hat-tip is in order. Writing about queer issues, guys! It's really great.
Anyway. With thanks to gamesiplay and foreverdirt for their kindness in betaing. (And so quickly, too! Thank you both very much.)
Fic:: Hear The City Breathe
by Raven
G, Sports Night, gen and slash, 4000 words. Natalie, who she is.
Natalie's had a lot of boyfriends.
In high school they're the skater types, and the sensitive guys who worked in record stores on the weekends. Later on they have their driver's licences, and later on than that some of them work in television, and most of them are assholes. Her first summer in New York, there's this one stoner guy, long hair, yellow fingertips. He thinks she's his age. His father works for Continental Corp., or so he says, walking through Central Park on a day so hot she thinks she might evaporate and die.
"Yeah, so, I could fix you up, maybe," he says. "Like, interning, or something."
"Do it now," Natalie says.
"Oh man, I just" - he motions down at himself, indicates vaguely the summer's day, the fact of its being four in the afternoon, being wasted - "you know, I'm not in a good place right now."
"Do it," Natalie says.
He dials - cellphones aren't a big thing yet, but he has one so he can call his guy who gets him his weed, and because despite the unwashed look his family have a house in the Hamptons - and goes through a secretary and a PA and maybe twelve other people before he's saying, "Yeah, Dad, so you know I have this girlfriend, and, she wants to work in television or whatever." A pause. "Oh, uh. She can make coffee and copy shit, I guess. I don't know."
"Excuse me, Mr. Zelner," Natalie says, taking the phone. "My name is Natalie Hurley, and I have a journalism degree from Northwestern. I'm bright, articulate, and I learn very fast." A pause. What the hell. "I'm a very good influence on your son. You will not regret giving me this chance." She listens to his answer. "Thank you very much. I'll see you Monday."
He's staring at her, jaw hanging slack. "So are you, like, a prodigy or something?"
"I'm twenty-two years old, asshole," she says, and afterwards she doesn't feel bad about it. She does have to make coffee on the job, and copy all kinds of shit, and stay late and come in early, and it isn't like they're paying her and a couple of weeks into it they cut off the electric in her apartment, but it's okay. Later in the summer Natalie meets Dana for the first time, and she's kind of strange, and when she's pissed she yells really, really loud, but when Natalie comes in late and shivering for the fourth day running, Dana lends her a gym membership card - "Put your thumb over the picture, it'll be fine" - and tells her to go get a hot shower.
A week after that they go out to Indianapolis for a couple of days to cover the Indy 500, and she sends stoner guy a postcard. "Wish you were here" - but she has everything she wants, and it's a lie.
*
Natalie's had a lot of shit.
She's sitting there, in Dana's office, not doing much of anything. Isaac wanders in, and says, "How are you doing, baby?"
She doesn't mind when Isaac calls her that. "I'm fine," she says, and it sounds a little hollow, but it's true. He nods, and touches her shoulder on her way out.
Dana says, "Natalie, you don't have to do the show tonight. You can go home."
"No," Natalie says, "no, no I can't, because I worked damn hard to get this job, and I worked hard to keep this job, Dana."
Christian Patrick might be going to jail, he might not. The sentencing hearing is in two weeks, and Natalie didn't cry when she gave her evidence. It's been a long day and it isn't five o'clock yet.
"You started out as a summer intern, you copied, you made coffee, you even dreamed of being a sports journalist when you were a little girl." Dana could have said it sharply, but she just sounds tired. "Natalie, I've heard it. I've heard it, I get it. I get it, okay? I'm not Dan, I'm not Casey or Isaac or Jeremy, I get it. You don't have to prove anything to me. Go home. Go home and get some rest and eat ice-cream and just..."
"Watch Sports Night?" Natalie smiles a little, gets up, shakes out her feet. She wore her favourite shoes today. She wonders if she'll ever wear them again.
"Yeah." Dana grins at her. "Watch Sports Night. I can swing by later, if you want?"
"Bring beer," Natalie says, and walks out of the office. She tries not to make eye contact with anyone, but Jeremy gets his face in her way and she has to stop, and tell him that it was okay, that it went okay, and it's not as if he doesn't know already from Isaac and she's so tired. He means well and she's so tired.
On her way out of the building, down the street, down into the subway, she thinks about going home with him, curling up in his unexpectedly comfortable bed, wearing his sweaters. He's a kind man, and a good one, and he's not who she is any more.
With a noise like a thousand rivets straining, the subway train rattles into her stop. She climbs the steps out of the station, enjoys the rush of fresh air on her face. It's a quiet blessing. Her grandmother used to say, "When the Lord closes a door He opens a window" - so she opens all the windows in her apartment and lets the sounds of the city in.
By eleven, she's cried a bit. But Dan and Casey make her laugh when they talk about Tampa, and when Dana arrives, she's thinking about tomorrow.
*
Natalie's getting over it.
It's nearly two am. Dana's slipped out for something from the all-night deli two blocks up. Dan and Jeremy are at the bar, with Jeremy slipping into his beer and Dan propping him up, and Kim's with a guy at the next table and she's probably having more fun than anyone else in the joint. Maybe than anyone else in New York.
"Hey, sugar," says a woman with pink hair in spikes across her head as she slips into Dana's empty seat.
"Hi," Natalie says. "Hi, I don't think I know you. But if you're gonna stick around I think you should know I'm pretty drunk right now. I mean, I'm not so drunk I don't know my name, or anything, but when I get drunk I kind of shout about HOW JEREMY IS SUCH AN ASSHOLE - sorry, Jack," she adds, nodding at the bartender. He waves, tolerantly.
"Jeremy's that guy?" Pink Hair points at the bar.
"Yeah. He's drunk too. Asshole should never have broken up with me in the first place. Though I broke up with him first."
Pink Hair nods. "You're pretty cute, sugar."
"Don't wanna be cute," Natalie says, morosely. "I would've killed to look like you do, when I was in high school."
"Hell, I would have killed to look like this, in high school." She touches her hair, a little self-consciously. "Why didn't you? Shy?"
"Catholic school," Natalie explains. "Uniforms, and nuns, and everything."
"Little skirts and black shoes?" Pink Hair raises her eyebrows.
"Yeah, it wasn't how it looks in porn." Natalie sighs. "Much more Bible reading and Hail Marys before bed."
Pink Hair smiles. "I'm lapsed."
"I try to," Natalie says thoughtfully. "I try not to believe in God, but then He keeps yelling at me. Where the hell is Dana? She only went for pastrami and rye, or something."
"Dana's the woman you were with?"
Natalie nods. "She's kind of my boss. She's my friend."
"Sure." Pink Hair nods, and whips out a pencil from her pocket. She scribbles something on a napkin. "You sober up and remember this, give me a call."
She's gone out into the night before Natalie has a chance to react. Jeremy and Dan haven't noticed; Kim's still having a really good time. Dana collides with the door on her first try - she's been drinking, too - but she makes it through, swinging a plastic bag.
"They were out of sandwich meat," she says happily. "And also vegetables, and, uh, bread. Kind of like it's two am or something. But I got olives!"
"Olives," Natalie says, goes to reach for the tub, remembers the napkin screwed up in her hand.
"What's that you've got there?" Dana asks. "I also got cheese. I'm ravenous."
"Nothing," Natalie says, and presses the napkin to her mouth in a perfect lipstick kiss.
*
Natalie's pretty awesome.
"What am I, Casey?" she says, coming in through the door. Sometimes she feels like this, with fizz in her blood, like she can't take a single step wrong. Sometimes she gets up at ten in the morning and thinks, she gets to get up at ten in the morning, she gets to spend her whole day counting down to one hour like a rocket's blasting off, every day. It's the best job in the world.
"Far too full of morning pep and vigour for someone who habitually works till midnight," Casey says. "No, seriously, Danny, you are wrong. There are not words for how wrong you are."
"She's hot," Dan says. "Natalie, don't you think Lucy downstairs is hot? I shared an elevator with her all the way up, and she smiled at me and then I felt all tingly."
"Stop feeling tingly, this is a place of work." Casey grins. "Also, you think Hillary Clinton is hot, shut up."
"Dan, what am I?"
"Awesome," Dan says, and he gets the smile.
"Rundown in ten" - and she slips out, waves to Kim on her way across the room, remembers the night before, trips over a snag in the carpet, hits her head on the desk and rolls to the floor feeling small but not nearly as insignificant as she'd like.
"Natalie," Dana says, "this is no time for taking naps."
She sits up and hits her head on the underside of the desk. Then she gets up again, cusses out everything under her breath and shouts, "Dana!"
"What is it?" Dana asks, and she doesn't stop walking, and Natalie's out of breath.
"Nothing" - and she turns around again, and heads up towards Isaac's office, and changes her mind and goes back to her desk, and she thinks she sees the dent her head left in it so she goes back to Dan and Casey's room, which now only has Dan in it, and she steps in and then she steps out and then she's spinning on the spot.
"Natalie…" Dan says, and he looks actually worried.
"I'm fine," Natalie says, and goes back to her desk. She sits down, reaches for her purse and pulls out the napkin, and after only four false starts, she calls the number.
"Smith and Chang Web Design" - but it's her: it's her voice, and Natalie lets out a breath.
"Hi," she says. "It's... uh, it's me. Natalie. Uh, I never told you my name, did I? It's Natalie. Uh, I'm..."
"The cute girl in the bar, sure. I'm glad you called." She sounds amused; not at all like strange women call her in the middle of the day and gibber.
"Hi," Natalie says again, and thinks maybe she should just slam her head into the desk a couple more times. "Hi, I don't, I don't want a girlfriend right now. But I kind of. Uh, I kind of need a friend. Is that okay?"
"Sure, honey" - and at the warmth in that, something inside Natalie melts.
*
Natalie's got faith. There's good left in the world, Dan and Casey can do shows without pants. Some day the Red Sox will win the World Series. She's got faith that it will all be all right.
Dan's sitting there, still, quiet, and she's terrified. "Natalie," he says, gently. "What is it?"
Natalie looks at the ceiling and then at her shoes. She blurts: "I made a friend."
Dan looks confused. "Well, that's good. Everyone should have friends. I myself have many friends. Sometimes we get together and have a few beers, talk about sports. Sometimes we do that in front of millions of people. "
"Dan, shut up."
Dan shuts up. He sits down on the couch - someday Natalie is going to have an office with a couch in it - and waits expectantly.
Natalie shuts the door and starts pacing up and down while she talks. "I met her in Anthony's. She's got pink hair. Like I wished I had, in high school."
"Natalie, I hate to hurry you along, but I kinda have to be on TV in less than two hours so can we, you know." He waves a hand. "So, unless you're dating this woman..."
Natalie sits down on the couch next to him and says, "Whatever you were going to say next, Danny, please don't be an asshole."
"Hey." Dan looks at her. "Natalie, are you - are you really..."
"No." Natalie looks at her hands. "I'm not dating her. Her name is Chang and she hit on me in a bar and I was going to tell her I don't date women and then I hit my head on something hard. And it turns out maybe I do. Want to date women, I mean. I mean I never even thought about it before. And I called her. And we went to a club."
It had just been a club. Natalie loves to dance; she loves sticky overpriced drinks and music so loud it thunders right down into her bones. It had just been a club, and she'd just been dancing, and there were other women there and she'd just been looking, and maybe that was it, but afterwards she stepped out on the street beneath the glowing lights of the city and felt that fizzing feeling in her blood, and maybe it wasn't.
Dan is still looking at her.
"And maybe I danced, kind of, and… you know. We're not dating. But I'm..."
"You're thinking about it?" Dan asks, after a while, and when she nods, "Natalie, did you think I was going to be weird about this?"
"Maybe." Natalie sniffs. "You're always weird."
"Yeah." Dan frowns. "Your girlfriend's name is Chang?"
"Everyone calls her by her last name, and she's not my - wait, that's what you're worried about?"
Dan shrugs. "I fixate on tiny details, it's endearing. Natalie..." A pause, while he looks at her, and puts a hand on her shoulder and then quickly takes it away. "Who else knows?"
"No one. Yet. Dan, you can't tell Dana."
"I can tell Casey?"
"Sure, whatever. But I have to" - she's standing up, she's pushing down the unaccountable urge to kiss Dan on the cheek, she's heading to the door - "I have to. You know."
"Yeah," Dan says, and he gets up and goes with her to the door.
*
"You should come up and see where I work, sometime," Natalie says.
Chang looks sideways at her. She's growing her hair out, and it's starting to curtain over her eyes. Natalie thinks it's cute.
"I'd like that," she says, but she sounds unsure. They're walking down towards Central Park, the traffic giving way to those little horse-drawn carriages. Natalie still turns when she sees one, which is how she knows she's not a native New Yorker.
"You don't have to, or anything," Natalie says quickly. "I mean… I guess not everyone likes sports."
"I like sports fine." Chang grins. "It's just... work, personal stuff..." She waves her hands around. "When you were growing up, did you never think you might be a dyke?"
"Because I like sports?" Natalie laughs. "No. Other people might have, I guess. Maybe not." She indicates herself with a gesture. "I guess I never looked the part? Too... little."
"What are they like?" Chang asks, curiously. "The people you work with?"
Natalie thinks about it, watches the little kids running up and down the path, shouting about the horsies. "I love them," she says.
Chang grins. "Well, I guess I'll come and see where you work sometime."
Natalie grins back. "Great. Speaking of work" - she looks at her watch - "I gotta go, lunchtime's up."
"I don't think I'll ever understand how you can have lunch at five o'clock." Chang grabs at her hand, and Natalie almost, but doesn't quite, kiss her. "Sure you don't want to date me?"
Natalie's still grinning, and thinking about kisses. "Are you going to ask me that every time I see you?"
"Yes," Chang says, composedly, "but no pressure. See you, sugar."
Natalie laughs, and does blow her a kiss before running down the little path, back towards the street. She's sure she's going to be back late for the next rundown, but something puts wings in her feet and she walks into the newsroom with five minutes to spare.
Dana's grabbed her before she's quite got her bearings. "Did you have a nice lunch? Can you go find out what Dan and Casey thought I meant when I said I needed to see their scripts as soon as possible?"
"I will," Natalie says, and before she loses her nerve: "Dana. Do you have a minute? In your office?"
"Sure," Dana says, but she looks surprised. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Natalie says, and takes a minute to say it again before what comes next. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just have something I wanted to tell you."
They walk back across the newsroom, but Natalie's calm, she's happy, and the sound of her people talking, of sports on TV behind her, is balm.
*
Natalie's got an antique silver fountain pen. It was given to her by her maternal grandmother, and she uses it for special occasions: thank-you notes, college applications, signing her contract for Sports Night. She's been staring at it at the whole day, and because she works in prime-time television, the day is rapidly becoming the night. Jeremy smiles at her, running through the newsroom on the way to the studio. It's dark outside. She needs to get a grip.
She unscrews the cap. She writes, Dear Mom.
Two weeks later her mom is in New York City, standing at the window of her apartment watching the traffic pass below. Without turning around, she says, "Natalie, you never mentioned this before."
Her voice is faintly disapproving. Natalie sighs. "Mom, I didn't know this before. I'm just trying to be honest with you about who I am."
"I had hopes for you, Natalie." Her mother at last turns around, with the sounds of the city drifting in through behind her. "I had considered grandchildren. And Jamie..."
"Jeremy."
"Jeremy was, for all his faults, a nice young man. He could have been good for you, Natalie."
"Mom." Natalie takes a deep breath. "He's a good guy, but it didn't work out. I'm not doing this to, I don't know, to spite you."
Her mother sighs. "Maybe if you didn't work such unsociable hours… and I never have liked that girl, what's her name?"
"Dana," Natalie says, gritting her teeth, "and she's my boss, and I don't know what she has to do with this."
Her mother breathes another deep sigh. "Well, Natalie, you're in the hands of God now."
"Thanks, Mom," Natalie says, losing her temper all at once like she did as a teenager, "thanks a bunch, that's really great, really reassuring." She takes a step forward, a step back. She's tired of this and it's late. "You can take my bed tonight, Mom. I've got the futon."
But she can't sleep. Her mother snores a little, now she's older, and Natalie can hear her sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Natalie tosses and turns on the little futon, watching the lights on the clock and TV blink red. Everything feels a little distant, a little unreal. After an hour of it, she gets up, pads quietly into her room to get her clothes and her sneakers, and in a few minutes she's stepping outside.
It's a beautiful night. Sports Night went off the air three hours ago - she had the night off, for her mom's visit; no wonder she's cranky - and it was raining then. It's dried off now, but the summer dust has settled and the air feels washed through, clean.
Around her, the city dozes, the traffic intermittent and soothing. She walked through a night like this with Chang a week ago, kissed her under a red and white smokestack. They're still not dating, but Natalie's looking at women in the elevator a different way and something inside her is changing. "Budding" is a crappy metaphor, but the kiss was like flowers blossoming in her mouth.
Suddenly, she's running. She used to go for morning runs before she started working late nights, and she remembers the feeling like flying, through the stillness, through the air charged with the dawn. She's running, picking up speed as she goes, thinking about the sidewalk cracks as ridges in a palm. If these are the hands of God, then she's doing okay.
*
Natalie's had time.
She's danced with women in clubs, she's watched them wonderingly on the street and she's felt tingly next to them in the elevator. She's stood up straight and prayed her voice wouldn't shake and asked them for dinner, for coffee, to stay for breakfast. She wasn't afraid of sex before and she isn't now. She works in television, she isn't afraid of broadcasting the truth. Her mother's still weird about it. Her grandmother sends her old clippings of Vera Lynn.
Chang gave her a pep talk at lunch. It had sports metaphors. Natalie was grateful.
And now Dana's standing in the doorway to her office, looking inside and liminal, with her hair tossed over her shoulders and a preoccupied expression. She's talking about being short in the twenties, about hockey, about how she's going to go in and see Dan and Casey any moment now and they'd better be wearing pants. She's beautiful.
Natalie walks across the newsroom floor and says, "Dana."
Dana turns to look at her. She's about to say something, but Natalie moves forwards and holds up a hand to stop her. She reaches up, takes a breath and then kisses her, deeply and sweetly. She holds it for a moment, then draws back.
There's a moment of absolute silence. On the TV, a puck slams into the back of the net.
And now Natalie's walking back across the newsroom and Dana is looking at her, looking after her, her lips are parted to say something and Natalie's walking, she's walking, there are the sounds of the city in her and the sound of cheering around her, she works in sports where anything can happen, and whatever happens now she'll be ready.
finis