The Wing Girl: A laugh out loud romantic comedy

“We’re going to prove to you that you are now one of the most desirable women in New York,” said Ariel. “Well, physically, anyway. Still got a lot of work to do on the attitude.”

“If I look as good as you say I do, I can now get away with being a bitch, right?” I asked.

“But you’re not,” said Roxanne. “You are as beautiful inside as you now are outside.”

I rolled my eyes. “We gonna hold hands and sing Kumbaya now?”

“Again with the attitude,” said Serena, raising one finger. “But one thing at a time.”

“So here’s what you’re going to do,” said Ariel. “I’m going across the street and I want you to wait till I get there, then I want you to cross the street.”

“What, I’m learning the principles of jaywalking?”

“I’m going to shoot a video with my cell phone and show you the reaction you get with your new look.”

“Seriously?”

“Trust me, honey, you’re gonna get a reaction,” said Roxanne.

“Ohhhh … kayyyyyy.”

Ariel took off and headed out the door of the department store. I started to follow, teetering in my heels that took me up to five-nine, a little wobbly as I hadn’t gotten my sea legs yet. The short skirt was a bit tight, restricting my normal gait, which Ariel said reminded her of her Connecticut mailman walking uphill in a snow drift. Roxanne and Serena followed, loaded down with my haul from the day.

We reached the door and walked outside, greeted by a cool breeze and the sound of New York’s heartbeat; horns and sirens. My spunky little ass felt cold, not being used to a skirt, especially one that ended several inches above the knee.

I saw Ariel across the street pointing her phone at me. “Anytime!” she yelled.

“Go get ‘em, Tiger,” said Roxanne.

I shrugged and shook my head. “Whatever.” I had no idea what to expect but played along. Big deal, I was gonna walk across the street. Millions do it every day in Manhattan and no one notices. The light changed and the little crosswalk icon told me it was safe to go.

What happened next nearly made my jaw drop.

Because just about every man crossing in the opposite direction had his hanging open.

They gawked. They flat out stared. A young, hardbodied bike messenger heading around the corner stopped, tipped his sunglasses down for a better look, and said, “Whoa.” A cabbie going the other way gave me the classic blue-collar compliment of “Hey, baby” as he honked his horn and beat his hand on the side of the car door. A utility worker ten feet off the ground in a cherry picker got distracted and sent his bucket into a telephone pole. A man twisted his neck like an owl as he crossed the street in the other direction. I heard a clang and an expletive only to turn and see he had walked into a mailbox and was hopping around on one leg.

I reached the other side of the street to find Ariel laughing hysterically as she put down her phone.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You’re now officially a smoking hot babe.”

***

The video rolled for the fifth time in slow motion, filling the giant flat screen in my living room.

“I love the look on the guy’s face when he hits the mailbox,” said Ariel, leaning back into my overstuffed beige couch while sipping a glass of red wine. She fired the remote at the screen and froze the video as the man cringed.

“I still can’t believe that’s me,” I said. “It’s like watching a stranger.”

Roxanne grabbed the remote from Ariel and started the video again, this time at half speed. “Look at that hair bounce. Am I good, or what?”

“It’s like there are invisible electric fans following her,” said Serena. “Rox, you’ve outdone yourself.”

“She didn’t just stop traffic, she made it back up.” Roxanne smiled and hit the pause button, then pointed a finger at me. “And I don’t want you touching your hair tomorrow. I’ll be here at seven to give you a comb-out.”

“Seven?” I said. “I sleep till eight.”

Roxanne shook her head. “Not any more. Beauty takes time. No more rolling out of bed and directly into a cab wearing a toothbrush as an accessory. Yeah, I’ve seen you do that.”

“Guess I need to start going to bed earlier.”

“Hopefully you’ll be doing that for reasons other than sleep,” said Ariel.

I looked at myself on the screen and it hit me. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh what?” asked Serena.

“I just thought of something. I’m not sure what the reaction will be at work.”

Ariel furrowed her brow. “Seriously? You work in TV. The new look should be worth bigger ratings. They’ll be thrilled.”

“There’s more to it than that. I realize my business is superficial but it’s hard to be credible if a viewer’s first impression of you has to do with how you look. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never fixed myself up.”

“The other reason is that you had no idea how to do it,” said Roxanne.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna get some flak for this.”

Ariel waved her hand. “Pfffft. They’ll love it.”

“You don’t know Harry.”

CHAPTER FIVE (#u0f047d89-72cd-5982-915a-978341715d31)

Harry Coyne likes to use the phrase “back in the day” when describing the halcyon days of broadcasting. No computers but typewriters, and not the electric kind but the kind where the letter “e” got stuck fairly often. No printers but carbon paper. A huge black metal wire service machine that spit out an endless roll of copy and had to be “stripped” every twenty minutes by the low man on the totem pole. (Only because there were no women on said pole. Their poles could be found in strip clubs.) Ribbons had to be changed, film had to be developed, phones had hold buttons that flashed. And actual human beings answered them when they rang. People smoked in newsrooms and every reporter had a flask filled with something a hell of a lot stronger than Dr. Pepper stashed in his desk.

And back in the day, as Harry puts it, “A newsroom sounded like a newsroom.” Watch any movie about the news business made before 1980 and you’ll hear the journalism heartbeat of the past: the loud banging of the wire machine, the incessant tapping of typewriter keys, the spinning of the typewriter platen as paper was ripped out. The wire machine is now a boat anchor, replaced by digital news delivered to your laptop while reporters gently write stories on nearly silent keyboards.

I say nearly silent, because today as I arrived in the newsroom I couldn’t hear them.

Same deal as crossing the street. Everything stopped. Jaws dropped open. Hal, the kid producer, walked into a file cabinet. Audrey the newsroom secretary spilled coffee all over herself. I left surprised looks in my wake as I entered the conference room for the morning meeting, adorned in a stunning short emerald-green dress that matched my eyes, which Roxanne had worked on after my morning comb-out.

The loud conversation that usually filled the room every morning came to a screeching halt as everyone looked in my direction.

Jenna Scanlin, our thirty-something five o’clock anchor with the supermodel body broke the silence. “Oh my God! You look … fantastic!”

“Thank you,” I said, sitting down in my usual spot at the far end, opposite the head of the table, newsroom “mom” to Harry’s “dad.”