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“Yeah, clearly. Having me jumble your schedule all around just so you can tune in live. I don’t think I’ve eaten dinner at five since I was a toddler.”
“They cut things on the podcast version,” I explain with finality, hoping she’ll shut up so I can listen. I do owe Resa a lot of favors. Or a nice bonus. She moved up our dinner and drinks with a couple of UK producers. They love to hear themselves talk so we had to really move up the start time.
“Hotel?” Arthur asks.
“No, no. Just drive,” I say, waving a hand toward Arthur.
“I’mgoing to the hotel,” Resa says sternly.
“Fine. Drop her off and then just drive me, alright?”
As soon as Harley’s voice comes through the speakers, the rest of the world falls away. “Hi, I’m Harley Solace coming to you live on WQXR and this isSomeone’s Gotta Do It, where I come to you five days a week to pull back the curtain on careers across sector boundaries to show you just how hard America is working.
“This week’s guest has been one you’ve been clamoring for. I’m so excited to introduce Elma Holland who has been a ranger at Yosemite National Park for over thirty years. Thanks for joining us this week, Elma.”
“That’s what people were clamoring for? A park ranger?” Resa asks with a sneer.
“Shhh!You don’t get it,” I reply.
She laughs. “Okay, okay.”
I listen with rapt attention the whole way back to the hotel. Resa waits until a commercial break in order to speak to me. “You really are obsessed with this girl, huh?”
My eyebrows leap. “Huh?!”
“This podcast. You think it’s special or something, right?”
Yes. The podcast. Not the girl. Definitely not. “Yeah, there’s something really special about it.”
“This American Lifewith a female Ira Glass.”
“That’s reductive,” I say as a jangly commercial for some law firm in LA plays.
Resa chuckles, “You know what I mean. Have you ever thought of doing something with her?”
She couldn’t possibly know what’s happened between Harley and me, but the way she’s talking is making it painfully difficult to assume otherwise. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. A docuseries or maybe something where she’s a host. If you think it has potential, think about it.”
I don’t have time to respond before the intro music starts again.
“Okay, I’m out. Enjoy your show, boys.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Arthur nods.
Resa steps out of the car hurriedly and heads inside the hotel, leaving me with Arthur and the sweet voice of Harley Solace.
“Just drive, sir?”
I lean back in my seat. “Yeah. Just drive.”
* * *
I listento the whole hour-long show in the car with Arthur and we talk about the show for another half hour afterward. It’s nice to have someone to chat with about the show and all our thoughts and feelings about being a park ranger in the US. I guess Harley’s show is doing exactly what she set out to do–bringing people together.
Once I’m back in my hotel room, though, there’s someone else I’d like to talk to about the show. Harley herself.
But I don’t just want to play the young man’s game of texting. It’s silly and fruitless.
