Tony Partly Cloudy (15 page)

“Sarah feels awful about what happened, Tony. She’s offered to give you a ride to the nearest Avis, so you can get another car.”

Tony tried to contain his excitement with a joke. “Gee, Mr. Fletcher, do you think I’d be safe with her driving?”

“Very funny,” came a voice from behind Tony. He turned in his chair to see Sarah standing in the doorway, smiling at him sardonically.

“Listen, Fletch,” she said, “we just got a call on the North Side – possible hostage situation. They just got Mobile News One separated from Tony’s car, and it’s good to go. So I’m taking Darby and another tech out to see what’s going on.”

“Great,” Fletcher said. “Take O’Neal – he should be free.”

Tony’s spirits began to sink. Fletcher saw him shift in his seat, and said, “Sarah, what about getting Tony to Hertz?”

“Avis,” Tony corrected.

Sarah said, “It’s handled. I asked the intern to take him.” Addressing Tony, she said, “His name is Josh. You probably saw him – he’s the kid with the wild red hair and the nose-ring. He’s ready whenever you are. And listen, I’m really sorry about everything.”

With that, she was out the door, leaving Tony really sorry, too.

AFTER THE LONGEST WEEK AND A HALF IN RECORDED HISTORY, Tony got the call. They wanted him, and the sooner, the better: Zack, the man he’d be replacing, was leaving for Iowa City in a week. For Tony it would mean a little more money, broader responsibilities, and the chance to work with weather that actually dipped below 70 degrees Fahrenheit on more than an occasional basis. Oh, and the opportunity to be in the proximity of a certain green-eyed reporter.

Tony had to think about it. For approximately a millisecond.

“Absolutely,” he said to Fletcher. “I’m there.”

Tony had very little time to wrap things up in Key West, but it was for the better. There was less fuss that way. Donny and Martin wanted to throw him a going-away party, but Tony begged off, his time occupied between packing the surprising amount of stuff he had accumulated over the last four and a half years, and training his coworkers at the NWS forecast office to cover his duties until a replacement was hired.

But even in the rush of all this activity, he was touched by the sentiments expressed by those he would be leaving behind. When Tony had broken the news to Donny and Martin, Donny even cried a bit, prompting Martin to comfort him with multiple martinis. And Sue Kirkland, the woman who had replaced Ryan Culbertson as Meteorologist In Charge of the Key West NWS office, told Tony she would welcome him back with open arms.

“Any time,” Susan told him. “Just call me. We can always use somebody like you, Tony.”

It was nice, Tony thought, as he drove east on the Seven Mile Bridge, heading toward the mainland of Florida, the bridge glowing pink in the light of the rising sun. It was really nice to have people who were genuinely sorry to see you go. Now he only hoped he would find people equally eager to see him arrive. That would be really nice – particularly if one of those people had green eyes...

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Tony made the trip in two days of marathon driving, finally reaching his hotel in Rockford late Saturday night. That would give him all day Sunday to recover before he started his new job on Monday. Maybe by then he’d be used to the cold, but he doubted it. All those years in the tropics had turned him into a wimp where cold weather was concerned. There were two beds in Tony’s hotel room, but even though he stripped the comforter off the unused bed to pile on top of his own blankets and comforter, he was still cold. And this was March, he thought. Jesus, what must it be like in January?

He lounged around his room on Sunday, only leaving it to venture down to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast and lunch. For dinner, he decided to be decadent and order room service. All in all, it was one of the most relaxing days he’d spent in years. But he still had trouble sleeping that night, unable to stay warm enough. Wrapping his cocoon of blankets around himself as tightly as he could, he vowed to buy some long thermal underwear after work on Monday.

But on Monday morning Tony found he was not the only one feeling the effects of the cold. His car wouldn’t start. Nearly five years in the southernmost tip of the United States had left the old Dodge in no shape to cope with Midwestern winter nights. The engine made a halting clicking sound when Tony tried the ignition. Then it made no sound at all.

Rockford, Illinois was not New York – there was not a taxi every twenty feet. Instead, it was a place where you had the concierge call you a cab, and then you sat and you waited. And waited.

Tony finally got to the WEFQ studios at a quarter past nine. A devout student of the Jimmy Carbone school of punctuality, Tony was mortified to be getting off to such a rough start. But Dale Fletcher seemed happy to see him, and dismissed Tony’s apologies.

“Don’t worry about it, Tony. Or, as you might say,
fuggedaboudit
.” Tony smiled, well accustomed to people teasing him about his speech. As Fletcher led Tony to what would be his desk, Tony scanned his surroundings for some sign of Sarah. But she was nowhere to be found.

“Tony, thank God you’re here.”

Tony spun around to face the person who had addressed him. “Oh – hi, Mr. Randall,” he said, recognizing the chief meteorologist.

“Please,” Randall said, “it’s Chip, not Mr. Randall. And I’m really glad to see you. We’ve been swamped without Zack here.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you too, Chip – I’m real excited about being here,” Tony said. “But it’s going to take me a while to get used to this cold weather.”

Chip laughed. “This? This isn’t cold – hell, it’s in the high twenties outside. This is downright balmy. And aren’t you from New York originally? Surely you’ve been through worse.”

“Well, yeah,” Tony said. “But you gotta remember – I spent the last four-five years in Florida. Down there we think it’s cold if the temperature drops down into the sixties! Seriously, I think my blood must have thinned out. I froze my as – er, I nearly froze to death the last couple nights in my hotel room. And today my car wouldn’t start. I already decided, after work today I’m going to find a store and go buy me some long johns.”

“The kind with the trapdoor on the back? Those will look cute on you.”

Tony whirled to find Sarah standing behind him, already beginning to laugh. If her laugh weren’t so darn cute he would have been a lot more embarrassed. Instead he said, “Jeez, I got the best timing, don’t I?”

“Your timing is almost as good as my driving,” Sarah said.

“Now that’s a scary thought.”

Fletcher cut in. “Tony, how about we discuss your underwear and Sarah’s driving another time. For now I need to get you settled in, then I’ve got a nine thirty I’m going to be late for.”

Chastened, Tony followed Fletcher through the studio, leaving a blushing Sarah behind.

With the help of Chip Randall and morning meteorologist Deena Knox, Tony spent the morning getting acclimated. A TV studio was a very different environment; unlike the NWS office in Key West, here the weather was only a small part of a much bigger picture.

But that was fine with Tony, who looked forward to the change in environment, and was excited to be working in a TV studio. As a boy, as his interest in the weather had grown, he had spent countless hours watching weather forecasters on TV.

Hell, there were times he still fantasized about being one of those guys on TV, wearing a sharp-looking suit, giving his audience a sneak peek at the next day’s weather. Yeah, that wouldn’t be half bad. But for now, Tony had a list of the tasks his predecessor Zack had performed for the WEFQ meteorology team, and it was time to learn them.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Tony fit in well at WEFQ. He and Chip Randall formed an easy working relationship, Chip quickly recognizing both the skill and enthusiasm Tony brought to the job. Chip even occasionally alluded that the quality of the work Tony was doing exceeded that of his predecessor. And Tony got along well with Deena and Ron, the other two meteorologists. Deena’s perky exterior was apparently bulletproof – Tony never saw her in a bad mood, although her perpetual cheerfulness did seem a bit forced, and she was never seen without a cup of coffee within arm’s reach. Ron Dawson did the weekends and some part time news reporting during the week, with an easygoing attitude that tended to be contagious. All in all, Tony felt very good about the change he had made, although the cold weather still plagued him. Spring brought welcome relief, and summer was a godsend.

Sarah was another story. Tony did his best to “accidentally” run into her as often as he could, but he could never predict the direction their resulting conversation would take.

Sometimes she was deliciously flirtatious, laughing at his jokes with that wonderful full-body laugh, and punctuating her remarks with the occasional touch, which ranged from quick pats on his forearm to good-natured punches on his bicep in response to his worst jokes. Tony tried to tell himself that this physical contact didn’t mean anything – being Italian, he was no stranger to people who expressed themselves so physically. She was a toucher, that was all. She just had no idea how much her touches thrilled him.

But sometimes Sarah would just shut him down, ignoring his jokes and speaking to him in a clipped tone clearly aimed at keeping him at a distance. Then the next day, she would be all touchy-feely and full of laughter once again. This maddening hot-and-cold cycle repeated itself with no discernible pattern, leaving Tony confused and disappointed. He had to admit that in coming to WEFQ, he’d been harboring some hope of romantic possibilities with Sarah. Hell, that was putting it mildly – he had hoped she’d fall madly in love with him. But that clearly wasn’t happening. Her attitude toward him was even less predictable than the weather.

Ah, the weather. If there was one thing northern Illinois had, it was weather. In the months that followed, Tony distracted himself from his romantic defeat by immersing himself in the complex weather scenarios that developed around the Great Lakes.

In helping to prepare the nightly forecast, Tony got to work with rain, hail, sleet, snow, and anything else a mailman had ever walked through. He savored the region’s meteorological variety like a connoisseur at a wine tasting. He reveled in the record highs produced by the August sun beating down on the pancake-flat plains of northern Illinois, and delighted in the chill November air blowing past the Windy City off Lake Michigan. He even got to issue a tornado warning once, something he could never admit to his mother.

He loved it all, loved getting inside the cloud formations, radar screens and barometer readings, trying to decipher nature’s hidden intentions.

It was a science, but it was also an art; an abstract art, subject to interpretation. And just as several people might walk away from viewing a painting with completely different interpretations of the piece, so it was with the weather. Tony and the other WEFQ meteorologists did not always draw the same conclusions from the data they collected. That was when the food chain became most apparent.

As weather producer, Tony collected and analyzed data, and helped create the maps and diagrams Chip, Deena, and Ron used in their on-air forecasts. But it was up to the person actually
delivering
the forecast to decide what to tell the audience; after all, when a meteorologist gave a forecast on the air, he was putting his reputation on the line.

Despite the fact that Tony had as much formal training as any of his colleagues (more, actually, than Deena’s two-year broadcast meteorology degree), his job description confined him behind the invisible but solid wall that existed between on-air “personalities” and the producers who worked behind the scenes.

Tony understood this – hell, there were unspoken rules in any profession, and there was always a hierarchy, a chain of command. It was the same everywhere, from the National Weather Service to the family business. So he largely ignored the politics of broadcast meteorology, and tried not to let it bother him when Chip, Deena, or Ron ignored his input regarding their forecasts. But he quietly kept track of how often their overriding forecasts ended up being wrong.

On a good note, as he did everywhere he went, Tony was making new friends. Although the station’s staff was made up of a mix of locals and transplants, Tony was the only New Yorker, and he caught a lot of good-natured ribbing over his speech and mannerisms. It was only a matter of time before his nickname caught up with him, and soon even the GM was referring to him as Tony Partly Cloudy.

Tony hit it off particularly well with Josh Colby, the red-haired intern who had chauffeured him to the rent-a-car office after Tony’s job interview. Having done internships himself, Tony knew what a challenging and often thankless task Josh’s job could be, and admired Josh’s seemingly boundless enthusiasm for working in broadcast news. And frankly there were aspects of Tony’s job that weren’t that far removed from Josh’s gopher duties, again the result of working on the poor man’s side of the camera lens. The two became fast friends, occasionally hanging out with each other outside of work.

One night, after a couple of beers at the Pickle, a bar that by nature of its proximity to WEFQ was quite popular with the station’s personnel, Tony worked up the nerve to make some tentative inquiries.

“So, Josh – what’s the scoop on Sarah?”

“Jakes or Covington?”

“Say what?” Tony asked, confused.

“Sarah Jakes is the reporter,” Josh said, putting his beer on a coaster and wiping his mouth with a cocktail napkin. “You know, the one who wrecked your car? And Sarah Covington is our resident babe in accounting. You know, with the legs. Always wearing those Ally McBeal skirts?”

“Ally who?” Tony asked. Seeing Josh’s lascivious grin, he said, “Never mind. Anyways, the one I’m talking about is Sarah Jakes, I guess. The reporter.”

Josh’s smile broadened. “She’s a babe, too, although my heart belongs to Sarah Covington. Well, to her legs, to be precise.” He lifted his beer in a silent toast to Covington’s lower musculature.

“She’s got great legs, no question.” Tony said, trying to keep the conversation going. “But about Sarah Jakes – what do you know about her?”

Josh frowned. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed
her
legs. She usually wears those pantsuits—”