They Call Me Baba Booey (27 page)

“I love her,” I said.

“But you’re in such a good spot; there are so many women out there. Can’t you just live with her? Tell me exactly why you love her.”

“Elegance and class. That is what I love about her.”

Then he looked me in the eye and with great seriousness
said, “That is exactly what you are going to come to hate about her.”

I laughed. It was a risk I was willing to take.

We chose a catering hall in Glen Cove, Long Island, for the wedding. Scott the engineer, who also owned a DJ company and DJ’d himself on the weekends, offered to give us a DJ for the wedding as his gift. We thought this was totally generous. Then, a month before the wedding, Mike Gange had a graduation party at which Scott was the DJ. We were horrified. He did everything we didn’t want at our wedding: throwing sunglasses to the crowd, displaying a scrolling electronic ad for his company on the DJ table, organizing a cha-cha line. Mary and I were freaking out. The music was horrible. “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang, “The Electric Slide,” and, worst of all, the cheesy Club Med song, “Hands Up.”

Of course, I mentioned this to Howard on Monday. The show is a great way to face up to uncomfortable conversations you’d otherwise never have the balls to have. Howard brought Scott into the studio and explained the problem I was having, on the air. Scott calmed me down, telling me that whatever Mary and I wanted—or not—is what he would do. Great. I requested that he not play cheesy songs like “Celebration” or “Hands Up.” “No problem,” he said. “You will not hear those songs.”

Midway through the wedding, everything was going great. The music was fantastic. Everyone was drinking and eating and having a good time. All the practical jokes I was afraid the guys were going to play on me—yelling “Baba Booey” during the ceremony, for example—didn’t happen. Until … I heard the opening riffs to “Hands Up.” Jackie, always the master prankster, told Scott I had changed my mind and really wanted to hear it. Scott shrugged and figured,
Okay. Before the song was half over, Fred and Jackie were standing on the bar dancing. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t get mad at Scott. I jumped on the bar and started dancing, too.

I still have a picture of the three of us up there, laughing and dancing and having a great time. I know it sounds corny but that was a fantastic day in my life, because my two families—the Stern show and the Dell’Abates—celebrated together.

I HAD MY NBC ID
and I was psyched. I may have only been working three hours a day, I may have been a traffic boy instead of an assistant on the news desk, but I had my fucking NBC ID. And every single day I was going to work in that building.

On my first day, the producer for
Imus
—the show that aired while Roz was doing her traffic reports—opened the door for me. His opening line when he saw me: “What do you want?”

“I’m Gary,” I said. “I’m the new traffic assistant.”

He didn’t say another word. He just turned his back. So I followed him, and he led me to a shitty cubicle that faced a wall. To my right was an aisle that led to the studio and to my left was a window into the studio, where Don Imus did his show every day. The producer could barely bring himself to acknowledge me as he took me through the tools on my desk. “There is your two-way radio, that is your ticker, and that is
your phone. Good luck.” Then, as he was walking away, he told me, “Oh yeah, don’t make eye contact with Imus. Ever.”

Well, that wasn’t going to be easy. If I moved my head to the left even a little, I could stare right at him as he did his show. I made a note of this and recognized that it might be a challenge.

I had to be at my desk every day at 6:15. Other than not looking at Imus, this was the hardest part of the job. I am my mother’s son in that I like to do everything at night. In college I wrote all my papers after midnight. I’d clean my room or do my laundry or just listen to music in my room long after the rest of the world was sleeping. I’m a night crawler, and at that point in my life, a year out of college and having just come from the T.G.I.F. party patrol, I was used to going to bed at 4:20 in the morning. Now that was when my alarm went off so I could make the 5:11 train into the city. I had to be in bed by 8:30 p.m.

Five minutes after I sat down at my desk every morning, Roz got in the chopper. I knew she was in there when I heard her clear her throat. It was a series of hacks, like she was coughing up quarts of oil. It never seemed like she got everything out. Then, if she was in a good mood, she would say, “Good morning, Gary,” in a southern accent that was sweeter than butterscotch candy. But usually she was pretty ornery and just said, “You there?” Then she was off, into the air, an accent yelling at me over twirling blades.

My responsibilities were pretty simple. As Roz flew over the tri-state area, she reported back to me when there were accidents. For example, if she hovered over the Grand Central Parkway and saw a tractor-trailer stalled in the left lane at Francis Lewis Boulevard, she’d radio to me over the two-way, “Got a tractor-trailer stopped on the GCP at Frankie Lewis.”

At the time, each mile-long stretch of highway in the New York area was patrolled by different towing companies. And I had a list of all of them, as well as the area they controlled, hanging on the wall of my cubicle. When Roz told me of a
breakdown, I called the tow truck company responsible for that part of the road to let the drivers know something needed clearing.

I wasn’t just being a Good Samaritan. Once Roz flew over the Grand Central Parkway, she was on to other spots in Staten Island, then New Jersey and into Manhattan. It was going to be forty-five minutes before she got back to that scene, but we had traffic reports every ten minutes. It was my job to let her know if the accident had been cleared. And the only way to know for sure was by keeping in touch with the towing companies.

Problem was, towing companies aren’t exactly known for customer service. Depending on the day and who picked up the phone, getting an answer was a crapshoot. Some days they told me, “Yeah, we got that one.” Then I’d find out a few minutes later, usually at the next traffic report, that they hadn’t. Other times they just said to me, “Fuck off, we’re busy.” Occasionally I’d get a sympathetic ear and they’d give me the real scoop.

Not that it mattered. Roz was a petite woman with curly black hair and huge, round glasses. But her voice could boom like thunder. She used it practically every time I gave her a report. That’s just the way she was, even though I worked hard to connect with her. A week after I started she asked me to go in the helicopter with her so I could see what she was seeing and have a different perspective on the job. It was a good idea; who doesn’t want to go on a chopper ride?

The helicopter cab was as small as a roller-coaster car. The radio between the two seats had to be removed so I’d have someplace to sit. It was a gorgeous spring day and I brought a camera to take pictures. Roz asked the pilot to fly near the Statue of Liberty, which was covered in scaffolding. We flew so close I thought we were going to hit it. Not once during the flight did Roz yell at me.

And it did help me do my job better. But I thought that after
some good one-on-one time we would have bonded. Not happening. Never happened. It was strange, because one of the things a lifetime spent with my mom taught me was how to handle volatile personalities. It made me someone who understands people. It’s a valuable skill. At the time, it might have been my only skill.

But Roz wasn’t swayed by my charm. And at times she was just plain unreasonable. Once, she was doing the 6:40 update and after she was off the air I jumped on the two-way to give her some accident reports, giving her plenty of time to put it all together. I pushed the radio button and said, “Roz.” Then there was silence. So I pushed it again a couple of seconds later and said, “Roz.” Nothing. I tried one more time. Finally, she screamed, in her southern accent, “Stop calling my name! I am not deaf! I can hear you perfectly fine. If I don’t respond right away just wait before calling me again because I am getting ready for a report!” But the next report was ten freaking minutes away!

After that, whenever I called her I had to time it. “Roz?” Then I’d wait a full minute before saying it again if she didn’t respond. “Roz?” I waited. That was fine if we had plenty of time between traffic updates. But sometimes info came in late between our segments and I had to get it to her right away. We’d have a minute before she went back on the air and I’d have vital accident updates that the listeners of WNBC needed to hear so they could get to work on time. This was traffic, goddammit. I’d hit the two-way. “Roz?” Nothing. So now I had to ask myself:
Do I risk getting yelled at by Roz for asking her to respond before enough time has elapsed? Or do I risk not getting her the accurate information so she sounds like she’s with it on the air?
It was like
Sophie’s Choice
.

Usually I’d let her do the report. And then she’d yell at me because she didn’t have what she needed. “Gary! I want to tell you right now that there is an accident on the GCP and I asked for this info and I have none of it.”

It was a difficult position but I didn’t want to fuck it up. I soon realized why my interview with Meredith was so weird. She was asking me all these questions about how I handled myself when getting screamed at because Roz was always screaming. Eventually I learned that the two people who had the job before me were women who’d left the building in tears. But this was the other benefit of growing up in my house: If I couldn’t get Roz to chill, I at least knew enough about ignoring yellers to turn my back and do my job.

Still, I couldn’t stand her. She was a big star at the station and had this patter with Imus whenever she went on the air. He’d say something clever about traffic and then she’d say, “Oh, Imus, you are so funny.” He’d follow that with, “Roz, you are crazy.” It was so phony, because as soon as she snapped the microphone off she got back on the two-way and started yelling at me.

Her tirades, however, started getting out of control. Shadow Traffic had volunteers all over the area who called in with reports. These were just people with two-way radios who figured out our frequency and tapped into it. There was a guy with a thick Jamaican accent who loved to check in every day, whether there was an accident or not. “All right, mon, I’m on the GCP passing Frankie Lewis and all clear, mon. Out.” I think he just liked saying the code words. One day I was at my desk and Imus’s producer told me I had a call on line three. My first thought was,
How did Mom get this number?
I hadn’t given it out to anyone. I was done with work before most of the people I knew woke up. Besides, I didn’t even have a phone at my desk. Then I freaked, worried that maybe something had happened to her, that she was having an episode or had been hurt. This all came to me in a flash, just a few seconds. I picked up the receiver. A man said, “Gary?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why do you let that bitch talk to you like that?”

“Who is this?” I asked.

“You don’t know me,” he said. “But why do you let that bitch talk to you like that?”

“Who?” I asked. I had no idea who this was.

“Roz,” he answered. “I hear her screaming at you every morning and it is fucking ridiculous.”

Then he hung up. I realized he was one of those random guys listening on the two-way radio. And he was right. One morning after she had finished yelling at me over the two-way radio I just started muttering under my breath. “Fuck you, bitch, I can’t stand you.” I gave the two-way radio the finger. Then I turned around and standing behind me was Imus. He just started cracking up. I don’t think he ever said a word to her about it.

I got so bad with Roz that it reminded me of when I was in grammar school. I’d come home with knots in my stomach, unsure of the mom I’d get when I walked through the door. Was it the yeller? The woman who was depressed? The one who was buzzing? I didn’t know which Roz was getting onto the helicopter each day, either. I ended my shift thinking,
A day not getting yelled at by Roz is a good day
.

The best part about my job was that I worked at WNBC. I had my fucking ID and when I strolled to my desk I passed the bulletin board with all the job listings at the station. I began to live for those listings. Once you were in the door you had the inside track on all the other open gigs. Being the traffic boy wasn’t what I was meant to do with my life.