While Paul, Enzo, Meredith, and Giuseppe were parked and panicked in Midtown, a young radio broadcaster was working one of her first shifts at 1010 WINS in Soho. Veronica Morgan was 27 when she was hired the previous December, and almost immediately was given her own show. 1010 WINS has been an all-news station for the majority of its existence, except for a brief period in the mid-1990s when they experimented with “alternative nation” programming. John Westerburg welcomed her into his office one day shortly before Christmas 1995 to reveal that she would be the host of Making Flippy Floppy, an all talk and music show, albeit from two-three a.m. “Kids are stoned then. They’re on cocaine. No—heroin. It’s new. I think my daughter’s tried it. Have you?” Veronica shook her head and looked at the floor.
“Making Flippy Floppy is not a good name. Not will want to listen to Making Flippy Floppy. What if we call it Rotten Apples?” Westerburg shook his head. “No, no, absolutely not, articles in the trades: ‘Sure is rotten,’ …you know.” Veronica shook her head. Westerburg looked at the floor. A moment passed before she said, “How about Morgan’s Music?” Westerburg looked up and smiled, suddenly inspired. “That’s good. That’s great. We can add a bit about the talk thing in the copy, yeah, you’ll have to take live callers, obviously not the best hours—” Veronica stood up and put her hand out. “Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Westerburg. Morgan’s Music will be an excellent addition to the 1010 WINS lineup. I promise.” He shook her hand, said, “Good,” groped her ass, and whispered in her ear, “If you ever want to suck me.”
Veronica spent the next few weeks avoiding her new boss, who she’d barely spoken to since their last interview. He wasn’t around much, and neither were any of the other gray-haired men with booming voices who used to comfort the nation—some of them were at home, waiting out the storm with their families, but most of them were dead. 1010 WINS was, in Veronica’s experience, just a frustrating and borderline intolerable place to work, but so was every other radio station she’d been to. Groping, feeling, “if you want to suck me,” it was nothing new. One of her first bosses made his secretary give him a blowjob while he counted a stack of payola cash. If Veronica was struggling in her career at 27, it was only because she never got down on her knees for anyone.
But on the night of the blizzard, she was totally alone at the studio. She lived in Hoboken, and she knew if she didn’t show up for work on Monday, she’d be conveniently canned as a “problem” with “little appeal” and “low ratings,” so she prepared and packed for a weekend sleeping in her studio. She was friendly with the floor janitor, Roscoe, and although she talked to him beforehand about her plan, not even he showed up the night of the blizzard. She lived alone, but she preferred the studio. Her husband Bill died the previous January, and she’d lost a television gig because of it, never mind the grief of a house full of a life planned and ripped away.
Breaking tradition, the first song she played that night was “All I Have to Do is Dream” by the Everly Brothers, introducing it with the words, “Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Veronica…”
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