Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [96]
I'm still processing the absurdity of all this and questioning for about the fiftieth time why, why, why I allowed myself to get talked into doing a travel show in the first place, and how I'm going to manage on my own for the next two weeks, when my thoughts are interrupted by the muffled chirruping of my cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Cash?”
Never in my life have I been so grateful to hear from Oscar-winning writer and actress Emma Thompson. Or in this case someone whose voice is identical to Emma Thompson's. Same nasal diction, same upbeat theatrical twang.
“Hi! Where the devil are you?”
Mandy!!! Oh, thank God!
“Heathrow. Where are you?”
“Paris. Having Christmas lunch with the people from my housing association. I just called my machine to check messages and …”
But enough about her.
I pour out the whole story of my plight, laying it on thicker than a Victorian mattress, whatever it takes to induce her to cut short her long weekend in Paris and return home early. After all, what are friends for?
“Okay, okay, alright, I get it. Give me a couple of hours.”
“You mean it? You'll come? I can stay?”
“Darling, of course you can stay.”
If anybody ever asks, I love this woman to bits. Write that down and read it back to me. I love this woman to bits.
In fact, even as I'm scrambling to my feet, infused after experiencing my own little Christmas miracle with a fair dose of the Yuletide spirit, I'm so bursting with happiness that I resolve there and then to reward her for being such an incredibly loyal friend all these years. Yes, by way of a gift, I'm going to waive the hefty sum she owes me for the incidentals incurred in my hotel room at the Trump International, which she left without paying for.
Or some of it anyway.
Okay, half.
16
A Real Celebrity Calls
One of the most fascinating things about working in public radio—well, maybe “fascinating” is stretching it a bit, but one of the strangest certainly—is that, no matter how hard you try or how long you've been on air—years, or even, as in my case, decades—you nevertheless remain completely unknown to the population at large.
Don't ask me why this is, because our audience is in the millions, and the reach is coast to coast, so statistically, you'd think, there has to be someone somewhere who's heard of you. But no, that's not the case. For reasons nobody has yet been able to truly account for, the majority of public radio broadcasters tend to inhabit an alcove in the shadowy recess of some celebrity dungeon where the press refuse to take notice and the spotlight never shines. However, all that changed the instant the show began airing on TV. Within days, I noticed people staring at me in restaurants, actually to the point where I became convinced I had something on my face. Baristas at Starbucks, who'd never looked at me twice before, would scribble my name on the cup before I'd told them what it was. Weird shoppers in Whole Foods started taking uncommon interest in what brand of dried apricots I was buying. And now and then teenagers would circle me in the street, whispering into their cell phones, “I'm telling you, man, it's him—I swear. You know—him, that dude! He does that cool show where he flies around with no money. No, I don't know the name of it. Or him. But he's right here!”
And though none of this is in the same league, I admit, as hordes of paparazzi screeching down our street in SUVs every time one of our celebrity neighbors leaves his home to go to the supermarket, by public radio standards my popularity was stratospheric. Didn't matter where I went, someone would point at me or call out to me from an escalator, or walk up and shake hands, with a cry of “Oh my God, it's you! You're …” At this point they'd stop, hoping I'd fill in my name as if this were a DMV form,