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The printout from the weather centre comes through at 3.43am, and finally someone has given it a name. Cumulus Letalis. Jesse reads the report like he’s supposed to, like he has every night for twenty-eight years, then he taps the screen that fires off Celine Dion on the playout system and stares out at the stars. Celine Dion! Has it really come to this?

At least they weren’t responding like every other station in town. In fact, the WXYW reaction was as far from that as you could get. Station Manager Steve Carlton had made that quite clear at the Crisis Management Meeting yesterday afternoon.

“If these clouds really spread to Boston, like the weather centre predicts, you can guarantee our competitors will be in full-on panic mode. They’ll have reporters up on the rooftops, man-in-the-street vox-pops, eye-in-the-sky choppers tracking the evacuation effort, everybody from the feds to NASA throwing in their two cents worth… there won’t be a station in town sticking to playlist with a live presenter. There will of course be the ones who go to automation and get the hell out of Dodge…”

“Like we all should be doing,” said Gerry Gerrity, WX’s hot-shit breakfast jock (and A-1 pain in everybody’s ass). He still had his blue-tooth clipped to the side of his temple (he regularly took calls from his agent in the middle of station meetings, and never lowered his voice); Jesse thought he looked like a stapled schlong.

“Well, obviously I can’t force anybody to stay and work,” said Carlton, “but—“

“I’ll do it,” said Jesse. It was the first he’d spoken in a station meeting all year. Maybe that explained the looks he got from around the table. But he’d long since given up caring what any of them thought. You can’t expect to maintain any semblance of self-respect when you’re playing James Blunt for a living.

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