Before she returned to the cold, Viv stood by the elevator bank in the subway and watched the stupid morning show video. She searched for it online, was relieved to see that “dinosaur egg” came back with nothing, and neither did “large egg.” She had to use a link that Walt sent to access it.

  It was a standard morning-show cooking clip. An energetic bearded chef whose name was drowned out by intro music (possibly Curtis) was talking about a giant cornbread he was making tomorrow, while prepping peppers and onions for an omelet. He had something under a cloth napkin, and made a big production about being tired of cracking multiple eggs. Then he zipped away the napkin to reveal what looked like the world’s largest avocado, dark green and striped and big as a grapefruit. He announced it was an emu egg, cracked it in a glass bowl, and the whole broadcast team took turns scrambling the yolk. The chef cooked a Denver omelet with it in a huge cast-iron pan.

  Emu eggs were that shade of green but didn’t have stripes. Dinosaur eggs did.

  Viv got off the elevator into a blast of wind that she swore was waiting for her. She pushed her smelly dinosaur crate toward Rockefeller Center. This was more touristy than the Upper West Side, so the streets were fuller, even this early in the morning. People walked slower, in groups and in families, sometimes holding hands. It was slow going to push the crate. At least the return to the cold meant the blanket smelled less.

  This was not how Viv’s regular job went, by the way. Her regular job: tracking down dinosaurs and other fauna and flora that had made their way to the 21st century, usually in remote areas. Today’s job, was asking a celebrity chef in the center of the universe where he got his emu egg. Only Viv – and maybe a herpetologist – would recognize the egg as being reptilian in origin.

  The crowd thickened as she got closer to Rockefeller Center. Viv wasn’t sure exactly how many hundreds of hours of TV she had watched that had been taped in that building, but it was a lot. The morning show she would be crashing was broadcast in front of a glass window at ground level. Every weekday, tourists packed the window and jumped around hoping for a chance to be on TV. Being on TV was a dream for many, and a nightmare for Viv.

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  She turned a corner and was face to face the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, a full month before Christmas. It was covered in about fourteen stories of scaffolding. Below the tree was a skating rink and a big gold statue of, uh, some big gold statue guy. The crowd was too thick for Viv to get any closer.

  The mob of people had coalesced around a glass-windowed building just south of the big tower, held back from the building itself by a moat of sawhorses. Some people had signs with greetings for family members. Some had high school mascots (whoever’s was the alligator must have chartered a bus). Three people had signs saying “I LOVE CORNBREAD.” The sign holders were relatively quiet, checking their phones, watching the live footage from inside the glass. The camera wasn’t on – they only had so much public cheeriness.

  The smart people were wearing multiple layers. Others were wearing thick jackets but rubbing their legs where they only had one layer of jeans. Viv rubbed her one layer of jeans. Yeah, dumb move, not wearing layers.

  A cameraman stood in the sawhorse moat, next to a female TV producer wearing a black puffy jacket. Viv heard her say “high energy!” to the crowd. The crowd burst into screams, a light went on above the camera lens, and the camera panned over a cheering and sign-waving throng. Viv was glad to be too short to be caught on this camera.

  The camera kept panning, and Viv could see from someone’s live feed on their phone that the broadcast had flicked back to inside the studio. The crowd quieted down like it has been unplugged.

  Four or five people ran up to the producer as she walked back to a door. There were shouts of someone having a birthday, a teacher retiring, lots of earnest calls to get on TV. The producer either didn’t hear them or pretended not to.

  Well, might as well try. Viv couldn’t get close without pushing the crate into the crowd, so she left it and waded a few feet closer to the producer and got on her toes. “HI, CAN I TALK TO YOU FOR A—“

  The producer stopped dead. She looked at Viv with intensity.

  She motioned for the crowd to part. They obliged. She walked over to Viv, looking at the crate.

  “Why aren’t you inside? GET INSIDE!”

  “Uh…”

  She got behind the crate and began pushing it toward the door. “God, this thing SMELLS.”

  Viv stood dumb for about two seconds before following the crate inside.