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“Which was…?”
Grover thrust a finger at me like he wanted to make an important point. “You should never dip your pen in the company’s ink.”
I sighed, threw my gaze up at the ceiling, then slowly shook my head. It all made sense. I remembered Sondra talking just a few minutes before about exactly the same kind of fantasy.
Sondra must be Cindy!
Chapter 8.
I was waiting in the studio when April came rushing back through the door. She swept hair from her face and dropped into her chair, one eye fixed on the wall clock. Her breathing was ragged and there was a flush of warm color across her chest. She glanced at me with a flicker of self-conscious guilt.
“You look worried… or nauseous,” she said in a breath. “Did you drink the coffee?”
I brushed the question aside with a hint of a smile. “And you look… satisfied…” I said, arching one eyebrow in speculation.
April flinched, paused. Her mouth opened. She licked her lips and then laughed a hollow sound. She gave the monitors her full attention for thirty seconds while the clock continued to count down. There were hot spots of color on her cheeks and a little tremble in her fingers. I watched her carefully.
She flicked me a bashful look and then said, “We’re about to go into the news. After that we’ve got callers for the next hour solid.”
I nodded. The news bulletins usually ran for three or four minutes. I heard the fanfare of familiar music and as the announcer began to read the top item I slipped the headphones off.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” I said to April.
She shrugged her shoulders and then turned in her chair to face me. Her expression was disturbed. “You think I go and get myself off in the ladies’ room because you make me horny, right?”
I said nothing. April’s lipsticked lips twisted with a little wrench of something that might have been malice. She nodded her head. “Well I do,” she confessed. “But not because of you, stud. I’m gay.”
I said nothing, but this time because I was surprised. April had been flirting shamelessly with me since we had first met. I recalled what Grover had said about her ‘cock teasing’, and suddenly it began to make strange sense.
“I like other girls,” April went on, as though she took my silence as a lack of comprehension.
I nodded numbly. “I get it,” I said. “I don’t understand, but I get it.”
She tilted her head to the side, jaw thrust out in a challenge. “What don’t you understand? You think you’re irresistible to women?”
I shook my head seriously. “I don’t think that at all,” I said. “I just don’t understand why you were always so overtly sexual around me.”
April nodded. “It’s my disguise,” she said in a voice that was revealing a secret. “I flirt with guys so no one will suspect.”
I nodded. For long moments the tension between us crackled like electricity. April was leaning forward, her eyes snapping with sparks of defiance, and I sensed a fiery temper simmering just below the surface.
“Well your secret is safe with me,” I said softly. “I’m sorry I brought the subject up.”
She sat back slowly. She glanced up at the clock and then back to me.
I took a chance.
“You’re not the only one with secrets here at the radio station,” I said delicately. “Grover was just telling me about young Cindy, the receptionist.”
April laughed, but it was a sound like grating shards of glass in the back of her throat. “Cindy is no secret,” April said bitterly. “Everyone knows the kind of girl she is.”
I made a face. “Well I didn’t.”
April ran her fingers through her hair and let out a long exasperated breath. “She’s a slut!” April said without any heat in her voice. “That girl is the wildest, most outrageous nymphomaniac…” the words trailed off as if April had run out of metaphors. She shrugged her shoulders and her lips became a pout. “I’m surprised she hasn’t made a play for you, yet,” she muttered off-handedly.
I said nothing.
Chapter 9.
I woke at midday. The apartment was warm. I rolled wearily out of bed and tottered to the window. Down on the sidewalk pedestrians were scurrying along the streets, pressed tightly together, moving like a stream. The roads were choked with traffic, the sound of car horns muted through the glass. I yawned and checked my phone.
There was a message from Nancy Collett.
I dialed the number and sat back onto the edge of the mattress. The call was answered almost immediately.
“Jericho?”
“Hi. What’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you about last night’s show.”
I felt myself frown suddenly. “Was there a problem?”
“No,” she said. “Not at all. The early figures coming through for ratings are through the roof. I wanted to congratulate you.”
I hesitated suspiciously. “Thanks,” I said with my guard up. I didn’t trust the woman. “April deserves a lot of the credit. She holds everything together.”
Nancy laughed lightly. “April is not the reason women are suddenly tuning into the station in droves,” she said bluntly. “It’s you who they want, Jericho. The number of listeners has doubled so far this week already.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” I said. Talking to the woman was like stumbling across a snake in the grass. I kept waiting for her to lash out. She didn’t strike me as the kind of executive who made courtesy calls to staff in the middle of the day just to hand out a grudging pat on the back.
“It’s great news,” Nancy enthused. “And we’ve drawn in several more advertisers who want to come on board as sponsors of the program. That helps the bottom line… and I think this is only the beginning. I have a couple of ideas…”
I screwed my eyes shut and waited for the inevitable…
“First, I want you to start running a kind of on-air club,” Nancy said. “We can call it the Sub Club, or something like that.”
“A club?”
“That’s right,” Nancy went on. There was a bubble of enthusiasm in her voice and it radiated down the line. “Every night between twelve-thirty and one in the morning, you run a club for all the women who want a little taste of submission. In that time, you speak directly to the listeners – no callers – just you giving instructions to all the ladies. They can obey your commands in the comfort of their own home and in privacy, but still get a sense of the Master-submissive dynamic.” The words came out in a long rush without pause or hesitation, as though she needed to explain the concept entirely before I had the chance to object.
I listened, and grudgingly admitted that it sounded like a good idea.
“What do you think?”
I wondered if she was pacing across her office, phone clutched to her ear and a frown of concentration on her face as if she were willing me down the line to bend to her wishes.
“I like it,” I admitted. “I think I can make that work.”
“Great!” Nancy’s voice came alive and I heard a tinkle of laughter that sounded like relief.
“What else?”
There was a significant pause down the line. I could hear a soft hum of background sound. Nancy’s voice came back at last, suddenly more hushed and confidential. “That Sondra who has been calling the show? I heard her say she wants to meet you when I was playing back the tapes.”
“Yes,” I said.
More silence. Nancy was diplomatically choosing her words.
“Do you want to?”
“Do I want to meet her?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I said.
More thoughtful silence. “Then have you thought about calling her? You can get the number through the producer’s log. They record the origins of everyone…”
“ I have the number, Nancy.”
The line went eerily silent for several seconds. “You do?”
“Yes. After the call was taken off air, she was
still on the line. She gave me her number.”
“Well are you going to call her? Did she say what she wanted?”
“She said she wanted to meet me.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. But I can guess.”
“Do you think she’s some kind of a crazy stalker – someone who has become infatuated with you?”
