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Within three weeks of her interview with Clare, a flu epidemic hit three of the KDSC announcers and Clare was forced to let Francesca take over a Wednesday morning shift. “Try to remember you're talking to people,” she barked as Francesca headed for the studio with her heart beating so rapidly she felt as if the blades of a helicopter were chopping away at her chest.
The studio was small and overheated. A control board lined the wall perpendicular to the studio window, while the opposite side housed cubbyholes filled with the records that were to be played that week. The room also contained a spinning wooden rack for tape cartridges, a large gray file box for live commercial copy, and, taped to every flat surface, an assortment of announcements and warnings.
Francesca seated herself before the control board and clumsily settled the headset over her ears. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. At small stations like KDSC, there were no engineers to operate the control board; announcers had to do it for themselves. Francesca had spent hours learning how to cue records, operate microphone switches, set voice levels, and use the three tape cartridge—or cart— decks, only two of which she was tall enough to reach from the stool in front of the mike.
As the AP news came to an end, she looked at the row of dials on her control board. In her nervousness, they seemed to be changing shape in front of her, melting like Dali watches until she couldn't remember what any of them were for. She forced herself to concentrate. Her hand flicked to the AP selector switch. She pushed the lever that opened her microphone and potted up the sound on the dial beneath. A trickle of perspiration slid between her breasts. She had to do well. If she messed up today, Clare would never give her a second chance.
As she opened her mouth to speak, her tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. “Hello,” she croaked. “This is Francesca Day coming to you on KDSC with music for a Wednesday morning.”
She was talking too fast, running all her words together, and she couldn't think of another thing to say even though she had rehearsed this moment in her mind a hundred times. In a panic, she released the record she was holding on the first turntable and potted up the sound, but she had cued it too close to the beginning of the song and it wowed as she let it go. She moaned audibly, and then realized she hadn't turned off her mike switch so that the moan had carried out over the air. She fumbled with the lever.
In the reception area, Clare watched her through the studio window and shook her head in disgust. Francesca imagined she could hear the word “Twinkie” coming through the soundproof walls.
Her nerves eventually steadied and she did better, but she had listened to enough tapes of good announcers over the past few months to know just how mediocre she was. Her back began to ache from the tension. When her stretch was finally up and she emerged from the studio limp with exhaustion, Katie gave her a sympathetic smile and muttered something about first-time jitters. Clare slammed out of her office and announced that the flu epidemic had spread to Paul Maynard, and she would have to put Francesca on the air again the following afternoon. She spoke so scathingly that Francesca wasn't left with any doubt about how she felt concerning the situation.
That night, as she used one of her four bent kitchen forks to push a clump of overcooked scrambled eggs around her plate, she tried for the thousandth time to figure out what she was doing wrong. Why couldn't she talk into a microphone the way she talked to people?
People. She set down her fork as she was struck by a sudden thought. Clare kept talking about people, but where were they? Impulsively, she jumped up from the table and began leafing through the magazines she had lifted from the station. Eventually, she cut out four photographs of people who looked like the sort who might listen to her show the next day—a young mother, a white-haired old lady, a beautician, and an overweight truck driver like the ones who traveled across the county on the state highway and picked up the KDSC signal for about forty miles. She stared at them for the rest of the evening, making up imaginary life histories and personal foibles. They would be her audience for tomorrow's show. Only these four.
The next afternoon she taped the pictures to the edge of the control board, dropping the old lady twice because her fingers were so clumsy. The morning disc jockey flicked on the AP news, and she sat down to adjust the headset. No more imitation deejay. She was going to do this her own way. She looked at the photographs in front of her—the young mother, the old woman, the beautician, and the truck driver. Talk to them, dammit. Be yourself, and forget about everything else.
The AP news ended. She stared into the friendly brown eyes of the young mother, flicked the switch on her microphone, and took a deep breath.
“Hello, everyone, it's Francesca here with music and chit-chat for a Thursday afternoon. Are you having an absolutely wonderful day? I hope so. If not, maybe we can do something about it.” God, she sounded like Mary Poppins. “I'll be with you all afternoon, for better or for worse, depending on whether or not I can find the right microphone switch.” That was better. She could feel herself relaxing a bit. “Let's begin our afternoon together with music.” She looked over at her truck driver. He seemed like the sort of man Dallie would like, a beer drinker who enjoyed football and dirty jokes. She gave him a private smile. “Here's an absolutely dreary song I'm going to play for you from Debby Boone. I promise the tunes will get better as we go on.”
She potted up the first turntable, turned down her mike, and as Debby Boone's sweet voice came over the monitor, glanced toward the studio window. Three startled faces had popped up like ja
ck-in-the-boxes—Katie's, Clare's, and the news director's. Francesca bit her lip, got her first taped commercial ready, and began to count. She hadn't reached ten before Clare slammed through the studio door.
“Are you out of your mind? What do you mean, a dreary song?”
“Personality radio,” Francesca said, giving Clare an innocent look and a carefree wave of her hand, as if the whole thing were nothing more than a lark.
Katie stuck her head in the door. “The phone lines are starting to light up, Clare. What do you want me to do?”
Clare thought for a moment and then rounded on Francesca. “All right, Miss Personality. Take the calls on the air. And keep your finger on the two-second delay switch, because listeners don't always watch their language.”
“On the air? You can't be serious!”
“You're the one who decided to get cute. Don't sleep with sailors if you're afraid of a little VD.” Clare stalked out of the studio and took a post by the window where she smoked and listened.
Debby Boone sang the final notes of “You Light Up My Life,” and Francesca played a thirty-second commercial for a local lumberyard. When it was done, she hit the mike switch. People, she told herself. You're talking to people.
“The phone lines are open. Francesca, here. What's on your mind?”
“I think you're a devil worshiper,” a crotchety woman's voice said from the other end. “Don't you know that Debby Boone wrote that song about the Lord?”
Francesca stared at the picture of the white-haired lady taped to the control board. How could that sweet old lady have turned on her like this? She bristled. “Did Debby tell you that personally?”
“Don't you sass me,” the voice retorted. “We have to listen to all these songs about sex, sex, sex, and then something nice comes along and you make fun of it. Anybody who doesn't like that song doesn't love the Lord.”
Francesca glared at her old lady. “That's an awfully narrow-minded attitude, don't you think?”
The woman hung up on her, the slam of the receiver sounding like a bullet passing through her headset. Belatedly, Francesca remembered that these were her listeners and she was supposed to be nice to them. She grimaced at the photograph of her young mother. “I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have said that, but she sounded like a perfectly dreadful person, didn't she?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Clare drop her head and clasp her forehead in the palm of her hand. She made a hasty amendment. “Of course, I've been awfully narrow-minded myself in the past, so I probably shouldn't cast stones.” She hit the phone switch. “Francesca, here. What's on your mind?”
“Yeah... uh. This is Sam. I'm calling from the Diamond Truck Stop out on U.S. ninety? Listen... uh... I'm glad you said that about that song.”
