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“You don't like it either, Sam?”
“Naw. As far as I'm concerned, that's about the biggest piece of faggot horseshit music—”
Francesca hit the two-second delay switch just in time. She spoke breathlessly, “You've got a rude mouth, Sam, and I'm cutting you off.”
The incident unnerved her, and she knocked her carefully arranged pile of public service announcements to the floor just as the next caller identified herself as Sylvia. “If you think ‘Light Up My Life’ is so bad, why do you play it?” Sylvia asked.
Francesca decided that the only way she could be a success at this was to be herself—for better or for worse. She looked at her beautician. “Actually, Sylvia, I liked the song at first, but I've gotten tired of it because we play it so many times every day. It's part of our programming policy. If I don't play it once during my show, I could lose my job, and to be perfectly honest with you, my boss doesn't like me all that much anyway.”
Clare's mouth opened in a silent scream from the other side of the window.
“I know exactly what you mean,” her caller replied. And then to Francesca's surprise, Sylvia confessed that her last boss had made life miserable for her, too. Francesca asked a few sympathetic questions, and Sylvia, who was obviously the chatty sort, replied candidly. An idea began to form. Francesca realized that she had unwittingly hit a common nerve, and she quickly asked other listeners to phone in to talk about their experiences with their employers.
The lines remained lit for a good portion of the next two hours.
When her stretch was up, Francesca emerged from the studio with her sweat shirt sticking to her body and adrenaline still pumping through her veins. Katie, her expression slightly bemused, tilted her head toward the station manager's office.
Francesca resolutely squared her shoulders and walked in to find Clare talking on the telephone. “Of course, I understand your position. Absolutely. And thank you for calling.... Oh, yes, I certainly will talk to her.” She put the receiver back in the cradle and glared at Francesca, whose feeling of elation had begun to dissolve. “That was the last gentleman you put on the air,” Clare said. “The one you told your listeners sounded like ‘the sort of baseborn chap who beats his wife and then sends her out to buy beer.’” Clare leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her flat bosom. “That ‘baseborn chap’ happens to be one of our biggest sponsors. At least he used to be one of our biggest sponsors.”
Francesca felt sick. She'd gone too far. She'd gotten so carried away being herself and talking to her photographs that she'd forgotten to watch her tongue. Hadn't she learned anything these past few months? Was she predestined to go on like this forever, reckless and irresponsible, charging forward without ever once considering the consequences? She thought of the small piece of life nestled inside her. One of her hands instinctively closed over her waist. “I'm sorry, Clare. I didn't mean to let you down. I'm afraid I got carried away.” She turned to the door, trying to get away so she could lick her wounds, but she didn't move quickly enough.
“Just where do you think you're going?”
“To the—the bathroom.”
“Gawd. The Twinkie is melting at the first sign of trouble.”
Francesca spun around. “Dammit, Clare!”
“Dammit, yourself! I told you after I listened to your audition tape that you were talking too fast. Now, I goddamn well want you to slow down before tomorrow.”
“Talking too fast?” Francesca couldn't believe it. She had just lost KDSC a sponsor and Clare was yelling at her for talking too fast? And then the rest of what Clare had said registered. “Tomorrow?”
“You bet your sweet ass.”
Francesca stared at her. “But what about the sponsor, the man who just called you?”
“Screw him. Sit down, chicky. We're going to make ourselves a radio show.”
Within two months, Francesca's ninety-minute talk and interview program had been firmly established as the closest thing KDSC had ever had to a hit, and Clare's hostility toward Francesca had gradually settled into the same casual cynicism she adopted with the rest of the announcers. She continued to berate Francesca for practically everything— talking too fast, mispronouncing words, playing two public service spots back to back—but no matter how outrageous Francesca's comments were on the air, Clare never once censured her. Even though Francesca's spontaneity sometimes got them into trouble, Clare knew good radio when she heard it. She had no intention of killing the goose that was so unexpectedly laying a small golden egg for her backwater radio station. Sponsors began demanding air time on her show, and Francesca's salary quickly rose to one hundred thirty-five dollars a week.
For the first time in her life, Francesca discovered the satisfaction that came from doing a good job, and she received enormous pleasure from the realization that the other staff members genuinely liked her. The Girl Scouts asked her to speak at their annual mother-daughter banquet, and she talked about the importance of hard work. She adopted another stray cat and spent most of one weekend writing a series of public service announcements for the Sulphur City Animal Shelter. The more she opened up her life to other people, the better she felt about herself.
The only cl
oud on her horizon centered on her worry that Dallie might hear her radio show while he was traveling on U.S. 90 and decide to track her down. Just thinking about what an idiot she'd made of herself with him made her skin crawl. He had laughed at her, patronized her, treated her like a mildly retarded adult, arid she had responded by jumping into bed with him and telling herself she was in love. What a spineless little fool she'd been! But she told herself she wasn't spineless any longer, and if Dallie Beaudine had the nerve to stick his nose back into her business, he would regret it. This was her life, her baby, and anybody who got in her way was in for a fight.
Acting on a hunch, Clare began to set up remote broadcasts for Francesca's show from such diverse locales as the local hardware store and the police station. At the hardware store, Francesca learned the correct use of a power drill. At the police station, she endured a mock jailing. Both broadcasts were runaway successes, primarily because Francesca made no secret of how much she hated each experience. She was terrified that the power drill would slip and bite through her hand. And the jail cell where they'd set up the remote was filled with the most hideous bugs she had ever seen.
“Oh, God, that one has pincers!” she moaned to her listeners as she raised her feet off the cracked linoleum floor. “I hate this place—I really do. It's no wonder criminals act so barbaric.”
The local sheriff, who was sitting on the other side of the microphone gazing at her like a lovesick calf, squashed the offender with his boot. “Shoot, Miss Francesca, bugs like that don't hardly count. It's centipedes you got to watch out for.”
The KDSC listeners heard something that sounded like a cross between a groan and a squeal, and they chuckled to themselves. Francesca had a funny way of reflecting their own human weaknesses. She said what was on her mind and, with surprising frequency, what was on theirs, too, although most of them didn't have the nerve to come out and acknowledge their shortcomings in public the way she did. You had to admire someone like that.
The ratings continued to rise, and Clare Padgett mentally rubbed her hands together with glee.
Using a part of the increase in her salary, Francesca bought an electric fan to try to dispel the stifling afternoon heat in her garage apartment, purchased a Cézanne museum poster to replace the string guitar, and made a down payment on a six-year-old Ford Falcon with body rust. The rest she tucked away in her very first savings account.
