so much as sag to the ground.
'Got to go,' he muttered, flipping his half-finished cigarette into a mud puddle. 'Melvin would scream bloody murder if we had a second of dead air.”
'Bye, Bobby. Come up and see me sometime.'
Mae West in Minnie Pearl's body. No, thank you, darlin’. Once was one time too many.
Robert rushed into the studio just as the tag on the last commercial trailed away. He slipped on the headphones and opened the mic.
'And Billy Buck Dodge-Jeep-Chrysler would like to congratulate Edna Massey for winning this month's gingerbread bake-off,' Robert said, settling into the control room’s swivel chair. 'Well, the weather word for today is rain, and I'd say fifty percent chance is as good a guess as any, starting this afternoon and tapering off around midnight. Highs will be in the fifties and lows in the upper thirties.'
He started the CD player and finished speaking over the instrumental opening bars of 'Hotel California.' 'Up next, it's the Eagles on AM 1220, WRNC.'
Robert leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. He'd bounced around a half-dozen little AM stations in his fifteen-year career, but this one had to be the runt of the litter. You were supposed to get better and better jobs as you gained experience in your field, especially when you were talented. But other than that brief spot on an FM Country morning show, he'd been about as hot a property as a broken Ninja Turtle doll.
'A Ham-It-Up Breakfast,' the FM show had been called. That dip into big-market FM had lasted about two months, and his show had been slowly climbing up the Charlotte ratings charts. He'd had Garth Brooks and Jeff Foxworthy on as guests, and seemed primed to make a run at syndication. He knew it was his break, his one shot that would bring him everything he deserved. But the station was sold out from under him, or rather, over his head, and converted to a conservative talk format faster than he could say “hallelujah.”
Instead of the wit and wisdom of Bobby Lee, the listening audience was treated to the bombast of Rush Limbaugh and Reverend Floyd Hardwick. The damnedest blow of all had been the fact that the station’s ratings had doubled within the week.
He'd lucked into a midday drive-time job and bounced around a little, and now here he was again, right back where he'd been ten years ago. But at least he was eating, he thought, as he patted the basketball that had somehow grown in his stomach over the course of his middle age. And being an announcer beat the heck out of working for a living.
The Eagles were winding down, and Elton John was in and cued, ready to tell everybody why they called it the blues.
As if old Eltie knew, with his stretch limousines and feather boas.
Robert fired off the song without an intro and walked up front to get another cup of coffee. He peeked around the corner and saw Melvin Patterson sitting behind his mahogany desk. Patterson was always bitching about how the station was about to go under, but his desk and cream-colored leather chair must have cost a few hundred reps of that Billy Buck Dodge-Jeep-Chrysler spot.
Betty's desk was by the front door, and she had her back to him. Despite himself, his eyes fell to her bottom. Her rump was spread out like a water balloon, quivery yet shapeless at the same time.
Robert filled his cup and went back to the studio. He turned down the monitor speakers so he wouldn't have to absorb any more adult contemporary rhythms than he'd already been bombarded with. He was sure that they caused cancer, or at least made you lose your hair and start voting Republican. But he didn't care if the manager told him to play the greatest hits of Boxcar Willie over and over, as long as the numbers added up on the paycheck every Friday morning.
He killed the next half hour with meatless banter and hits from Whitney Houston, Madonna, Celine Dion, and Lionel Richie. Before he knew it, it was two minutes until noon and Dennis Thorne, WRNC's answer to Walter Cronkite, or at least Les Nessman, but slightly taller than both, was standing behind him ready to take over the chair for the twelve-o'clock news.
'What's your lead, Dennis?' Robert asked him.
Dennis smoothed his gel-thick black hair as if he were going in front of a camera. 'Chemical spill at Bryson's Feed Supply.'
'Damn, man, you got some hard-hitting stuff today. Did you check with Melvin?'
'Check? What for?'
'Bryson's been a sponsor since you were sticking boogers under the desk in journalism school, my friend. I don't think that will pass the censors.”
'It's okay. It was the delivery driver's fault. She was filling in, wasn't very experienced. She forgot to latch the back of the trailer and a couple of barrels of pesticide bounced around in the parking lot as she was pulling away. Some experimental stuff called Acrobat M-Z, supposed to kill blue mold on tobacco.'
'Emergency Response team situation?'
'Yeah. They just hosed the stuff into the ditch.'
“Maybe we’ll get some weird mutant life forms to go with the green lights.”
“Green lights?” Dennis adjusted his tie as Robert got up and gave him the chair.
'Long story,” Robert said, waving to the sound console. “If you want the UFO beat, let me know.'
Dennis waved him away and spread his news copy out on the desk. As the 'On Air' sign lit up, Robert went out back. The rain had started as a soft trickle. A spasm of lightning lashed across the murk of the horizon. A couple of seconds later, it was followed by a booming bass line of thunder.
Robert worked his way through a Camel Light. Tamara would soon be heading down the mountain for her afternoon classes. He shouldn’t have been such a jerk last night. But she was driving him crazy lately. At first her little premonitions had been cute and quirky, because she was quick to search for rational explanations based on her knowledge of psychology. But lately she had become obsessed, taking them seriously, growing distracted and distant.
Gloomies. What a bunch of crap.
Still, her skin had felt wonderful last night. He should have kept his mouth shut and his hands busy and maybe Robert’s pulse sped up. Then he heard Betty’s brittle laughter erupt from the far end of the building and his mood crash-landed like the Hindenburg, only without the climactic explosion.
For the hundredth time, he cursed himself for his moment of weakness, the one blotch on his marital record. It had occurred at the station Christmas party three months ago. Tamara had to give a final exam to her night class and hadn't been able to make it, so Robert endured the party alone, chumming around with people he already saw too much of at work. They stood around the catered buffet spread trying to make conversation over the roast beef and rye, but shoptalk seemed to be the only thing they had in common.
After Melvin and his frosty-haired trophy wife left, Jack Ashley, the morning man, brought a couple of bottles of Wild Turkey from under the seat of his truck and started them around the room. Robert hadn’t been much of a drinker since becoming a family man, but he thought a few sips might keep him from dying of boredom. He had intended to have only enough to get warm faced, because he knew what would happen if he got the old ball rolling.
Warm faced came and went, and then he was starting to get a little thick lipped. Drink just enough to chuck up that clam dip, he'd told himself, then you've had enough.
But the clam dip stayed down, and so did a good pint of eighty-proof whiskey. Somewhere along the way to getting wobbly headed, damned if Betty Turnbill didn't start looking good. If Robert squinted just a little bit, she resembled a younger, if slightly seedier Reba McIntyre.
And those wrinkles in her pink wool sweater just might have been breasts, and there could have been a real smile beneath her painted one. She corralled him in a corner after most of the staff had left, her whiskey-and-Cheez Whiz breath on his neck and her hands roving over his ample flesh. And the next thing he knew, they were in the backseat of his car, bumping like a couple of awkward high schoolers.
More than once, if he remembered correctly, but he couldn't be sure.
He'd driven home at three in the morning with a fuzzy tongue and his clothes smelling like a French whorehouse. Tamara was already in bed, snoring gently. He peeked into the kids' rooms. Kevin had been fast asleep under the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on his ceiling and Ginger was somewhere in the middle of a pile of stuffed bears and aardvarks and frogs. Betrayal cut through the alcohol haze like a scythe.
He crept into the bathroom and took a shower, trying to wash Betty's raw scent off his skin. By the time he'd
