Charlie All Night (12 page)
Authors: Jennifer Cruise
* * *
It was almost midnight when Charlie saw Allie wave to him through theglass. He was still annoyed
with her, but it was hard to maintain. It
wasn't her fault he'd stumbled over the worst case of greed
that Tuttle
had ever seen.
He motioned her in.
"Nice boring show," she told him, and he rolled his eyes at her.
"Don't start. What have you got for me?"
Allie handed some papers over, and he frowned at them. "Here's the
title for that guy who wanted
the Tennyson allusion. It was really
Wordsworth. And here's the print of Rubens'
Rape of the
Sabines.
I
forget why you wanted that. This is radio."
Charlie studied the print, a painting of ample bodies spilling all over
a horse. "That woman last night
who said it was okay you eat like a
locust also said the problem with men is that all we look at are
pictures of skinny women. She said if we put Rubens' work up instead of
Hugh Hefner's, we'd all be better for it." He held the print up beside
Allie so that he could see them together and squinted between her and
the print. "You need to put on some weight."
"Good. I'll start now." She picked up what was left of the cheeseburger
he'd brought into the booth
with him and chomped into it. "You need
anything else?"
"Nope." The tape ended and he went back to the mike. "And now, for all
you William Wordsworth
fans who have probably been trying to call in on
our dysfunctional phones and tell me that yesterday's mystery quote was
not Tennyson, 'Getting and spending we lay waste our powers' is from
Wordsworth's
The World Is Too Much
With Us
. Will dashed off that little
ditty in 1807, but it's still relevant today."
A pickle oozed out of the cheeseburger Allie was eating and flopped
onto her blouse, leaving a
mustard trail on the white rayon as it
toppled over the swell of her breast.
"Oh, great," Allie said next to the mike, and then winced it her
mistake.
"And that was the voice of Alice McGuffey, my producer." Charlie
grinned at her. "Usually this is a one-man show, but Allie just dropped
a pickle with mustard on her blouse. What's the blouse made
of, Al?"
"Rayon. Dry-clean only, hold the mustard."
"Anybody out there with a surefire method for getting mustard out of
rayon, call in and save Allie's blouse. She doesn't get paid enough
here to buy a new one. Oh, you can't call in, the phones are down.
Well, write. And now a nostalgic wake-up call since it's after
midnight, bedbugs—2 Live Crew."
Allie glared at him, and he shoved the cassette slide up while he tried
to figure out what he'd done
wrong this time.
"What?" he said to her. "It's not my fault you ripped off my lamburger
and got slimed with mustard."
He got out of his chair, stretched and
sat down on the counter to get a better look at her. She was
actually
glowering. He moved back a little farther until his butt hit the
soundboard. She was fun to
watch when she was mad, but he was still a
prudent man.
"2 Live Crew?" Allie sputtered. "You're playing 2 Live Crew?"
"Yes, Allie," Charlie said patiently. "I'm playing 2 Live Crew. It's my
show. I do the playlist."
"I can't believe it." Allie smacked the hamburger down on he console.
"And I thought you were an
okay guy."
"I am an okay guy. I have testimonials." Charlie leaned back to enjoy
the argument since for once
it wasn't about making him a star.
Allie was visibly steaming. "2 Live Crew are sexist psychopaths and you
give them airtime."
"Hey, it's a free country. The first Amendment..."
"The first Amendment doesn't give men the right to sing about attacking
women. It doesn't give—"
"Well, actually, it does." Charlie said, and Allie turned bright red.
"Hold it." Charlie warded her off
with his hand. "Just hold it. You're
saying I should censor what goes on the air?"
"This is your show," Allie steamed. "What you play reflects your
tastes. You have a
responsibility
—"
"I have a responsibility to play music that appeals to a lot of
different people. 2 Live Crew may not
be my favorite group, but..."
"Oh. Right." Allie was so mad her eyebrows fused over her nose. "A lot
of different music? So when
are you going to play Barry Manilow?"
Charlie snorted. "I will die before I play Barry Manilow."
Allie leaned closer. "According to you, that's censorship."
"No, it's not," Charlie said, trying not to be annoyed. "I don't object
to what he's saying. It's just
lousy music."
"But you have a responsibility to play music that appeals to a lot of
different people," Allie pressed
on. "You just said so."
"Not Barry Manilow."
"So you'll play psychopathic music that advocates hurting women but you
won't play mediocre
music that advocates loving them."
"Allie, don't twist this—"
Allie jerked back from him, glaring. "You know what you are? You're
just like Mark."
Charlie jerked his head back, outraged. "Hey, watch your mouth, woman."
"You have no respect for women. You're amused by the woman's movement
and you think—"
"I love women's movements. Come on, Allie..."
"Don't patronize me," Allie shouted. "I can't believe you're—"
"Ah, Allie, have a heart," Charlie said. "It's no big deal."
"—such a yuppie scum dweeb," Allie finished and stomped out of the room.
He started to follow her and then realized he couldn't leave the booth.
"Allie, come back here."
Somebody moved toward the booth through the shadows of the production
room, but it didn't look anything like Allie.
"Uh, Charlie." Stewart, the night engineer, looking more like a peeled
egg then ever, came to stand
in the doorway, looking sleepy but
interested. "I was just in the break room, and I realized you
probably
didn't know."
"Know what?" Charlie frowned at him.
"You're on the air." Stewart shrugged. "It's good stuff, but -"
"The tape can't be over yet," Charlie looked around frantically.
"It never started."
"Oh, hell." Charlie put the headphones back on. Sure enough, no 2 Live
Crew. He looked at the
mike slide and closed his eyes when he saw it
was up. "Uh, for those of you listening at home,
Alice McGuffey has
just walked out in a huff. And for the record, she does a very nice
huff. She overreacts, though. And now, let's try that 2 Live Crew
again, shall we? This is for all you yuppie
scum dweebs out there who
dig rap. There must be at least two of you."
He punched the tape again and listened. Silence. "All right," he said
into the mike, "we won't do rap. Seems we have a defective tape. Let's
try Elvis since he was on deck next, anyway." He punched the next tape,
shoved the slide up and heard absolutely nothing.
Then he looked at Stewart. "Go get me a tape. Any tape. Now." Then as
Stewart disappeared, he
spoke into the mike. "Well, it's a darn shame
our phones are down because this would sure make one heck of a call-in
topic. Send in those postcards, folks, and vote your preference,
Manilow or Crew. Although, come to think of it, that is a pretty lousy
choice. Maybe I'll try something different." He babbled on about some
of the other choices he could have made, feeling like a fool and
developing
a real need for revenge on whoever had wiped his tapes. When
Stewart came loping back and thrust
a CD at him, he shoved it into the
player. "Or we could play something good like this one."
Frank Sinatra began to sing "My Way."
Charlie looked at Stewart. "You're kidding."
"I like Frank." Stewart shoved a handful of CDs at him. "Here's more
new ones. Want me to check
to see if anything you've got in here has
music on it?"
"That would be good." Charlie put his head in his hands. "This is a
disaster."
Stewart dropped the new CDs on the counter and picked up the old tapes.
"Not really. You had your mike slide shoved up so people could hear you
talk. That's good."
Charlie looked at him as if he were demented, always a possibility with
Stewart. "How is that good?"
"Because if you hadn't, you'da had yourself some dead air. Nothing's
worse than dead air."
Charlie shook his head. "I suppose not. What's wrong with the tapes?"
Stewart picked up the one on the top of his stack and ooked at it.
"Doesn't look like anything's wrong.
It's one of our old tapes, all
right. Must go back five or six years. Maybe it was too old."
"I played it this afternoon," Charlie said.
Stewart shrugged. "Maybe somebody erased it. I'll check all of them,
but
I bet somebody did it on purpose. Not everybody likes you, you know.
The mayor, for instance."
Charlie snorted. "You trying to tell me that Rollie Whitcomb snuck in
here and erased my tapes so
I'd have dead air? Come on. The man can
barely drive a car."
Stewart shrugged again. "You asked."
Charlie tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. "So Al-lie and I
just broadcast our 2 Live Crew
fight to greater Tuttle. All right.
That's okay. I can't possibly get in trouble for this. Unless the FCC
bars 'yuppie scum dweeb', in which case, pay the fine. I'm covered on
this. I am not in trouble."
Somehow, though, he knew he was.
That was just the way his life was going.
Stewart left the booth. A few minutes later, while Charlie was figuring
out the angles, the phone rang,
and he picked it up out of habit.
* * *
He
got a beer, undressed,
and climbed in beside her, touching the cold can
to her back.
"Get out," she said and drew away from him.
"It's the yuppie scum dweeb. Wake up." He drank a third it the beer in
one gulp and then put the
cold can against his forehead.
"Go sleep on the couch."
"Oh, no, Alice." He put the can on the table beside the bed, turned on
the light and rolled her over to
face him.
"You can't for a minute think I'm going to have sex with you." She
tried to push him away. "You can't possibly..."
"After you left, Stewart, who has not been paying attention, noticed
the phones were down. So he
turned them on. We got over a dozen calls
in less than an hour. Roughly speaking, fifty-five percent
were in
favor of you, forty-two percent were in favor of me and three percent
wanted to know exactly what a yuppie scum dweeb was."
"Send them your picture." Allie rolled away from him.
He rolled her back. "One person suggested baking soda for the mustard
on your blouse."
"Why are we discussing this?" Allie asked, and the edge in her voice
told him she was still mad and
not just faking it.
Charlie sighed. "Because we have a meeting with Bill on Monday. For
once in his worthless life, he
was listening to the show to make sure
we didn't do anything stupid, and you go berserk on the air."
He shook
his head and picked up his beer. "He was not happy when he talked with
me."
Allie rolled back over and buried her face in her pillow. "Good.
Maybe you'll get fired. Then you
won't have to worry about success
anymore, and you can stop screwing up my life and the lives
of those
around you by playing Nazi music."
"That does it." Charlie picked up his pillow and stood up, pulling the
quilt with him.
"Hey!" Allie sat up and grabbed for the quilt, but he was too fast for
her.
"If you want me, I'd be on the couch," he said over his shoulder.
"I may never want you again," Allie yelled after him.
"Ha." He turned to look down at her superciliously from the door.
"You'll probably be out on the
couch with me by morning."
"Ha yourself, you yuppie scum. Don't hold your breath waiting. Your
brain needs all the oxygen
it can get."
Charlie slammed the door behind him, and Allie flopped back down in the
bed, put the pillow over
her head and screamed with fury and
frustration.
7
Alie moved behind the scenes at the University of Riverbend campus thenext day, making sure there were plenty of bumper stickers and station
programs to hand out, that nobody hot-wired the sound system while
Stewart slept in the back of the station van, and that none of the
cassettes disappeared or were mysteriously wiped clean of music. If
somebody was out to get them, she wanted to be there first.
The entire time she kept an eye on Charlie, studying him to make
optimum use of future public appearances. She wasn't sure she was ready
to forgive him, but she'd been relieved the night before
when an hour
after he'd stormed out of her bedroom, he'd come back, tossed his
pillow on the bed
and threw the quilt over her. "I figured you were
cold without the quilt," he'd said and climbed in
beside her. "Ha,"
she'd said, but she'd snuggled her back up next to his just the same.
Now, she watched him charm the crowd and felt her anger fade
completely. Natural charisma, she decided, watching him lean over the
portable broadcast counter to smile at a coed who was waving
a bumper
sticker for him to sign. Most of these kids didn't know who he was,
since Tuttle graft was
not uppermost in their minds as entertainment
value. They'd just wandered by to pick up those dumb bumper stickers
and stopped to listen to him as he sat slumped in his chair with his
feet on the table. Charlie's patter was completely off the cuff and off
the wall. It took a really focused person to ignore
him, and not many
college kids were focused on a Saturday afternoon.
Charlie was building an audience. Yes, Allie thought and forgave him
completely, but she kept her
mouth shut so as not to distract him. She
had no idea why Charlie had agreed to two hours of college
broadcasting, but she wasn't about to question her luck or, God forbid,
point out to Charlie how well
he was doing. Then Charlie called back
good-naturedly to a heckler, and the crowd laughed, and Allie heard it
as the sound of rising ratings.
* * *
After two hours in the early-October afternoon sun, Charlie was readyto pack it in. He'd listened for
any clue about crime or drugs in all
the comments the kids had made as they'd drifted past, and he'd started
animated conversations with everyone who came up to him, trying to
leave openings for any
clue they'd like to drop. After two hours, he'd
found out exactly nothing. He had a bunch of drunk freshman fraternity
guys hassling him off and on, and while they were easy to deflect, it
wasn't his
choice of the way to spend a great autumn afternoon. He'd
also deflected more than enough young women who'd asked him what he was
doing that night. "Sleeping with my producer" didn't seem to
be a good
answer, especially since, after last night, Allie might still be
feeling hostile. Then he looked
out over the crowd and grinned. Nope.
He'd been a public-relations dream all afternoon. Given Allie's
lust
for success, there was a good chance she'd jump him in the van from
gratitude. The thought led
him to other thoughts of Allie in the
windowless van with the doors closed and locked. He hadn't seen Allie
naked for almost thirty-six hours. That was bad for him. Usually he
wasn't this obsessive about
sex, but Allie was different. It was easy
to be obsessive about Allie. In fact, it was a pleasure to be obsessive
about Allie. And the van had a bench seat in back, not wide but padded
enough for Stewart
to sleep on. Maybe he could get rid of Stewart....
"Quite a crowd," Mark said behind him and he sat up in surprise.
"What?" Charlie squinted at him in the sun. "Oh. Yeah. They're a great
crowd. You up now?"
"Yes. Lisa's taking over from Allie." Mark surveyed the situation and
frowned at him. "There are a
lot of people here."
Charlie stood up. "Well, that was the idea. It's all yours." He clapped
Mark on the shoulder. "Have
a great time."
Mark ignored him and took over the mike as the last song ended. "Hello,
UR," he said into the mike. "This is Mark King, live from the
University of Riverbend."
People started to drift away, and for a moment, Charlie felt sorry for
Mark. Then he remembered who Mark was and his pity evaporated. This was
the jerk who'd dumped Allie. This was the jerk who had probably
sabotaged his show the night before. Even more important, this was the
jerk who sooner or
later was going to try to get Allie back to save his
show. Annoyed, Charlie went down the steps to look for her, stopping
twice along the way to tell groups of female students who'd asked that
he was busy
that night. Then he headed for the van, and someone hooted
at him.
The bunch of drunk freshmen were back, hanging around the end of the
platform. "Still givin it away free?" one of them said.
Charlie stopped and raised an eyebrow. "Giving what away free? Bumper
stickers?"
They all laughed and somebody said, "Bumper stickers. Yeah, right."
Then one of them raised his
fingers to his mouth and made a sucking
sound. "You'll never get rich giving it away, man," one of
them said.
"Forget it," the tallest one said. "He's stupid."
"Wait a minute." Charlie went toward them, but they faded into the
crowd, laughing over their
shoulders at him.
Giving it away free. The kid had mimed smoking, but giving pot away
made
no sense at all. Not
even for Grady, their resident pot head. Charlie
leaned against the van and thought about it. If he was looking for
crime, he had to find a profit, "That
only made sense. So maybe somebody was giving
away free samples, trying
to hook paying buyers later? That ruled out Grady completely since he
thought capitalism was a crime.
Unless he was faking it. Unless under all Grady's New Age babble beat a
heart just like Charlie's dad's.
It was possible, but not probable. Grady's good nature was legendary.
Someone would have noticed
if he'd been leading double life. Tuttle wasn't that big.
"Hey, we're through." Allie came up and leaned on the van lext to him.
"We are completely through
until Monday night, if ore than forty-eight
hours free. Can you believe it?"
"No ."Her face was turned up to his, and he grinned at her nd pushed
her glasses up the bridge of her nose with his finer. "What do you want
to do for forty-eight hours?"
Allie grinned back at him. "Watch videos. Eat Chinese, feed Sam. Make
love."
"Let's take those in reverse order." Charlie bent his head lose to hers
and watched her blush and smile.
"It was very old in that bed last
night, and you're very cute today. Is the an empty or is Stewart still
sleeping in there?"
"I don't make love in vans," Allie said primly.
"Of course not," Charlie said. "So is it empty or not?"
It was empty.
"That's a very narrow bench," Allie pointed out as Charlie sat down and
pulled her onto his lap.
"I have a great sense of balance." He slid his hand under er T-shirt to
cup her breast and listened to her soft gasp with great deal of heated
pleasure. "You don't really want to wait ntil we get home, do you?
Think of the traffic."
He kissed her neck and she murmured, "Traffic would be bad," and then
he tipped her gently down
onto the seat as she wrapped herself around
him. "Remind me to do these college things more often,"
he said as
he unzipped her jeans. "I love doing remotes."
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