The Word Master (7 page)

Grover walked another restless lap of the producer’s booth, like it was a cage. “One day after the show, Cindy was hornier than usual,” Grover started shaking his head like he wished he could erase the memory. “We were in the ladies’ room. I had her bent over in one of the stalls, her skirt up around her perfect little ass, taking her from behind. She was clinging to the wall, pushing back against me and grunting as we screwed. Collett came into the washroom and found us together. That was when I learned a big life lesson.”

“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?”

I thought about that carefully. “No,” I said at last. “I don’t think she is obsessed with me – I think her fascination is with the lifestyle.”

It was Nancy’s turn to lapse into thought. I could hear her moving around the office. “So are you going to call her?”

“I don’t see an upside to doing that. If I do, it might encourage other listeners to think they can make contact with me outside the program.”

“Hmmm,” Nancy made a non-committal sound. “But if you don’t at least phone her, you run the risk of turning her into an obsessive fan.”

I said nothing.

“Do you want to block her calls?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I think she’s good for the program. We’re getting more fantasy calls from other women because of her.”

“Then what? How do you want to handle this?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Let’s see what happens tonight. Maybe she won’t phone again. I made it clear to her last night that it was against policy to meet. Maybe she will accept that.”

Nancy didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Okay,” she said reluctantly, “but if she does call in to the station tonight, talk to her off air. Don’t put her on the radio, Jericho. This needs to be dealt with discreetly. I said to you when we first spoke – listeners want their fantasies to be available, even if they’re not attainable. Remember that.”

I sighed. “I remember,” I said. “But meeting this woman face to face could be a bad idea.”

Nancy’s voice hardened a little – just enough to let me know she disagreed. “Meeting this woman might be the only way to settle the issue and prevent it from overshadowing the success of the show,” she countered.

Chapter 10.

April greeted me in the corridor of the radio station with an angry bluster. “Did the horror-bitch call you about the changes to tonight’s show?” she fumed.

She was dressed differently. Gone was the open-necked blouse and the gaping neckline that revealed the tops of her breasts, and gone were the tight jeans that had clung to the curve of her hips and ass like a second skin. Instead she was dressed demurely in a loose-fitting sweater and casual slacks. The long flowing cascade of her hair had been tamed and tied back from her face in a ponytail. She looked like a different woman.

She must have seen the flicker of surprise that registered on my face. She checked a burst of outrage that was bubbling on her lips and wrinkled her nose.

“This is the real me,” she said, flapping her hands in a gesture that invited a comment. “No point carrying on the charade of the flirtatious vixen when you know my little secret, and there is no one else that matters in the building.”

I gave her appearance a more considered appraisal.

“I like the real you,” I said warmly. “Very striking.”

“Thanks,” April smiled. She dabbed at her hair with vain preening fingertips, and then seemed to remember her anger. She pursed her lips and planted her hands on her hips. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What are the changes to the show?”

I frowned. “Nancy didn’t tell you?”

April shook her head. “Hey, apparently you are the new Golden Boy of talk back radio,” she said with an edge of sarcasm. “She told me you would fill me in on all the changes when you arrived.”

I let April’s comment slide. “Who is producing the program tonight? Is Cecily back at work?” I asked casually.

April shook her head. “The rumor around the station is that she won’t be back at work until next week.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Some sort of family crisis, apparently.”

I grunted. “So it’s Grover again?”

April nodded.

“Is he here yet?”

April gave me a quirky smile. “He’s bird watching.”

“What?”

“Bird watching,” April said again more slowly, and then jabbed her thumb in the direction of Nancy Collett’s office. “The view from the dragon’s office is directly opposite a high rise apartment complex. Grover takes a pair of binoculars in there sometimes and checks the building to look for strangers having sex.”

I almost laughed. Almost. “Are you serious?”

April nodded, then turned wordlessly on her heel. I followed her along the corridor until we were standing in the open doorway of Nancy’s office. Grover was hunched over at the waist, powerful binoculars clutched to his eyes. He was pressed against one of the full-length windows, a gloomy shadow in the darkness.

April cleared her throat and I saw Grover straighten guiltily. He saw April, and then he saw me. The hand holding the binoculars fell to his side.

“Oh, hey man!” he said uncomfortably. “You’re early.” He came to the doorway, brushed past me and then reached back to pull the office door closed. His face was awash with embarrassment. He tucked the binoculars under his shirt and made a lunge for the coffee machine.

For several minutes Grover worked studiously at the machine, making coffee with the concentration of an alchemist. He handed me a Styrofoam cup with a sheepish grin. “So…” he muttered at last. “April told me the big bad bitch is changing the format of the program tonight. Wanna share the news?”

I took the cup and set it back down. “There are a couple of things she wants changed,” I said. “If the Sondra woman calls tonight you are to put her on hold. I’ll talk to her off the air. The call isn’t to come through to the studio. Okay?”

Grover nodded. He sipped at his coffee and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Cool,” he said.

I glanced at April. “And there are to be no calls between twelve-thirty and the one o’clock news. Collett wants me to go on the air and just talk to listeners. She wants me to get some kind of a submissive club going.”

“A club?” April sounded bewildered.

I nodded. “She wants me to start giving instructions to women who want to experience submission – like a remote control Master, I suppose,” I shrugged my shoulders. Talking about the idea now, the concept sounded almost foolish. Somehow, when Nancy had explained it, the idea had made good sense. Now I wasn’t so sure. My uncertainty was reflected in my voice, and mirrored by April’s expression.

“How is that going to work?” she asked.

I made a pained face. “I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m just going to wing it.”

I could see April’s hesitation. “We’ll have to adjust the playlists, and the schedule of calls,” she balked.

I nodded. “I know. I thought we could take a caller before the twelve-thirty break tonight, and then work in the rest of the calls and the music after we try the sub-club segment.”

April’s frown deepened. I knew the reality of radio programming wasn’t as easy as I had just made it sound. The changes would require a lot of behind-the-scenes adjustments, and that meant more work for April.

She took a deep breath and folded her arms. “Okay,” she said with an intrepid sigh. “We’ll give it a try.”