Fancy Pants (30 page)
"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
jack-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."
"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."
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 cloud 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, and 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 cne out and acknowledge their shortcomings in
public thhad 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 Cezanne 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.
Although she knew her looks had improved now that she was eating better
and worrying less, she paid little attention to the fact that a healthy
glow had returned to her skin and a sheen to her hair. She had neither
the time nor the interest to linger in front of a mirror, a pastime
that had proved so completely useless to her survival.
The Sulphur City airport advertised a skydiving club, and Clare's
normally testy temper took a turn for the worse. She knew a good
programming idea when she saw one, but even she couldn't order a woman
who was eight months pregnant to jump out of an airplane. Francesca's
pregnancy greatly inconvenienced Clare, and as a result she made only
the smallest concessions to it.
"We'll schedule the jump two months after your kid is born. That'll
give you plenty of time to recover. We'll use a wireless mike so the
listeners can hear you scream all the way down."
"I'm not jumping from an airplane!" Francesca exclaimed.
Clare fingered the pile of forms on her desk, part of her attempt to
straighten out Francesca's affairs with the U.S. Bureau of
Naturalization and Immigration. "If you want these forms filled out,
you will."
"That's blackmail."
Clare shrugged. "I'm a realist. You probably won't be around for long,
chicky, but while you are, I'm going to suck out every last drop of
your blood."
This wasn't the first time Clare had alluded to her future, and each
time she did, Francesca felt a surge
of anticipation pass
through her. She knew the rule as well as anyone: people who were good
didn't stay at KDSC for very long; they moved on to bigger markets.
She waddled out of Clare's office that day feeling pleased with
herself. Her show had gone well, she had almost five hundred dollars
tucked away in the bank, and a bright future seemed to be waiting for
her on the not-so-distant horizon. She smiled to herself. All it took
to succeed in life was a small bit of talent and a lot of hard work.
And then she saw a familiar figure walking toward her from the front
door, and the light went out of her day.
"Aw, hell," Holly Grace Beaudine drawled as she came to a stop in the
center of the reception area.
"That stupid son of a bitch knocked you
up."
Grace planted five frosty mauve fingernails on the hip of a pair of
elegantly tailored white summer trousers and shook her head in disgust.
"That man doesn't have any more sense now than he did the day I married
him."
Francesca winced as every head in the office turned her way. She felt
her cheeks fill with color, and she had a wild urge to cross her hands
over her bulging abdomen.
"Do you girls want to use my office to chat?" Clare stood just inside
her doorway, obviously enjoying the mini-drama that had sprung up
before her.
Holly Grace quickly sized up Clare as the person in authority and
announced, "Us girls are gonna go someplace and have ourselves a stiff
drink. That is, if you don't mind."
"Be my guest." Clare swept her hand toward the door. "I do hope you'll
be ready to share some of this excitement with your listeners tomorrow,
Francesca. I'm sure they'll be fascinated."
Francesca stayed several steps behind Holly Grace as they crossed the
parking lot toward a sleek silver Mercedes. She had no desire to go
anywhere with Holly Grace, but she could hardly play out this
particular scene in front of her rabidly curious co-workers. The
muscles in her shoulders had tightened into knots and she tried to
relax them. If she let Holly
Grace intimidate her so quickly, she would never recover.
The Mercedes had a pearl gray leather interior that smelled like new
money. As Holly Grace got in, she gave the steering wheel a light pat
and then pulled a pair of sunglasses from a purse that Francesca
instantly recognized as Hermes. Francesca drank in every detail of
Holly Grace's wardrobe, from the marvelous turquoise silk halter top
that crisscrossed in the back before disappearing into the belted
waistband of her beautifully cut trousers to the stunning Peretti
chrome cuff bracelet and luscious silver kid Ferragamo sandals. The
Sassy ads were everywhere, and so Francesca wasn't surprised to see how
well Holly Grace was doing for herself. As casually as possible,
Francesca draped her arm over the
coffee stain that marred the front of
her shapeless yellow cotton maternity dress.
As they rode silently toward Sulphur City, the pit of her stomach
filled with dread. Now that she knew about Francesca's baby, Holly
Grace would surely go to Dallie. What if he tried to make some claim on
her baby? What was she going to do? She stared straight ahead and
forced herself to think.
On the outskirts of Sulphur City, Holly Grace slowed down at two
separate roadhouses, inspected them, and then drove on. Only when she
reached the third and most disreputable-looking did she seem satisfied.
"This place looks like it serves good Tex-Mex. I count six pickups and
three Harleys. What do you say?"
Even the idea of food made Francesca feel nauseated; she just wanted to
get their encounter over with. "Any place is fine with me. I'm not very
hungry."
Holly Grace tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel. "The pickups
are a real good sign, but you can't always tell with the Harleys. Some
of those bikers keep themselves so stoned they wouldn't know the
difference between good Tex-Mex and shoe leather." Another pickup
pulled into the lot in front of them, and Holly Grace made up her mind.
She nosed into a parking place and shut off the engine.
A few minutes later, the two women slid into a booth at the back of the
restaurant—Francesca clumsily bumping her stomach against the edge of
the table, Holly Grace settling in with
a model's elegance. Above them, a set of steer horns and a rattlesnake
skin had been nailed to the wall along with several old Texas license
plates. Holly Grace pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and nodded
toward the Tabasco bottle in the center of the table. "This place is
gonna be real good."
A waitress appeared. Holly Grace ordered a tamale-enchilada-taco
combination and Francesca ordered iced tea. Holly Grace made no comment
about her lack of appetite. She leaned back in the booth, ran her
fingers through her hair, and hummed along with the jukebox. Francesca
had a vague sense of familiarity, as if she and Holly Grace had done
this before. There was something about the tilt of her head, the lazy
drape of her arm over the seat back, and the play of light on her hair.
Then Francesca realized that Holly Grace reminded her of Dallie.
The silence between them lengthened until Francesca couldn't stand it
any longer. A strong offense, she decided, was her only defense. "This
isn't Dallie's baby."
Holly Grace regarded her skeptically. "I'm real good at counting."
"It isn't." She stared coldly across the table. "Don't try to make
trouble for me. My life is none of your business."
Holly Grace toyed with her Peretti cuffbracelet. "I picked up your
radio show when I was driving along Ninety on my way over to Hondo to
see an old boyfriend, and I was so surprised to hear you that I almost
ran off the road. You do a real good show." She looked up from the
bracelet with clear blue eyes. "Dallie was pretty upset when you
disappeared like that. Even though I can't blame you for being mad when
you found out about me, you really shouldn't have left without talking
to him first. He's sensitive."
Francesca thought of any number of responses to that and discarded them
all. The baby kicked her hard beneath her ribs.
"You know, Francie, Dallie and I had a little baby boy once, but he
died." No emotion was visible in Holly Grace's face. She was merely
stating a fact.
"I know. I'm sorry." The words sounded stiff and inadequate.
"If you're having Dallie's baby and you don't let him know, you'd be
pretty much of a low-life in my opinion."
"I'm not having his baby," Francesca said. "I had an affair in England,
right before I came over. It's his baby, but he married a female
mathematician before he knew I was pregnant." It was the story she'd
invented in the car, the best she could come up with on short notice,
and the only one Dallie might accept when word of this got back to him.
She managed to give Holly Grace one of her old haughty looks. "Good
gracious, you don't think I would have Dallie's baby without demanding
some sort of financial support from him, do you? I'm not stupid."
She saw that she had struck a responsive chord and that Holly Grace was
no longer so certain of herself. Francesca's iced tea arrived and she
took a sip, then stirred it with her straw, trying to buy time. Should
she give more details about Nicky to support her lie or should she keep
quiet? Somehow she had to make her story stick.
"Dallie's funny about babies," Holly Grace said. "He doesn't believe in
abortion, no matter what the circumstances, which is exactly the sort
of hypocrisy I hate in a man. Still, if he knew you were having
his
baby, he'd probably get a divorce and marry you."
Francesca felt a stir of anger. "I'm not a charity case. I don't need
to have Dallie marry me." She forced herself to speak more calmly.
"Besides, whatever you may think of me, I'm not the kind of woman
who'd
make one man responsible for another's child."
Holly Grace played with the straw wrapper abandoned on the table. "Why
didn't you get an abortion?
I would have if I were you."
Francesca was surprised at how easily she could slip back behind her
rich-girl facade. She gave a bored shrug. "Who remembers to look at a
calendar from one month to the next? By the time I realized what had
happened, it was too late."
They didn't say much else until Holly Grace's meal arrived on a platter
the size of west Texas. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some of this?
I'm supposed to lose four pounds before I go back to New York."
If Francesca hadn't been so much on edge, she would have laughed as she
watched food ooze over the sides of the plate and puddle
onto the table. She tried to shift the course of the discussion by
asking Holly Grace about her career.
Holly Grace dug into the exact center of her first enchilada. "Have you
ever heard any of those talk shows where they interview famous models
and all of them say that the job's glamorous, but it's a lot of hard
work, too? As far as I can tell, every one of them is lying through her
teeth, because I never made so much easy money in my life. In
September, I'm even auditioning for a TV show." She set down her fork
so she could heap green chili salsa over everything except her
Ferragamo sandals. Shrugging her hair away from her face, she picked up
her taco, but she didn't lift it to her mouth. Instead, she studied
Francesca. "It's too bad you're so short. I know about a dozen
photographers who'd think they'd died and gone to homo heaven if you
were six inches taller . . . and not pregnant, of course."
Francesca didn't say anything, and Holly Grace fell silent, too. She
set down her taco untasted and pierced the center of a mound of refried
beans with her fork, twisting it back and forth until she'd made an
indentation that looked like an angel's wing. "Dallie and I pretty much
stay out of each other's love lives, but it doesn't seem to me I can do
that in this case. I'm not absolutely sure you're telling the truth,
but I can't exactly come up with a good reason why you'd lie."
Francesca felt a surge of hope, but she kept her expression carefully
blank. "I don't really care whether you believe me or not."
Holly Grace continued to twist her fork back and forth in the beans,
turning the angel's wing into a full circle. "He's sensitive on the
subject of kids. If you're lying to me . . ."
Her stomach in a knot, Francesca took a calculated risk. "I suppose I'd
be better off if I told you this was his baby. I could certainly use
some cash."
Holly Grace bristied like a lioness springing to the defense of her
cub. "Don't get any ideas about trying to put the screws to him,
because I swear to God I'll testify in court to everything you've told
me today. Don't think for one minute that I'll sit on the sidelines and
watch Dallie pass out dollar bills to help you raise another man's kid.
Got it?"
Francesca hid her relief behind an aristocratic arch of her eyebrows
and a bored sigh, as if this were all just too, too tedious
for words. "God, you Americans are so full of melodrama."
Holly Grace's eyes turned as hard as sapphires, "Don't try to screw him
over on this, Francie. Dallie and
I may have an unorthodox marriage,
but that doesn't mean we wouldn't take a bullet for each other."
Francesca pulled a six-shooter of her own from its holster and sighted
down the barrel. "You're the one who forced this confrontation, Holly
Grace. You can do whatever you want." I take care of myself, she
thought fiercely. And I take care of what's mine.
Holly Grace didn't exactly look at her with new respect, but she didn't
say anything, either. When their meal was finally over, Francesca
grabbed the check, even though she couldn't afford to. For the next few
days, she anxiously watched the front door of the station, but when
Dallie failed to show up, she concluded that Holly Grace had kept her
mouth shut.
Sulphur City was a small, graceless town whose only claim to fame lay
in its Fourth of July celebration, which was considered the best in the
county, mainly because the Chamber of Commerce rented a tilt-a-whirl
every year from Big Dan's Traveling Wild West Show and set it up in the
middle of the rodeo arena. In addition to the tilt-a-whirl, tents and
awnings encircled the perimeter of the arena and spilled out into the
gravel parking lot beyond. Beneath a green and white striped awning,
Tiipperware ladies showed off pastel lettuce crispers, while in the
next tent the County Lung Association exhibited laminated photographs
of diseased organs. The pecan growers badgered the Pentecostals, who
were handing out tracts with pictures of monkeys on the covers, and
children dashed in and out of the tents, snatching up buttons and
balloons only to abandon them next to the animal pens, where they set
off firecrackers and bottle rockets.
Francesca moved awkwardly through the crowd toward the KDSC remote
tent, her toes pointed slightly outward, her hand pressed to the small
of her back, which had been aching since yesterday afternoon. Although
it was barely ten o'clock in the morning, the mercury had already
reached ninety-four and
perspiration had formed between her breasts. She gazed longingly toward
the Kiwanis Sno-Cone machine, but she had to be on the air in ten
minutes to interview the winner of the Miss Sulphur City contest and
she didn't have time to stop. A middle-aged rancher with grizzled
cheeks and a fat nose slowed his steps and gave her a long,
appreciative look. She ignored him. With a full-term pregnancy sticking
out in front of her like the Hindenburg, she could hardly be anybody's
idea of a sex object. The man was obviously some sort of loony who was
turned on by pregnant women.
She had almost reached the KDSC tent when the sound of a single trumpet
came toward her from the area near the calf pens where the members of
the high school band were wanning up. She turned her head to see a tall
young boy with a hank of light brown hair falling over his eyes and a
trumpet pressed to his mouth. As the boy played the notes of "Yankee
Doodle Dandy," he turned his head so that the bell of the instrument
caught the sun. Francesca's eyes began to tear from the glare, but she
couldn't bring herself to look away.
The moment hung suspended in time as the Texas sun burned above her,
white and merciless. The smell of hot popcorn and dust mingled with the
scent of manure and Belgian waffles. Two Mexican women, chattering in
Spanish, passed by with children draped from their plump bodies like
ruffled shawls. The tilt-a-whirl clattered along its noisy track, and
the Mexican women laughed, and a string of firecrackers went off next
to her as Francesca realized that she belonged to it all.
She remained perfectly still while the smells and the sights absorbed
her. Somehow, without knowing it, she had become part of this vast,
vulgar melting pot of a country—this place of rejects and discards. The
hot breeze caught her hair and tossed it about her head so that it
waved like a chestnut flag. At that moment, she felt more at home, more
complete, more alive, than she ever had felt in England. Without quite
knowing how it had happened, she had been absorbed by this hodgepodge
of a country, transformed by it, until— somehow—she, too, had become
another feisty, single-minded, ragtag
American.
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
jack-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."
"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 programhad 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 cloud 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, and 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 cne out and acknowledge their shortcomings in
public thhad 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 Cezanne 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.
Although she knew her looks had improved now that she was eating better
and worrying less, she paid little attention to the fact that a healthy
glow had returned to her skin and a sheen to her hair. She had neither
the time nor the interest to linger in front of a mirror, a pastime
that had proved so completely useless to her survival.
The Sulphur City airport advertised a skydiving club, and Clare's
normally testy temper took a turn for the worse. She knew a good
programming idea when she saw one, but even she couldn't order a woman
who was eight months pregnant to jump out of an airplane. Francesca's
pregnancy greatly inconvenienced Clare, and as a result she made only
the smallest concessions to it.
"We'll schedule the jump two months after your kid is born. That'll
give you plenty of time to recover. We'll use a wireless mike so the
listeners can hear you scream all the way down."
"I'm not jumping from an airplane!" Francesca exclaimed.
Clare fingered the pile of forms on her desk, part of her attempt to
straighten out Francesca's affairs with the U.S. Bureau of
Naturalization and Immigration. "If you want these forms filled out,
you will."
"That's blackmail."
Clare shrugged. "I'm a realist. You probably won't be around for long,
chicky, but while you are, I'm going to suck out every last drop of
your blood."
This wasn't the first time Clare had alluded to her future, and each
time she did, Francesca felt a surge
of anticipation pass
through her. She knew the rule as well as anyone: people who were good
didn't stay at KDSC for very long; they moved on to bigger markets.
She waddled out of Clare's office that day feeling pleased with
herself. Her show had gone well, she had almost five hundred dollars
tucked away in the bank, and a bright future seemed to be waiting for
her on the not-so-distant horizon. She smiled to herself. All it took
to succeed in life was a small bit of talent and a lot of hard work.
And then she saw a familiar figure walking toward her from the front
door, and the light went out of her day.
"Aw, hell," Holly Grace Beaudine drawled as she came to a stop in the
center of the reception area.
"That stupid son of a bitch knocked you
up."
Chapter
21
The bubble of Francesca's self-satisfaction abruptly popped. Holly21
Grace planted five frosty mauve fingernails on the hip of a pair of
elegantly tailored white summer trousers and shook her head in disgust.
"That man doesn't have any more sense now than he did the day I married
him."
Francesca winced as every head in the office turned her way. She felt
her cheeks fill with color, and she had a wild urge to cross her hands
over her bulging abdomen.
"Do you girls want to use my office to chat?" Clare stood just inside
her doorway, obviously enjoying the mini-drama that had sprung up
before her.
Holly Grace quickly sized up Clare as the person in authority and
announced, "Us girls are gonna go someplace and have ourselves a stiff
drink. That is, if you don't mind."
"Be my guest." Clare swept her hand toward the door. "I do hope you'll
be ready to share some of this excitement with your listeners tomorrow,
Francesca. I'm sure they'll be fascinated."
Francesca stayed several steps behind Holly Grace as they crossed the
parking lot toward a sleek silver Mercedes. She had no desire to go
anywhere with Holly Grace, but she could hardly play out this
particular scene in front of her rabidly curious co-workers. The
muscles in her shoulders had tightened into knots and she tried to
relax them. If she let Holly
Grace intimidate her so quickly, she would never recover.
The Mercedes had a pearl gray leather interior that smelled like new
money. As Holly Grace got in, she gave the steering wheel a light pat
and then pulled a pair of sunglasses from a purse that Francesca
instantly recognized as Hermes. Francesca drank in every detail of
Holly Grace's wardrobe, from the marvelous turquoise silk halter top
that crisscrossed in the back before disappearing into the belted
waistband of her beautifully cut trousers to the stunning Peretti
chrome cuff bracelet and luscious silver kid Ferragamo sandals. The
Sassy ads were everywhere, and so Francesca wasn't surprised to see how
well Holly Grace was doing for herself. As casually as possible,
Francesca draped her arm over the
coffee stain that marred the front of
her shapeless yellow cotton maternity dress.
As they rode silently toward Sulphur City, the pit of her stomach
filled with dread. Now that she knew about Francesca's baby, Holly
Grace would surely go to Dallie. What if he tried to make some claim on
her baby? What was she going to do? She stared straight ahead and
forced herself to think.
On the outskirts of Sulphur City, Holly Grace slowed down at two
separate roadhouses, inspected them, and then drove on. Only when she
reached the third and most disreputable-looking did she seem satisfied.
"This place looks like it serves good Tex-Mex. I count six pickups and
three Harleys. What do you say?"
Even the idea of food made Francesca feel nauseated; she just wanted to
get their encounter over with. "Any place is fine with me. I'm not very
hungry."
Holly Grace tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel. "The pickups
are a real good sign, but you can't always tell with the Harleys. Some
of those bikers keep themselves so stoned they wouldn't know the
difference between good Tex-Mex and shoe leather." Another pickup
pulled into the lot in front of them, and Holly Grace made up her mind.
She nosed into a parking place and shut off the engine.
A few minutes later, the two women slid into a booth at the back of the
restaurant—Francesca clumsily bumping her stomach against the edge of
the table, Holly Grace settling in with
a model's elegance. Above them, a set of steer horns and a rattlesnake
skin had been nailed to the wall along with several old Texas license
plates. Holly Grace pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and nodded
toward the Tabasco bottle in the center of the table. "This place is
gonna be real good."
A waitress appeared. Holly Grace ordered a tamale-enchilada-taco
combination and Francesca ordered iced tea. Holly Grace made no comment
about her lack of appetite. She leaned back in the booth, ran her
fingers through her hair, and hummed along with the jukebox. Francesca
had a vague sense of familiarity, as if she and Holly Grace had done
this before. There was something about the tilt of her head, the lazy
drape of her arm over the seat back, and the play of light on her hair.
Then Francesca realized that Holly Grace reminded her of Dallie.
The silence between them lengthened until Francesca couldn't stand it
any longer. A strong offense, she decided, was her only defense. "This
isn't Dallie's baby."
Holly Grace regarded her skeptically. "I'm real good at counting."
"It isn't." She stared coldly across the table. "Don't try to make
trouble for me. My life is none of your business."
Holly Grace toyed with her Peretti cuffbracelet. "I picked up your
radio show when I was driving along Ninety on my way over to Hondo to
see an old boyfriend, and I was so surprised to hear you that I almost
ran off the road. You do a real good show." She looked up from the
bracelet with clear blue eyes. "Dallie was pretty upset when you
disappeared like that. Even though I can't blame you for being mad when
you found out about me, you really shouldn't have left without talking
to him first. He's sensitive."
Francesca thought of any number of responses to that and discarded them
all. The baby kicked her hard beneath her ribs.
"You know, Francie, Dallie and I had a little baby boy once, but he
died." No emotion was visible in Holly Grace's face. She was merely
stating a fact.
"I know. I'm sorry." The words sounded stiff and inadequate.
"If you're having Dallie's baby and you don't let him know, you'd be
pretty much of a low-life in my opinion."
"I'm not having his baby," Francesca said. "I had an affair in England,
right before I came over. It's his baby, but he married a female
mathematician before he knew I was pregnant." It was the story she'd
invented in the car, the best she could come up with on short notice,
and the only one Dallie might accept when word of this got back to him.
She managed to give Holly Grace one of her old haughty looks. "Good
gracious, you don't think I would have Dallie's baby without demanding
some sort of financial support from him, do you? I'm not stupid."
She saw that she had struck a responsive chord and that Holly Grace was
no longer so certain of herself. Francesca's iced tea arrived and she
took a sip, then stirred it with her straw, trying to buy time. Should
she give more details about Nicky to support her lie or should she keep
quiet? Somehow she had to make her story stick.
"Dallie's funny about babies," Holly Grace said. "He doesn't believe in
abortion, no matter what the circumstances, which is exactly the sort
of hypocrisy I hate in a man. Still, if he knew you were having
his
baby, he'd probably get a divorce and marry you."
Francesca felt a stir of anger. "I'm not a charity case. I don't need
to have Dallie marry me." She forced herself to speak more calmly.
"Besides, whatever you may think of me, I'm not the kind of woman
who'd
make one man responsible for another's child."
Holly Grace played with the straw wrapper abandoned on the table. "Why
didn't you get an abortion?
I would have if I were you."
Francesca was surprised at how easily she could slip back behind her
rich-girl facade. She gave a bored shrug. "Who remembers to look at a
calendar from one month to the next? By the time I realized what had
happened, it was too late."
They didn't say much else until Holly Grace's meal arrived on a platter
the size of west Texas. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some of this?
I'm supposed to lose four pounds before I go back to New York."
If Francesca hadn't been so much on edge, she would have laughed as she
watched food ooze over the sides of the plate and puddle
onto the table. She tried to shift the course of the discussion by
asking Holly Grace about her career.
Holly Grace dug into the exact center of her first enchilada. "Have you
ever heard any of those talk shows where they interview famous models
and all of them say that the job's glamorous, but it's a lot of hard
work, too? As far as I can tell, every one of them is lying through her
teeth, because I never made so much easy money in my life. In
September, I'm even auditioning for a TV show." She set down her fork
so she could heap green chili salsa over everything except her
Ferragamo sandals. Shrugging her hair away from her face, she picked up
her taco, but she didn't lift it to her mouth. Instead, she studied
Francesca. "It's too bad you're so short. I know about a dozen
photographers who'd think they'd died and gone to homo heaven if you
were six inches taller . . . and not pregnant, of course."
Francesca didn't say anything, and Holly Grace fell silent, too. She
set down her taco untasted and pierced the center of a mound of refried
beans with her fork, twisting it back and forth until she'd made an
indentation that looked like an angel's wing. "Dallie and I pretty much
stay out of each other's love lives, but it doesn't seem to me I can do
that in this case. I'm not absolutely sure you're telling the truth,
but I can't exactly come up with a good reason why you'd lie."
Francesca felt a surge of hope, but she kept her expression carefully
blank. "I don't really care whether you believe me or not."
Holly Grace continued to twist her fork back and forth in the beans,
turning the angel's wing into a full circle. "He's sensitive on the
subject of kids. If you're lying to me . . ."
Her stomach in a knot, Francesca took a calculated risk. "I suppose I'd
be better off if I told you this was his baby. I could certainly use
some cash."
Holly Grace bristied like a lioness springing to the defense of her
cub. "Don't get any ideas about trying to put the screws to him,
because I swear to God I'll testify in court to everything you've told
me today. Don't think for one minute that I'll sit on the sidelines and
watch Dallie pass out dollar bills to help you raise another man's kid.
Got it?"
Francesca hid her relief behind an aristocratic arch of her eyebrows
and a bored sigh, as if this were all just too, too tedious
for words. "God, you Americans are so full of melodrama."
Holly Grace's eyes turned as hard as sapphires, "Don't try to screw him
over on this, Francie. Dallie and
I may have an unorthodox marriage,
but that doesn't mean we wouldn't take a bullet for each other."
Francesca pulled a six-shooter of her own from its holster and sighted
down the barrel. "You're the one who forced this confrontation, Holly
Grace. You can do whatever you want." I take care of myself, she
thought fiercely. And I take care of what's mine.
Holly Grace didn't exactly look at her with new respect, but she didn't
say anything, either. When their meal was finally over, Francesca
grabbed the check, even though she couldn't afford to. For the next few
days, she anxiously watched the front door of the station, but when
Dallie failed to show up, she concluded that Holly Grace had kept her
mouth shut.
Sulphur City was a small, graceless town whose only claim to fame lay
in its Fourth of July celebration, which was considered the best in the
county, mainly because the Chamber of Commerce rented a tilt-a-whirl
every year from Big Dan's Traveling Wild West Show and set it up in the
middle of the rodeo arena. In addition to the tilt-a-whirl, tents and
awnings encircled the perimeter of the arena and spilled out into the
gravel parking lot beyond. Beneath a green and white striped awning,
Tiipperware ladies showed off pastel lettuce crispers, while in the
next tent the County Lung Association exhibited laminated photographs
of diseased organs. The pecan growers badgered the Pentecostals, who
were handing out tracts with pictures of monkeys on the covers, and
children dashed in and out of the tents, snatching up buttons and
balloons only to abandon them next to the animal pens, where they set
off firecrackers and bottle rockets.
Francesca moved awkwardly through the crowd toward the KDSC remote
tent, her toes pointed slightly outward, her hand pressed to the small
of her back, which had been aching since yesterday afternoon. Although
it was barely ten o'clock in the morning, the mercury had already
reached ninety-four and
perspiration had formed between her breasts. She gazed longingly toward
the Kiwanis Sno-Cone machine, but she had to be on the air in ten
minutes to interview the winner of the Miss Sulphur City contest and
she didn't have time to stop. A middle-aged rancher with grizzled
cheeks and a fat nose slowed his steps and gave her a long,
appreciative look. She ignored him. With a full-term pregnancy sticking
out in front of her like the Hindenburg, she could hardly be anybody's
idea of a sex object. The man was obviously some sort of loony who was
turned on by pregnant women.
She had almost reached the KDSC tent when the sound of a single trumpet
came toward her from the area near the calf pens where the members of
the high school band were wanning up. She turned her head to see a tall
young boy with a hank of light brown hair falling over his eyes and a
trumpet pressed to his mouth. As the boy played the notes of "Yankee
Doodle Dandy," he turned his head so that the bell of the instrument
caught the sun. Francesca's eyes began to tear from the glare, but she
couldn't bring herself to look away.
The moment hung suspended in time as the Texas sun burned above her,
white and merciless. The smell of hot popcorn and dust mingled with the
scent of manure and Belgian waffles. Two Mexican women, chattering in
Spanish, passed by with children draped from their plump bodies like
ruffled shawls. The tilt-a-whirl clattered along its noisy track, and
the Mexican women laughed, and a string of firecrackers went off next
to her as Francesca realized that she belonged to it all.
She remained perfectly still while the smells and the sights absorbed
her. Somehow, without knowing it, she had become part of this vast,
vulgar melting pot of a country—this place of rejects and discards. The
hot breeze caught her hair and tossed it about her head so that it
waved like a chestnut flag. At that moment, she felt more at home, more
complete, more alive, than she ever had felt in England. Without quite
knowing how it had happened, she had been absorbed by this hodgepodge
of a country, transformed by it, until— somehow—she, too, had become
another feisty, single-minded, ragtag
American.
Other books
The Beast Within by Jonathan Yanez
The Billionaire Goes For Broke: Book 1: London by Madison Rain
Talosian Chronicles 3: Talosian Alliance by Ben Winston
Medianoche by Claudia Gray
Steampunk Carnival (Steam World Book 1) by Cassandra Leuthold
Final Cut by T.S. Worthington
Perry Scrimshaw's Rite of Passage by Chris Hannon
The Accidental Pallbearer by Frank Lentricchia
Human Nature by Eileen Wilks
The Chalmers Case by Diana Xarissa