Jennifer Crusie Bundle (82 page)

“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 the 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 pop 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 women'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, “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. Or 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 looked 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 Allie 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, I 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.

W
HEN
C
HARLIE GOT HOME
that night, Allie was already in bed in the dark. 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 of 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 per cent 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'll 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.

A
llie moved behind the scenes at the University of Riverbend campus the next 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.

A
FTER TWO HOURS
in the early-October afternoon sun, Charlie was ready to 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 a double life. Tuttle wasn't that big.

“Hey, we're through.” Allie came up and leaned on the van next to him. “We are completely through until Monday night. More than forty-eight hours free. Can you believe it?”

“No.” Her face was turned up to his, and he grinned at her and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with his finger. “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 close to hers and watched her blush and smile. “It was very cold in that bed last night, and you're very cute today. Is the van 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 her T-shirt to cup her breast and listened to her soft gasp with a great deal of heated pleasure. “You don't really want to wait until 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.”

A
S FAR AS
Allie was concerned, the weekend just got better after that. They rented videos Saturday night and stayed home with Joe and his date, critiquing the mistakes in
The African Queen
and
Casablanca.

“Bad ending,” Allie said when Ingrid Bergman left on the plane.

“A woman's got to do what a woman's got to do,” Charlie told her.

“I think she's right,” Joe's date, David, said. “
I
wouldn't have left Humphrey Bogart.”

“You're a guy,” Charlie said. “Women sacrifice. It's their job in life.”

He complained loudly when Allie threw popcorn at him and then attacked her that night when they went to bed, tickling her until she giggled helplessly and then making love to her until she lost her mind. The next day, they had a picnic in the park and that night, Charlie dragged Allie off to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's newest exploding-head picture.

Allie had never been happier in her life. “You are one good time,” she told Charlie.

Charlie grinned at her. “Let's take some Chinese food home to Joe and David.”

But Joe was alone when they got home.

“C
HINESE
,” Charlie called out when they came through the door and then stopped. Joe was standing in the middle of the living room and he didn't look happy.

“What's wrong?” Allie said.

“David and I were spending a nice quiet evening at home,” Joe said, “when somebody knocked on the door.”

Charlie put the take-out bag down on the coffee table. “What happened?”

Allie sank down on the sofa across from Joe. “Where's David?”

“He went home. Things got weird.” Joe looked at Charlie. “Did you annoy anyone lately?”

“Just about everybody.” Charlie sat down on the arm of the couch. “I'm not going to like this story, am I?”

Joe shook his head. “When I opened the door, this blonde was standing there, and she shrieked, ‘Charlie!' and flung her arms around me.”

At least nobody had tried to gun Joe down. There were worse things than being hugged by a blonde. Charlie grinned at Allie. “Happens to me all the time.”

“Then she dropped her coat,” Joe said. “She was naked.”

Charlie stopped grinning. “That doesn't happen nearly as much.”

“Then she grabbed me again and somebody took a picture. With a flash.”

“That never happens to me.” Charlie frowned at him. “What the hell?”

“I don't know,” Joe said. “But it's not good.”

Charlie glanced at Allie. She was glaring at him. “What?” he asked her.

“Is there something you're not telling me?” Allie said.

“Something blonde? No.” Charlie looked at her with disgust. The last thing he needed was Allie getting jealous while he tried to figure out this newest wrinkle. “Come on, I spend every waking moment with you. Every sleeping moment, too, for that matter. When would I be dating blondes?”

“Well, something's going on with you,” Allie said, getting up. “And I don't like it.” She went in her room and shut the door.

Charlie looked at Joe. “Is this my fault?”

“I don't think so,” Joe said. “But if it is, knock it off. You're screwing up my social life.”

T
HE PICTURE OF
J
OE
and the hooker was on the front page of Monday's
Tuttle Tribune.

“I can't believe they printed that,” Allie said as she stared at it over breakfast, trying to figure the public-relations angles. “Local DJ Patronizes Call Girl? How much of the paper does the mayor own?”

“God, I look like hell,” Joe said over her shoulder. “In fact, I almost look like Charlie.”

“Very funny.” Charlie came into the kitchen and took the paper away from them to read the caption. “This is weird. They're setting themselves up for a lawsuit here. Somebody with clout must have got this in. Who have we annoyed that has clout?”

“Well, the mayor owns a chunk of the paper, and there's Roger Preston and all his friends.” Joe took the paper back. “Good thing I warned David about this. He's not the jealous type, but this looks bad.”

“Actually,” Allie said, trying to look on the bright side. “It might help the ratings. It should definitely get us some callers.”

“Great,” Charlie said. “The Moral Majority calling in to tell me I'm the spawn of Satan. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.”

“Forget the Moral Majority,” Joe said. “How about Bill?” The phone rang, and he got up to answer it. “Even as I speak. Do you want to talk to him?”

“No.” Allie stood up and carried her plate to the sink. “We're already on the carpet for the 2 Live Crew mess. Tell him we'll see him this afternoon.” She smiled at Charlie to reassure him. “It's all right. Bill's going to know that's Joe, not you, and that it has to be a setup. Really. It's all right.”

Allie wasn't as sure later that afternoon.

Bill sat in his desk chair and swiveled back and forth, glaring at both of them. “I don't know what it is with you two,” he began on a deceptively quiet note. “I don't know whether you're dumb or crazy or out to get me or what.” He glared at Charlie. “I'm particularly glad I hired you, you dumb-ass.”

Allie winced at the injustice. “Wait a minute. The Friday broadcast was all my fault. I know the rule is never to say anything in the booth that can't be broadcast. I broke it. It's my fault.”

Charlie sighed. “No, it isn't. It's mine. I was the one who sat on the mike slide and moved it up so everyone heard us. She had every right to assume we were off the air. It was my fault.”