Going For It

Unless, of course, Darlene’s hunch was right, in which case the ensuing scandal would get Dr. Jamie a one-way ticket to obscurity, and Darlene about ten grand more per article.

She just wished she could be sure.

She focused on the billboard again. Even fifty feet wide Jamie still looked tiny. Didn’t the woman know the waif look was dead? With that short dark hair and those huge dark eyes, she came across as Little Miss Innocent—which was the hook. Just like the sign said, she talked sex and Manhattan listened. Straight answers, no euphemisms, no giggling. She told women they could have sex like men, and the women were eating it up. She had the number-one show in her market, and she was the number-one topic around watercoolers and in lunchrooms.

Darlene snorted. She’d seen ‘em come and go, and Dr. Jamie wasn’t going to be around very long. She was like a pet rock or a lava lamp. A sparkler on the Fourth of July. The trick for Darlene was to catch the light while it flared and turn the sparkler into a Roman candle. Darlene would be the one to light the match, and Jamie would burn.

Jamie’s eyes, almond shaped, deep brown, with what had to be fake lashes, stared down from the billboard with all the innocence of a lamb before the slaughter. When Darlene was through with her, Jamie would be knocked off that perch of hers and she’d have to face life among the great unwashed. Hell, Darlene was doing her a favor. Toughening her up for real life. Especially life in New York City.

God bless research. If Darlene hadn’t found Jamie’s old roommate in college, if she hadn’t gone all the way to Buffalo to do the interview in person, if Dianna Poplar hadn’t dropped just enough hints about the sex doctor…this article would have been about as interesting as a night at the Laundromat. But a scandal—that changed everything. That sold magazines. And that meant the kind of money Darlene deserved. The kind that would get her out of her hideous apartment and into something decent.

That she was able to dethrone the current queen of New York was an extra bonus. The cherry on top. Jamie was so much like all the girls Darlene had gone to college with—beautiful, bright, successful without any effort. What had Jamie done, really, to deserve this job? Gotten her degree? Big deal. Darlene had a degree, and she wasn’t about to go on the radio and say she was an expert on sex.

Jamie was a fraud. And Darlene was going to prove it.

The roar of a beefed-up motorcycle caught her attention, and she watched a guy on a Harley glide into a brilliantly lit parking space next to the Dumpster. She couldn’t see much of him—just his leather jacket, the worn jeans, the boots and the black helmet. But as she stared, he got off the bike, took off his helmet and shook his hair free. It was longish, below his collar. Then, as if he sensed her watching him, he looked over. She was too far away to see the details of his face, but she knew who he was.

Chase Newman. The race-car driver. Another one of the beautiful people who showed up at all the right parties and were paraded on the pages of magazines like Vanity Fair with other gorgeous rich people. She happened to know that People had tried to dub him Sexiest Man Alive, and he’d told the magazine to go to hell. She had to give him credit.

He turned to lock up his bike, and the short hairs on the back of her neck rose. It was her own personal radar system. There was a story here. What, she didn’t know yet. But the short hairs were never wrong.

She narrowed her gaze as she studied him. The way he moved, the way he stood, shouted confidence, sensuality, raw male energy. The kind of charisma that beguiled the most jaded hearts. Even she hadn’t been immune. She’d met him at a fund-raiser—some kid thing, or maybe pets. She’d wanted to do an article on him then, but she couldn’t find a hook. If she could figure out a way to combine the Dr. Jamie story with a guy…especially a guy like Newman.

She’d seen it before, although not terribly often. Mostly there were wannabes, men who swaggered and flexed and flashed their money around for all to see. But when the real thing came along, everyone knew it. There were some men who commanded attention. Respect. Who made a person want to breathe the same air, or at the very least stand in their shadow. Who owned the room, and all the women in it. The ladies fell in love with a man like that after even the briefest exposure—like it was some kind of virus. She’d seen it a thousand times. Women falling all over themselves to be near a man with that kind of charisma. Believing some of it would rub off on them.

Oh, yeah. Chase Newman would be perfect to put into this piece, if only she could find a way. Something about Chase and this station niggled at the edge of her consciousness. What was it? As she reached for another cigarette, she glanced at her watch and swore. She’d better get inside. Dr. Jamie was waiting. She hurried inside to the smoke-free air of the most popular talk-show radio station in the five boroughs, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.

“OKAY, BOYS AND GIRLS,” Dr. Jamie Hampton said into the mike. Her favorite mug was filled with green tea, and her notes were stacked neatly in front of her. “With me now is Darlene Whittaker, from Vanity Fair magazine. She’s going to interview me right here, right now, up close and personal. And a little later, you’ll get your chance to ask me some questions, too.” She turned to her guest, outfitted with fresh coffee and her own set of headphones. “So, Darlene. What can I tell you?”

“You’re a lot younger than I thought you’d be.”

God, she was tired of that comment. “Twenty-seven on my next birthday.”

“Is the title real? Or does your first name happen to be ‘Doctor’?”

Jamie laughed, already hating the woman. It wasn’t Whittaker’s looks. She’d dressed in Manhattan gothic, with horn-rimmed glasses, a head of curly, unkempt black hair, a black tunic over black jeans, and red lipstick so bright she probably stopped traffic. The look was too passé, but that wasn’t it. The way Whittaker looked at her was another story. Something wicked was brewing inside the reporter. Something devious. “The title is real. I got my PhD in human sexuality at NYU.”

“When?”

“Two years ago.”

“At twenty-four?”

“Yep. I started college at sixteen, got my master’s degree at twenty-one.”

“Wow. That’s some accomplishment. So, it was while you were a doctoral candidate that you started the radio show on campus?”

“Right. The Sex Hour. We broadcast from the campus radio station, and the show got pretty popular.”

“Isn’t it true that the reason you were so popular is that you’re a female version of Howard Stern? Outrageous just for the sake of shocking your audience?”

“Well, I suppose that could be true if one considers the truth shocking.”

“The truth?”

“I talk about sex. With all the weirdness that implies. Kinky sex, normal sex—whatever that is—solo sex, monogamous sex, safe sex. Sex on the beach, and in the kitchen.”

“And the Woman’s League of Decency has tried to shut you down because all you do is promote sex to teenagers.”

“I wouldn’t know about the Women’s League of whatever, but I do know our demographics. Most of our listeners are in their twenties and thirties.”

“The attempt to get you off the air has been in all the papers for the past six months. Don’t you read the Times?”

“I skip over the boring articles.”

Whittaker gave her a sarcastic smile. Damn Fred for making her do this. Sure, she wanted to be syndicated, but the show should speak for itself.

“When was the last time you talked about chastity?”

“Two days ago. I encouraged a caller to keep her knees together unless she was walking. Does that count?”

“But then tonight you taught a woman how to masturbate!”

“Someone had to.”

“What are all the religious leaders going to say?”

“Thank you?” Jamie looked through the five-inch plate-glass window in front of the room, and met the gaze of her producer, Marcy Davis. Marcy’s left brow arched as she fought a smile. Then Cujo, whose real name was Walter Weinstein, gave her the signal to go to commercial. “We’ve got Darlene Whittaker here from Vanity Fair, doing a live interview. This is Dr. Jamie, and we’ll be right back.”

She turned to her guest as she took off her headphones. “Having fun?”

Whittaker extracted her headphones from the forest of black hair. “Do I have time to go to the john?”

“Sure do. We’ve got a whole five minutes of commercials.”

Whittaker crossed the room and struggled with the heavy soundproof door. Once she was out, Marcy walked in.

“So far, so good.”

After checking to make sure no microphones were live, Jamie turned to her producer. Marcy was the best, and Jamie thanked the radio gods every day that Marcy had been the one to bring her over to WXNT. At forty-two, she bitched about being the old lady of the station, which was technically true, but no one cared except Marcy.

“You know,” Marcy said, “I really like her sense of color. She’s a summer, don’t you think?”

Jamie put her finger to her lips. “She could be right outside the door.”

“So what?” Marcy fell into the guest’s chair. “This was a stupid idea.”

“You won’t get an argument from me.”