What's a Girl Gotta Do Read online

  “How are you, dear?” Solange said to her. “You’ve had a bit too much to drink, I think.”

  “Gee,” Susan said, chastened. “I never know how mmmuch is enough.” She threw her arms open in a broad gesture of prostration to her boss. The paper cup of punch went flying and splashed all over Solange’s very expensive lilac silk suit.

  Susan had just redeemed herself in my eyes, but Solange was not amused.

  “Susan, sometimes I think you are beyond hope!” she said. “Now I have to go upstairs and change.”

  Susan was distraught. After Solange excused herself, Susan said, “I didn’t mean to spill my drink on her. I feel terrible.”

  She looked terrible. A shade of avocado was creeping into her complexion. She pulled herself erect and with something resembling dignity said, “I think I must go now to the ladies; room. It’s time to throw up.”

  She wheeled around and staggered purposefully towards the john.

  It was 9:45. I still had over an hour to kill before my appointment and I felt tense. I needed to work off some stress somehow, so I went looked for Burke and Amy, figuring it was time to make them feel uncomfortable and knowing it would do me a world of good.

  At the moment, they were dancing to a Beatles medley. After taking a deep breath, I summoned up every ounce of chutzpah I had and shimmied on over to the dance floor, where I inserted myself between them. I was holding the knife I’d taken from the buffet.

  “Hi, Robin,” Burke said, as if he had just stepped in something that smelled. He stopped dancing and stepped around me to be beside his girlfriend.

  “And Miss Amy Penny,” I said, extending my free hand. She took it without enthusiasm and we shook. When she withdrew her hand, I noticed she was wearing a ring with a large diamond in it.

  “It’s very nice to see you… again,” she said feebly in her honeyed drawl. With her smooth, peachy makeup, she looked remarkably like a Barbie Doll. Malibu Barbie. Adultery Barbie. Co-respondent Barbie.

  “You’re so young-looking,” I said to her, taking a leaf on the civil insult from Solange Stevenson’s book. ‘What are you Amy? Twenty-one?”

  “Twenty-three,” she said defensively.

  “Barely out of college,” I said, because I knew for a fact she hadn’t gone to college and was self-conscious about it.

  “If you’ll please excuse me. I’m feeling woozy,” she said, with pained politeness.

  She looked a little pale. I loved that I had this effect on her. Whenever I saw her in the hallways at ANN, she turned tail and ran from me.

  Burke looked at her with caring. Poor Amy, put in this awkward situation by the Wicked First Wife. He gave me that progressive parent look again.

  I said, “You have a lot of nerve coming to this party.”

  Whenever I speak with Burke, I intend to be amiable and mature, to take the moral high ground and behave with decorum. But all he had to say was the word Amy and I became vengeful. To actually see them together looking so happy was too much.

  Burke claimed they’d met when she was doing a field report at the Toy Expo and he was covering it for Channel 3. But in fact, they’d met at this very same ANN party last year, when he had accompanied me. I remembered a look they gave each other, a kind of recognition between strangers. At the time, it registered subconsciously. Only later, with the addition of certain facts, did that hidden memory of mine merge and become significant. This was a kind of anniversary for them, I realized.

  Burke was about to say something, but just then Boris Yeltsin walked by with Mia Farrow and Ross Perot. When they had passed out of earshot, he said, “These are Amy’s friends and colleagues too. You don’t own ANN.”

  He paused while a Spotted Owl went by, holding a martini in each hand.

  “Of course, I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you were going to be here. I would have thought, given all the embarrassment you’ve suffered this last year, you’d want to keep a lower profile,” he said.

  “Hey, discretion is a two-way street. Do you call that rock on her left hand low-profile? It’s like a floodlight.”

  Burke took a deep breath. I think he was counting to ten. Around seven, he recaptured his temper and said, ”It’s just as well you came over, I guess. I need to talk to you anyway. I want to get this over with.”

  Amy returned and interrupted him.

  “Burke, I’m feeling sick. I think I have that, you know . . .” Their eyes met. They were speaking in their own code. “That flu. I’m going to get a cab uptown.”

  “But I haven’t met Jack Jackson yet and it isn’t even ten. Can’t you wait until I can take you?”

  “Well, I can’t wait, Burke,” she said. There was a perceptible pause.

  It was impossible to get Burke away from a party until he had met every single important person present who could help his career. As Jackson rarely showed up at company parties, this could be his only shot. I watched with interest to see who would win this battle, as I’d been there, and I’d never won.

  “You’re right. You stay and meet jack,” she said after a moment, a girl who put her man’s concerns ahead of her own. “Madri is leaving early. Maybe I can share her cab.”

  This could only make me look bad by comparison.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind?” he said, sounding sincere, full of empathy for his wench. This was not the same guy I was married to.

  “I’m sure. No reason for both of us to miss this.”

  They made like they were going to kiss and I said, “Please. I’m standing right here.”

  After she left us, for good this time, Burke turned to me and said, “Robin, I just want to put this behind us and get on with our lives. I have a lot of respect for you. I’d like us to be friends. If not, well, I don’t care what you say to me—or what you do,” he added with less conviction. “But leave Amy out of it. She’s an innocent bystander.”

  “Innocent, my ass! She dated a married man while he was still married, while he was still sleeping with his wife and telling his wife he loved her. She did it knowingly. I’m sorry, but that’s against the rules.”

  “She can’t help it. She loves me.”

  “Gag me with an oar.”

  He took another exaggerated deep breath. “Look, Robin, shit happens. People decide they want different things. People fall out of love…”

  “Then you should have told me. You shouldn’t have claimed to love me. You lied, you cheated and she encouraged you, and for that,” I paused, “you have to die.”

  I raised the butter knife slightly for emphasis and was gratified to see that, for a split second, Burke took me seriously enough to put an arm in front of his face defensively.

  “I’m joking,” I said with contempt. “You’re such a weenie. I mean, what a cliché, leaving me for a younger woman. Did you really think I was going to stab you? Do you think you’re worth a crime of passion? Get real.”

  “You’ve been known to go nuts every now and then,” he said.

  “Oh please, we’re divorcing. I’m allowed to lose my goddamned temper. It’s one of the perks.”

  He was pissed off now. “It’s your sanity I’m worried about, Robin, not your temper. Your sanity.”

  What a difference a few years of marriage make. “I’ll never sign the papers,” he told me once, shortly after we were married, when I mentioned that insanity ran in my family (it came straight down the maternal line) and confided my deeply held fear of ending up in asylum somewhere, muttering to myself about the state of the world with spittle building up at the corners of my mouth. Or wandering the streets telling strangers I’m a member of the Royal Family, as my mother often does.

  I’d pushed him too far. Now he was using that fear as a weapon against me, just as I use his fears against him. On the day we split up, he told me I was a hysteric, a doomed woman, certifiable.

  And what had I done to incite this heartless assault? Merely tried to feed him a pie—in which I’d baked his lucky shirt, a beloved silk Perry
Ellis, cut into strips and enclosed in a light, flaky pastry. That was the same day I learned of his affair with Miss Congeniality, Miss “My future plans are to find a cure for cystic fibrosis or else become a television anchorwoman.”

  He continued to probe this sore spot. “Do you still keep that morbid scrapbook of dead people you don’t even know?”

  “Murdered people.”

  “Oh, murdered strangers. So much more rational than just dead people. Do you still grow poison ivy in the window boxes?’

  “It’s too cold for window boxes. I have it in hanging planters inside the windows now and in vases on top of all the major appliances and valuables. In case of burglars. If they rob me and the police don’t catch them . . .”

  “You want them to suffer a painful rash at least, I know,” he said. “You’ve explained this to me a dozen times and it still strikes me as nutty. You don’t think this behavior is a little strange?”

  “This from a man who rubs sheep-placenta cream into his face every night. A man who refers to his genitalia as ‘Uncle Wiggily.” A man who won’t read a magazine until he wipes down the cover with disinfectant.”

  “You know how many people’s hands a magazine goes through before it gets to your door? Do you know where their hands have been?”

  “I’m surprised you were willing to kiss me without wiping me down first.”

  “It’s no use trying to talk to you civilly,” he said. “You’ll excuse me.”

  “Sure, Heinrich,” I said loudly.

  He looked around nervously.

  I know lots of his secrets: that his given name is Heinrich Adolph Stedlbauer IV, changed to Burke Avery for television; that at home he belches without excusing himself and secretly reads Judith Krantz. I know his guilty pleasures and his annoying habits. I know his blood type, his allergies, even which foods give him gas. I wish I didn’t know so much about him, and I wish he didn’t know so much about me. That’s why I said his name, to remind him to keep his mouth shut about me.

  “You promised not to tell anyone that my name—“

  “You promised to love, honor and cherish,” I said. But he looked so hurt by my threat that I gave in. “I won’t say anything. Jeez.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Let’s get together and talk one of these days. I really do want to be friends if we can.” He kissed my cheek and as soon as he did I wiped the kiss away with my hand.

  I looked for Eric—unsuccessfully—while worrying about my imminent meeting with the ginger-haired guy. At 10:55, I headed to the elevators. As I got on, Solange, changed into a fresh blue suit, got off.

  “Oh, are you staying here tonight, Robin,” she asked.

  “Uh, no. I’m going to meet a friend.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said suggestively.,

  I smiled weakly and let the elevator doors close her out. Great. A rumor of some kind would be circulating around the ballroom in about a minute and a half. I wondered who my name would be linked with. I wondered who I could get to tell me.

  I walked down the corridor and when I reached the door marked 13D I opened my purse slightly to have access to my Epilady and my cayenne cologne if I needed them, and I get a good grip on my knife.

  I knocked. No answer. I knocked again, harder and waited. Still no answer.

  Maybe he was late. I leaned against the wall and waited. While I stood there, Joanne Armoire came out of a room down the hall. She gave me a quizzical smile. “Who are you waiting for, Robin,” she asked. Journalists are shameless.

  “A friend.”

  “Oh. Well, happy New Year, almost.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  I watched her walk away and disappear into the wall where the elevators were.

  I knocked one more time, longer and louder, in case the asshole had fallen asleep or something. But there was still no answer.

  What kind of weird joke is this, I wondered.

  Yeah, that’s what it was, I realized. A joke.

  I’m known as a kind of . . . prankster at ANN, which was crawling with them. Somebody was getting even with me, and in a way that would naturally appeal to my troublesome curiosity. Let’s face it, a few phone calls around my hometown could have yielded the information he’d fed me on the phone.

  Hell, if he’d caught my own mother on a bad day, she would have quite innocently told him anything he wanted to know, and forgotten about it as soon as she hung up the phone.

  It was a pretty good setup, I had to admit. Page 1 of 3. Very clever. I wondered who had masterminded it and when and how they’d reveal themselves. I started gleefully plotting my revenge as I returned to the party.

  I hoped it wasn’t too late to catch up with Eric Slansky.

  Chapter Three

  I HAD MORE THAN A SLIGHT HANGOVER as I rode the subway down to Jackson Broadcasting the next day, New Year’s Day, a working day in the news business. An electrical storm cracked and thundered at regular intervals inside my skull.

  It was one of those days when everything on the subway seemed slightly unreal, when I thought of the city as New York: the Movie. Everything and everyone seemed self-conscious and surreal. Across the aisle, this kid was staring at me and in spite of my imploding brain I smiled at her. Suddenly, she burst into tears. I turned to the guy next to me and said, “Kids just love me.” The man looked surprised that I had spoken to him, like he too might start bawling at any moment.

  I’d dressed, fed Louise Bryant, and boarding the subway on autopilot, and only now was the night before returning to me, in flashes. Burke . . . Amy . . . Eric Slansky. Oh God.

  Had he really told me he was HIV negative and liked “slightly” older women? Had I really mentioned that at thirty-five I was at my sexual peak? Had we really discussed all the different places we’d had sex?

  And that practical joke. The ginger-haired man who’d never showed. After waiting around outside room 13D I’d gone back down to the party and had another lemon Stoly, so the rest of the night was still kind of blurry around the edges. I vaguely remembered Jack Jackson on stage toasting the new year and leading us in a countdown to it. Some asshole who thought he was being funny randomly shouted nonsensical numbers to confuse us, which, thanks to our inebriation, he was able to do briefly, until Jackson restored order.

  When midnight struck, with corks popping and confetti swirling I the air above, I kissed Eric Slansky.

  Yeah. I remembered that kiss pretty clearly. Eric and I danced and kissed until about 1:30 A.M. Shortly after that, with everything around me wobbling, the air wavy like hot air over a fire, I vanished from the screen.

  The subway stopped directly beneath Jackson Broadcasting headquarters, a massive black-and-pink granite building in the east fifties, and I got off with a horde of waxy white people who worked nearby, including a few JBS types whose names I didn’t know.

  JBS is really three networks: DIC, the Drive-In Channel; JNC, Jackson Network Corporation; and

  ANN. DIC is a movie channel aimed at the beer-and-gun-rack crowd, while JNC is a bit of everything, including tractor pulls, a highly rated if critically ignored wrestling show, and plenty of Mr. Ed reruns.

  ANN, however, is the prestige of JBS, the all news network nobody thought would fly but did, bringing honors and black ink to our esteemed founder and chairman, Georgia Jack Jackson.

  We’d come a long way, baby. In the early days of ANN, there were only two kinds of people there, old-timers with checkered careers rescued from the fringes—and drunk tanks—of journalism, and newcomers, right out of college and willing to work for peanuts. The freshly scrubbed and the nearly washed-up. Back then, it took a peculiar mix of genius and low self-esteem to work for ANN. The low self-esteem allowed them to work us long hours for low pay without dissent. The genius kept us on the air and built the quality of the network.

  I read somewhere about this Afghan tribe that could build a Kalashnikov from a Chinese bicycle. That’s sort of what we did in those early years. Back then our equipment was cheap and
broke all the time. We broadcast an entire interview with Henry Kissinger in various hues of green, klieg lights fell in the middle of newscasts, and one day someone came and repossessed the set while we were on the air.

  We were hapless but we had this sense of mission: to scoop the other networks and to present the news as unbiased and unfiltered as possible to the people, the unpolished news, warts and all. Every once in a while we’d scoop the Nets on something important. We’d rush out of the bushes, muss the networks’ hair, and rush back in again, laughing.

  Ten years later, we are all glossy and well manicured and every prime minister, president, and dictator in the world watches us. It’s scary. Especially if you’re not all glossy and manicured, like me.

  I was a little late for work, but not so late that I couldn’t stop to scan Democracy Wall, a ten-foot

  bulletin board that covered the left wall in the hallway leading to the newsroom. Under the heading FAN CLUB was a letter from one of Madri Michaels’s crazy fans, asking her to please send a pair of her freshly worn panties, autographed. There were contests to provide captions for wire-service photos, goofy stories, and a little bit of legitimate news, although the primary purpose of Democracy Wall was to provide labor with a forum to spoof management, world leaders, and anchors. I’d been the butt of a few Democracy Wall jokes myself.

  That day I was looking for a note referring to the joke played on me. But there was nothing.

  It was ten minutes to the top of the 10 A.M. show and just outside the newsroom anchorman Patrick Lattanzi was speed-smoking a cigarette before he went on. He smiled at me, but didn’t waste any smoking time in salutations.

  “Hi, Pat,” I said anyway, as I went into the newsroom. A desk assistant ducked between us with freshly ripped copy while an editor veered around us with a freshly cut videotape.

  If you’ve never been in a television newsroom, it’s a little like being inside a giant pinball game. Tapes whirred, typewriters clacked, computer screens hummed, phones buzzed, lights flashed, and images flickered. Along one wall were bright monitors showing what the other networks were running as well as our own picture and the feed we were pulling off the satellites. Underneath the monitors was the assignment desk, manned by one African-American woman and a half dozen harried-looking and overweight white men in their shirtsleeves.