Julia London (2 page)

“Paul, I hear
exactly
what you’re saying,” Kelly said.

“That piece of
bleep
ain’t
worth no ten million!”

“No, he’s not worth ten million, so it’s like a
double
insult that
the Mets paid him
one hundred and ten million
,” Kelly
gleefully corrected him.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I meant. One hundred ten million. It’s
bleep
obscene.”

“But, Paul . . . I know Parker Price is slow as Christmas, but
frankly, I thought that was the most artistic steal I’ve ever seen.”

Parker uncovered
his eyes and looked at the radio.

“Kelly, whaddaya saying?” Guido cried.

“I’m saying that
attempted steal was poetry in motion. Beautifully executed,” she continued over Guido’s
groans. “Really, if you think about it, the only thing missing?”

“Yeah?”

“A tutu and the final pirouette when he hit the
bag.”

Guido and Paul with the Jersey accent howled with laughter along with the
stadium of cheers as Parker shouted at the ceiling and sank deeper into the pillows. He
had to
stop
it. He
had
to stop it.

“Hey, Guido, did we get our game
count of how many balls disappeared in his magic glove last night?” Kelly asked, dragging
up a little stunt they did sometimes, which was to count how many errors he’d made—and
count them with a giant gong, which they seemed to think was hilarious. They never cut him
any slack, never counted how many spectacular, leaping grabs he had. Oooh no. That was
because Kelly O’Shay had it in for him.

“Let’s see, Guido, there was the
line drive up the middle that nearly took his hat off, right?”

Parker didn’t
hear the rest because he had grabbed the radio, yanked it from the wall, and hurled it
across the room. It hit the wall and fell, cracking in the center. He sat up, swung his
legs over the side of the bed, grabbed his phone, punched a number, stood up, and stalked
across the room to pick up the pieces of the radio.

“Sportsdaywithkellyoshay,”
a
young man answered rapidly.

“This is Parker Price, and I want to talk to Kelly,” he said
gruffly as he dumped the radio into a trash can.

“Right, and I’m Tinkerbell,” the guy
snorted.

Parker stilled. “Look, you little ass, I
am
Parker
Price, and I want a word with Kelly O’Shay right this
minute
!”

“Hey, pal, you
know how many goofs call every single day claiming to be someone? And like Parker Price
would have the ’nads to call this show!” He snorted again. “Save it for your girlfriend,
pal,” he said, and hung up before Parker could get another word out.

Parker yanked
the receiver from his ear and stared at it. The kid had just hung up on him! With a roar,
he hurled the phone onto his bed, but in the next instant, he pounced on it, punching in
another number.

“Frank,” he said when the call was answered. “Did you hear the show this
morning?”

“Still hearing it,” Frank, his agent, said jovially.

“It’s gotta
stop. I can’t take that constant needling. She is single-handedly ruining my
career.”

“Park, Park! Calm down, now! Why don’t you just listen to another station?”
Frank asked as Parker padded into a massive walk-in closet.

“I can’t! You
know
I can’t! Frank, I have to
talk
to her. I have to explain baseball to
her so she will stop jinxing me. You have to get me on that show.”

He could almost
hear Frank gulp. “No, Park. That is not a good idea—”

“Did you hear anything I said?”
Parker shouted as he reached for a box containing a new radio alarm from a stack of boxes
that contained radios identical to the one he’d broken moments ago. And yesterday. And
four days ago after the San Francisco game. “I’m telling you, Frankie, if she’d just back
off, I’d start hitting again!”

“Listen to me, Parker,” Frank said, sounding a little frantic.
“You are putting too much stock into what this chick says. She’s nobody! She’s just a
morning trash jockey trying to keep her measly little share of the market! Look, look,
look, take a walk, go
out with a girl, maybe take in a movie, something
like that. But don’t let her get under your skin. She’s not worth it.”

“Frank,” Parker
said, stuffing the box with the new radio under his arm. “I want on that show. If you
don’t get me on that show, I will fire your ass and find an agent who will. Do you
understand what I am saying?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Like hell I don’t!” Parker roared
into the phone so hard that he dropped the box with the radio.
“You get me on that damn
show, or I will get an agent who will!”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Frank said.
“I’ll call you later,” he said and clicked off.

Parker tossed his phone onto the
bed, then stooped to pick up the box with the new radio alarm. Frank would get him on that
show. He better. The whole season was riding on it.

The guy Kelly O’Shay had hired to do her makeup stood back and looked at his
handiwork and nodded. “Mm-
mmm
, girl, you
definitely
got it going
on.”

“You did a great job,” Kelly said and grinned at her reflection. Her
shoulder-length hair was actually a new, luminous shade of blond, thanks to the great
salon she found on the corner of Broadway and 93rd. The makeup took five years off her
face, and the simple black turtleneck she was wearing made her green eyes
pop.

She looked good.

She looked like an ESPN talk show host.

Yes!
With
any luck, after they had taped this fifteen-minute audition tape, she’d
be
an ESPN
talk show host. The word was out that they were looking for a young new talent to do a
new, humorous sports talk show. Kelly had practiced and practiced, called in a favor from
a friend with access to a studio, and shelled out a good chunk of her savings for hair and
makeup. But it was worth
it. She was so excited she could hardly sit
still. “Let’s go,” she said, popping up from the chair. “I’m ready.”

She smoothed the
skin-tight black pencil skirt she wore, and with a bright smile, she strode to the set
she’d created, her high-heeled, knee-length black boots clicking authoritatively across
the tiled floor.

She took her place behind the desk she and Chuck, the guy helping her make
the tape, had set up, and spread her hands across the wood veneer as Chuck fit her with a
microphone and then switched gears to being the light guy, adjusting those on
her.

On the desk in front of Kelly was the script she’d written. The
director—okay, Chuck again—had gone over it with her and told her where to look. And now
he stepped in the shadows behind the camera, prepared to fill the role of cameraman.
“Whenever you’re ready, Kelly,” he said.

Oh, she was ready. She’d been
working toward this for ten years and truly believed this was her shot at TV. Her radio
show had been climbing steadily through the ratings. Especially since they’d let her off
the graveyard shift and gave her the morning slot. The all-important twenty-something
demographic loved her, but it was her scorching commentary on Parker Price, the Biggest
Choker Ever, that had sent her ratings through the roof.

And thanks to the most boneheaded
error in the history of baseball, she had been handed the best material of her life. Oh
yeah, she was ready for this. With a grin at Chuck, she nodded. He cued her, and she
began.

“Welcome to
Sports Day with Kelly O’Shay
,
the
source of sports
news. Hey, if you’re a big fan of baseball like I am, you’re probably wondering—like I
am—what is
up
with Parker Price of the New York Mets? Is he ill? Is he tanking? Has
a body snatcher invaded his body? Here are the facts: The Mets paid one hundred and ten
million for this guy to improve their record and maybe loosen the chokehold teams like the
Yankees have held them in for
years
. The dude hasn’t delivered. Don’t talk to me
about his golden
glove—the guy couldn’t catch a beach ball if you
rolled
it to him. And don’t wave his great batting average around, either—that baby
is flying below the radar. Here’s another fact: Parker Price has made some of the
costliest errors the Mets have ever witnessed on the field.”

She smiled. “So
here is my question: if a franchise pays that sort of scratch to a guy who is essentially
pegged to deliver a pennant, then who is responsible when the guy can’t come through? Is
it the fans? One might think so, given the price of tickets, a couple dogs, and a beer at
Shea Stadium,” she scoffed. “Is it the owner? The team manager? Maybe. They are the
geniuses who struck the outrageous deal. But if you ask me, the one person who is
responsible and must shoulder the blame is Parker Price. He was paid an obscene amount of
money to deliver, and if he can’t, then he is the one we should hold
accountable.”

She smiled into the camera and picked up a pencil. “Let’s go to the local
papers and see what
they
are saying about Parker Price . . .”

And on Kelly
went, making a case that Parker Price should be canned for costing too much money and
delivering the absolute wrong results.

Nothing personal against the guy.
No, really—Kelly didn’t care what they paid him, but she figured if he was fool enough to
take that kind of dough to leave a team he’d played with for ten years and then blow it as
bad as he had this season, it was his problem. His outrageous salary alone made him public
fodder, and she wasn’t saying anything the rest of the sports world hadn’t said about him.
But now Kelly had a front row seat at the feeding trough.

She made several jokes about Price
that had Chuck laughing, while hopefully she was managing to be charming and feminine and
not too girly. Men did not like getting their sports news from girly-girls. She’d learned
that the hard way, early on.

Yeah, baby, this was
her
job.

When she’d
finished her audition tape, Chuck complimented
her. “Great job,” he
said. “We’ll get this edited and sent around for you to look at in the next couple of
days.”

“Great. Thanks so much,” Kelly said.

She gathered up her things, left the
studio, and caught the subway—one day, maybe she’d have a car to drive her, like the big
network stars—and went home, to her apartment, where she lived alone . . . and hung out
alone, without the company of even a cat. After the graveyard radio slot she’d worked,
she’d sort of lost touch with a lot of her friends. The morning slot wasn’t much better
for her social life—every night, she worked on her show for the next day, watched a little
ESPN, and was in bed by nine. She was essentially undateable.

Sometimes it got
to her. She was lonely. She missed companionship—especially of the male variety—but she
figured it was a small sacrifice that was worth what she was working toward. She had
dreams of something greater than a local radio talk show, and now, having taped her
audition, all she had to do was wait.

 The next morning, a bright-eyed Kelly O’Shay strode into the radio station offices at
five-thirty and was met by her producer, Rick—a thin, young guy who smoked so much Kelly
thought he was responsible for the haze over the city—who greeted her with a cup of
coffee.

“How’d it go?” he asked through a massive yawn, referring to her taping
yesterday.

“Great,” she said. “I think I have a shot, Rick. I think I might really make
it this time.”

He smiled wryly. “That’s great. Just be sure to remember the grunts when you
hit it big. You know, the guys who made you.”

She laughed. “I’ll remember,” she
said and picked up her interoffice mail.

“Oh, hey, here’s one for the record
books,” Rick said, sliding onto a chair, facing backward. “Frank Campanelli called
yesterday—you know who he is, right? Big-time sports agent?”

“Sure, I
know who he is,” Kelly said with a laugh. “He reps Parker Price, among others. Let me
guess—he wants me to stop unloading on Price, right?”

“He definitely wants that,” Rick
said with a snort. “But he also wants Parker Price to make an appearance on your
show.”