On the Line (19 page)

Harmony leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek. His answer had hurt like hell. “Riz, you know I'm not the type of woman you can just buy a house for. I'm not a deck of cards you play with and then stash away until you're ready to play again. I'm the kind of woman you'd have to come home to. Every night. I'm the type of woman you'd have to marry.”

Riz's head bounced, and Harmony knew that he understood. He opened his mouth to speak, and she silenced him with a finger.

“Shh. We both have our limits and principles. We know what we want and can't handle. Let's just keep it like it is.”

“You still my Harmony?” he asked sincerely.

Harmony masked her pain behind a laugh. “I'll always be your Harmony. Your personal anthem who'll be with you wherever you go. We're a part of each other, so we can't lose one another.”

Harmony gathered her things after Riz went back to sleep. With tears in her eyes, she tiptoed out the door, knowing he'd never find her. She was good at disappearing.

 

I'm waiting for the punch line, but all I get is silence. “Hello? Caller, are you still there?”

“I'm still here.”

Macy is waving at me frantically, signaling me to pick up line nine. “We're going to take a ten-second break,” I say into the mic. “We have some major drama unfolding right here
On the Line.
Hold on to your shorts.” I pick up the phone line and my mouth drops open. This is too good. I tell each of my callers to hang on and they will be live on the air in three, two, one…

“Go ahead, caller. You want to tell us your name.”

“My name's not important, my reason for calling in is.”

“Riz? Oh my God! Is that you? I didn't know you were on the line.”

I sit back and grin. Ms. Girl had been playing possum all along. She wasn't
anonymous,
she was Harmony. It wasn't a story about some friend, it was her. And damn if Mr. Riz wasn't listening in the whole time.

“Why don't I let you two work it all out? And big ups to you, Riz. You sure rocked Harmony's world. You go, boy! See, folks, this show is good for something.”

A loud crash shakes me out of my seat. Security breaks in the door and comes storming in like I have weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bledsoe comes in safely behind them then snatches off my headset and tosses it onto the console.

“Get her out of here!”

The two guards grab me by my arms as I struggle against them. I can't go down without a fight, so I start kicking and screaming like a wild woman. They are so startled that they release me. Guess they think they might catch a case of the crazies. Plus I know these two—we've partied together.

Everyone is out in the hallway watching my unceremonious dismissal. Once I get them off of me I tug on my clothes to get them right, snatch my purse from off the desk and march out like the martyr that I am. I swear I hear applause.

The two guards are so close to me I can tell what they had for breakfast. I suppose they want to make sure I don't pull a fast one and bitch slap Bledsoe before I leave. I get halfway down the hall and one of the overnight interns runs up to me.

“This came in right after your last call,” she says, a bit breathless. She hands me a piece of paper. It was an e-mail that had come into the station. It was from Harmony.

I smile triumphantly to myself and tuck the note in my jacket pocket. How ironic that my last act of treason actually brought two people together. Life. Go figure.

The guards escort me all the way to the front door.

“Sorry about all this, just doing my job,” says Lenny, one of the guards, before gallantly opening the front door. Me and Lenny have tossed back a few beers over the years.

“I think they're making a big mistake,” Burt adds.

“'Preciate it, fellas.” I put on my best sheepish expression. “Sorry about kicking you in the shins. A little ice will help.” I tug in a breath and take my first steps toward unemployment, where Macy is waiting.

“You go, I go,” she says.

We link arms and walk out to the parking lot. What the hell we were going to do with our lives and livelihoods now was the million-dollar question. But in the meantime, I need a drink.

A
fter an hour of cussing, drinking and damning the board of directors of WHOT and all of their progeny to hell, I drag myself home with promises to call Macy later in the day.

When I push through the door of my building I do a double take. Randy is chatting it up with Vinny the doorman as if they were best friends.

Vinny jumps up. “Ms. Newhouse, Mr. Temple insisted on waiting,” he says.

I shoot him a look then turn my attention on Randy and quickly realize that I'm really glad to see him. And for no reason that I can think of, tears start to burn my eyes. He walks toward me and, without a word, puts his arm around me and leads me to the elevator.

“How did you know?” I finally ask him once we get upstairs.

Randy closes and locks the apartment door. “I worked late tonight and was listening to the show in the car.” He started to chuckle. “I almost had an accident listening.”

I grin. “Yeah it was a bit over the top.”

“A bit!”

He's smiling and coming my way. My heart is beating like crazy. He looks into my eyes.

“I'm sorry this happened to you. Your management are a bunch of assholes. But this is a blip on your radar. Take some time, think about what you want to do then, like Nike says,
just do it.
”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He cups my face in his hands. “I'll be here for you if you let me.”

I find myself wrapped in his arms with my head pressed against his chest. A part of me wants to maintain my tough-girl attitude but the other part of me needs just what he's giving and I say something I've never said to a man in my entire life.

“Stay with me tonight.”

And he does.

 

“He spent the night?” Macy asks me in disbelief. “On purpose?”

“Yeah.”

She's silent for a minute. “You really like this guy?”

“I think so.” I look at her, the one person in the world who knows me better than I know myself sometimes. “I don't understand it.”

“What's to understand, Joy? You're a woman who's spent all of her life running from attachments—and we both know why. You hide behind other folks' angst so that you don't have to deal with your own. Maybe it's time to finally stop running.”

I know she's right. Lately I'd found myself questioning what I was doing. The letters and calls I'd gotten recently had really begun to make me think.

“Any ideas about what you are going to do to continue living in the style to which you've grown accustomed?”

“Not really. I've been in the radio game my entire working life.”

Macy paces back and forth in front of me, a sure sign that she has her thinking cap on. Suddenly she stops and I swear I can see a lightbulb hanging over her head.

“Check this out. You've seen and heard just about every kind of personal drama known to man.”

“Yeah, and…?” I'm getting suspicious.

“And you still have tons of letters, tapes and e-mails that you haven't touched.”

“Yeah…”

“What if you put them all together in a book!”

“What?”

“Write a book. Use some of the letters and stuff, some old shows. Call it
The Best of On the Line.
”

I stare at her in confusion, but slowly the idea begins to take shape and make sense. I plop down on the love seat. A grin moves across my face. “Yeah, I like it. I love it!”

Macy claps her hands in delight.

My bubble bursts. “But I don't know a damned thing about writing a book.”

“You don't, but your new boyfriend does.”

Bingo!

“I can see it now,” Macy says. “Bookstores, TV, radio interviews, Oprah!”

The idea is really taking shape in my head. If I could do it on the air, why not on the page? I just up and dash into my office and call Randy at work.

“Joy! Hi, is everything okay?”

“Everything is better than okay. I have an idea I want to run past you…” I tell him about the idea to turn my radio show into a book.

“I love the idea.”

“You do!” I start doing the happy dance. Macy appears in my doorway and I give her the thumbs-up. “So what do I have to do?”

“Well, first you need to decide what material you're going to use and you need to put a proposal together.”

“Proposal?”

“I can help you with that. Once you have that done and a sampling of what the content will be, I can push it through and we can go to contract.”

“Whoo-hoo! How much do you think I can get?”

“A high six figures, I'm sure. Folks love books written by celebrities. And you are definitely a celebrity.” He chuckles.

“I better get busy going through these letters and tapes. I have boxes of the stuff.”

“Great. When you get a few of them together, we can get started on the proposal.”

“I'm going to get started right now. Macy is here and she can help.”

“We're still on for tonight, right?”

My heart knocks. “Uh, sure. I'd like that.”

“I get out of here around six. Is eight still good for you?”

“I'll be ready.”

“See you then.”

Slowly I hang up the phone. A date. Damn, can't remember the last time I was on one of those.

“Are you going to tell me what he said or keep staring into space?”

I totally forgot Macy was standing there. “I'm going on a date,” I tell her, and I hear how goofy I sound.

“About damned time,” she says, and I start grinning like a fool. “What did he say about the book idea?”

“High six figures!”

“That's what I'm talking about! Let's get busy.”

“Grab the box on the top shelf of the closet. Those are some of the older shows.”

We sit on the floor and begin going through the letters, e-mails and audio tapes of the show, separating our treasures into yes, no and maybe piles. I pull out a tape from a show I did about a year earlier. It had to be from the craziest broad I'd ever heard from.

“Remember this,
Hotline?
” I hold up the tape.

Macy's eyes widen. “Yeah, the crazy woman with the werewolves?”

I start cracking up. “Yeah, scared the hell outta me,
after
I stopped laughing.” I reach for my tape recorder and put in the tape. “This was a good one.” The tape begins to whir and, after a few moments, our voices fill the room. As I listen, getting both turned-on and scared witless, I let my imagination wander and fill in the visuals for all the things the caller didn't say….

“W
HOT
, the Joy Newhouse show,” Macy said. “You're up next, hold tight and be sure your radio is turned down low so there's no feedback. Your name and age?”

“Uh…I'm thirty-nine, but, uhmmm…”

“Cool, anonymous. No problem. What's your issue?”

“I, uh, just lost my husband and have a new lover and…well…it's complicated.”

“Good—a sex question,” Macy said, as though talking to someone else in the studio. “Joy can work that to the bone. You've been celibate or need to know when it's cool to start doing it again—somethin' like that?”

“Yeah,” Sidney said. “And, uh, I think I might have caught something from him after the first time. Although, it could be genetic.”

“Oh, this is gonna be great. Hold on, baby—Joy is gonna be on the line in a few after the break.”

“So, we've got Anonymous on the line, a sister about thirty-nine years old, my good studio sister says…and from what I understand, hon, your husband died, you got your freak on, and some rat bastard gave you something you can't shake—that's messed up, y'all. Talk to me, sis. What happened? How can Joy bring it to you real?”

Sidney took a deep breath. “It didn't happen like that. My husband was the rat bastard.”

“Oh, okay, so my bad—my producer got it wrong,” Joy said, her voice soothing. “Macy, next time—”

“I know, I know.” Macy fussed in the background, causing the typical studio banter that boosted ratings.

“All right, now let me get this straight, your husband gave you a—”

“No,” Sidney interrupted. “He's dead. And I may have been the cause, sort of. We had a fight, after he pulled a nine on me. It wasn't the first time he did something like that—the first time he sent some guys to beat me up. So, isn't that self-defense?”

“Whooooo!” Joy exclaimed with a practiced whistle. “So you were the one carrying the plague, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sidney said, with a tinge of reluctance. “Sort of, but not really.”

“Is that why he pulled a nine? I mean, I'm just saying, sis—not that it makes it right but—”

“No, no, no. He never caught anything from me, and it's hard to explain. My ex and I hadn't been together in two years. Separate bedrooms, the marriage was a sham.”

“Okay, now we're getting somewhere. This so-called husband leaves you high and dry, no booty, no intimacy for two years. Then you met a man…” Joy said, allowing her words to trail off with emphasis.

“He's the most fantastic, sexy, incredibly wonderful man…”

“Ain't they all, girl—but he ain't worth your life!” Joy shouted, and the smack of a high five echoed through the studio along with her producer's background comments.

“Yes he is, Joy,” Sidney said. “This one was worth it. But that's not why I called.”

“This sister is straight crazy if she has what I think she does,” Joy Newhouse exclaimed. “I have
got
to keep your insane ass on the line to hear this one. You are gonna have to break it all the way down to the nub for me, girl. How do you let some man give you the plague and—just help me understand? You sound like a fairly educated woman, make me understand this.”

“Okay…here's the deal,” Sidney said with a surge of confidence, evading the question about the virus. “My husband was an ass. He died and I want to know if, by some chance, if a person got mauled by a wolf—an animal that was clearly provoked into attack mode by threatening behavior—do you personally feel that—”

“Hold it, stop playing on my phone!” Joy said, hollering and laughing. “Oh my gawd. No, she did not say wolf, like a werewolf! A pit bull, all right, messed up as that may be. A Rot, I can deal with—but are you saying you sicced a wolf dog on the man, or are you leaning to some supernatural conspiracy theory thing tonight?”

“No, I didn't sic the animal—it attacked because he attacked me.” Sidney hesitated. “That's the…”

The studio was in an uproar, and laughter echoed from the speakers into the house as the show crew argued what constituted a werewolf and made references to several rap artists that could pass as one.

“I just needed to know from a disinterested party…if I was going crazy,” Sidney murmured.

“You're asking us about werewolves and you need me to tell you if you're crazy?” Joy said, laughing. “Don't be shy. Caller, you're awfully quiet—are you still on the line?” Joy continued to laugh with Macy and her engineer. “It takes all kinds to make a world. What happened, girl?”

“Okay, here's what happened,” Sidney said. “He tried to attack me, my wolf came out and went for him—which evened out the strength differential—then got himself beat up so badly by both of us that it looked like he'd been mauled, is what I was saying.”

“That's craaaazy,” Joy said. “Dayum! I call it self-defense if some deranged man attacks you and your dog rescues you, girl. Shoulda mauled his sorry ass—brothers need to keep their hands off women.”

“That's what I'm saying. Sho' you right,” Macy agreed, gaining a rumble of agreement from the engineer.

“He got his ass beat down,” Brick said.

“Is that the boyfriend? Who's the bass in the background?” Joy shouted. “This is too wild. Yo, boyfriend,” she teased. “So, you got in the mix, too, and kicked the husband's ass? What'd y'all do, roll up on him like a Nia Long type of thing? That sounds too ghetto, you know that, right?”

“No. Wasn't me, would love to take the credit. The sick bastard was messing with my lady, didn't know she could go straight gulley on him, and, hey…he got his ass kicked. I was just the referee.”

“Whooo!” Joy said, making the studio erupt again with comments from the peanut gallery as she and Macy verbally sparred and even got the engineer involved.

“Gangsta, daaaayum,” Macy hollered. “Right, Tyrone?”

“You know it,” the engineer said, laughing. “I like a sister who can hold her own, but she can't be looking like no knife-fighter.”

“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, no doubt—she gotta be fine,” the producer agreed.

“Naw, man,
fionne,
” Tyrone corrected.

“This one, my lady,” Brick said with pride in his voice, “is fine as—
bleep
—”

“We feel you, man,” the engineer said.

“Anonymous, we said we feel you,” Joy repeated. “But how did you feel when you were kicking your husband's ass with your lover standing there?”

“I really hadn't thought about it that way. He'd dogged me for a l-long time,” she managed to stammer. “Tried to take everything I'd worked hard for all my life, and had affair after affair, did everything you could imagine. Set me up. Even tried to kill me.”

“So, this was pent-up, had been brewing?” Joy said, her voice filled with empathy. “That's enough to drive somebody over the edge, to seriously try to hurt the person who was doing all of this—not that I advocate violence, but you can see how it could get ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Sidney said.

“Wait, we gotta hear this,” Joy said. “I want you to hold on while we break for commercial and come back.

“All right,” Joy said, “now that we've handled our business to keep the lights on in here, we're back with an anonymous, fine—from her own lover's description—thirty-nine-year-old female caller, who says she kicked her husband's ass, he subsequently died…I don't know, that's murder, right? Unless he died from something else, or was it self-defense?”

“It was self-defense,” Brick rumbled.

“That's what they all say,” Joy scoffed.

“The sister didn't go to jail, and was obviously vindicated,” Brick said calmly. “So, hey.”

“All right,” Joy said, sounding unconvinced but willing to move forward. “I'm not po po or a lawyer, so we're not going there for the sake of time. But the boyfriend says he didn't do the husband, we know your dog got in it…still, the part I wanna get back to is this STD y'all was passing between you. Tell me about that.”

“Told you purebred humans were judgmental,” Brick crooned to Sidney.

“It's not an STD,” Sidney said.

“What, like a nervous tic? A blood condition? C'mon, we need to be honest and address issues that are wrecking havoc in the community.”

“Oh, God, it's something that only one in several million people contract—-like West Nile, or Bird Flu…or…Joy, I can't really think what it's like, but it's…oh,
just like that.
”

“Oh, okay, now we're getting somewhere,” Joy replied, after a round of comments from her crew. “But how did
you
get it?”

“It's something so rare that…” Sidney's voice trailed off as she choked back a gasp. “If you were already a carrier—I had it in my system already as a child. Like a recessive gene that's dormant.”

“So this would sort of be like one of those crazy, never-heard-of type of diseases, is what you're telling us? What's it called?”

“Tell her,” Sidney breathed.

“I'm…I'm not sure what the true technical name is,” Brick said, desire bottoming out his voice.

“This is some deep mess you all are trying to get me to buy into,” Joy said. “We need to get a doctor on the line or something to verify some of these wild-ass allegations. I've never heard of something that can just make you flip, that's a blood disease—have you, Ty? Macy, what about you?”

“It's like schizophrenia, makes you act bipolar,” Brick said quickly.

“So, this mental, blood thing that you don't know the technical name for, this made your woman flip on her ex after years of abuse, who subsequently died in some way we have yet to fully hear about—anybody go to jail?”

“Uh-uh,” Brick said through his teeth.

“All right, in the interest of responsibility here, tell me you didn't kill the man? I'm just being real.”

“Naw, that didn't happen,” Brick said fast, then paused to take a deep breath. “Not like that.”

“Oh, all right, glad to hear that,” Joy said, relief washing through her voice. “Dude died later?”

The sound of heavy breathing could be heard on the other end before the line dropped.

“You're not big on details, I see,” Joy teased. “Strong silent type? Man! I am so sorry that call dropped off the hotline, though, y'all. I really wanted to ask that wild couple a bazillion more questions on the werewolf comment. Like, how do you train a wolf and where the hell do you keep it in the city? Isn't that illegal, against all kinds of codes, and whatnot? I know a man had a tiger in a New York apartment, and you hear about these huge snakes crazy people keep, so who knows? I still think they did her husband and there's more to the story, but I don't know. That wolf comment seemed like it came out of nowhere. But they sounded real sexy together, the two of them…Like her voice and his, they just sounded in tune—both crazy, mind you, but synced. What do y'all say?”

“I say it was getting real quiet on the phone, ya mean?” the engineer said.

“Oh, get out—your mind is in the gutter. They
were
not
getting busy while they were on the phone on
the radio!
” Joy laughed.

“I don't know,” Macy said. “It sounded like the convo on their side was drifting. I'm not a phone-sex expert—but, hey, I'm just saying.”

“You two are incorrigible. You see what I have to deal with on the air, late night's folks, and the crew I have to work with in here? I just hope our callers were satisfied with what they got from the call.”

 

I hit the stop button. “Now that was some wild shit.” I shake my head and look across at Macy, who's hugging herself as if she's freezing.

“What's wrong?”

“What if that Sidney chick was telling the truth?”

“Say what?”

“What if she is some kind of werewolf and she was getting it on with him during that call?”

I make a face at Macy. “Chile, please.” A chill suddenly runs through me. “No way.” But to tell you the truth, I remember that call like it was yesterday. It scared the hell outta me then just like it did now. Who am I to say what's real and what's not? All I know is, if some hairy-looking man runs up on me, he's getting shot! I blow out a breath. “Let's keep digging.”

“You want that in the yes, no or maybe pile?” Macy asks.

“Definitely yes. It's classic.”

We spend the next couple of hours on the floor tossing and laughing, the years of our time together at WHOT piling up at our feet. Finally I get up to stretch my legs. “Hungry?”