Jennifer Crusie: Charlie All Night

“Sorry, I’ve already got a date. In fact, I have to go now. Maybe some other time.” She ducked out into the hall in front if him, trying not to cry. That would be a real mistake because she never cried. If she did, people would probably assume somebody had died. And then she’d have to tell them that, tragically, Mark still lived.

Mark followed her, so she speeded up.

Karen yelled “Allie” again as she went past the receptionist’s counter, and this time shoved an envelope at her. “Bill-”

Allie took the envelope without slowing down, flashing the best smile she could under the circumstances, and bolted for the elevator with Mark still in pursuit.

Then Karen called out to him, too, and stopped him, and Alllie caught the elevator and escaped to the street.

She’d been fired. She still had a job, but her career was gone with Mark. Allie stuck her chin out and tried to fake defiance-well, big deal, she’d just build another great show-But it was no good. She’d spent two years making Mark’s show a hit, taking surveys, researching topics, devising contests, doing everything she knew to showcase Mark’s strengths. She’d majored in Mark King, and now he’d expelled her.

For a moment, outside the restaurant across from the station, Allie felt a moment of pure fear. What if she couldn’t do it again? What if Mark was right and he was the talent? What if she really was a loser? Nobody coming to her for help, nobody relying on her.

No. She’d find a way back. She gritted her teeth and went into the restaurant.

The hallway divided the restaurant from the bar, a sort of DMZ that separated the eating yuppies from the drinking yuppies. Allie stopped there and opened the envelope Karen had thrust at her. She found the kind of note the station owner was famous for: short, tactless and to the point:

I’m taking you off Mark’s show and giving you to Charles Tenniel, the man taking over for Waldo Hancock. Meet him tomorrow, Tuesday, five o’clock, my office.

Bill

Weird Waldo had the 10:00 to 2:00 a.m. spot, the dead zone of radio. She’d just been demoted rom producing the radio equivalent of “Oprah” to the radio equivalent of of an info-mercial.

And her roommate Joe, who was supposed to meet her, wasn’t there to comfort her. The hell with it. She was going home.

She turned around to go back into the street, but outside the door was Mark, greeting people who greeted him back as if he were a celebrity. Which, of course, he was.

And he was going to come into the bar and find her alone after her big talk about a date because Joe was late again. Not that Joe would have been very impressive as a date, but he would have been more impressive than no date at all.

So she went into the bar to find a date, and there were all those suits and the thug. She couldn’t face another suit, and it least the thug looked like a change of pace, so she went over to the thug and said, “Hi!” as vivaciously as she could. She wasn’t vivacious by nature, so she sounded as if she’d been lucking helium, but he turned and looked at her anyway,

Allie didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Maybe some Fantasy guy who was even better-looking than Mark, which, in all fairness to Mark, would be impossible, but this guy wasn’t even in the running. He had the kind of face that the big, good-natured kids in the back of high-school English classes always have, slightly dopey and comfortable.

He looked nice. That was about it, but after Mark, it was pretty good.

Allie plopped her bag down on the bar. “So! You meeting someone?” she asked, still on helium, and looked over her shoulder to check on the Mark situation. All she had to do was keep the thug in conversation until Mark walked in, saw she was with him and left.

Mark didn’t like competition.

“So, are you?” Allie smiled like a telemarketer. “Meeting someone?” She sat down beside him, praying Mark wouldn’t come in.

And he said, “No. What are you doing?”

Charlie Tenniel had been contemplating his future when she picked him up. His immediate future looked complicated and possibly dangerous, so his best plan was to lay low, not make waves, do the job and get out. Investigating the source of an incriminating anonymous letter to a radio station in Tuttle, Ohio, couldn’t be that hard. The station wasn’t that big. Hell, the town wasn’t that big. His biggest problem was going to be pretending to be a disc jockey, and how hard could that be? If his brother had done it stoned, he could certainly do it straight. And he’d made it clear to everybody concerned that he was only around for six weeks, tops. He had things to do, he’d told them, places he had to be in November.

He hadn’t decided yet exactly what place he had to be in November, but he was positive it was somewhere uncomplicated and remote. Especially remote from his father who had taken to asking weird favors lately. like “Check into this radio station for my old friend Bill…” This was what came of going home for his father’s birthday. From now on, he’d just send a card. And as soon as he was done, he was out of here and someplace else. Someplace where he could do something simple for a while, like raise pigs. No, too complicated. He’d raise carrots. You didn’t have to feed carrots.

He stopped thinking when she squeaked, “Hi!”

Charlie blinked at her, mildly surprised. She didn’t look like the vivacious pick-up-a-guy-in-a-bar type. Her sharp brown eyes gleamed behind huge, round, horn-rimmed glasses, and her glossy gold-brown hair swung in a tangled Dutch-boy bob. There was nothing wrong with her nose or mouth, either; good standard-issue all-American-woman features. She just seemed sort of scrubbed to be trolling for guys. The long flowered skirt and oversize vest weren’t right for a pickup, either. She looked like a nice, clean kid. Well, she was no kid. Early thirties easy.

She raised her eyebrows so high they disappeared under her bangs and batted her eyelashes. “So! You meeting someone?” She looked over her shoulder and flopped her bag down on the bar. It looked as if it was made from very old blue flowered carpet. Charlie had never seen anything quite like it so he poked his finger into it. It was fuzzy.

“Are you?” She smiled at him again, a sort of strained, too-many-teeth, trying-too-hard smile. “Meeting someone?” She sat on the stool beside him

“No.” Charlie looked at her with interest. “What are you doing?”

“Picking you up?”

Charlie shook his head. “I don’t think so. What are you really doing?”

The artificial smile morphed into a genuine scowl, and her jerky voice dropped an octave. “I don’t believe this. Can’t you even pretend on the hope you’ll get lucky?”

“I never pretend. I’m the natural, open type.” Charlie considered moving away from her and then rejected the idea. If he left her, he’d never find out what she was up to. And besides, when she’d scowled at him, her voice had gone husky. She had a great low voice. He smiled down at her, trying to make her talk again. “Why don’t you just give me the drift, and then we can take it from there.”

She lowered her head a little and stared at him over the rims of her glasses. “Look, the drift will take too long, and besides, it makes me look pathetic. All I ask is that you pretend to be having a drink with me.” He must have looked skeptical because she added, “I swear that’s it.”

Right. Charlie had been wandering through the world long enough to know that wouldn’t be it, that there would be complications. There were always complications, which was why Charlie had spent his thirty-four years learning to be light on his feet and fast out the door.