Fancy Pants (28 page)
After she left, he spent several months so drunk that he couldn't play
golf, even though he was supposed to be getting ready for qualifying
school for the pro tour. Skeet eventually called Holly Grace, and she
came to see Dallie.
"I'm happy for the first time in a long time," she told him. "Why can't
you be happy, too?"
It had taken years for them to learn to love each other in a new way.
At first they had tumbled back into bed together, only to find
themselves caught up in old arguments. Occasionally they had tried to
live with each other for a few months, but they wanted different things
from life and it never worked out. The first time he saw her with
another man, Dallie wanted to kill him. But a cute little secretary had
caught his eye, so he kept his fists to himself.
Over the years they talked about divorce, but neither of them did
anything about it. Skeet meant everything in the world to Dallie. Holly
Grace loved Winona with all her heart. But the two of them
together—Dallie and Holly Grace—they were each other's real family, and
people with childhoods as troubled as theirs didn't give up family
easily.
cars parked at the side next to a trash dumpster. A padlocked shack
stood behind the dumpster, and fifty yards beyond that was the thin
metal finger of the radio antenna that Francesca had been walking
toward for nearly two hours. As Beast went off to explore, Francesca
wearily climbed the two steps to the front door. Its glass surface was
nearly opaque with dust and the smear of countless fingerprints. Decals
advertising the Sulphur City Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, and
various broadcasting associations covered much of the left side of the
door, while the center held the gold call letters KDSC. The bottom half
of the C was missing, so it might have been a G, but Francesca knew it
wasn't because she had seen the C on the mailbox at the end of the lane
when she turned in.
Although she could have positioned herself in front of the door to
study her reflection, she didn't bother. Instead, she rubbed the back
of her hand over her forehead, pushing aside the damp strands of hair
that had stuck there, and brushed off her jeans as best she could. She
couldn't do anything about the bloody scrapes on her arms, so she
ignored them. Her earlier euphoria had faded, leaving exhaustion and a
terrible apprehension.
Pushing open the front door, she found herself in a reception area
overstuffed with six cluttered desks, nearly as many clocks, an
assortment of bulletin boards, calendars, posters, and cartoons fixed
to the walls with curling yellowed tape. A brown and gold striped
Danish modern couch sat to her left, the center cushion concave from
too much use. The room contained only one window, a large one that
looked into a studio where an announcer wearing a headset sat in front
of a microphone. His voice was piped into the office through a wall
speaker and the volume was turned low.
A chubby red-haired chipmunk of a woman looked up at Francesca from the
room's only occupied desk. "Can I help you?"
Francesca cleared her throat, her gaze traveling from the swaying gold
crosses hanging from the woman's ears down over her polyester blouse,
and then on to the black telephone sitting by her wrist. One call to
Wynette and her immediate problems would be over. She would have food,
a change of clothes, and a roof over her head. But the idea of running
to Dallie for help had lost its old appeal. Despite her exhaustion and
fear, something inside her had been unalterably changed back on that
deserted dirt road. She was sick of being a pretty ornament getting
blown away by every ill wind that swept in her direction. For better or
for worse, she was going to take control of her own life.
"I wonder if I might speak with the person in charge," she said to the
chipmunk. Francesca spoke carefully, trying her best to sound competent
and professional, instead of like someone with a dirty face and dusty,
sandaled feet who didn't have a dime in her pocket.
The combination of Francesca's bedraggled appearance and her
upper-class British accent obviously interested the woman. "I'm Katie
Cathcart, the office manager. Could you tell me what this is about?"
Could an office manager help her? Francesca had no idea, but decided
she would be better off with the man at the top. She kept her tone
friendly, but firm. "It's rather personal."
The woman hesitated, then got up and went into the office behind her.
She reappeared a moment later. "As long as you don't take too long,
Miss Padgett'll see you. She's our station
manager."
Francesca's nervousness took a quantum leap. Why did the station
manager have to be a woman? At
least with a man, she would have stood
half a chance. And then she reminded herself that this was an
opportunity for a fresh beginning—a new Francesca, one who wasn't going
to try to slide through life using the tired old tricks of her former
self. Straightening her shoulders, she walked into the station
manager's office.
A gold metal nameplate on the desk announced the presence of Clare
Padgett, an elegant name for an inelegant woman. In her early forties,
she had a masculine, square-jawed face, softened only by the remains of
a dab of red lipstick. Her graying brown hair was medium-length and
blunt-cut. It looked as though it received nothing more than shampooing
by way of attention. She held a cigarette like a man, pushed into the
crook between the index and middle finger of her right hand, and when
she lifted the cigarette to her mouth she didn't so much inhale the
smoke as swallow it.
"What is it?" Clare asked abruptly. She spoke in a professional
broadcaster's voice, rich and resonant, but without the slightest trace
of friendliness. From the wall speaker behind the desk came the faint
sound of the announcer reading a local news report.
Even though she hadn't been offered it, Francesca took the room's
single straight-backed chair, deciding in an instant that Clare Padgett
didn't look like the sort of person who would respect anyone she could
step all over. As she gave her name, she positioned herself on the edge
of the seat. "I'm sorry to appear without an appointment, but I wanted
to inquire about a possible job." Her voice sounded tentative instead
of assertive. What had happened to all that arrogance she used to carry
around with her like a cloud of perfume?
After a brief inspection of Francesca's appearance, Clare Padgett
returned her attention to her paperwork. "I don't have any jobs."
It was nothing more than Francesca had expected, but she still felt as
if she'd had the wind knocked out
of her. She thought of
that dusty ribbon of road stretching to the rim of the Texas horizon.
Her tongue
felt dry and swollen in her mouth. "Are you absolutely
certain you don't have something? I'm willing to
do anything."
Padgett sucked in more smoke and tapped at the top sheet of paper with
her pencil. "What kind of experience do you have?"
Francesca thought quickly. "I've done some acting. And I have lots of
experience with—uh—fashion." She crossed her ankles and tried to tuck
the toes of her scuffed Bottega Veneta sandals behind the leg of the
chair.
"That doesn't exactly qualify you for a job at a radio station, now,
does it? Not even a rat-shit operation like this." She tapped her
pencil a little harder.
Francesca took a deep breath and prepared to jump into water much too
deep for a nonswimmer. "Actually, Miss Padgett, I don't have any radio
experience. But I'm a hard worker, and I'm willing to learn." Hard
worker? She'd never worked hard in her life.
In any case, Clare was unimpressed. She lifted her eyes and regarded
Francesca with open hostility. "I was kicked off the air at a
television station in Chicago because of someone like you—a cute little
cheerleader who didn't know the difference between hard news and her
panty size." She leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrow with
disenchantment. "We call women like you Twinkies—little fluff balls who
don't know the first thing about broadcasting, but think it would be
oh-so-exciting to have a career in radio."
Six months before, Francesca would have swept from the room in a huff,
but now she clamped her hands together in her lap and lifted her chin a
shade higher. "I'm willing to do anything, Miss Padgett—answer the
telephones, run errands .. ." She couldn't explain to this woman that
it wasn't a career in broadcasting that attracted her. If this building
had held a fertilizer factory, she would still have wanted a job.
"The only work I have is for someone to do the cleaning and odd jobs."
"I'll take it!" Dear God, cleaning.
"I don't think you're right for it."
Francesca ignored the sarcasm in her voice. "Oh, but I am. I'm a
wonderful cleaner."
She had Clare Padgett's attention again, and the woman seemed amused.
"Actually, I'd wanted someone Mexican. Are you a citizen?" Francesca
shook her head. "Do you have a green card?"
Again she shook her head. She had only the vaguest idea what a green
card was, but she was absolutely certain she didn't have one and she
refused to start her new life with a lie. Maybe frankness would impress
this woman. "I don't even have a passport. It was stolen from me a few
hours ago on the road."
"How unfortunate." Clare Padgett was no longer making the smallest
effort to hide how much she was enjoying the situation. She reminded
Francesca of a cat with a helpless bird clasped in its mouth. Obviously
Francesca, despite her bedraggled state, was going to have to pay for
all the slights the station manager had suffered over the years at the
hands of beautiful women. "In that case, I'll put you on the payroll at
sixty-five dollars a week. You'll have every other Saturday off. The
rest of the time you'll be here from sunup to sundown, the same hours
we're on the air. And you'll be paid in cash. We've got truckloads of
Mexicans coming in every day, so the first time you screw up, you're
out."
The woman was paying slave wages. This was the sort of job illegal
aliens took because they didn't have a choice. "All right," Francesca
said, because she didn't have a choice.
Clare Padgett smiled grimly and led Francesca out to the office
manager. "Fresh meat, Katie. Give her a mop and show her the bathroom."
Clare disappeared and Katie looked at Francesca with pity. "We haven't
had anyone clean for a few weeks. It's pretty bad."
Francesca swallowed hard. "That's all right."
It wasn't all right, of course. She stood in front of a pantry in the
station's tiny kitchenette, looking over a shelf full of cleaning
products, none of which she had the slightest idea how to use. She knew
how to play baccarat, and she could name the maitre d's of the world's
most famous restaurants, but she hadn't the faintest idea how to clean
a bathroom. She read the
labels as quickly as she could, and half an hour later Clare Padgett
discovered her on her knees in front of a gruesomely stained toilet,
pouring blue powdered cleanser on the seat.
"When you scrub the floor, make certain you get into the corners,
Francesca. I hate sloppy work."
Francesca gritted her teeth and nodded. Her stomach did a small
flip-flop as she prepared to attack the mess on the underside of the
seat. Unbidden, she thought of Hedda, her old housekeeper. Hedda, with
her rolled stockings and bad back, who'd spent her life on her knees
cleaning up after Chloe and Francesca.
Clare sucked on her cigarette and then deliberately tossed it down next
to Francesca's foot. "You'd better hustle, chicky. We're getting ready
to close down for the day." Francesca heard a malevolent chuckle as the
woman moved away.
A little later, the announcer who'd been on the air when Francesca
arrived stuck his head in the bathroom and told her he had to lock up.
Her heart lurched. She had no place to go, no bed to sleep in. "Has
everybody left?"
He nodded and ran his eyes over her, obviously liking what he saw. "You
need a lift into town?"
She stood and wiped her hair out of her eyes with her forearm, trying
to seem casual. "No. Somebody's picking me up." She inclined her head
toward the mess, her resolution not to begin her new life with lies
already abandoned. "Miss Padgett told me I had to finish this tonight
before I left. She said I could lock up." Did she sound too offhand?
Not offhand enough? What would she do if he refused?
"Suit yourself." He gave her an appreciative smile. A few minutes later
she let out a slow, relieved breath as she heard the front door close.
Francesca spent the night on the black and gold office sofa with Beast
curled against her stomach, both of them poorly fed on sandwiches she
had made from stale bread and a jar of peanut butter she found in the
kitchenette. Exhaustion had seeped into the very marrow of her bones,
but still she couldn't fail asleep. Instead, she lay with her eyes
open, Beast's fur
pushed into the V's between her fingers, thinking about how many more
obstacles lay in her way.
The next morning she awakened before five and promptly threw up into
the toilet she had so painstakingly cleaned the night before. For the
rest of the day, she tried to tell herself it was only a reaction to
the peanut butter.
"Francesca! Dammit, where is she?" Clare stormed from her office as
Francesca flew out of the newsroom where she'd just finished delivering
a batch of afternoon papers to the news director.
"I'm here, Clare," she said wearily. "What's the problem?"
It had been six weeks since she'd started work at KDSC, and her
relationship with the station manager hadn't improved. According to the
gossip she'd picked up from members of the small KDSC staff,
Clare's
radio career had been launched at a time when few women could get jobs
in broadcasting. Station managers hired her because she was intelligent
and aggressive, and then fired her for the same reason. She finally
made it to television, where she fought bitter battles for the right to
report hard news instead
of the softer stories considered appropriate
for women reporters.
Ironically, she was defeated by Equal Opportunity. In the early
seventies when employers were forced
to hire women, they bypassed
battle-scarred veterans like Clare, with their sharp tongues and
cynical outlooks, for newer, fresher faces straight off college
campuses—pretty, malleable sorority girls with degrees in communication
arts. Women like Clare had to take what was left—jobs for which they
were overqualified, like running backwater radio stations. As a result,
they smoked too much, grew increasingly bitter, and made life miserable
for any females they suspected of trying to get by on nothing more than
a pretty face.
"I just got a call from that fool at the Sulphur City bank," Clare
snapped at Francesca. "He wants the Christmas promotions today instead
of tomorrow." She pointed toward a box of bell-shaped tree ornaments
printed with the name of the radio station on one side and the name of
the bank on the other. "Get over there right away with them, and don't
take
all day like you did last time."
Francesca refrained from pointing out that she wouldn't have taken so
long last time if four staff members hadn't dumped additional errands
on her—everything from delivering overdue bills for air time to having
a new water pump put in the station's battered Dodge Dart. She pulled
on the red and black plaid car coat she'd bought at a Goodwill store
for five dollars and then grabbed the key to the Dart from a cup hook
next to the studio window. Inside, Tony March, the afternoon deejay,
was cuing up a record. Although he hadn't been with KDSC very long,
everyone knew he would be quitting soon. He had a good voice and a
distinct personality. For announcers like Tony, KDSC, with its
unimpressive 500-watt signal, was merely a stepping stone to better
things. Francesca had already discovered that the only people who
stayed at KDSC for very long were people like her who didn't have any
other choice.
golf, even though he was supposed to be getting ready for qualifying
school for the pro tour. Skeet eventually called Holly Grace, and she
came to see Dallie.
"I'm happy for the first time in a long time," she told him. "Why can't
you be happy, too?"
It had taken years for them to learn to love each other in a new way.
At first they had tumbled back into bed together, only to find
themselves caught up in old arguments. Occasionally they had tried to
live with each other for a few months, but they wanted different things
from life and it never worked out. The first time he saw her with
another man, Dallie wanted to kill him. But a cute little secretary had
caught his eye, so he kept his fists to himself.
Over the years they talked about divorce, but neither of them did
anything about it. Skeet meant everything in the world to Dallie. Holly
Grace loved Winona with all her heart. But the two of them
together—Dallie and Holly Grace—they were each other's real family, and
people with childhoods as troubled as theirs didn't give up family
easily.
Tempest-Tossed
Chapter 19
The building was a squat white rectangle of concrete with four dustyChapter 19
cars parked at the side next to a trash dumpster. A padlocked shack
stood behind the dumpster, and fifty yards beyond that was the thin
metal finger of the radio antenna that Francesca had been walking
toward for nearly two hours. As Beast went off to explore, Francesca
wearily climbed the two steps to the front door. Its glass surface was
nearly opaque with dust and the smear of countless fingerprints. Decals
advertising the Sulphur City Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, and
various broadcasting associations covered much of the left side of the
door, while the center held the gold call letters KDSC. The bottom half
of the C was missing, so it might have been a G, but Francesca knew it
wasn't because she had seen the C on the mailbox at the end of the lane
when she turned in.
Although she could have positioned herself in front of the door to
study her reflection, she didn't bother. Instead, she rubbed the back
of her hand over her forehead, pushing aside the damp strands of hair
that had stuck there, and brushed off her jeans as best she could. She
couldn't do anything about the bloody scrapes on her arms, so she
ignored them. Her earlier euphoria had faded, leaving exhaustion and a
terrible apprehension.
Pushing open the front door, she found herself in a reception area
overstuffed with six cluttered desks, nearly as many clocks, an
assortment of bulletin boards, calendars, posters, and cartoons fixed
to the walls with curling yellowed tape. A brown and gold striped
Danish modern couch sat to her left, the center cushion concave from
too much use. The room contained only one window, a large one that
looked into a studio where an announcer wearing a headset sat in front
of a microphone. His voice was piped into the office through a wall
speaker and the volume was turned low.
A chubby red-haired chipmunk of a woman looked up at Francesca from the
room's only occupied desk. "Can I help you?"
Francesca cleared her throat, her gaze traveling from the swaying gold
crosses hanging from the woman's ears down over her polyester blouse,
and then on to the black telephone sitting by her wrist. One call to
Wynette and her immediate problems would be over. She would have food,
a change of clothes, and a roof over her head. But the idea of running
to Dallie for help had lost its old appeal. Despite her exhaustion and
fear, something inside her had been unalterably changed back on that
deserted dirt road. She was sick of being a pretty ornament getting
blown away by every ill wind that swept in her direction. For better or
for worse, she was going to take control of her own life.
"I wonder if I might speak with the person in charge," she said to the
chipmunk. Francesca spoke carefully, trying her best to sound competent
and professional, instead of like someone with a dirty face and dusty,
sandaled feet who didn't have a dime in her pocket.
The combination of Francesca's bedraggled appearance and her
upper-class British accent obviously interested the woman. "I'm Katie
Cathcart, the office manager. Could you tell me what this is about?"
Could an office manager help her? Francesca had no idea, but decided
she would be better off with the man at the top. She kept her tone
friendly, but firm. "It's rather personal."
The woman hesitated, then got up and went into the office behind her.
She reappeared a moment later. "As long as you don't take too long,
Miss Padgett'll see you. She's our station
manager."
Francesca's nervousness took a quantum leap. Why did the station
manager have to be a woman? At
least with a man, she would have stood
half a chance. And then she reminded herself that this was an
opportunity for a fresh beginning—a new Francesca, one who wasn't going
to try to slide through life using the tired old tricks of her former
self. Straightening her shoulders, she walked into the station
manager's office.
A gold metal nameplate on the desk announced the presence of Clare
Padgett, an elegant name for an inelegant woman. In her early forties,
she had a masculine, square-jawed face, softened only by the remains of
a dab of red lipstick. Her graying brown hair was medium-length and
blunt-cut. It looked as though it received nothing more than shampooing
by way of attention. She held a cigarette like a man, pushed into the
crook between the index and middle finger of her right hand, and when
she lifted the cigarette to her mouth she didn't so much inhale the
smoke as swallow it.
"What is it?" Clare asked abruptly. She spoke in a professional
broadcaster's voice, rich and resonant, but without the slightest trace
of friendliness. From the wall speaker behind the desk came the faint
sound of the announcer reading a local news report.
Even though she hadn't been offered it, Francesca took the room's
single straight-backed chair, deciding in an instant that Clare Padgett
didn't look like the sort of person who would respect anyone she could
step all over. As she gave her name, she positioned herself on the edge
of the seat. "I'm sorry to appear without an appointment, but I wanted
to inquire about a possible job." Her voice sounded tentative instead
of assertive. What had happened to all that arrogance she used to carry
around with her like a cloud of perfume?
After a brief inspection of Francesca's appearance, Clare Padgett
returned her attention to her paperwork. "I don't have any jobs."
It was nothing more than Francesca had expected, but she still felt as
if she'd had the wind knocked out
of her. She thought of
that dusty ribbon of road stretching to the rim of the Texas horizon.
Her tongue
felt dry and swollen in her mouth. "Are you absolutely
certain you don't have something? I'm willing to
do anything."
Padgett sucked in more smoke and tapped at the top sheet of paper with
her pencil. "What kind of experience do you have?"
Francesca thought quickly. "I've done some acting. And I have lots of
experience with—uh—fashion." She crossed her ankles and tried to tuck
the toes of her scuffed Bottega Veneta sandals behind the leg of the
chair.
"That doesn't exactly qualify you for a job at a radio station, now,
does it? Not even a rat-shit operation like this." She tapped her
pencil a little harder.
Francesca took a deep breath and prepared to jump into water much too
deep for a nonswimmer. "Actually, Miss Padgett, I don't have any radio
experience. But I'm a hard worker, and I'm willing to learn." Hard
worker? She'd never worked hard in her life.
In any case, Clare was unimpressed. She lifted her eyes and regarded
Francesca with open hostility. "I was kicked off the air at a
television station in Chicago because of someone like you—a cute little
cheerleader who didn't know the difference between hard news and her
panty size." She leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrow with
disenchantment. "We call women like you Twinkies—little fluff balls who
don't know the first thing about broadcasting, but think it would be
oh-so-exciting to have a career in radio."
Six months before, Francesca would have swept from the room in a huff,
but now she clamped her hands together in her lap and lifted her chin a
shade higher. "I'm willing to do anything, Miss Padgett—answer the
telephones, run errands .. ." She couldn't explain to this woman that
it wasn't a career in broadcasting that attracted her. If this building
had held a fertilizer factory, she would still have wanted a job.
"The only work I have is for someone to do the cleaning and odd jobs."
"I'll take it!" Dear God, cleaning.
"I don't think you're right for it."
Francesca ignored the sarcasm in her voice. "Oh, but I am. I'm a
wonderful cleaner."
She had Clare Padgett's attention again, and the woman seemed amused.
"Actually, I'd wanted someone Mexican. Are you a citizen?" Francesca
shook her head. "Do you have a green card?"
Again she shook her head. She had only the vaguest idea what a green
card was, but she was absolutely certain she didn't have one and she
refused to start her new life with a lie. Maybe frankness would impress
this woman. "I don't even have a passport. It was stolen from me a few
hours ago on the road."
"How unfortunate." Clare Padgett was no longer making the smallest
effort to hide how much she was enjoying the situation. She reminded
Francesca of a cat with a helpless bird clasped in its mouth. Obviously
Francesca, despite her bedraggled state, was going to have to pay for
all the slights the station manager had suffered over the years at the
hands of beautiful women. "In that case, I'll put you on the payroll at
sixty-five dollars a week. You'll have every other Saturday off. The
rest of the time you'll be here from sunup to sundown, the same hours
we're on the air. And you'll be paid in cash. We've got truckloads of
Mexicans coming in every day, so the first time you screw up, you're
out."
The woman was paying slave wages. This was the sort of job illegal
aliens took because they didn't have a choice. "All right," Francesca
said, because she didn't have a choice.
Clare Padgett smiled grimly and led Francesca out to the office
manager. "Fresh meat, Katie. Give her a mop and show her the bathroom."
Clare disappeared and Katie looked at Francesca with pity. "We haven't
had anyone clean for a few weeks. It's pretty bad."
Francesca swallowed hard. "That's all right."
It wasn't all right, of course. She stood in front of a pantry in the
station's tiny kitchenette, looking over a shelf full of cleaning
products, none of which she had the slightest idea how to use. She knew
how to play baccarat, and she could name the maitre d's of the world's
most famous restaurants, but she hadn't the faintest idea how to clean
a bathroom. She read the
labels as quickly as she could, and half an hour later Clare Padgett
discovered her on her knees in front of a gruesomely stained toilet,
pouring blue powdered cleanser on the seat.
"When you scrub the floor, make certain you get into the corners,
Francesca. I hate sloppy work."
Francesca gritted her teeth and nodded. Her stomach did a small
flip-flop as she prepared to attack the mess on the underside of the
seat. Unbidden, she thought of Hedda, her old housekeeper. Hedda, with
her rolled stockings and bad back, who'd spent her life on her knees
cleaning up after Chloe and Francesca.
Clare sucked on her cigarette and then deliberately tossed it down next
to Francesca's foot. "You'd better hustle, chicky. We're getting ready
to close down for the day." Francesca heard a malevolent chuckle as the
woman moved away.
A little later, the announcer who'd been on the air when Francesca
arrived stuck his head in the bathroom and told her he had to lock up.
Her heart lurched. She had no place to go, no bed to sleep in. "Has
everybody left?"
He nodded and ran his eyes over her, obviously liking what he saw. "You
need a lift into town?"
She stood and wiped her hair out of her eyes with her forearm, trying
to seem casual. "No. Somebody's picking me up." She inclined her head
toward the mess, her resolution not to begin her new life with lies
already abandoned. "Miss Padgett told me I had to finish this tonight
before I left. She said I could lock up." Did she sound too offhand?
Not offhand enough? What would she do if he refused?
"Suit yourself." He gave her an appreciative smile. A few minutes later
she let out a slow, relieved breath as she heard the front door close.
Francesca spent the night on the black and gold office sofa with Beast
curled against her stomach, both of them poorly fed on sandwiches she
had made from stale bread and a jar of peanut butter she found in the
kitchenette. Exhaustion had seeped into the very marrow of her bones,
but still she couldn't fail asleep. Instead, she lay with her eyes
open, Beast's fur
pushed into the V's between her fingers, thinking about how many more
obstacles lay in her way.
The next morning she awakened before five and promptly threw up into
the toilet she had so painstakingly cleaned the night before. For the
rest of the day, she tried to tell herself it was only a reaction to
the peanut butter.
"Francesca! Dammit, where is she?" Clare stormed from her office as
Francesca flew out of the newsroom where she'd just finished delivering
a batch of afternoon papers to the news director.
"I'm here, Clare," she said wearily. "What's the problem?"
It had been six weeks since she'd started work at KDSC, and her
relationship with the station manager hadn't improved. According to the
gossip she'd picked up from members of the small KDSC staff,
Clare's
radio career had been launched at a time when few women could get jobs
in broadcasting. Station managers hired her because she was intelligent
and aggressive, and then fired her for the same reason. She finally
made it to television, where she fought bitter battles for the right to
report hard news instead
of the softer stories considered appropriate
for women reporters.
Ironically, she was defeated by Equal Opportunity. In the early
seventies when employers were forced
to hire women, they bypassed
battle-scarred veterans like Clare, with their sharp tongues and
cynical outlooks, for newer, fresher faces straight off college
campuses—pretty, malleable sorority girls with degrees in communication
arts. Women like Clare had to take what was left—jobs for which they
were overqualified, like running backwater radio stations. As a result,
they smoked too much, grew increasingly bitter, and made life miserable
for any females they suspected of trying to get by on nothing more than
a pretty face.
"I just got a call from that fool at the Sulphur City bank," Clare
snapped at Francesca. "He wants the Christmas promotions today instead
of tomorrow." She pointed toward a box of bell-shaped tree ornaments
printed with the name of the radio station on one side and the name of
the bank on the other. "Get over there right away with them, and don't
take
all day like you did last time."
Francesca refrained from pointing out that she wouldn't have taken so
long last time if four staff members hadn't dumped additional errands
on her—everything from delivering overdue bills for air time to having
a new water pump put in the station's battered Dodge Dart. She pulled
on the red and black plaid car coat she'd bought at a Goodwill store
for five dollars and then grabbed the key to the Dart from a cup hook
next to the studio window. Inside, Tony March, the afternoon deejay,
was cuing up a record. Although he hadn't been with KDSC very long,
everyone knew he would be quitting soon. He had a good voice and a
distinct personality. For announcers like Tony, KDSC, with its
unimpressive 500-watt signal, was merely a stepping stone to better
things. Francesca had already discovered that the only people who
stayed at KDSC for very long were people like her who didn't have any
other choice.
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