Page 18 of You Spin Me

“So I’m a call girl now? You bought dinner, so I owe you sex? If that’s the situation, I’m going to have to raise my prices.”

“Jesus, you don’t have to be a bitch about it.” Tightening his grip, he twists my wrist to pull me back into the car.

“Let mego.” Yanking back so hard that both his grip and my purse strap break, I almost fall off my heels. Once I’ve caught my balance, I growl, “Don’t call me again. Ever.”

After slamming the door in his face, I race up the steps and into the building. I don’t stop until I’m inside my apartment, deadbolt locked. Heart thudding in my chest, legs shaking, I drop my ruined purse on the floor and struggle out of my coat.

Heading straight to the bathroom, I turn the shower on full bore, needing to get the stink of Charles off me. It’s only when I collapse onto my bed in my flannel pjs that I hear Cal’s voice again, coming through the tinny speaker of my clock radio. Pulling a blanket around me, I turn it up and let the tears flow.

I can’t call him now. I don’t want him to hear me like this. I can keep listening to his soothing voice, though. As the sobs subside, I silently thank him for watching over me.

Chapter6

Nigel here this Sunday afternoon on WBAR and I’ve got the Beatles’ “Every Little Thing” for your listening pleasure.

CAL

Driving home from Sunday dinner with my family, it occurs to me for the first time how alone I am. I’ve always felt cocooned by my family, but in a good way, not an isolating one.

Neither my parents nor my siblings have ever shown the tiniest bit of resentment toward me, even though I sucked up way more than my share of attention and resources growing up. It took hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to get me through surgery after surgery. At some point, the Shriners began picking up my bills, but the nurses always had to kick my parents out of my room in the hospital to make them go home and rest. At school, my brothers did their best to protect me from bullies. I’m more of the family baby than my baby sister.

My family is everything to me.

For the first time, I’m wondering if that’s a problem.

My siblings have all paired off and have their own families. They’re adults. I may have the body of a thirty-two-year-old man, but inside? I’m a little kid who never really left the nest.

I don’t think they worry about me. It probably seems like I’m doing well enough. I make a decent living at a job that I’m good at in a hugely competitive field. I’ve got a big loft apartment in downtown Boston, great co-workers, and friends all over the world, if you count pen pals.

So far, I’ve had no reason to leave the comfy cocoon that is my life. I mean, I know better than most that when bandages get ripped off before the skin underneath is fully healed, the pain is horrendous.

Unfortunately, those wounds might get exposed sooner than I’d like. Jones is still bugging me about stepping up my game, adding something to my slot that’ll attract more listeners, but I don’t know what someone like me can do. Grace practically hosts a party during her shift. Drive-time DJ Motor trades jokes with the headlining comics who visit him when they roll into town. “Morning Guy” Guy does massive promos, like last summer when he gave away a car by broadcasting from said car while it dangled from a crane hundreds of feet in the air over the Charles River.

How do I compete with that?

I can’t see myself getting up in front of hundreds of people like Special Kay and Nigel do when they introduce bands at live shows, but according to Jones, I have to do something to up ratings.

The other change I never saw coming? Jess. I’ve never been so nervous and excited about anything as I am about her call each night. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since Friday. I even took the extra shift last night, hoping she’d call. And you wouldn’t believe the what-ifs buzzing around inside my skull, taunting me.What if there’s a chance she and I could actually have something together? What if I could have a real relationship like my siblings and parents do?

The only way I can see that happening? Get her to fall in love with me on the phone. If I can be her knight in shining armor five nights a week for long enough, then maybe by the time we meet and she finds out I’m a prince stuck in the body of a frog, she’ll accept the real me.

Yeah, I know.

Who am I kidding?

“All right,you assholes, I don’t have all day here.”

That’s how Jones kicks off the music meeting every Monday morning. Or afternoon, rather. It’s two o’clock, but it feels like morning to me. Attendance at the meeting isn’t required and Weird Wayne rarely shows because of his two-to-six-a.m. shift time, but I make it a priority to be here so I can have some influence on what gets played across the station’s programming.

It also makes me feel like I’m part of a team. The DJs in this room are a relatively diverse group, not only diverse in musical taste—though we do challenge each other and cover the whole spectrum of rock music—but also by gender, race, sexuality and even generation. Not many rock stations have a woman with her own slot—they’re usually a sidekick—but we have two and they couldn’t be more different. Special Kay (call her Karen, her given name, at your peril) has helped make the careers of female-fronted bands like Roxette. Right now she’s all about some group from the Midwest nobody’s heard of called Babes in Toyland.

A Red Sox cap frames Kay’s pale face and stringy brown hair. Like most of the guys, she’s always in jeans and band T-shirts. Gracie’s style is at the other end of the spectrum. She’s a Deborah Harry-inspired party girl with bleached hair, funky glasses and funkier outfits. Then there’s Motor, who’s never not in a suit. Not the stuffy-old-man kind, though. He dresses in homage to his hero, David Bowie. Motor’s a people collector, so it’s a party during his drivetime shifts, from an evolving crew of pretty young things—both male and female—to the comics who stop by. This week he interviewed local Paula Poundstone and an up-and-coming comic in town on tour. I think his name was Jerry Steinfeld. Or Seinfeld? I don’t pay much attention to the comedy circuit so I’ve never heard of him, but Motor says he’s got a boss new style.

Nigel, who came to the States from England to study and never got around to leaving, is the darkest skinned of us all. I’m probably next in line on that scale. What’s left of my original skin color is the swarthy brown of my Portuguese and black Irish heritage. Nigel’s also the most well-spoken and definitely the smartest at the table. After he and Jones made a sensation at Northeastern University’s radio station, they quickly climbed the ranks here. Most people have no idea that Nigel’s black because he sounds like he was raised by the Queen herself. Elizabeth, not the band. At the moment, he’s impatiently flipping through a stack of albums—probably new music he can’t wait to bring to our attention.

Finally, an enthusiastic whoop from Guy followed by a groan from Big Bob means that the hallway whiffle ball game is over, so the meeting can begin.

When the players enter, Jones rolls his eyes. Guy—aka “Morning Guy” Guy—high-fives everyone within reach before taking a seat. You’d never know the guy is almost forty with a wife and kids. Heisa big kid.

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