Page 24 of Dirty Filthy Boy
"I can handle him." I bite my lip. Handle is so not the right word.
He laughs. "Can you?"
Great. Now he thinks I'm a joke.
But he surprises me. "I'll approve it conditioned on my liking your other two interviews. Just do it in public. The interview, that is." He laughs again.
This guy's a regular comedian.
"Yes, Mr. Howard, and thank you. I really appreciate it."
"Just don't make me regret it." And he slams down the phone.
Randy, the worm, sticks his head into my cubicle. His face is beet red and he's practically foaming at the mouth.
"What do you want Randy?"
"You think you're hot shit, don't you?" He hisses out. I'm probably the only one who can hear him, his voice is so low. "You got all these men wrapped around your finger. All you have to do is wiggle your ass and flash your tits and just like that you get an interview that should go to Joe Johnson."
That language would get anybody else fired. But since he's the newspaper owner's nephew, he'll probably get away with it. "I'm not taking anything away from Joe. He can continue to write about the game. I'm doing human interest stories, not sports."
"Yeah, right."
Somebody clears a throat somewhere, and he crawls away like the worm he is.
My stomach growls, reminding me it hasn't been fed. With no dinner last night and only a cup of coffee this morning, I'm ready to gnaw off my arm.
In the kitchen, I run into our receptionist, Dotty, who likes to eat an early lunch.
"Hi." The newspaper provides snacks for its employees, so I toss open the cupboard in search of something to eat.
"Hungry?"
"Yeah, didn't get breakfast."
"Remember you have leftovers." She points to the refrigerator. "Did you forget?"
I smile sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess I did."
It's only eleven thirty, but I'm starving. The container from yesterday's lunch, the very one Ty threatened to dismember someone if it disappeared, lies untouched just where I left it. My eyes grow watery as I open the container, pour the leftovers into a paper plate.
"He's something else, isn't he?" Dotty says. A fifty something veteran of the Navy on a pension, she returned to the workforce because sitting at home bored her silly.
I don't pretend not to know who she's talking about. "Yeah, he is."
"My husband was a lot like him. Overprotective, big. Drove me crazy at times, but I had no complaints in bed."
Yeah, I don't have any either. Too bad it will never happen again.
