Love on the Air (18 page)

"I don't know. Let's see. . ." Rick's eyes went back
to the road. "Station T-shirt? Oh, wait, you're already
wearing one. Your first remote? No, you just did one.
And passed with flying colors, by the way."

Christie's throat ached. That was the boss talking.
"Thanks."

"By the way, you left your headphones in the studio
again over the weekend. That's a really good way to
get them thrashed, or stolen. I put them in the file
drawer in my office." His tone was stern and matterof-fact. "If you're going to leave them at the station,
keep them there. I told you that before."

Christie only vaguely remembered the conversation.
"Yes, sir."

By the time they pulled up to the station, her natural
high had dissipated.

That night, Christie started to get her headphones
from the shelf in the studio before she remembered. Okay, so sue me. It's a habit. Sighing, she got her
keys and headed for Rick's office.

When she opened the drawer of the wide, horizontal
filing cabinet, a barrage of color hit her in the face.
Balloons.

Christie shrieked and laughed at the same time,
stepping back as red, green, blue and yellow balloons
flew up around her, stopping short of the ceiling. They
were tied together and anchored by her headphones.
She searched the drawer in vain for a card or note of
any kind.

Rob appeared in the doorway, apparently brought
by her shriek. He squinted at the balloons, still bobbing around her. "So what is it between you and Rick,
anyway?"

"Nothing," Christie said immediately. She felt like
a three-year-old caught with stolen cake all over her
face. And just as transparent.

"Right," Rob said, still surveying the balloons.
"And I'm Cleopatra. If I ever laid a hand on you, I
think he'd cream me." The thought of Rick "creaming" anyone on her behalf was laughable. But Christie
realized that lately, Rob's flirting had tapered way
down.

He poked at a green balloon, then turned and headed
back for the studio. "Last song's on."

Christie stared, dumbfounded, at Rick's little multicolored salute. She had to squash her feeling of
delight over the gesture. Feelings like that only spelled
her death sentence here at the station. She thought
about the kiss, the turtle, their long talk today, and the genial mask he'd been wearing all this time. She still
wasn't sure who the real Rick Fox was, but she was
sure about one thing.

She had to get out of there fast.

Rick got the call before he'd gotten his coffee. It
was from a station in Tucson, asking about Christie.

He knew this was going to happen, and he'd already
made up his mind what he would say. It would have
been easy enough to damn her with faint praise. Just
a few carefully chosen qualifiers about how well she
was doing ...for a beginner. It would keep her here
longer. Instead, Rick told the truth, his fist clenched
around the receiver. He had no right to do anything
else.

He hung up and pushed back from his desk. He
hadn't been socked in the stomach since he was
twelve, but he recognized the way it felt. What he had
a harder time remembering, strangely, was how it had
felt only five years ago when Sylvia left. He was pretty
sure it hadn't been like this.

Rick didn't know how many other applicants the
people in Tucson were looking at, but the fact that they'd telephoned the program director at Christie's
station was not a good sign. Not for him, anyway.

Time was running out.

Tucson. At least seven or eight hours away. If she
got the gig, she'd have to move, and he wouldn't be
surprised if he ended up volunteering to help load the
truck. All in the name of-what? Friendship?

He rested his head on the back of his chair and shut
his eyes. It didn't help much, but it did shut out the
sight of his desk, with its ever-changing stacks of clutter. He'd spent many a night there, digging into those
stacks, when his apartment seemed too empty to go
to. At times it had been a solace, a home away from
home, but lately he'd begun to despise it. Three
months ago, he and Christie had sat for the first time
with that desk between them. In a way, it had stood
between them ever since.

Lately, after hours, he'd packaged up a lot of resumes from this spot. Now it looked like Christie
might beat him to the punch.

"Rick?" Yvonne's voice came from several feet
away.

"Mm-hmm?" He didn't move.

"Are you okay?"

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. She'd stopped in
the doorway, headphones in hand, on her way down
the hall to start her air shift. Now she was staring at
him with a mixture of concern and curiosity. "What's
wrong?"

He smiled weakly. "Nothing. Just that Reyes Curse
of yours."

He shouldn't have said it. He wouldn't have, if the
shock hadn't been so fresh.

"Christie?"

"Yeah. That." He straightened, pinching the bridge
of his nose. Pulling the chair back up to his desk, he
started to reach for his coffee mug, and remembered
it was sitting next to the machine in the break room,
waiting for the next pot to finish brewing. Bad news
before coffee. Not fair.

"Did she quit?" Yvonne's voice was hushed.

"No." Not yet. He shook his head. "Forget it. I
shouldn't have said anything."

"Sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Men don't talk. Men have ulcers. It's why you outlive us."

She wasn't taking the hint. She still stood there,
watching him. He didn't know how much she knew,
but he knew it was way too much. Men didn't talk,
but women did. "Rick, you're not going to let her go
without a fight, are you?"

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Don't you have an
air shift to do?"

Yvonne arched her eyebrows in return, then left
without another word.

Rick sighed, pulled himself up and trudged to the
coffee machine.

Christie plugged in her headphones with a heavy
heart. These night shifts were getting longer and
longer, and more and more sad ballads seemed to be
cropping up on the play list. She knew it was her
imagination, but it didn't help.

It was Thursday night-no, Friday morning, she
corrected herself-and she had an interview in Tucson
first thing Monday. Rick had asked very few questions
when she'd asked to take the Monday shift off. Instead, he'd waved her away, saying she had that much
comp time coming to her for all the extra work she
put in. For a moment she'd stood there in front of his
desk, tempted to say more, but he seemed more preoccupied than usual. Probably just as well.

She had an interview to work the midday shift in
Tucson, for a lot more money, and she was miserable.

Christie started the next song. Paul McCartney's
voice filled the studio, singing warmly and sweetly
about no more lonely nights. It was one of her favorites, but it wasn't on the play list. She'd cued the
wrong track on the CD player. And tonight, it was the
last thing she needed to hear. A lot of the songs that
were getting to her these days were pretty sappy. But
this one, with its mixture of longing and hope, felt
intimate and real. Christie reached for the knob to
change to the right track, then stopped. Perversely, she
bit her lip and let it play.

"No more lonely nights. . ." Paul sang.

It was too much. She dropped her forehead to her
arms on the counter and waited for the phone to ring,
for Rick to tell her the thing wasn't on the stupid play
list. Half of her hoped he would.

But he didn't.

The first hour of the night dragged by. Then the
song on CD-1 started to skip, and Christie reached for
the butter knife before she realized this wasn't the problem CD player. The glass walls around her started
to vibrate. Then, invisible hands seemed to be shaking
the whole studio from the outside as the tremor grew.

An old hand at California earthquakes, Christie
ducked underneath the counter. She knew a lot of people who didn't even bother to do that. There wasn't
much room, but she managed to find some cover
alongside the sound equipment and dusty wires.
Around her, the room continued to rock, and she eyed
the rattling windows with some apprehension. At least
there were blinds in front of the glass.

Most earthquakes were over in a few seconds. This
one was still picking up steam. Christie was willing to
bet most people would be diving for cover by this
time. CDs fell-no, flew-from the shelf above her,
sailing by and clattering to the floor.

Finally, slowly, it subsided.

Christie straightened, not sure if what she felt was
some remaining swaying or her own reaction to the
movement. The quake must have gone on for the better part of a minute. Now, it was barely over, and
already her phones were lighting up. It was a foreign
sight this time of night.

Priorities, she reminded herself. Christie went on
the air, confirmed that there had been an earthquake,
and details would be available soon. She checked the
Internet, found the initial assessment of the quake, and
started answering phone calls. It had been a big one,
originating about twenty miles away...

Then the EAS tone sounded, and all bets were off.

The Emergency Alert System was tested on a regular basis, but Christie had never heard of it being needed for an actual emergency. She scrambled for the
station's EAS manual, which miraculously hadn't
fallen off the shelf with the CDs. Following the instructions, she received a message from the emergency
crew: a natural gas line had broken in a suburban
neighborhood, and the surrounding blocks were being
evacuated.

Christie aired the report. The phones were going
insane. Answer the phones? Keep the music going?
She wasn't sure. Wildly, she remembered what she'd
once said to Rick: So I'm here in case of an emergency?

Rick. It was after one in the morning, but she had
a feeling he'd better know about this. She was picking
up the phone, trying to get a line clear to call him,
when he hurried into the studio, pulling off his jacket
and joining her behind the counter. Obviously the
quake had gotten him out of bed; his hair was rumpled, and so was his shirt, as if he'd thrown it on in
a hurry. He looked more unshaven than she'd ever
seen him. And Christie had never been so glad to see
anyone in her life.

"I missed the last couple of minutes," he said.
"What have we got?"

"EAS alert. I just aired a report from the emergency
crew. There's a gas main..."

And suddenly the chaos was manageable. It was a
frenzy, but with Rick's help, it was a controlled
frenzy. He handled the phone calls and helped her run
the control board; Christie took the updates from the
emergency crew and aired the reports. Even at this
hour, the evacuation had created a traffic backup in the mountain pass leading out of the neighborhood
near the gas line. Most of the calls were superfluous,
asking about the reason for the backup, or what the
magnitude of the earthquake had been. All of which
the callers would have known if they'd turned on their
radios for five minutes. Rick waded through them and
passed the few valid tidbits of information on to Christie.

It made the afternoon drive shift look like a cake
walk, but they were getting through it.

After the first hour, the panic began to level off.
Evacuees were leaving their homes; people routed out
of their beds by the earthquake were going back to
sleep. After one more update, this one from the California Highway Patrol, Christie was able to actually
talk to Rick for the first time. "How many EAS alerts
have you had?"

"First one. But then, I never had an evacuation before either."

"How'd you get here so fast?"

"Fast? It took me fifteen minutes." It had felt more
like five. "I didn't know how bad it was until I got
here. But after that quake, I knew the phones alone
would have you buried."

"Thanks for coming," she said. He couldn't have
slept more than a few hours. But his eyes were alert,
and she knew he was riding the same adrenaline rush
she was. "The phones, I could have handled. But all
this-"

Just when she was starting to catch her breath, another tremor hummed through the studio. Aftershocks
could be stronger than the original earthquake, but this time Christie refrained from diving to the floor. Instead, she held on to the sides of the counter with both
hands. Rick put one hand on her shoulder, as if to
steady her. For the first time it occurred to her just
what a small space they were in together-about four
feet wide, enclosed by the counter on three sides. Even
without his hand on her shoulder, he was close enough
for her to feel some of the warmth from his body.

The aftershock passed in a few seconds, barely a
rumble.

"Small potatoes," Christie said, nervously taking a
step back. Rick let her go, and she cringed as the
phones lit up anew.

The crisis ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. The evacuation was completed; word went out
that the gas main would be repaired during the day.
No fatalities, no injuries reported. Roadblocks were
diverting traffic away from the area. The morning
commute was going to be a zoo, but that was hours
away. At last, the calls tapered off again.