The Best New Horror 2 (15 page)

“Redlands, California, you’re on the air.”

“Yes, Arthur?” an elderly woman said.

“You’re on the air, ma’am, please get to your question.”

“Well, I’d just like to say that I’m seventy-nine years old and I don’t understand how your guest—what’s her name? Cartwright?—can possibly suggest that all men are evil. Speaking from experience, I can say that I’ve—”

Miss Cartwright interrupted firmly: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you and the rest of the listeners are being misled by Mr Colton. I am not saying that men are
evil
. I’m simply saying that our culture—along with many other cultures—has given women a back seat in
everything
and it’s time to—”

“I’m sorry,” Andy said as the theme music came up, “but we’ve run out of time. I’d like to thank my guest, Melissa Cartwright, whose book
Women in Crisis, Men in Power
, is, for some reason, number two on the New York
Times
nonfiction bestseller list. Thank you for joining us,
Mizzz
Cartwright, it’s been an education, if nothing else. We’re coming up on the news, then we’ll be back with open lines. Stick around.”

As Andy leaned back in his chair and removed his headphones, he heard Melissa Cartwright’s pinched voice calling from them, “Mr Colton? Mr
Colton?
” He glanced at Tanya, the producer, waved toward the phone and picked up the receiver, saying, “Yes?”

She struggled to control her voice. “I’m very disappointed, Mr Colton. I was told you were going to interview me about my book. I didn’t know this was going to be the broadcast equivalent of stocks and public humiliation. I didn’t know it was going to be an inquisition.”

“Oh, please, Ms Cartwright, don’t take it personally. It’s just the way I do the show.”

She paused. “I’m sorry? Pardon me?”

He shook his head and chuckled. This always puzzled him. Didn’t they understand it was just a
show?
That it was just
show business?
“Have you ever heard my show, Ms Cartwright?”

“No, I haven’t. And after tonight, I have no intention of listening.”

“Well, if you had,” he said gently, “you’d realize that this is just the way the show goes, okay? I mean,
think
about it. My audience is made up of very conservative, aggressive people who want more than just an interview, okay? Otherwise they’d be listening to Larry King. They want
fireworks
, you know? So please, Ms Cartwright. Don’t take this personally. I have nothing against you or your book or your opinion. In fact, you’re probably right,
I
don’t know. Anyway, I really appreciate your good sportsmanship. It’s just show business, you know?”

Another pause, longer this time. “You appreciate
what?
”

“Your good sportsmanship.”

She laughed, but it was an angry laugh. “Are you serious?”

“
Sure
I’m serious. Look, it’s just a show, okay? I mean, you want compassion, call
Talk Net
. You want indepth questions, you go on
Nightline
. And on
my
show, you get confrontation and a lot of yelling.”

“And name-calling and humiliation and some pretty obscene sexist insults.”

“Well, that too. But you can’t take it personally. It’s the nature of the show. You got to make your point and plug your book, right? Myself? I think you’re an interesting, intelligent woman. What I say on the show really means nothing.”

A cold chuckle. “In other words . . . you’re a whore.” She hung up.

Andy rolled his eyes as he replaced the receiver. Why was it so hard for them to understand? Why did so many people get so upset? Not that he minded; they were his best publicity and stirred the controversy that made his show the number one late night radio
talk show in the country. He just didn’t understand what made them so furious. “About li’l ol’ me,” he muttered, leaving the studio and heading to the lounge for coffee.

Laurence Olivier had once played a hideous Nazi, but did anyone accuse him of actually
being
one? Of course not. They praised his performance; he was simply a great actor. Nobody accused Stephen King of being a sick bloodthirsty monster, did they? Well, maybe a few . . . but surely they didn’t
really
believe it; he was just a very good writer. But when it came to The Arthur Colton, Jr., Show, otherwise rational people began to foam at the mouth, pound fists into palms and scream for a public hanging. It made no sense.

He’d used that argument with Katherine, a former girlfriend back in Cincinnati who had been irate about the content of his show. It hadn’t worked.

“That’s different!” she’d exclaimed. “What they do is fiction. Everyone
knows
that what Olivier and King do is
fiction!
You, however, are hosting a
talk show!
You’re shaping opinions,
manipulating
them! You aren’t writing a novel or acting in a movie. People
listen
to what you say. They respect it, they take it
seriously
. And for you to go on that show and say the barbaric things you say to boost your ratings—things you don’t even
mean
—is obscene, Andy!”

It had just been a local show which, for the first four months, was just straight talk with a few guests and a couple hours of open phones; Andy had never expressed an opinion, just kept the conversation going. The ratings were bleak, so he’d listened carefully to his audience, looking for something he could use to breathe life into the show, trying to figure out what they wanted. One night it occurred to him: they were angry and they wanted to scream and shout and kick furniture and if they couldn’t do it, they wanted someone to do it for them. His listeners were fed up with everything from crime and poverty to crooked politicians and unfair laws and they wanted someone with a voice—a loud, powerful voice—to represent them.

The following night, Andy opened his show differently than usual: “I’ve cancelled tonight’s scheduled guests,” he said, “because I want to talk about something, ladies and gentlemen. I . . . am mad . . . as
hell!
”

There wasn’t an open line for more than thirty seconds that night. Liberals called to complain about his sudden change of attitude and his unfair generalizations and conservatives called to complain about the tit-sucking liberals. Blacks complained about whites and whites complained about blacks . . . and Asians and Iranians and American Indians. Men complained about women and women complained about men. AM radios throughout Cincinnati crackled with the wholesale condemnation of Jews and homosexuals
and Democrats and Communists and drug dealers and feminists and homeless people and . . . and anyone who disagreed in any way with the caller. Cincinnati was angry and Andy Craig had given it an opportunity to throw a tantrum. Along with the city’s anger, however, came a barrage of racial slurs and profanity which Andy, at first, edited during the seven second delay; but as the show continued that night, getting better by the minute, he left his finger off the button and let the bile flow. He knew he’d get yelled at for it but, in his gut, it felt right.

Two thirds of the way through the show, Dexter Grady, the station manager, burst into the engineer’s booth and glared at Andy through the small square window; his face squirmed with anger as he waved his arms and yelled silently at the engineer. Moments later, the show broke, quite abruptly, for a commercial. Grady disappeared from the window and stormed into the studio shouting, demanding to know exactly who the fuck Andy thought he was, allowing all that Goddamned profanity to go out over the fucking radio. He yelled for quite some time, threatening not only to fire Andy, but to see to it that he never worked in Ohio again, not in a radio station, not even in a MacDonald’s, and then—

—the phonecalls started to come in.

Grady had told the engineer to play a few songs, to go to some network programming,
anything
, just as long as he didn’t go back to Andy’s show.

And people complained. Oh, how they complained.

Andy stayed at the station and continued doing his late-night talk show for almost two years. It didn’t last any longer because the sponsors got fed up with the show’s controversy; the controversy was the only reason it lasted as long as it did . . .

In the lounge, Andy poked through a box of stale donuts left in front of the coffeepot and picked out a cruller, which he dipped into the black coffee he’d poured. He was a small, wiry man with short reddish-brown hair and a mustache between his slightly sunken cheeks. His skin was smooth and somewhat pale; he didn’t get much sun. He chewed his cruller as he stared out the window at the black, light-smeared city nineteen stories below and listened to the news, which came over the P.A. He’d become addicted to the news; the more current his topics, the more riled his listeners became, and the more riled they became, the better were his ratings.

“You seen this?” Tanya asked, bursting into the lounge.

Andy turned as she tossed a section of the
Times
onto one of the round tables. It was opened to an article accompanied by a
photograph of Andy; the headline read, DANGEROUS RADIO, DANGEROUS LISTENERS, OR BOTH?

“No, I haven’t,” Andy said, glancing over the article.

Tanya smirked. “It’s great stuff. The kinda stuff that brings in new listeners, y’know? It was in this morning’s edition and my buddy over at the
Times
says they’ve been getting phonecalls all day. I mean,
complaints
. Starting tomorrow, the letters to the Editor section’ll probably be full of epistles from your loving fans for a couple weeks.” She beamed at him through the smoke from her cigarette.

“Why? What’s it say?”

She shrugged. “Oh, the usual bullshit. You’re stirring up the masses, using sick jokes and faulty logic that
sounds
intelligent and reasonable to get them so upset that they’re willing to
hand
over their freedoms to the first dictator that comes along. The usual bullshit. He says that you’re—” She swept the paper up and raised a stiff forefinger. “—listen to this, ‘. . . sucking up ratings like a vampire sucks up blood, flashing his fangs all the way to the bank’. Isn’t that
great?
” she laughed.

Andy grinned as he finished the cruller and plucked Tanya’s cigarette from her fingers, taking a deep drag.

“I thought you quit,” she said, slapping the paper down again.

“Just quit smoking my own. It’s cheaper that way.” He glanced at the clock.

“Don’t worry, you got another six minutes.” She started for the door as she said, “Got a great call for ya. A pro-choicer raving about the abortion laws.”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman. A real bitch. Give her your Jerry Lewis speech.” She winked at him as she went out the door.

Finishing Tanya’s cigarette, Andy scanned the article. It accused him of stirring up hatred and racism, of helping to destroy the freedoms that made America great—especially the one freedom that provided for radio shows like his own—and suggested that his “careless and irresponsible form of broadcasting” could ultimately bring about “the downfall of American freedoms as we know them.”

He chuckled bitterly as he sipped his coffee. He’d gotten the same response from the Cincinnati press since the day he’d changed the format of his show; they’d hated him.

But the
women
had loved him. Not just the women callers, but the women who attended his personal appearances . . . the women who wrote to him . . . the women he met in bars and restaurants and grocery stores who recognized his name or, better yet, his voice. Building his entire radio show around the political stance that riled his listeners the most—the one that would have sent most feminists into a convulsing, mouth-foaming seizure—Andy had more women
hungry for his attention than ever before in his life. The change was so sudden and drastic that Andy had actually been relieved the day he’d come home and found Katherine stripping his apartment of her belongings.

“I can’t live with you anymore,” she said, throwing her toiletries into a satchel.

“But you don’t live with me. We agreed you’d keep your apartment, I thought that was—”

“Listen
to yourself!” she snapped, stabbing a forefinger at his chest. “You’re such a
stickler
for details, like my fucking apartment. What difference does my
apartment
make? It’s just a little section of a building in which I get my phonecalls and keep my
cat
! When I say I can’t live with you anymore, I mean that I can’t live with the fact that you’re such a stickler for details and yet, when someone tries to point out the details of what you’re doing, you blow up, or just
laugh
. I can’t live with the fact that I’m wrapping my life around a person who can, so very
casually
, do such vicious damage to things that so many people have died to protect, things that have taken so many decades to finally realize and are already being dismantled fast enough as it is without any help from you! I can’t live with you, Andy. And how you possibly can will be one of the greatest mysteries of my life.” She was gone in ten minutes.

Half an hour later, he had a dinner date, and only a few hours after that, he had her in bed. Suddenly, life was good,
really
good. Suddenly, everything was going his way, and that included his break up with Katherine.

Then, a few months later, someone threw a brick through the windshield of his car at a red light. Not long after, the first death threat was phoned into the station, followed by a few more over the following months. At first it had, like everything else, worked in his favor and stirred up some publicity-grabbing controversy. But during the week of the second bomb threat received by the station, the sponsors began to drop like computer generated aliens in a video game and the manager and owners became so afraid for their lives that they saw no alternative but to let Andy go.

At first, he’d been very depressed. In fact, for a couple days, he hadn’t left his apartment or answered the phone. But only two days after his firing had been announced, he was offered a job by TBN—Talk Broadcasting Network—the biggest talk radio network in the country. He’d responded with appropriate nonchalance, asking for a few days to give it some thought and talk it over with his agent; he needed the extra time to
get
an agent.