What's a Girl Gotta Do Read Free

Hayworth’s body.
    Joanne and I had started out at ANN around
the same time, in similar lowly positions, and we had both been
writers for Greg Browner when he was the anchor and managing editor
for the six o’clock. Her hitch on the six had gone somewhat better
than mine, in small part, at least, because she knew how to handle
Greg’s constant advances and his big ego. She knew when to speak,
when to hold her tongue, and how to be diplomatic.
    I did not. I told Greg to go fuck himself and
was promptly given a new assignment—a better assignment,
actually—another report on my “bad attitude” comfortably ensconced
in my thick personnel file.
    I watched Joanne trade bon mots with Mark
O’Malley, a devilishly handsome business reporter wearing a barrel
marked “1987 stock market crash,” and Tom Charing, who wore an
upright open coffin and a bad suit with a hammer and sickle on the
lapel to represent a generic dead Soviet leader. Off to the side
was Madri Michaels, a brunette anchorwoman with a premolded plastic
kind of beauty who came as Madonna, wearing Mylar. So obvious.
    These were the reporters and anchors who
always dominated the A block—the first ten minutes or so of a news
show—and brought prestige and respect to ANN. The Pantheon. They
took risks, they knew how to use their sources, and they knew how
to tell an exciting story. Because of this, they had considerable
influence with lawmakers all over the world. Everything they did,
everything they said, every movement of their heads, every earnest
furrow on their brows said “Emmy.”
    God, I wanted to be one of them.
    The pathetic thing is, I had been well on my
way. I’d had the crime and justice beat, covering big Manhattan
murder trials and other cases for the network. It was a
second-string beat, but I didn’t mind. It fascinated me and I knew
it could lead to bigger and better things.
    Then I got my big break. I was sent to D.C.
on a temporary assignment to fill in as weekend White House
correspondent. All right. It was only weekends and it was only
fill-in, but it was that all-important foot in the door to the
Washington power establishment—and the big stories. I could have
parlayed that into a regular spot in the A block, guest appearances
as a panelist on Brinkley, a column in the Washington Journalism
Review, a Maxwell House commercial.
    But I had this little problem, you see. I
couldn’t seem to keep myself from fucking things up.
     
     
    After half an hour of mingling, nobody had
approached me and I was beginning to think the guy who called me
was just an old high school boyfriend playing a practical joke. Old
high school boyfriends. There’s a depressing subject. I needed a
drink.
    Traditionally, the New Year’s drink at ANN
parties was Jonestown Punch, which was not only in bad taste but
was bad tasting, a sickening, strong concoction of grape juice and
vodka. That was free. Anything else you wanted you had to pay for
at the cash bar.
    Which is where I found Jerry, one arm over
the bar, his Richard Nixon mask pulled down around his neck, trying
to offend a young bartender/actress.
    I stood behind him and heard him say, “I’ll
have a slow screw up against the wall. Know what that is?”
    The bartender gave him a shriveling look.
    “Sloe gin, OJ, and Galliano,” she said.
    That’s Jerry for you. He drinks slow screws,
a drink whose only purpose is to shock cocktail waitresses and lady
bartenders. So out of touch, that Jerry. Doesn’t know that the new
generation of drinks—Sex on the Beach, Safe Sex, Oral Sex,
Orgasms—makes the old slow screw quaint and old-fashioned.
    He didn’t see me standing behind him, so he
proceeded unwisely.
    “I’m well hung,” he said to the skeptical
brunet. “Oh, I apologize. I suffer from a mild case of Tourette’s
syndrome. Do you know that disease? It makes me tell the truth all
the time.”
    He thought he was so funny. The woman just
stared at him.
    “Just a mild case. I’m a producer. I