What's a Girl Gotta Do Read Free Page A

could
get you a job in TV. Nine inches. Oh, there I go again.”
    Yes, all Jerry’s best lines sounded like
they’d been picked up from liars in locker rooms. I wanted to tap
him on the shoulder and say something smartass—I was spoiling for a
fight—but Burke was going to be here later and I was saving myself
for him.
    Anyway, the lady could take care of
herself.
    “Get away from me, or I’ll call security,”
she hissed.
    Jerry turned and saw me there.
    He hated that I’d just witnessed his
humiliation at the hands of a female.
    “Look, it’s another member of the PMS Sewing
Circle,” he said, as he pulled his Richard Nixon mask up over his
face and pushed past me.
    I could tell he was really drunk, otherwise
he’d never have had the nerve to talk to a pretty young woman like
the bartender. Jerry has this little problem relating to women, you
see. It’s a very common problem. When he’s sober and he comes face
to face with a woman in a social setting, he tends to become
focused on her breasts and can’t look her in the eye. If she moves
from side to side, his head moves from side to side too, like a dog
watching a tennis ball.
    I ordered a shot of lemon Stoly and downed it
with a grimace and then grabbed a plate of hors d’oeuvres and went
up to the balcony area overlooking the dance floor. Louis waved me
over to a table by the railing.
    There were about a dozen writers crammed
around the rectangular table, one in Woody Allen wig and glasses
clutching a doll, another as a giant condom made of papier-mâché,
complete with ribbing and reservoir tip, the whole thing
articulated into segments so the wearer could bend and sit. The
rest were a mixed bag of Scud missiles, presidential pets, the
usual buffoonish congressmen.
    They looked up and said hi, and then resumed
an argument I’d apparently interrupted on the moral imperatives of
Bewitched.
    “Look at it as an allegory about marriage,”
Helen Lalo said. “This young woman comes into her marriage with
exceptional abilities, which her husband tries to stifle. He tries
to make her conform, to sacrifice her natural gifts, her
specialness. Endora, on the other hand, encourages her daughter to
express her special talents.”
    I couldn’t get into this conversation, so I
sat down and watched people waltzing on the dance floor below,
waiting for my anonymous source to make himself known. Just then,
my husband danced into view with Miss Amy Penny.
    What a cute couple—Burke as Oliver North and
Amy as Fawn Hall. I thought maybe Donald Trump and Marla Maples or
Jimmy Swaggart and a generic truck-stop prostitute might be more
appropriate costume couplings. But even as I was sneering, I felt a
painful twinge. Burke looked really good, like a younger, shorter,
blonder Peter Jennings, and that snappy marine uniform didn’t hurt
a bit.
    Burke was a lucky guy. With his sunny looks,
he could only age well. As a woman, I fought crow’s-feet, but no
crow’s-feet for him. Unh-unh. What he had, the television
columnists called “an endearing correspondent’s squint.” My worry
lines robbed me of a little bit of youth and diminished my on-air
worthiness, but his gave Burke a look of authority. Personally, I
think the best revenge is aging well, and in that respect, Burke
had me beat, hands down.
    I was quite sure young women would always
find him attractive, young women like Miss Amy Penny, who sparkled
tonight as Fawn Hall. Unaware that I was watching, she looked up at
him as they danced and he looked back and their eyes glistened,
full of each other. They looked like they were in love, but I
couldn’t tell—was it with each other, or with their own reflections
in each other’s eyes?
    I blinked back tears and watched through the
blur as Greg Browner brought George Dunbar over and introduced him
to Burke. Dunbar was president of ANN. Burke shook his hand
energetically and said something. I don’t lip-read too well, but I
knew Burke’s spiel for media bigshots. Look