Wicked Game Read Free

fireplace, on the opposite wall from Frank’s. Beyond it sits a copier so old I expect it to have a hand crank.
    “Come.” David moves past me so suddenly it makes me jump.
    He descends a creaky wooden staircase between the two closed office doors. I follow him, trying not to get my hopes up. Maybe his hiring talk was hypothetical, as in,
you’d work at that desk if all the other intern candidates got eaten by a giant cockroach
. I force my mind away from the things I’ll have to do if I don’t get a summer job. Things I can’t put on a resume.
    At the bottom of the stairs, David rests his hand on the knob of a closed door. He takes in a quick, deep breath as if to say something momentous. The words don’t make it out before he shakes his head.
    “Probably best if you meet them without preconceptions. If they like you, the job’s yours.”
    I nod. No pressure or anything.
    David opens the door to let me pass into a small, dim lounge. A pervasive cloud of cigarette smoke gathers over the halogen lamp in the far left corner, muting the room’s lurid shadows.
    My stinging eyes take a moment to adjust. I strain to see a group of—
    Freaks.
    Exquisite freaks, to be sure, so soul-shatteringly beautiful, it’s a tragedy that radio is for ears only. But they each look like they stepped out of a different time machine.
    David squeezes past me through the doorway, where my feet have stopped. “Ciara Griffin, meet the pride of WMMP.”
    Three men and a woman are playing poker around a table scattered with plastic chips and open bottles. They examine me with a palpable distrust. Maybe it’s the interview suit: navy blue makes me look like a fed.
    “Spencer, Jim, Noah, Regina.” David points from left to right. “And back there is Shane.”
    On the love seat at the foot of the lamp, a young man in faded ripped jeans appears to sleep, right arm draped over his face. One leg is bent, foot resting on the cushion, and the other stretches beyond the end of the sofa.
    David touches my elbow to urge me forward a few steps. “I’m hoping Ciara will be our new intern.”
    The hostility fades from the faces of the four awake DJs, replaced with a patronizing politeness. I attempt a smile, encouraged by the slight thaw.
    “Spencer does our fifties show,” David says. “Birth of rock ’n’ roll and all that.”
    A man in a white dress shirt and black pants stands to greet me, unfurling endless legs from under the table. His dark red hair is slicked back into a ducktail. He squeezes the hand I offer.
    “Hey, baby, what’s shakin’?” Spencer’s southern drawland impeccable clothes give him a gentlemanly facade, which doesn’t quite gel with the feral look in his eyes.
    “Not much, Daddy-o.” It just comes out. Rather than take offense, Spencer smiles and nods approvingly.
    The next guy springs out of his chair, and I force myself not to retreat from his approach.
    “This is Jim,” David says.
    “Man, I really dug your portfolio.” Jim hugs me. His long brown curls and tie-dyed shirt reek of marijuana and patchouli. “I used to go to art school, too.”
    “Thanks, but I’m not an artist.” Is he sniffing me?
    Jim pulls back and regards me at arm’s length. “Then how’d you get all those layouts to look so groovy?”
    “For my class projects? I used the computer, of course.”
    His eyes crinkle with confusion. “The . . . ?”
    David clears his throat loudly enough for my bullshit alert system to creep into Code Yellow. What the hell’s going on?
    Comprehension crosses Jim’s face, and he snaps his fingers. “Right. Back in my day, we had to do it all by hand.”
    I squint at him. He looks just a few years older than I am. They all do.
    “Back in your day?”
    The third man scrapes his chair against the floor as he rises. I turn to him, relieved to slide out of Jim’s personal space, which seems to lack boundaries.
    “I am Noah.” The man’s voice rolls over me like a warm Jamaican breeze. “It is a