now, having been dumped as his lover two months ago when he decided he’d look better standing next to Lisa than he did with her. He was right, of course, but it still hurt to look at him now. He stood in the entrance to the hallway, quietly superior, and it was such a change that everybody shut up and she followed him to her office without question.
Once inside, he closed the door behind her, went around to her desk chair and sat.
Allie fought back a snarl. All right, she wasn’t territorial, but this was her office, no matter how tiny and cluttered, and her desk, and that was her desk chair, and he was making her a visitor in her own domain. So she scowled at him and said, “What is this?”
Mark crossed his arms and leaned back in her chair, which tilted so that he was almost horizontal to her vertical, and then he said, “There’s no good way to tell you this, Allie, so I’ll just say it. I know it’s going to be hard, but I also know you’re an adult and you realize that things change. People grow. Change is good.” He let his head fall back and addressed the ceiling as he began to wax philosophic. While Allie waited for him to get to the point, assuming he had one, she considered how amazingly good-looking he was, and how mad she was at him, and how much she wanted him back.
This was the great mystery of her life. He was an insecure twit. So why had she fallen for him and why was she still hung up on him? Why did she miss going to dinner with him and lying in bed with him, all the while listening to him talk about himself? Of course, that had been research for the show, but still… As he droned on and she automatically began to edit his speech for broadcast purposes, the possibility dawned on her that what she’d fallen for was the edited Mark King she’d created on the radio, not the real Mark King who sat in front of her now, boring her to tears. And that what she was most mad about was that she’d created him, and then he’d taken her work to another woman.
Mark was still waxing. “So that’s why—”
Allie cut in, more exasperated with herself than with Mark. “Look, I’ve got things to do here, so if you’ll just cut to the chase, I’ll get back to keeping you a hit.” Okay, that was below the belt, but he’d started the fight by sitting in her chair, the louse. Not to mention dumping her for a younger woman.
Mark sat up straight and put his palms flat on her desk. “All right, here it is. You’re not going to be working on my show anymore.”
The room spun. Allie dropped into the remaining chair in the room and said, “What?”
“I’ve sensed a certain hostility since our breakup, and it’s affecting my performance. So Bill and I have decided it’s best to put Lisa in your place since you’ve trained her. That way, the show won’t suffer at all.”
Allie sat stunned.
Mark smiled at her and spread his hands, fait accompli. “Lisa is producing the show, starting now. It’ll be better for all of us.”
“All of us who?” She took a deep breath. “Not all of us me. You have the drive-time show. I’m the drive-time producer. Unless I get the slot while you and Lisa move someplace cozy, this is not better for me.”
“Well, of course I’m not moving.” Mark sat up straighter in the chair. “I’m the talent.”
He was the talent? Then what was she?
“And you’re not fired or anything like that. We do appreciate what you’ve done,” he went on, and Allie jerked her head up, anger finally evicting her panic.
“Of course I’m not fired. Why would I be fired? This makes no sense.”
He plowed on through her anger. “And Bill’s going to give you another show to produce. I made sure of that.”
Good old Mark. Taking care of her. What a pal. She stood up, refraining from killing him where he sat only by Herculean effort. “Well, gee, Mark, thanks for the support and good luck in the future. Now get out of my chair.”
He stood, doing what she’d said as if by instinct. After two years of doing everything she said, it was probably a hard habit to break. He moved toward the door, brimming with patronizing goodwill. “Look, why don’t we go out for a drink? Just to show there are no hard feelings.”
She wanted to scream at him, Of course there are hard feelings, you jerk. If I could, I’d beat you senseless with one right now. But she was too adult for that, and too rattled, so she lied instead. Mark might have kicked her in the teeth, but she still had her incisors.
“Sorry, I’ve already got a date. In fact, I have to go now. Maybe some other time.” She ducked out into the hall in front of him, trying not to cry. That would be a real mistake because she never cried. If she did, people would probably assume somebody had died. And then she’d have to tell them that, tragically, Mark still lived.
Mark followed her, so she speeded up.
Karen yelled “Allie” again as she went past the receptionist’s counter, and this time shoved an envelope at her. “Bill—”
Allie took the envelope without slowing down, flashing the best smile she could under the circumstances, and bolted for the elevator with Mark still in pursuit.
Then Karen called out to him, too, and stopped him, and Allie caught the elevator and escaped to the street.
She’d been fired. She still had a job, but her career was gone with Mark. Allie stuck her chin out and tried to fake defiance—well, big deal, she’d just build another great show—but it was no good. She’d spent two years making Mark’s show a hit, taking surveys, researching topics, devising contests, doing everything she knew to showcase Mark’s strengths. She’d majored in Mark King, and now he’d expelled her.
For a moment, outside the restaurant across from the station, Allie felt a moment of pure fear. What if she couldn’t do it again? What if Mark was right and he was the talent? What if she really was a loser? Nobody coming to her for help, nobody relying on her.
No. She’d find a way back. She gritted her teeth and went into the restaurant.
The hallway divided the restaurant from the bar, a sort of DMZ that separated the eating yuppies from the drinking yuppies. Allie stopped there and opened the envelope Karen had thrust at her. She found the kind of note the station owner was famous for: short, tactless and to the point:
I’m taking you off Mark’s show and giving you to Charles Tenniel, the man taking over for Waldo Hancock. Meet him tomorrow, Tuesday, five o’clock, my office.
Bill
Weird Waldo had the 10:00 to 2:00 a.m. spot. She’d just been demoted from producing the radio equivalent of Oprah to the radio equivalent of an infomercial.
She shoved the note back into the envelope and looked around the hallway. Her roommate Joe who was supposed to meet her wasn’t there to comfort her. The hell with it. She was going home.
She turned around to go back into the street, but outside the door was Mark, greeting people who greeted him back as if he were a celebrity. Which, of course, he was.
And he was going to come into the bar and find her alone after her big talk about a date because Joe was late again. Not that Joe would have been very impressive as a date, but he would have been more impressive than no date at all.
So
