What's a Girl Gotta Do by Sparkle Hayter Read Free Book Online Page A

stick implement available
in kits distributed free at outlets of a popular drugstore chain.
Actually, ANN asked them to send their Popsicle sticks full of shit
to a lab on Long Island to be analyzed at ANN’s expense. It was a
humanitarian gesture that backfired, so to speak. On part one of
the series, Jerry neglected to include the full-screen graphic with
the lab address, which was to be run at the end of each “Cancer
That Dare not Speak” segment, and as a consequence thousands of
people with bowel problems throughout the tri-state area just sent
their shit samples to ANN. Most didn’t even bother with the
Popsicle stick. They just wrapped up a good-sized hunk and slipped
it into a padded envelope.
    Needless to say, the folks in the mailroom
have had it in for Jerry Spurdle ever since.
    After roaming the byzantine hallways of ANN
for forty-five minutes, I finally learned that McGravy was tied up
in meetings with the mandarins. But just as I was about to abandon
giving Jerry his RDA of grief, I saw Turk in the hallway outside
the newsroom.
    “Turk, how are you?” I said. “You should have
been over in Special Reports five minutes ago.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Well, Jerry and I were talking about the ’69
Mets.”
    “Is he still there?”
    “Sure. Why don’t you go over?” I
suggested.
    Turk took off like a man on a mission.
    I felt much better now.
     
    In the afternoon, we had an interview with a
white woman whose husband banked sperm with Empire Semen before he
died of cancer, and who had given birth to an Asian-looking child,
leading her troublesome in-laws to believe she’d had an affair with
an Asian man while her husband’s body was still cooling.
    The sperm bank’s lawyers played up this
theory in order to get it off the hook, and there was no way she
could prove otherwise. She loved the child dearly, she said, but
she wanted her reputation restored and she wanted her late
husband’s sperm found so she could try to have his child as
well.
    After that, we interviewed a doctor who did
genetic typing on another baby conceived from Empire Semen semen.
While he was 99.6 percent sure it was the wrong semen, he couldn’t
prove the woman hadn’t slept with other men.
    With those two in the can, we went back to
the office. We had another such interview to shoot later that week,
along with at least one undercover shoot, before we’d start writing
and assembling the series, so at the moment I was rather
under-employed. The pace could get kind of slow in Special Reports
between interviews. I missed the action of general news.
    I logged into the computer and an E-mail
message blinked in the corner of the screen. I retrieved it. It was
from Eric.
    “Stairs?” it said.
    I laughed. The night before, I’d quizzed him
on his sex life, where he’d done it, in what position, how many
times, etc. Now he was reciprocating. I hesitated before answering,
but then decided it was okay, it was safe to proceed.
    I typed back, “Not yet.” I sent the message
and then typed, “Public transportation?”
    From his computer terminal in a far corner of
the building, he answered, “Yes. Please be more specific.”
    “Subways, buses, trains, planes, helicopters,
elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, the Staten Island Ferry?”
I typed.
    “Yes, yes yes yes no yes no no yes,” he
beeped back. “And the Verrazano-Narrows in a moving vehicle,” he
added.
    Around five o’clock Claire came into my
office and said she wanted to discuss her career strategy in a more
relaxed setting. Greg Browner was thinking of adding
Nightline-esque backgrounder pieces profiling the celebrities on
the show, and that would mean a reporter slot. Claire was dying to
report.
    “Keggers?” I suggested. Keggers, our usual
handout, was cheaper and more convenient than Kafka’s, where she
wanted to meet, and much less pretentious, or at least pretentious
in a different way.
    “Expand your horizons,” Claire said. “You
might even like the place.