“What I’m saying, Victoria, is that we’re in a situation now where we’re buying too much energy from foreign dictatorships. We ought to be producing a lot more energy here at home.”
While he spoke, Jim eyed one of the two screens in front of him. One displayed the show schedule. It was also hooked up to the Internet so he could look up points on the fly. The other screen showed listeners holding for their chance to talk. On it, Chris, the call screener, had listed the name, town, and point of view of each caller. Three people were still on the list, meaning they would hold over the upcoming break. As Jim spoke, he saw a fourth caller and then a fifth join the queue.
“What we need is to open up the coast to drilling, and open up the Rocky Mountains for shale oil. The Rocky Mountains have three times the amount of oil that the Saudis have in their entire reserve. And yet it’s currently illegal for Americans to get oil from American territory in the Atlantic, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, northern Alaska. We should have been drilling in ANWR fifteen, twenty years ago. I mean, it’s insane.”
“What about the wilderness?” Victoria said. “What about the caribou?”
“If the caribou don’t like it, we’ll relocate them.”
Victoria’s mouth started to form an answer, but it was time for the top of the hour break, and he pointed at the clock and then made a motion with his hands like he was snapping a stick.
Jim said, “And you’ve been listening to The Hand of Fate. We’re going to take a quick break for a news, traffic, and weather update. But before we go, I want to read you the email from The Nut of the Day: ‘Jim—you are a fat, ugly, liar who resembles the hind-end of a poodle. Signed, Mickey Mouse.’”
He laughed. “Fat? Maybe. Ugly? Well, I can’t help that. I can’t even help the hind-end of a poodle business, although I think that’s going a bit far. But a liar? No, my friend, that’s one thing I am not. Come on, all you listeners who just tune in because you can’t stand me, you are going to have to get a little more creative than that if you want to win the NOD award. And for the rest of you, when we come back, we’ll be opening up the lines for more of your calls.” He pushed back the mike on its black telescoping arm.
As the first notes of the newscast jingle sounded in his padded black headphones, he pulled them down around his neck. He and Victoria now had six minutes to themselves, before the second and final hour of The Hand of Fate was broadcast.
“I’m going to get some tea,” Victoria said without meeting his eyes. Jim nodded. In the last week, there had been a strained civility between them when they were off mike. On air, though, they still had chemistry. Even if lately it had been the kind of chemistry you got when you mixed together the wrong chemicals in your junior scientist kit.
Everything was different on air. Jim was more indignant and mocking than he ever was in real life. Victoria made vaguely dirty jokes that she wouldn’t tolerate hearing off mike. And on air, they usually got along great, bantering and feeding each other lines.
Victoria grabbed her mug and stood up. Even though she was half-Japanese, Victoria was five foot ten, with legs that went on forever. “Oh, this was in my box this morning, but it’s really yours,” she said, handing him a padded envelope from a publisher.
When she pushed open the heavy door to the screening room, the weather strip on the bottom made a sucking sound. For a minute, Jim could hear Chris talking to Willow and Aaron in the screener’s booth. Then the door closed with a snick—there were magnets on the door and frame—and Jim was left in the silent bubble of the radio studio. The walls and ceiling were covered with blue textured soundproofing material that resembled the loop side of Velcro.
Jim grabbed the first piece of mail from his inbox and slit it with a letter opener. He scanned the note inside. Dad’s seventy-fifth birthday, would love to have a signed photo, yada yada.
Happy Birthday, Larry! he scrawled on a black and white head shot he pulled from dozens kept in a file folder. Your friend, Jim Fate. Paper clipping the envelope and letter to the photo, he put them off to the side for Willow to deal with. Three more photo requests, each of which took about twenty seconds to deal with. Jim had signed his name so many times in the last couple of years that it should have been routine, but he still got a secret thrill each time he did it.