What's a Girl Gotta Do

by Sparkle Hayter

  There was nothing on Solange.

  After I read it all, I felt kind of sleazy, but with my curiosity sated, more or less. I shredded everything but the report on Amy. Claire knocked on the door.

  "Do you have a script? Jerry wants you to track soon, and I have to re-edit my six o'clock for the eight so I can't help you."

  "I'm working on it, "I said. I wrote up my story, leaving out the sordid details about the "innocent" people investigated. Jerry changed the script, I changed it back and tracked it, and the piece made the 8 o'clock with two minutes to spare.

  Later, Claire and I went to Tatiana's for omelets and grain to celebrate her breakout reporting and my continued living.

  "Jerry's making himself out to be your savior," Claire said. "He told me when he saw your message he knew you would never meet me at a steakhouse. So he called the cops."

  "I had Amy at my mercy before the cops got there," I said.

  "You know Jerry. He'll milk it forever," she said. "So--you were wrong about Eric."

  "Claire, I just can't trust my instincts," I said. "I'm not fit for dating. I need to take a refresher course first."

  "No, you can trust your instincts, but you don't. You listen to all these other voices. What was your first instinct about Eric, the very first, honestly?"

  "That I really wanted to have sex with him."

  "What was your first instinct about Amy Penny?" "That I really wanted to punch her lights out."

  "And what was your first instinct about Burke?" "That he was full of himself, almost sociopathic, but he was really cute."

  “Right on all counts.”

  "Well, Eric still has some stuff to explain."

  "So do you, my dear."

  "Yeah." That's what happens when you're too close to a story--right smack in the middle of it, in fact, instead of on the outside looking in objectively. You lose sight of things and make mistakes.

  "Have you talked to Burke?"

  "No. I figure I'm one of the last people he wants to hear from right now. You know, when we first split up, I wished horrible things would befall him, but this exceeds my wildest revenge fantasies. It's overkill, it's justice of Greek proportions."

  Poor Burke. he took a medical leave and went to rest at his parent's house in the Hamptons. he always loved the ocean. I was going to call him or send him a card but I really didn't know what to say. This wasn't covered in Vogue's Book of Etiquette. I felt bad for him though. Poor guy. He used to have such good taste in women.

  In the next week, the purse-cam tape ran all over the news, ours and that of other channels. Most of the story is out now. I say most because one never knows when the story is really over. Just recently, I read that archaeologists now believe the Philistines weren't the loutish, barbaric beer-guzzlers their many enemies painted them to be. They were actually cultured and refined wine drinkers with highly evolved arts and technology for their time. This just in: The Philistines were slandered. Forget what you've read. Even back then, there was media bias.

  Our stock price is up too, slightly. Paul Mangecet is rumored to be gunning for a big Hollywood studio, but his Christian no-load mutual fund still hold ten percent of JBS, and the next shareholder meeting promises to be a media circus.

  McGravy made a play to get me back into general news, but Jack Jackson himself vetoed it.

  "She and Jerry are a bang-up team," he said. "And I'm gonna keep them together. If it ain't broke don't fix it."

  Claire, however, is up for a weekend reporting spot, in general news. Kinda like Ruby Keeler--she went in a producer and came out a star.

  Even Louise Bryant has had offers. Get this. Some agent saw my cat on the news, and wants to sign her to an endorsement contract. My cat gets an agent before I do. My cat could make more this year than I. It's a strange world.