by Bud Connell
The name of the song was Naval Girl, about a chick on the sea working for Uncle Sam. Now, you’d suspect I’d be able to come up with some kind of promotion that would get a no-count program director to pay attention and put the song on his lousy station. Well, I didn’t disappoint myself. I didn’t get the reputation of Joe Oaks the Promo King for nothing. The answer was in my head before I stopped at McDonald’s to take a leak.
The idea was simple, and it would bail me out of what could have been a jam-and-a-half, and it would keep me on my Florida moving schedule.
I dialed Katya’s private number, the one that rang her closet. Yeah, she actually had a phone mounted in her walk-in closet. It looked like a frickin’ clothing store and she said she spent more time in that closet and in her attached bathroom than anywhere else, and that the calls she missed were always transferred to her cell phone. Well, la-di-dah. When she told me that, I thought she had too much time on her hands. But if that’s what it took to look that good, it was okay with me.
“Hello-oh.” Her accent knocked me over every time I heard it. She could offer me anything and I’d buy.
“Katya, it’s Joe. I got an odd favor to ask. Can you talk?”
“Sure. By the way, last night was super-fragilistic-ex-p, ex-p–whatever. I can barely walk.”
“Would you loan me your mink coat?”
“Are you crazy? Whatever for?”
“A promotion. I need it for the afternoon.”
“–I dunno. And it’s a sable. Tell me more.”
I couldn’t tell her I was gonna put a naked hooker from the Carousel in her drop-dead coat. But if she’d loan me the rag, I’d save at least a hundred on a rental.
“I’m hiring a model to wear it into a program director’s office, we close the door, she opens her mink coat and voilà, she’s wearin’ nothing but a CD called Naval Girl, taped to her belly. Whaddya think about that?”
“Cute, but it’s a sable, Joe.” She sounded genuinely impatient, almost angry. “Why don’t you hire me? I used to be a model, you know. A good one.”
Well, doodle me, I hadn’t thought.
“How much would you charge?”
“For you? Nothing. My husbahn writes me checks.”
I ran a brain tally. I’d save two hundred plus the hundred coat rental. Am I a good promoter or what? Charge fifteen hundred for a low-cost promotion and get three hundred in expenses free. All profit. The Promo King strikes again.
“You’re on. I’ll pick you up at ten in the morning and we’ll drive up to Palm Beach.” She was game for everything. “Katya, did anyone ever tell you you’re one helluva woman?”
“Yeah, several times.”
I could believe that. “Well, they beat me to it,” and they probably beat me to a few other things.
“Oh, Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“This morning one was a little smaller than the other.”
“One what? What do you mean?”
“I think you mashed me too hard lahst night.”
10 – Why Don’t You Rub It Off?
She met me in the 7777 garage by the elevators, she said, to “avoid the doorman”. Safe and smart move. And there she was in her full-length mink glory; make that sable from head to toe. I couldn’t help wondering if she was already naked as a hairless Chihuahua underneath all that fur. And, I’d had the Toyota all washed and vacuumed and it looked like a new dime.
“I’m not riding up there in that piece of… in that thing!”
“Why not, I’m on expenses.”
“I don’t care. I’ve never been in a Toy-yoder.”
“Toyota.”
“Whatever.”
“We’ll take the Bentley.” She pointed over to the far corner where a cobalt blue bomb sat ready to be detonated with an ignition key. A queen’s ride-in-waiting.
“Sure, if it makes you happy.”
I parked my car in a guest spot and walked my lady toward her carriage.
“You’re driving, aren’t you?” I was sure she wouldn’t ask me to get behind the wheel.
“Me? No, crazy? Me drive when there’s a man around? I don’t drive right-handed anyway.”
“Well, I’m right-handed. What does being right-handed have to do with driving?”
“The steering wheel, Joe. It’s on the right side, like in England.”
I stopped and stared at the inside of the sedan and I started to feel detached at the brain. Crap, right-hand drive. “Let’s take another car.”
“Mercedes is at the airport. Darragh, my husbahn took it.”
“Let’s go in the Toyota.”
“I won’t ride in that… thing.”
I took a deep breath and reoriented myself. I had to get to Palm Beach or I was gonna lose Kodi as a client.
What the hell, I might never get another chance to drive a Bentley with European plates; but if the program director sees it, his price to play the song would go as high as a giraffe’s nuts.
I helped her in, fired it up, screwed around with the seatbelt and pulled out onto Collins. Before I knew it, I was doing 15 in a 30 and scared shitless. Cars were passing me right and left and I felt like I was on another planet. When I turned onto the causeway I moved it up to 25 in a 60, and by the time I got up to speed on the I-95, I registered a cool 40. People were mad, horns blowing, fists shaking out their windows, and they were screaming four and seven-letter words at us when they sailed past.
Katya watched me with her mouth open. “Why don’t you go faster? This car has 160 on the speedometer.”
I didn’t answer. I just tried to concentrate and gripped the steering wheel tighter until my hands turned white. It was like being made to play the piano with your feet. I held my breath and prayed.
“Are you dressed under that fur?”
“SABLE. I’m undressed, that’s what you want. Isn’t that what you said you wanted, nothing but the coat?”
“Right. Sorry.” Crap. Keeping the car in the lane was hard, like having to write with your foot that never held a pen.
She continued to stare and screwed up her mouth. “Are your scared of this car? Are you holding your breath? –Talk to me!”
“I gotta concentrate.”
+++
It was white knuckle time and questions all the way up the I-95 and into the parking lot of the green stucco radio station with the little transmitter stick in the back on the outskirts of West Palm.
“What is that?” She pointed.
“It’s a radio station.”
“You’re kidding? I got nude for that?”
I scratched around in my jacket pocket and pulled out a roll of two-sided tape and a jewel case. I removed the CD and handed it over to Katya.
“Here, tape this to your abdomen around your navel. Make sure it won’t fall off.”
“I’m gonna need help. I can’t see below my, you know. I can’t even see my toes unless I lean over.”
I had to smile at that one.
“Let’s get in the back seat.” So we did. And in opening and closing all four doors of a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car we attracted the attention of a trio of pimple-faced young studs coming out of the radio station wagging CDs they’d probably won. They invaded the Bentley with openmouthed stares and I waved ‘em off while trying to tape the piece of plastic called Naval Girl to the tanned belly of a gorgeous nude who’d doused herself in body lotion an hour before, but they got closer and kept looking.
“The tape won’t stick, dammit. You’re too oily– and you smell like nuts.”
“Aloe vera and almond oil. It’s not my fault I have dry skin.”
“Right now you have greasy skin. It won’t stick.”
She reached in her purse and drew out a wad of tissues. “Here, rub it off.”
“Why don’t you rub it off?”
“I cahn’t see.”
God help me. I looked down and began to polish off the oil and cream from her bronze and beautiful skin and she started to moan. I was
in frickin’ trouble. I got a window full of teenagers peering in, and a hottie-in-heat, nude, in the backseat of a car that attracts more attention than a Michael Jackson trial. I was in deep trouble.
“Oh-hh-h, Joe!”
“Hold still.”
“Oh—ohhhh. Oh-h-h-hhhhh, oh, Joe.”
I got enough oil off and the tape finally grabbed on and held. Perfect. And, guess what showed through the hole in the CD, Mrs. Belly Button herself. Can you believe it?
I pushed the door open, flailed my arms and shooed at the little wiseasses. They scattered, jeering and pointing and panting like a herd of thirsty cocker spaniels.
“Help me out.” Katya wrestled the mink back on. “Who are they?”
“Don’t look at ‘em, don’t talk to ‘em. They’re just kids.”
I pulled her out of the car and she overlapped the fur coat all the way down, covering up her assets; and we advanced into target territory, her taking small model steps to keep the coat from flopping open. I gotta admit, Katya looked good and she fit the bill for this gig.
“I’ll get your silly CD played,” she said.
I had no doubt.
11 – Playing It Just for Him
So we’re standing outside the program director’s office and I make the appropriate introductions.
“This is the famous European model, Katya.” She nodded and smiled, gripping her mink up tight and close to her ample rack and concealing the glory beneath. “And this, Katya, is Howie Spins, the famous program director.” Famous, like my ass.
“He’s little, but he’s cute.” Katya ran her designer fingernail down his cheek.
Howie shivered and grinned ear to ear and flashed his set of ultra-whitened nipple-biters. I gotta admit Howie was a handsome little stud, all tan and blond and living on Florida sunshine.
“I’ll play it just for him, Joe.” Katya looked at me and pointed to the floor. “Wait for me here.”
Arf, arf. She just commanded me like a dog and she was taking charge of the situation, which made me quite a bit nervous.
“Who’s got the disk?” Howie looked at Katya and back at me.
I opened my mouth, but Katya filled in. “You’ll see.”
“Huh?”
She pulled Howie by the hand and kicked the door closed with the toe of her ultra-pointy stiletto leaving me standing in the hall.
Two minutes stretched to ten and the music coming out of Howie’s office was so loud I couldn’t hear what was going on, but suddenly I didn’t hear any talking and I had the feeling they weren’t dancing.
Just then, the station manager, a bulky guy with a shiny dome growing through a half-circle of brown hair came up behind me.
“What the hell is going on here?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. He jiggled the doorknob and it was locked. So he reached in his pocket, pulled out a batch of keys and jammed the right one into the knob and twisted, pushing the door wide open all in one move.
Crap! My life was over. There was Howie’s pants in a cloth puddle on the floor, and Katya, the bronze goddess, in her mink, sable, whatever, on her knees with Howie’s shiny purple throbber in her hand. They both looked like they had seen the Second Coming, I’m certain they’d seen the first.
The general manager, Bob Burley, fired Howie on the spot and ordered Katya and me out of the station. All personnel had poured out of the offices and control room to see the source of the racket with Howie screaming at me for costing him his job.
“It’s your fault, Joe Oaks. It’s all your fuckin’ fault!” It was the last thing I heard in our retreat through the exit as the screen door slammed behind us.
We got in the car and I was so rattled I couldn’t drive, so I handed her the keys and she pushed ‘em back at me.
Katya shook her head. “No, I’m too nervous. Besides he’ll kill me if I scratch it.
“Geeze, Katya, you didn’t have to do him!”
“It’s your fault, you got me all worked up.”
I shoved the key in the ignition and turned it, and the Bentley purred awake. The only sound in the car’s cabin was the ticking from the dashboard clock and the fuse from the bomb called my life that would go off when I called Kodi Graws and told him what happened with Naval Girl. I could kiss off his two grand a month and the sweet expense account along with my move to Miami. Well, frick-a-doodle-do.
Katya sat silent and pouted and I pulled onto I-95 South. I ticked down what I’d say to Kodi and got lost in rehearsing what would be my final statement before I was sure Kodi pronounced the death sentence on me and my Florida plan.
I forgot I was driving from the right side and I let the big blue Bentley drift too far left and into the fast lane. That’s when I heard the horn and Katya’s one long squeal. A tag-team of blue-hairs on their way to Miami in a frickin’ Cadillac Escalade and Mr. Cahoone’s Bentley did a one-eighty on the Interstate like paired ice-skaters. Both cars stopped cold, dead, and blocking traffic for the better part of two hours.
Everybody was wearing seatbelts and nobody got hurt. Thank God, just paint scrapes and screeching brakes and a considerable set of dents, and lots of the wrong kind of attention.
Drivers and cops and mechanics from fire engines and police cars and wreckers, examined all occupants and vehicles, measured skids, wrote reports and pulled the two vehicles apart while I-95 traffic crawled along and every son-of-a-bitch going and coming taking a long look.
My life as I knew it, was over.
But Katya was a big hit, especially when the TV cameras rolled. She opened the mink and flashed for Channel 5 News. Can you believe it?
When the reports were wrapped and the wreckers started loading the two cars, the police transported the blue-hairs back toward West Palm and I pulled out my cell and called a cab to take us back to Miami Beach. A Yellow was only blocks away and picked us up in a New York minute. We sat in the back seat staring straight ahead.
“Did you have to show your beaver for the Six O’clock News for Christ’s sake?”
“It’s a sable.”
“Sable! I didn’t mean the coat.”
She shot me a blank. “He’s going to divorce me and I’ll need a career.”
“As what?”
“I was once a model, you know. A good one.”
The cops had my name and license number and I was as good as dead when her old man got home. I was also a dumbass. It wasn’t Katya’s fault. I should’ve never involved her.
“Katya?”
“Yeah, what?”
“When’s he coming back?”
“Who?”
“Your husband!”
“Oh. Two weeks now. He called and said he had to stay in Europe, in Colombia another few days.”
“Colombia? Colombia’s not in Europe. It’s South America.”
“It is?”
Maybe, just maybe. I didn’t know exactly how I’d do it, but I would. “Tell you what. I’ll get the Bentley repaired, and also fix the old ladies’ Cadillac. That way your husband will never know.”
“Can you do that?”
“I can try.” I had a little stash of cash. “Hell, it’s the right thing to do,” and that little bit of bravado committed my stash to an early death.
Katya looked relieved and she gave me a big kiss on the cheek. I deserved worse.
12 – My Beans on the Floor
We unloaded at 7777 and I got Katya situated upstairs.
I retrieved the Toyota and drove the long block back toward the hotel, thinking all the way. I parked, fished out my cell phone and rang Beverly Hills. Kodi didn’t even give me a hello.
“You’re off the freakin’ payroll, fucker.”
“Lemme tell you what happened.”
“Save it. I already heard.”
“Who told you?”
“Howie Spins. He said he was calling Billboard and spreading the word that you’re a freakin’ spaz.”
“That’s not fair. It just got a little out of control.”
“A little, my ass. You’re out, Joe Oaks. Goodbye!”
There you go, a ten-year relationship with a guy I more than half-liked, which is above average for the music business. Beans on the table had just been scraped off on the floor. My plans were down the tube.
Miracle of miracles. I’m sitting there holding the phone paralyzed, and Kodi is still on the line.
“Joe? –Joe, tell you what. You owe me; you owe me, fucker. You get Naval Girl on the Miami station and I’ll keep you on, but this one’s a freebee, okay? Okay, Joe?”
I caught a breath. “Yeah, good. Good, Kodi. Freebee.”
“And no more nudes who give head in the station, okay?”
“Okay, okay, Kodi. Yeah. Thanks, really.” I was stunned. He wasn’t a bad guy after all. But, and it was a really big but. The only things that would get Naval Girl on would be speed dust and happy weed, and plenty of it—a lot more than I’d given the needy bastards earlier in the week. I’d have to lean on Ramon, and for this one, I was not being reimbursed. Screw me.
13 – A Deeep, Deeep Metalico
First on the Saturday morning hot-list was have the Bentley delivered to a first-rate body shop. I couldn’t go to the Rolls dealer because they knew the car and its owner, and I didn’t want Cahoone to kill me in my sleep or toss me into an alley with a tire tool shoved up my ass. Besides, the Rolls dealer would charge a frickin’ fortune. I called Ramon.
“Precisely the Best Body & Paint. All they do is imports. They take care of my sweet li’l Porsche.” Ramon said Emilio and Carlos ran the lowest-priced shop in town for expensive foreign cars.
Two hours later I’m in the shop and the two brothers, a couple of Cuban exilitos, walked around the cobalt blue Bentley shaking their heads and saying, “Too bahd, tough break, m-mmm-mm. Too bahd––too, too bahd. And look at theese wahn over heeere.”
“Well, how much? How much to make it like new again?”
“Wow, señor, too bahd. It’s a deeep, deeep metalico.”
“Can you give me an estimate, or what?”
One of the guys nodded and gave me a patience please two-handed gesture, and the other began to write on a clipboard while they gabbled in Spanish and pointed, first at a dent or scrape on the car, and then at a spot on the paper secured by a metal clip.
