Page 23 of Good Days Bad Days

“You gonna make her drag you?” Tony looks at me as though something’s wrong with me.

“No, no. I . . . I would love to.” I offer Martha my arm as we make our way onto the dance floor. I try to keep my feet in time with the beat, enjoying the playful rhythm of the pianist.

Even the liberal strain of improvised jazz gives the musician no more than eighty-eight keys on the piano, twenty-four musical keys, three or four instruments playing together in an attempt to make something not only good but also worthwhile.

In jazz there are rules and then freedom within those rules.

But not so with the rest of life. Don’t murder, but go to war.

Don’t lust, but don’t be a prude. Protect women, but also hunt them.

Money isn’t everything, only it absolutely is.

Martha knows how to dance, and though as a man I should be the one leading, I follow her guiding movements.

Even in her heels, her head reaches no higher than my chest, and my long, gangly arms awkwardly encircle her waist. She’s not shaped like the women who work here, but she has a womanliness to her figure, pliable and enticing, especially when she leans in closer to whisper in my ear.

“That man has hands like an octopus. My lord.”

“Are you kidding me?” I whip around, my mind flooded with hot words heated not only by Tony’s brazen womanizing but also by what I saw happen to the girl I’m fairly sure is Betty.

“Shhh. It’s OK,” Martha says, regaining my attention, her lightly boozy breath caressing my neck.

“Not sure what kind of business will get done here tonight. It’s all so .

. . distracting.” She gestures to the dolled-up women in the room.

“They seem to forget I’m not one of these laughably desperate girls, shaking my ass for attention. But I’m not. I’m a producer, dammit.”

I think of Betty, that man’s hand, how she looked like a wild creature stuck in a trap rather than a woman in a costume. But Betty isn’t desperate, or at least she doesn’t seem to be when I watch her through the camera’s lens at work.

Martha can’t know about Betty. She already despises our daytime show, and to find out our host is a Playboy Bunny . . . I’m not sure she’d recover from it. Does Hollinger know? Is that why we came here tonight?

I check the rear table again and see the outline of a Bunny. She’s not standing anywhere as close to the old man as before, a wise decision no doubt. But is it Betty?

“You OK?” Martha checks my line of focus. The Bunny turns her head, laughing at something one of the men at the table said.

It’s not her. It’s not Betty. Was the whole thing a trick of the shadows and scotch?

Then the velvet curtain to the kitchen sways for a moment before a redheaded Bunny explodes out from behind it. A form stands in the darkness, blond, wearing pink satin. Then, the figure is gone.

Martha glares in the redheaded Bunny’s direction, noticing my preoccupation with the back of the room.

“Ugh. Men.” She huffs and rolls her eyes, and as the song ends, she rushes back to her seat, where she gulps down a full glass of freshly poured champagne.

The rest of the night she has no interest in talking to me. The men at either side of us have swapped positions, and we both dive into the same conversations we had earlier. Where are you from? What show are you working on? Oh, the cooking one? That little blond girl—she’s great.

As the night rolls on and Martha starts to slouch beside me, the room blurs with each drink. And it becomes clear—and no one, not even Martha can deny it—that Betty is our star. She’s the reason WQRX is making a dime. She’s the pure, charming model of what a woman should be like.

And as Mark and I escort Martha to her room, keeping her upright as she trips up the wide-set stairs, my arm around her waist for the second time this night, she stares up at me while Mark works her lock.

“We have to give them what they want, don’t we?”

“Yeah, I think we do,” I say, hoping she remembers at least some of what she’s saying in the morning because Martha has to bury her resentment toward Betty if we’re going to find a way to move forward.

“Damn it,” she says, her green eyes glistening from a gathering of tears. A drop escapes and slides down her cheek. I catch it with my fingertips and brush it away, wishing I could do the same for all of the problems with our show—her show.

“Got it,” Mark says as the door pops open.

I attempt to help Martha over the threshold, but she pats my chest, slips her feet out of her dressy shoes, and picks them up. Stepping into her room, she retrieves her key from Mark, thanks us both, and promptly slams the door in our faces.

“Well, that wasn’t exactly how I thought the night would go,” Mark says, blinking rapidly, staring at the closed door.

“Me either,” I say, unsure if any good came from sharing a table with those men tonight.

As we get to the end of the hallway, Mark hesitates, checking his watch. “Wanna go to a strip club? I know some of the girls in town. They’d go bananas over you.”

“Nah, I’m gonna crash,” I say, following the number signs in the direction of our room. “Don’t drive, though. They have a disco downstairs.”

“Yeah, full of couples and old men and Bunnies who can’t even say whether they’re married or not. No thank you.” Mark trails me to our room. I let myself in and he reminds me of his earlier warning. “And if I come home with someone tonight, you’re sleeping in the bathtub.”

“I’m gonna be asleep, so good luck making me.” I chuckle at the idea of Mark trying to carry all six feet five inches of me to the bathroom as he stumbles off down the hall, so clearly drunk that I’m sure the valet will refuse to get his car.

Inside, the smell of aftershave still lingers in the air. I slip out of my suit, hanging each piece carefully so it’ll be presentable for our meetings tomorrow.

In bed at long last, my mind returns to Betty.

Could that woman have been her? Does our wholesome homemaker have a secret life?

If it’s her, do I keep my mouth shut? It’s not like the side job gets in the way of her work at the station.

But then again—what happens when the housewives and young mothers and matronly grandmothers find out their respected figure of wholesome womanhood is a Playboy Bunny?

What happens when Martha finds out, or Hollinger or Quinton Florence?

Nothing good, that’s for sure.