Carl Van Marcus
The lady disk-jockey
CHAPTER ONE
"And that's it from Johnny Cash for now, all you out there. Let's look high in the sky and see that Led Zepplin and hear the caarazy sound IT makes… like it'll break your head, bambini… lotsa noise comin' on, like RIGHT NOW AND Wiiiiiiiild!"
The long limbed girl with dark hair and enticing high breasted body took a deep breath and wished she could say what she really felt into the mike. She wanted to curse it but couldn't, because it was her only way of making a decent living. She had long ago managed to completely shut off the horrible sounds that came from the records. If idiots out there in the night wanted to listen to such garbage, she was being paid to keep idiots happy. She continued the spiel, which had been written by some advertising type guy.
"This, in case you aren't tuned in already, is the Sally Sue Bennett show, coming live and direct from the friendliest club in town, Jacques' Trap! They pour honest booze! Right at the corner of Third and Main. So come on down and live a little, until 4 a.m., and then you can go next door and get revived with a great breakfast at Rosie's – they never close, and now let's hear it from the Led Zep!"
Sally Sue released the tuntable, hit switches so she wouldn't have to listen to the terrible sound, spun around in her comfortable swivel chair to Face another mike and console and began to tape a second pitch aimed at the teenagers who would have their transistor radios glued to their ears to hear her sex-laden voice enticing them to drive-ins, malt shops, speed shops and whatever Harold Eaton, owner of the teakettle radio station in the heart of coastal California, could sell time to. She had precisely three minutes and ten seconds to do the tape for – teens, and then had to swing back and put on a fun type rap with customers at the bar, interviewing them off the top of her head, looking for laughs, with a bleep button and five second delay in case they used the wrong words, thinking they were funny.
She knew many people tuned into the Sally Sue Bennett Show in high hopes that she wouldn't hit the bleep button quick enough and some blue language would go out on the airwaves. It sometimes happened. The raven-haired woman in her late 20's was resigned to getting at least one nasty letter a month from the Federal Communications Commission threatening to pull her ticket and put her out of work.
She was also resigned to minor indignities, such as being caressed by half-drunk males as she did her chatter thing along the bar and at the booths of the club with a remote mike, but she had developed an instinct which enabled her to evade wandering fingers almost every time. Sally Sue, was repelled by such contact, even though she was honest enough to admit that her body was interesting and knew she'd have to put up with as much or more if she was dealing plates off her arm in a diner and not making half as much money.
Smoothly she reeled off her pitch to the young set as the tape flowed, thinking all the while, that there might be something to Women's Lib after all – she was the only disc jockey in the country who had to, in effect, do two shows at once through the magic of electronics. And a lot of quick scissoring of her long, shapely legs between a sophisticated Jacque's Trap night club and the Rosie's Pizza Parlor across the parking lot. There she would rap with the teens and put them on the air while a long playing tape was spinning and covering time at the bar.
Sometimes she felt like a electronic tennis ball. But it was a living, and she was getting noticed in the industry because the Sally Sue Bennett Show pulled in listeners and pulled beautifully. The part from the cocktail lounge was live and direct; that from the pizza parlor and other sponsors taped. Her husky voice was on the airwaves some 14 hours a day. In time, this could lead to a big network job, but for the moment, Sally Sue had to sell herself, and it was a personal thing.
At least once a week, she visited every sponsor's place of business, met whatever customers might be there, talked with them, taping the conversations. She collected speeding tickets with an old MGA roadster and a new BMW 750 motorcycle, and used them to paper the walls of her apartment. Sally Sue went about her work with a fury, burying a heartbreak that only she knew about. She supported a collection of animals and birds to ease her loneliness.
A cheetah, a huge Airdale dog, a pigmy owl, a red-tailed hawk, a coral snake, and several cats of uncertain origin. She kept them so well fed they never tried to eat each other.