Room For Doubt, First Chapter--Nancy Silverman
CHAPTER 1
“Excuse me,
miss? Are you a model?”
I was in the cereal aisle at the grocery
store with a box of bran
flakes in my
hand when I heard the voice behind me. It had been years
since I’d
done any modeling, and I wasn’t feeling particularly
glamorous.
My hair was in a ponytail, and I was wearing a pair of
sweatpants
and a ratty old KCHC t-shirt with a cartoon of a dead
chicken on
my chest. The words Radio Road Kill blasted beneath it.
Not exactly
the type of thing one wears to make a good first
impression.
“Not in years.” I laughed and turned
expecting to find a friendly
face.
Grocery stores these days topped bars for places to meet men.
Despite the
fact the line was an obvious come on, I was, unfortunately,
once again
in the market.
Instead, the voice belonged to a
nice-looking, well-built gym-rat
with a
neatly cropped beard. He was about half my age, and worse yet,
he wasn’t
talking to me. Not at all. He had cornered a young girl
directly
behind me; a twenty-something darling dressed in a skin-tight
running outfit that looked like it had been painted onto her body.
I smiled apologetically and turned to read
the label on the cereal
box. Not
that they noticed. Lately, I felt as though I’d become the
invisible
woman.
My name is Carol Childs, I’m a single mom,
and I work as a
reporter for
a talk radio station in Los Angeles. I was one of those
faceless
voices on the airwaves people heard every day. Perhaps that,
and the fact
I’d recently turned forty, explained why
I was beginning to
feel I
blended into the background like wallpaper paste. Few of my
listeners
could identify me, and in LA, women over forty simply
weren’t on
anyone’s radar. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched,
while I
listened to their exchange.
Gym-rat, with muscled arms like
watermelons bulging from
beneath his
t-shirt, pressed a business card into Running-girl’s
hand.
“You ever
want to get into the club, just call.”
Gym-rat was making a big impression.
Running-girl glanced at
the card,
hugged it to her chest like she had just won the lottery, then
kissed
Gym-rat on the cheek as she tucked the card into her sports bra.
At that point, I tossed the cereal box
into my cart and started up
the aisle. I
didn’t give it another thought.
Until the next day.
My bedroom
was still dark when the phone rang. With my head barely
off the
pillow, I squinted at the digital clock next to my bed: 5:55 a.m.
Dammit, Tyler, it’s not even five o’clock. New record. I fumbled for the
bedside
phone—a requirement the station demanded of all its
reporters—and
knocked it to the floor before grabbing the handle.
Nobody else,
not even a phone solicitor, would dare to call before
sunup.
“Please, Tyler, tell me this isn’t
becoming a habit with you.”
“Sorry, Carol. I need you.”
On the other end of the line was my boss,
Tyler Hunt, a twentyone-
year-old
whiz-kid who referred to me as the world’s oldest cub
reporter.
“No,” I begged. “Absolutely not. Please,
Tyler, not today.”
Tomorrow was my son’s birthday, and Tyler
had promised me the
day off to
prepare. On Saturday, Charlie, my youngest, would officially
be sixteen,
and I had planned a big surprise party to celebrate. My
daughter,
Cate, was coming up from San Diego State. My best friend,
Sheri, her
son, Clint, and fourteen members of Charlie’s football team
would all be
here. Plus, my ex, Robert, planned stop by with the wife
and
Charlie’s new step-brother. No way was I about to get caught up in
anything
that would distract me.
“I need you to take this, Carol. There’s a
body up on the
Hollywood
Sign.”
I sat up in bed and pushed the hair out of
my face. He had to be
kidding. The
Hollywood Sign? Recently a prankster had climbed to the
top of the
sign and with tarps and tape lettered it to read Hollyweed. A
pro-cannabis
statement for sure.
“Tyler, if there’s a body on the Hollywood
Sign, it’s got to be a
publicity
stunt. Something one of the studios is doing for a movie
maybe.”
“It’s not a stunt, Carol. The police are
reporting a man’s naked
body hanging
from the sign. It’s for real. I need you up there. Now.
Go!”
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