Waking Up in Vegas

Chapter 1




*Life is Beautiful*



Tap. Tap. Tappatappatappatap.



“Will you stop doing that?” Jesus. And of course he couldn’t hear me, because Milo insisted on putting his headphones over both ears instead of leaving one ear open like the rest of the radio world.

Welcome to my life. I’m the morning-drive DJ at Las Vegas’ number one rock station, KLVR. And I’m going to dump a pot of hot coffee on my co-host’s lap if he doesn’t stop the goddamn bongo act. It would be a public service, actually.

Maybe next music break. The only java I had at hand was the dark-roasted espresso grind we keep in the studio and I don’t want to waste it on his crotch.

I am completely and categorically heterosexual, by the way. I just happen to respect the coffee.

Meet my morning-drive partner, Emilio ‘Milo’ Schmidt. If my name was Emilio, I’d use a nickname, too. Although Milo’s not much better.

And his daily constant tapping on the counter was not only driving me batshit, today he was even doing it while the mics were open. Listeners all over Las Vegas probably thought they had flat tires with the way he was thumping.

I threw my pen at his head.

Ha!

“What in the Sam Hill was that for?”

And there’s reason number two why he drives me up the wall: The guy never swears. It’s unnatural.

I aimed a finger at his side of the counter and said, “Your drumming is coming through the microphones. Fucking stop.”

He opened his mouth—most likely to admonish me for the cursing—as I slid the traffic report over to him. “You’re up. In three, two, one.” I counted down with my fingers as I made his mic hot, in order to cut off his retort. He’d slid his headphones down after my pen assault, and was now scrambling to get them at least half on. It was Friday morning, and that meant the commuters were already brain-dead thinking about their upcoming weekend. The crash-dummy list was as long as it was every Friday.

I took over when he was done, reading the list of weekend shows our station was sponsoring. As I was wrapping it up, the Big Kahuna stuck his head into the booth, silently waving at Milo to follow him.

The boss looked like a pissed-off bulldog (his usual face, actually), and I was just happy that I wasn’t the one he wanted to bark at. Milo nodded and thumbed off his mic, then got up to follow him…

…and was promptly yanked backwards by the headphone cord. Dumbass forgot to take off his cans. It was hard not to laugh on-air. Once I heard the song start, I turned off my own mic.

Then I laughed.



Poor bastard. I wonder who he pissed off that he was forced to go upstairs to get chewed on. Bill Kalani (aka the aforementioned Big Kahuna) is Cirrus Radio’s local head honcho and he rarely bothered with us peons in the booths. Milo had to have fucked up big time.

Despite being annoyed with Milo in general, I like the guy well enough to be his good buddy when he comes back downstairs and needs to gripe. Or to pack his stuff into a box.

I queued up a couple more songs, ignored the request line, and found the promo copy sheet for the weekend. Unless I felt like actually showing my face in this building during the next two days, I needed to hustle my ass to the production room to pre-record my weekend ‘shifts.’

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Nobody is ever actually in a radio station on weekends unless there’s a call-in contest, a celebrity interview, or a remote broadcast at some car dealer. Sometimes, jocks aren’t even in the station for their weekday shifts. The building could be totally vacant except for the executives, the receptionist, and the guy who fills the vending machine. And you’d never know.

The exceptions are during the weekday morning and evening drive times. Those of us who pull those slots are always in the building. And I gotta tell you, the morning drive time crews truly love their cities to get up at crazy-thirty so they can be coherent by six a.m.

And I am admittedly Vegas’ biggest fan.

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but The LV. The people are friendly, the women are friendlier, and there’s always something exciting happening. Forget New York as the City That Never Sleeps. In Las Vegas, if you’ve been in a casino for a while, you could easily lose track of the real world. And never mind looking outside to check… The Strip is so brightly lit that ducking out the front doors won’t tell you if it’s day or night, either.

I’m rambling again. Can’t help myself, though. Vegas is my mistress, the only one who’s always been there. I grew up here, and it’s perfect.

Which makes me wonder why Bryce, the morning guy at our sister station The Pulse, has decided to leave. For Salt Lake City, of all godforsaken places. It snows there, it’s full of Mormons who are anti-everything-fun, and, most importantly, the market is smaller. It’s a step down, for chrissakes. He’s got a week to go. I haven’t heard anything yet about his replacement.