Waking Up in Vegas(5)

I ran into Milo in the hall when I went to get the final traffic report. He looked happier than I’d ever seen him in my booth. He said The Morning Crew was a riot, and that they kept forgetting to play music because they were so busy talking and taking calls.

It’s draining to be entertaining all by yourself.

When I got off the air, I made a stab at talking to BK about my new partner. He was in a sales meeting. I decided to wait, and since I was fighting to stay awake, headed to the KLVR booth for some decent coffee. And to mess with Scott, who follows me on air with the ten-to-three.

Scott’s our music director, and it’s like some industry rule that all radio station music directors work the midday slot so they can take the all-request lunch-hour calls. This effectively cuts their work in half. The listeners tell the guy what songs they want to hear and he makes note of the requests. Sprinkle in enough of the new releases, and ta-da: you have a station’s playlist. All you really need in order to be a good music director is a great memory and legible handwriting.

Scott wasn’t in the booth when I got there, and Elton John’s ‘Funeral For a Friend’ was playing. Seven-minute songs like this one were primarily designed for DJs to go to the can, and I was sure that’s where he was.

I poured the last of his potful into my mug and doctored it up just right. He still wasn’t back. So I fucked with the stack of promo sheets so they were more messed up than when I got them.

Me and my cup of awake juice went back upstairs.

Only to be told that the boss had exited the meeting and started another.

I guzzled the rest of my coffee and brought the mug with me to my car. Not because I was trying to avoid the booth where Scott was griping about his paperwork—I could hear him all the way out in the lobby—but because that java cup had some serious funk and needed a good sanitizing run through the dishwasher.

There were still four days left to find out who the boss was sticking me with.



Tuesday and Wednesday were easier (the bored night jock cut up all the promos and taped them onto two sheets of paper), but I still could not get in to see Bill Kalani. If I thought he saw me as more than the station’s bottomless ATM machine (or even had a vague idea what I looked like), I’d seriously wonder if he was avoiding me on purpose. So I left a note with his secretary mentioning that it would be nice to at least know my new co-host’s name, so I would let in the right guy on Monday morning.

The clubs reopened for night-time business on Wednesdays, and Lita knew my routine. She got all my attention for the first half of the week, and the clubs and the ladies got the other half. She only whined a little when I was leaving.

As my car practically autopiloted toward the neon skyline, I felt a bite of guilt at leaving her alone again. Tomorrow, I’d skip the clubs (Thursdays are hit-or-miss, anyway) and take her to the park to play Frisbee before the sun went down.

Now that my conscience was satisfied, it was time for the rest of me to get that way. Wednesdays were always like this… three days of being Mr. Homebody gave me a bad case of blueballs and I was horny as all fuck. I needed to find a soft and welcoming body to take it out on. Especially since I’d decided to be a monk tomorrow.

The Bourbon Room at the Venetian had just the dirty blonde I was looking for.



Four a.m., and I’m on my way home. I need to shower off her overly-sweet perfume and down a pot of coffee before it’s time to wake up the city.



When I got to work, there was a note with a name on it taped to the booth door. Jensen MacKenzie was all it said. I hoped that was the name of my new partner in crime and not the highbrow law firm the station uses. I’d hate to think that I’m, for some reason, in deep shit.

I used up the spare moments during my shift thinking up new names for the morning show. Tack and Jensen sounded too much like an outdoor outfitter, and Morgan and MacKenzie is not only a mouthful, it made me think of an accounting firm. Too bad my new partner isn’t a Jennifer MacKenzie… Tack and Jen has a nice rhythm.

And though BK may be corporate-brained, he’s not stupid. He would never hire a woman to work on my show. That’d be like dumping goldfish in a tank full of piranhas.

Thinking up names for our morning show should make for a nice ice-breaker when this Jensen MacKenzie arrives on Monday morning. I hoped the whole last-name-for-a-first-name thing has made him cool and funny. I don’t want to spend five mornings a week with a dick.



I got up a little earlier than usual, so Lita and I could spend some good quality time at the park. The poor dog must have missed running around; she was so wild and excited that she ran right into a brunette who was out for a sunset walk. Lita smashed the poor girl’s pedometer.