"Just leave Deke to me." She smiled behind a mist of smoke. "I'll be very sentimental."
She picked up the note cards that Deanna had finished organizing at seven that morning. It was a gesture of dismissal that had Lew shaking his head. Angela's smile widened as she skimmed through the notes. The girl was good, she mused. Very good, very thorough.
Very useful.
Angela took one last contemplative drag on her cigarette before crushing it out in the heavy crystal ashtray on her dressing table. As always, every pot, every brush, every tube was aligned in meticulous order. There was a vase of two dozen red roses, which were brought in fresh every morning, and a small dish of multicolored coated mints that Angela loved.
She thrived on routine, at being able to control her environment, including the people around her. Everyone had their place. She was enjoying making one for Deanna Reynolds.
Some might have thought it odd that a woman approaching forty, a vain woman, would have taken on a younger, lovely woman as a favored apprentice. But Angela had been a pretty woman who with time, experience and illusion had become a beautiful one. And she had no fear of age. Not in a world where it could be so easily combated.
She wanted Deanna behind her because of her looks, because of her talent, because of her youth. Most of all, because power scented power.
And for the very simple reason that she liked the girl.
Oh, she would offer Deanna tidbits of advice, friendly criticism, dollops of praise — and perhaps, in time, a position of some merit. But she had no intention of allowing someone she already sensed as a potential competitor to break free. No one broke free from Angela Perkins.
She had two ex-husbands who had learned that. They hadn't broken free. They had been dispatched.
"Angela?"
"Deanna." Angela flung out a hand in welcome. "I was just thinking about you. Your notes are wonderful. They'll add so much to the show."
"Glad I could help." Deanna lifted a hand to toy with her left earring, a sign of hesitation she'd yet to master. "Angela, I feel awkward asking you this, but my mother is a huge fan of Deke Barrow's."
"And you'd like an autograph."
After a quick, embarrassed smile, Deanna brought out the CD she was holding behind her back. "She'd love it if he could sign this for her."
"You just leave it to me." Angela tapped one perfect, French-manicured nail along the edge of the CD. "And what is your mother's name again, Dee?"
"It's Marilyn. I really appreciate it, Angela."
"Anything I can do for you, sweetie." She waited a beat. Her timing had always been excellent. "Oh, and there is a little favor you could do for me."
"Of course."
"Would you make reservations for dinner for me tonight, at La Fontaine, seven-thirty, for two? I simply don't have time to deal with it myself, and I forgot to tell my secretary to handle it."
"No problem." Deanna pulled a pad out of her pocket to make a note.
"You're a treasure, Deanna." Angela stood then to take a final check of her pale blue suit in a cheval glass. "What do you think of this color? It's not too washed-out, is it?"
Because she knew that Angela fretted over every detail of the show, from research to the proper footwear, Deanna took time for a serious study. The soft drape of the fabric suited Angela's compact, curvy figure beautifully. "Coolly feminine."
The tension in Angela's shoulders unknotted. "Perfect, then. Are you staying for the taping?"
"I can't. I still have copy to write for Midday."
"Oh." The annoyance surfaced, but only briefly. "I hope helping me out hasn't put you behind."
"There are twenty-four hours in the day," Deanna said. "I like to use all of them. Now, I'd better get out of your way."
"'Bye, honey."
Deanna shut the door behind her. Everyone in the building knew that Angela insisted on having the last ten minutes before she took the stage to herself. Everyone assumed she used that time to go over her notes. That was nonsense, of course. She was completely prepared. But she preferred that they think of her brushing up on her information. Or even that they imagine her taking a quick nip from the bottle of brandy she kept in her dressing table.
Not that she would touch the brandy. The need to keep it there, just within reach, terrified as much as it comforted.
She preferred they believe anything, as long as they didn't know the truth.
Angela Perkins spent those last solitary moments before each taping in a trembling cycle of panic. She, a woman who exuded an image of supreme self-
confidence; she, a woman who had interviewed presidents, royalty, murderers and millionaires, succumbed, as she always did, to a vicious, violent attack of stage fright.
Hundreds of hours of therapy had done nothing to alleviate the shuddering, the sweating, the nausea. Helpless against it, she collapsed in her chair, drawing herself in. The mirror reflected her in triplicate, the polished woman, perfectly groomed, immaculately presented. Eyes glazed with the terror of self-discovery.
Angela pressed her hands to her temples and rode out the screaming roller coaster of fear. Today she would slip, and they would hear the backwoods of Arkansas in her voice. They would see the girl who had been unloved and unwanted by a mother who had preferred the flickering images on the pitted screen of the tiny Philco to her own flesh and blood. The girl who had wanted attention so badly, so desperately, she had imagined herself inside that television so that her mother would focus those vague, drunken eyes just once, and look at her.
They would see the girl in the secondhand clothes and ill-fitting shoes who had studied so hard to make average grades.
They would see that she was nothing, no one, a fraud who had bluffed her way into television the same way her father had bluffed his way into an inside straight.
And they would laugh at her.
Or worse, turn her off.
The knock on the door made her flinch. "We're set, Angela."
She took a deep breath, then another. "On my way." Her voice was perfectly normal. She was a master at pretense. For a few seconds longer, she stared at her reflection, watching the panic fade from her own eyes.
She wouldn't fail. She would never be laughed at. She would never be ignored again. And no one would see anything she didn't allow them to see. She rose, walked out of her dressing room, down the corridor.
She had yet to see her guest and continued past the green room without a blink. She never spoke to a guest before the tape was rolling. Her producer was warming up the studio audience. There was a hum of excitement from those fortunate enough to have secured tickets to the taping. Marcie, tottering in four-inch heels, rushed up for a last-minute check on hair and makeup. A researcher passed Angela a few more cards. Angela spoke to neither of them.
When she walked onstage, the hum burst open into a full-throttle cheer.
"Good morning." Angela took her chair and let the applause wash over her while she was miked. "I hope everyone's ready for a great show." She scanned the audience as she spoke and was pleased with the demographics. It was a good mix of age, sex and race — an important visual for the camera pans. "Anyone here a Deke Barrow fan?"
She laughed heartily at the next round of applause. "Me too," she said, though she detested country music in any form. "I'd say we're all in for a treat."
She nodded, settled back, legs crossed, hands folded over the arm of her chair. The red light on the camera blinked on. The intro music swung jazzily through the air.
""Lost Tms," "That Green-Eyed