Thirty minutes later, I was walking onto the set, feeling like I was on my way to the electric chair. Clutching my bathrobe in a death grip. Cherise was sitting in a chair over to the side, looking like a thundercloud. I don’t mean frowning, although she was doing that, of course. No, she looked like a thundercloud. As in, blue foam cloud suit, with little drops of silvery rain glittering all over it and hanging by wires. Her legs were covered in thick black tights.
I clapped my hands over my mouth in outright horror. She frowned harder.
“I did notask for this,” I blurted. “God, Cher—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “It’s not your fault.”
“This is awful.”
“Are you wearing my bikini under there?”
“We can quit.”
Cherise managed to look mutinous and defeated at the same time. “And do what? Flip burgers? Internet modeling? I’ve got my pride, you know. I’m a professional.”
Her little, silver suspended raindrops were shivering with indignation.
I swallowed a bubble of laughter and nodded. “Let’s just get through this, okay?”
“I will if you will,” she said, and looked around at the stagehands, who were all staring at us. Probably waiting for me to drop the bathrobe. “You! Assholes! Nobodydrops water on me today unless you want to cash in on that pension, you got me?”
For a little thing, she was ferocious. Nobody answered.
Marvelous Marvin strolled onto the set, toothy as a land shark, and patted his stiff hair. “How do I look, girls?”
“Clark Gable and Valentino all rolled into one,” Cherise said. He beamed at her and moved into his camera position. She glared after him. “They’re dead, asshole.”
“Let me guess. Marvin’s behind this?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Marvin wants to ogle your ass for a while. And besides, he’s pissed at me because I wouldn’t put out.”
Usually, that would have been a joke, but the way she said it… “Seriously?”
She just looked at me.
“You’re going to report him, right?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Like Bikini Girl is going to get any traction on a sexual-harassment issue. Plus, there’s the whole issue of me having tormented the hell out of every HR person to the point where they run when they see me coming.” She eyed me speculatively. “But you, on the other hand…”
“Me?”
“If he snaps your bikini, you’d report him, right?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I’d kill him.” Especially today. Sonot in the mood for this. I wanted to do this, grab my paycheck—which would be the last one, as I planned to be fleeing soon—and get the hell out.
Whatever Cherise was about to say was cut off by the command for silence on the set, and we stood in silence, waiting for our cues.
Hers came first. I watched her lumber out into public view in her thick, lumpy cloud costume. Watched Marvin deliver his lame-ass jokes at her expense. I’d never really looked at it from this side of the camera before. Damn, I had a really pathetic job.
Marvin had set up a water-drop joke. The stagehand didn’t pull the bucket.
Cherise was just that scary, and besides, the stagehands were union. They didn’t give a shit. When Marvin gave the signal, the stagehand up there just grinned, shrugged, and chomped gum.
Cherise gave him a behind-the-back thumbs-up.
Commercial break. The anchors sniped at each other over who had stepped on whose leads. One of them was rewriting an intro for the next piece. Badly.
Marvin speared me with a look and gave me the toothy grin of death.
“Joanne,” he said. “Let’s flash some skin. You’re up.”
I took a deep breath and slid the bathrobe off of my shoulders, then folded it neatly on a chair. The air felt ice-cold on my all-too-exposed skin. I walked over onto the tiny ocean set, which had glittering white sand, a blue-sky backdrop, and an oversized beach ball. Marvin came over to join me. Close up, his tan looked a shade of orange that earthly sun didn’t produce, and the professionally even smile didn’t really disguise the ruthlessness in his eyes.
“Okay, this is the standard beach setup, right? So look pretty and nod.” He gave me an analytical once-over. “Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn around.”
I didn’t want to, but I did it, a fast circle. When I was halfway around, he reached out and stopped me.
“Your tag’s showing,” he said, and slipped his fingers into the back of my bikini bottom.
And snapped it.
And burst out laughing.
I spun, with perfect timing, and yanked his toupee off his head just as the camera operator finished his silent three-two-one countdown. The thing felt damp and dead-animal in my hand. I tossed it offstage, to where Cherise was standing.
She fielded it neatly, waved it like a battle flag, and grinned at me.
Marvin was notamused. The red light went on, and he was still glaring at me for a full two seconds before he pulled himself together enough to bare his teeth at the audience and start the shtick. His hair plugs looked naked and sickeningly experimental under the harsh lights, and some of them were standing up stiff as cornstalks from where I’d pulled the toupee off. We were talking about the possibilities for fun and sun in the next three days, I gathered. Marvin talked in totally unscientific generalities about updrafts and warm fronts, and gave us the assurance that we were over the worst so far as hurricane season went. “And I can personally guarantee that the next weekend is going to be spectacular!”
I stood hipshot in my best cover-model pose, waving and smiling. Presenting myself mostly in profile, because it seemed slightly less revealing than standing full-on or (God forbid) facing away.
Marvin turned to me and gave me the most furiously charming smile I’d ever seen.
I smiled back. Give us pistols at ten paces, and we’d be the picture of friendship.
“Why don’t you read the forecast for the next week, Joanne?” he asked. Which gave me a pleasant little shock of surprise.
“Sure,” I said warmly, and caught, too late, Cherise frantically making a no-go gesture with both hands. Damn. Whatever was coming, I’d just walked right into it.
“It’s on the beach ball,” he said.
The beach ball was behind me.
I froze, stared at him for a second, and then recovered my smile. “Would you get it for me, Marvin?”
He kept smiling. “Sorry. I’m busy.”
The whole point was, of course, to get me to turn my nearly naked ass to the camera. I bit the inside of my cheek and decided to just go for it. “Actually, Marvin, I’d like to give it a shot without the notes.”
Which wasn’t what he expected or wanted to hear. He shot a look at the director, who made a bored keep-moving motion. “Sure.” He rolled his eyes for the benefit of the viewers.
“Well, Marvin, from the radar imaging you showed us earlier, it’s pretty obvious that we have a warming trend moving in from the southwest, moving northeast. I’d say from the satellite time-lapse that we can expect to see some clouds later today with a strong possibility of afternoon showers, and by tomorrow, lows in the mid-eighties and highs topping out around ninety-two degrees. The dew point will be around seventy-four, with humidity of about eighty-four percent, rising through the weekend. We can expect to see some thunderstorms by tomorrow evening, about a seventy-three percent chance. So let’s be careful out there. There should be some major electrical activity associated with these storms, as well as the possibility of rising winds.”
I finished it with a wide smile.
There was a stunned silence. The two anchors and the sports guy looked at each other in open-mouthed amazement; I guess they didn’t think a girl in a bikini could so much as string together a sentence, much less deliver a coherent, scientific analysis.
I hadn’t used even a little bit of Oversight to do it, either. I didn’t think I was capable of that, at the moment. I’d done it all from my own observations last night, and the maps, and the same data Marvin had available at his disposal.