I foraged between the front seats for a girls’ small, black tank top, emblazoned with the station logo, and the stack produced one without much effort.
“Here you go,” I offered as I handed her the shirt.
She accepted it with a, “Thanks,” before stuffing it between her legs and reaching for the bottom hem of the shirt she was wearing. She pulled the cotton up from her torso, and once the material had cleared her bra (her front-clasp, black lace bra), it caught for a few moments on the rhinestone encrusted leather collar I had somehow failed to notice, which matched the rhinestone encrusted leather cuffs I had also, somehow, failed to notice. With her arms caught over her head, and her view obstructed by the shirt that was stammering her escape attempt, I took time to observe her firm, toned torso. She was quite athletic. I was even able to make out the faint trace of a six-pack, though just barely, and I thought to myself, Holy shit, this chick is serious, even as I pictured myself licking honey liquor from her perky breasts. My erection grew harder.
Once she’d freed herself from the pink mess, she offered the crumpled shirt to me. I snapped my gaze from her body up to her face to find her looking me in the eye, and as if this sort of thing was done all the time, she asked, “Would you hold this for me?”
I chuckled briefly as I accepted the almost weightless shards of cotton. “Sure.” I smiled at how free she was. She seemed either to not care about the scene she was presenting, or to be oblivious to the mild impropriety of it.
Her entry into the new shirt was much faster and less eventful than her egress from the old, and once she was as comfortable as she was going to be with the fit, she again looked brightly at me, then spun around.
“Well, how do I look,” she asked me with earnest interest.
The shirt fit her snugly, and I was so, so glad. I responded quickly and coolly, “You look good.” I decided to leap. “The tank looks pretty good on you, too.”
She tilted her head down, keeping her eyes on mine as a new kind of smile formed on her lips, and both of her hands grabbed the very front of the shirt and pulled down. She remained silent as her body twisted to-and-fro in an obviously manufactured seductive shyness, and I was hard as a rock.
I suddenly remembered to check my watch to see that I was only a couple of minutes from my next check-in. “Oh, shit,” I urgently remarked as I leapt from the van to get my headphones and mic from the side door as I dialed the studio on my phone for signal confirmation.
While the studio’s line was ringing, I turned back to Ashley to see her looking at my crotch, and I immediately remembered my erection, now deflating.
“Sorry about the interruption,” I said, “but the show must go on, you know.” There wasn’t time for her to respond before the studio answered my call, and a minute later, I was reading promotional materials into my microphone, and convincing my audience of the fantastic time that was to be had, “Right here at Ground Zero, Lexington’s Premiere Party Scene.” I stole a look at Ashley. She was motionless, looking at me in utter concentration. She appeared totally fascinated at what I was doing, as if in disbelief that this could be the origin of the magical noise on the sound machine in her car. She was completely entranced, and I paid her no mind as I finished my check-in.
I completed my outro, turned off my mic and headphones and set them down, and walked a few feet to where she was standing. The way she looked at me now made me just a little uncomfortable. She, on the other hand, looked a little too comfortable. She seemed as if she’d just put some puzzle pieces together in her mind, and now she knew something that I didn’t. Some girls are easy to figure out, Ashley was not one of them.
“Sorry, again,” apologizing one more time for good measure. “I wasn’t paying attention to the time. Still got work to do, you know?”
She playfully latched onto my arm, and her touch reignited the fire in my loins. “Sure, no problem. Well, I’m gonna go find my friends. It was great to finally meet you!”
“Yeah, you too. I’m here until One, so if I don’t see you again, have a great night.” My sentiments were sincere, if not complete.
With that, she looked up at me, released my arm, and strutted back into the club, and I was fixated on her the whole way.
Once my tour had ended, it was a quiet twenty minute drive back to the station, and I contemplated my brief encounter with the girl the whole way. When I got back to the studio, I carried and stowed the broadcast gear inside, signed the work log, and went back to the van one last time to retrieve my bottle of water before getting in my car to go home. When I got to the van and reached for my water, I saw something that made me smile.
I still had Ashley’s t-shirt.
SATURDAY
II. After being out until 2:30, and not being able to wind down enough to sleep until roughly Five in the morning, I slept until around One in the afternoon. Once I’d repeatedly and then finally wiped the sleep from my eyes, I decided to go for a swim. I didn’t have to be in to the studio for my on-air shift until 7:00, so I had a few hours to waste.
It was 3:00, full on, by the time I got to the gym. I almost never worked out, but I did swim a lot, so the use of its clean and quiet pool was well worth the membership fees charged by the gym.
When I hit the showers before my swim, I started remembering meeting Ashley the night before. I remembered, in slow-motion, her removing her shirt. I remembered watching the flimsy, cheap pink fabric give way to fine skin, taut over well-toned flesh. Then I imagined her going on the remove her bra, hands reaching slowly for the front clasp as her eyes drew me in seductively.
I then remembered I was in the public shower at the gym, and I’d better get my shit together if I didn’t want to embarrass myself with the erection that was stirring. I started thinking about the weather, and contemplated whether or not I’d be able to drop the top on my convertible Maserati. Well, all the markings on the car said “Maserati,” but I had no illusions about it just being a Chrysler LeBaron with fancy leather seats and Maserati badges.
I enjoyed about an hourlong swim, showered again (focused, this time), and got dressed. I did decide to put the top down on the car, then I went on for something to eat. I enjoyed a cheap, fast, and incredibly unhealthy meal, then took the longest, most scenic route to work, thoroughly enjoying my impossibly overpriced LeBaron.
A few hours later, I was taking my seat in the studio, pulling my CDs off the racks in playing sequence for the first hour. I gathered my commercial spot recordings, and printed a few updates from the interwebs that I thought were relevant to my listeners. As always, I was psyched. Jammin’ 97 was on the air. She was a ship; an aircraft carrier, launching songs as planes one after another, and I was her Captain. It was a ridiculous analogy, but that’s the way I liked to think of it. I fucking loved my job.