Page 79 of You Spin Me

“Or something that rhymes. Sometimes that’s better. Our listeners aren’t as smart as you. Let’s do a speed round.” Circling between us with his finger, Rocket explains. “Say the first word that comes into your head until we find one that seems good. Got it?”

This is like one of my favorite warm-ups from college improv, so I nod. Porky starts with “dry,” and then we continue to rattle off words. Some don’t make any sense at all in the context, but I know that you have to “Yes, and” to get the juices flowing. So when I say, “bone dry” and Porky follows with “boner,” I don’t object or even roll my eyes, I just say, “stoner.” Eventually we come up with a list of potential Arrid replacements that Rocket thinks could work: Desert, Barren and Torrid.

When we play the commercial again, the guys jump around the small room, imitating the couple onscreen. Suddenly, Porky turns to me. “Do chicks really care about how guys smell?”

“Wait.” Rocket pauses the video. “Is this about how the guy smells or how the girl smells?”

“It’s weird to watch people smell each other,” I say. “That guy is creepy enough sneaking up behind her, but on top of that, does she want a guy wholikesthat she smells like a baby?”

Rocket points at me. “You’ve got something there. You could do the woman’s lines like in the real commercial about the patented formula, blah-blah-blah, then I could go ‘Hey, baby, I noticed you smell like a baby now. That really turns me on.’”

“And then I could do the announcer wrap-up,” Porky says. “Arrid Extra Dry—or whatever we end up calling it—with the baby-fresh scent. A surefire weirdo detector.”

Rocket’s head tics back and forth like a metronome. “Maybe. Let’s keep at it. But write that down.”

Next, Rocket sits at the keyboard and—without any sheet music or anything—begins to play the “Get a little closer” jingle while Porky makes notes. I’m feeling useless again until I notice that Rocket has accidentally replaced the “get” in the lyrics with “come.”

This gives me an idea, I sing along. On “Come a little closer,” I crook my finger at Porky, who steps behind me like the guy in the real commercial does and murmurs, “Hey, baby, you smell great.”

Without planning to, I whirl around like a Charlie’s Angel and mime squirting him in the face with a can of deodorant, shouting, “Too close! Back off, buddy.” Then I turn to Rocket and pretend to holster the can. “Doubles as pepper spray.”

Rocket claps once. “I love it. With a spray sound effect and Porky screaming his head off. Let’s do it.”

And we do. After choosing “Torrid” as our replacement brand name, an engineer materializes from somewhere to set up the mics, and we record the little scenario. Then Jones comes in to remind us that we have some actual commercials to record, so Rocket goes somewhere else to mix sound effects and music into the Torrid spot, while Porky and I record the things advertisers are paying top dollar for.

I’m so relaxed with these guys that I don’t hesitate to ask Porky to read the script to me. When he asks why and I explain about my dyslexia, he asks, “So I read it to you once, and then you remember it?”

“Well, I have to pay attention and repeat it in my head a few times, but yeah.”

“That is so cool. It’s like you have a superpower. Bet you wouldn’t have that if you could read better.”

“Huh. Maybe not.”

I do have a show to get to, so after we record the Newbury Comics and Ground Round ads, it’s time for me to go. Rocket returns from the mixing room and stops me on my way out, pointing a finger gun at me. “You’re coming back tomorrow, right? I want to do anNational Enquirertakeoff, and I need you to be the girl who wants to know.”

“I’ll be here,” I say with a smile.

The day has definitely taken a turn for the better because I only get lost once on my way out of the building.

Chapter21

Weird Wayne here at WBAR. I don’t know what time it is, but I’ve got “Time” for you. Whoa, like, that’s, like, cosmic man. Take it away Mr. Waits.

CAL

When I sneak into my apartment in the wee hours of Friday, having handed off the meals to Walt again, and see the sleeping beauty in my bed, I really, really want to wake her with a kiss. But I promised I wouldn’t, and I’m not a fairy-tale prince anyway, so I slip in next to her without even disturbing Cash, who’s curled up at her feet. Her heat-seeking butt wiggles close, but the only sound she makes is a soft little sigh.

Next thing I know, I’m waking to the sweet scent of Jess on my pillow—some coconutty thing she must use in her hair. Smiling, I rub crusty eyes open, but there’s no Jess in the bed. Turning my head with caution, as sometimes the left side gets cranky, I’m relieved to see her on the floor doing some sort of exercise routine. My morning boner swells with happiness, so I tiptoe to the head. When I return, Jess is back in my bed and greets me with open arms.

Hugging her tightly, stroking her smooth curves and breathing in more of her heady scent is driving me closer to the edge of need. Even though she doesn’t seem disturbed by the parts she’s seen so far, battle scars from previous encounters with women have me gun-shy. I’m not sure which was worse, the ones who were turned on by my scars or the ones who couldn’t even look at them.

While I’m trying to figure out how to talk about all this, she trails a figure down my right arm and asks, “Will you tell me the story of these?”

“How do you know there’s a story?”

“The images are connected literally, but I feel like they’re connected figuratively, too.”

It’s not that I forget how smart she is, but when a sentence like that is served up in her raspy morning voice, it’s sexy as hell. Like everything about her.

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