Free Prime Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

check.”
    “References? Check?” I’m confused, then realize maybe Franklin was right. “Like job references?” I ask.
    “Job…? No. Not like that.” Josh smiles and points to his own chest. “English teacher, remember? Literary references. So I said, sure, I’d be glad to try to help him. He read me the lines, though, and they weren’t familiar, so I asked him to e-mail them to me. I never figured out why he didn’t research them himself. Anyway. I looked them up, and e-mailed him back the results. It happened a couple of times, maybe three. And that was the end of that.”
    I take out my notebook and flip it open. “Do you mind telling me what the quotes were?”
    “I guess it’s fine,” Josh says slowly, apparently weighing any possible consequences. He holds up the book. “In fact, I was looking back on one of them now.” He runs a finger down what I guess is the table of contents, hunting for the page.
    “Here’s the last quote he sent,” Josh says. He begins to read:
     
     
    “The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
    Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
    And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
    Leave not a rack behind.”
     
     
    He puts a finger in the book to mark his place and looks up at me, starts to say something.
    I can’t help but interrupt. “ The Tempest , huh?”
    And then, I almost burst out laughing. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone’s jaw literally drop. But Josh’s jaw does, and now he’s trying to recover.
    “I’m sorry,” he says, eyes widening. “Of course I’ve seen your investigative stories, but I didn’t have you pegged as a Shakespeare buff.”
    He is so very, very cute. And so flatteringly sweet, remembering me from TV. I know it’s a big journalism “don’t” to flirt on the job, but there can’t be any harm in being friendly, right? Well, there actually can, but I’m promising myself I won’t cross the line.
    “My mother always warned me my major in Shakespeare would make me unemployable,” I tell him, attempting to look charming and well educated, but not too self-satisfied. “But from time to time, it comes in handy.”
    “Impressive,” he says. He clamps the book closed. “But anyway, that was one of the quotes. He wanted me to identify each one and then tell him the next two lines.”
    “‘We are such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep,’” I quote back. “That’s what’s next, isn’t it?”
    “Very good.” Josh nods in professorial admiration. “Who knew you TV types had hidden depths?”
    I can see little laugh crinkles behind his glasses, and he absently brushes away a shock of barber-needy hair that’s fallen onto his forehead. I calculate there’s more salt than pepper, and that he must be early fifties, maybe mid. I can feel “the line” getting fainter and fainter.
    “Wait,” he says. “Let me show you another quote he sent. This one’s tougher.”
    I watch as he gets up and turns back to the bookcase, moving his hand slowly across a shelf of multicoloredcovers. There’s laughter out in the hallway; somewhere a door slams. It feels…familiar.
    I’ve been here before? No. It was years ago.
    It was the day I met James. Sweet Baby James.
    My hair was still dark brown back then, parted Steinem-style down the middle, pulled back into a ponytail. My skirt was unimaginably short. Not that it mattered. I was Charlotte Ann McNally, radio reporter. First real job out of college, no contract, five dollars an hour. My mind was racing with my looming deadline, wondering how I could explain the state’s newly passed clean-water law in a thirty-second story.
    Then, I heard laughter out in the hallway; somewhere a door slammed. I felt someone enter the room, and turned around. Even now, I remember I had to steady myself on the back of my chair. Cheekbones. Pinstripes. A smile that wrapped me in promise. I hadn’t