Free Is the Bitch Dead, Or What? by Wendy Williams

the special Dermablend cover-up makeup, to the little magic coloring stick when there isn't time to get to the salon for a color treatment.
    And there was always Miss Clairol when the job was bigger than a little covering around the temples. Delilah was a pro. She'd been there, done that, many, many times.
    All she thought about was getting back on television (and, of course, getting back at Ritz Harper). She knew her daywould come, that she would get back to the top. She just never expected to have to basically start from scratch.
    “Screen test?!” Delilah howled into the phone when her agent, Frank Baker from the William Morris Agency, told her about the newsmagazine show CNN was launching.
    “I am Delilah Summers! Don't they know what I can do already? Doesn't
everybody
know what I can do?!”
    “You
were
Delilah Summers,” said Frank, who never bit his tongue and never tried to soften the truth with one of his most difficult and most famous clients. “CNN knows what you used to be. But quite frankly, Delilah, few people come back from scandal.”
    “Pat O'Brien came back!”
    “Pat O'Brien is in entertainment,” Frank said. “That's fluff. They thrive on scandal in entertainment. Hell, that probably helped his career. You are a newswoman— a serious news-woman. Look what happened to Dan Rather. He left the business in shame. They didn't give a damn that he worked more than forty years bringing the truth at a high level. They didn't care that he risked his life covering wars. They didn't care about his stellar record. He has one bad spill and bam! It's over. Hasta la vista! You're basically starting all over again, Delilah.”
    “That bitch!” Delilah muttered under her breath, barely audible.
    “I'm sorry, Delilah,” Frank said. “Let's just knock 'em out, show them that you're ready— that the rumors of your weight gain and mental deterioration are just rumor.”
    Delilah tightened her jaw. She couldn't believe that all that she had worked for over so many years could be so frivolously tossed aside. Delilah wasn't completely discouraged. She was still relatively young. Katie Couric, who became the first woman to anchor the
CBS Evening News
, was fifty and still considered a youngster. Diane Sawyer was over sixty and Barbara Walters, hell, she went to high school with Methuselah. Delilah was younger than the youngest by more than a decade. Time was on her side to re-create herself and make a serious comeback. But this comeback had to be for good.
    She still couldn't grasp that Ritz Harper— that no-talent lackey, as she referred to her— could not only bring her down in one fell swoop, but could then go on to become one of the biggest names out there.
    That bitch
!
    That had become Delilah's mantra.
    “I am not going out like that!” Delilah declared to Frank. “I will be back!”
    “Of course you will,” he said. “That's why we never dropped you. I knew it was just a matter of time. Now, get your fanny in gear. You cannot be late!”

12
    Jacob Reese's cell phone rang. He was nervous about answering it. He saw the news reports that said Ritz Harper was still alive. He was all dressed up with nowhere to go. He had on his go-get-my-money suit and just hours ago he was buying buildings and building his personal empire. Now everything was in jeopardy.
    Jacob fidgeted as he answered the phone.
    “Hello?”
    “The bitch is not dead!” The voice on the other end spit the words out. “You fucked up. You don't get your dough until you finish the job.”
Click
.
    Jacob was fuming. He knew he wasn't cut out to be a hit man. It seemed like he couldn't do anything right. He had big dreams but no follow-through or execution. He had a failed marriage that was his fault because he kept coming up withthese get-rich-quick schemes and squandering the family's hard-earned money. His wife finally got fed up.
    “You can break yourself, but I work too damn hard to go broke,” she'd said before she left. He