Free The Song Is You by Megan Abbott Page A

girl reporter’s home, could he? He, the professional juggler of newsmen, the light-and-shadows artist forever dangling, then withdrawing, promises of sexy secrets and sexier lies, couldn’t possibly have gone to a reporter’s house and held forth on the carpet, no charge, no trade, tales dark enough to kill a half dozen careers, especially his own? Not him. He was the master of keeping his mouth shut, could practically count on two fingers the number of people in this town who knew his full name. Power in withholding. It’s what every smart woman ever taught him, and the not-so-smart ones, too, by bad example-
    You give anything away, you might as well give everything away.
    Still, the more his thoughts took hold and he was able to distinguish his recollection from his frenzied dreams—the things he said from the things he merely thought while saying other things— the more he had to face the grim truth.
    He’d told Miss Frannie Adair a lot. And he was going to have to fix it, fast.
    He had no one to blame but those two girls so hard on him the last few days—Iolene and Midge weighing him down, he who so depended on being light on his feet, always moving, never sitting still.
    As the sun finally crept under his blinds, Hop, half awake, forgot for a second about everything, other than a wave of brief pleasure at the flickering dream image of Iolene’s coffee-with-cream thighs. But the image didn’t wake up with him, just settled into his body, his bones and joints, nuzzled for a second, then passed. In its place twitched the memory of the Midge hubbub. That sure woke him. The clock read 7:30. He had to clear the murk from his head. He had to get out of bed. It was Saturday, right? Yes. Thank god.
    Ten minutes later, he’d managed to make it to the bathroom, to the pulsing shower and then the medicine cabinet to scrape a night of bad living from his face. As the fog on the mirror slowly evaporated and the shaving cream slid away to reveal his bright, forever bright face, he began thinking straight for the first time in twelve hours. For a second at least. Then:
    That goddamned wife, like a little girl, pulling off the legs of insects, one by one. First she steals his best friend for herself, then she gets him so worked up that he goes off and spills his guts to a professional megaphone.
    And who was this Iolene, anyway? Christ, he barely knew the girl and she’d managed to throw his life into some kind of crazy funhouse mirror in a matter of days. She’d tapped into a tiny reservoir of guilt, of sympathy, of something, and now he couldn’t untap it. Iolene.
    Still …
    Facts are, Hop, you fucked up. You have to admit it: you have only yourself to blame. You gotta fix it.
    First, Frannie Adair. What does she know and what does she plan to do with it?
    “City desk.”
    “Frannie Adair there?”
    “Not yet, pal. Call back later.”
    “She comes in today?”
    “She’ll be in to file. She’ll be at the courthouse today. Say, who is
    this, anyway?”
    Okay. Okay.
    He made some coffee and got dressed.
    As he drank a cup, scalding and bracing, he thought hard.
    Okay, I’m Frannie Adair, junior reporter out to prove my chops. What do I know? I know Jean Spangler met up with high-wattage stars Sutton and Merrel the night she went missing. I know they were looking to have a party with her. That’s it.
    What don’t I know?
    He thought hard about this. He never told Frannie where Jean Spangler and the others had moved on to after they left the Eight Ball. The name “Red Lily” never passed his lips, he was sure. He never said who else was there, except that there was another girl he left with. She doesn’t know who that girl was (of course, neither does he). He never said anything about his story to the police, about his lies, half-lies, and whatever else he used, because, let’s be honest, he’d used everything he had.
    So if I’m Frannie, he thought, and I’m as smart as she maybe could be, what do I do with