Free The Reporter by Kelly Lange

was calling her again, with
     his “Let’s get together, babe, I really miss you, I want to get it on with you.” What
she
wanted was his balls cut off and served up on a plate.
    Still, she had sex with him every time he came calling, even when he started bringing Clio around. He’d phoned her one night
     at the station and said he was coming over to her house when she got off, and he had a fabulous surprise for her. She soared
     through her show, fantasizing that the surprise meant the end of Janet Orson and the real beginning of Jack and Zahna, or
     even that Janet was going out of town for a month. But the surprise was Clio.
    Zahna was waiting when he rang the bell, and she rushed to the door and pulled it open to see… Jack on her doorstep holding
     Clio by the elbow, both of them grinning. Clio was a lanky, leggy, exotic-looking black woman who worked at a dubbing house
     in Studio City. She headed right for Zahna, put both hands on her cheeks, and said, “We’re gonna have some fun, girlfriend!”
    “Wait, wait, wait…” Jack laughed, and ushered them both into the bedroom, where he popped the champagne he was carrying.
    “I’m going to get some glasses, ladies.” He beamed. “Now don’t start without me.” Zahna sat on the bed, trying to absorb what
     was going on, while Clio stood three feet in front of her and began to strip, slowly, down to black-lace bra and garter belt.
     Shewas touching herself, sensuously lingering on her nipples, when Jack came back into the room with three of the champagne flutes
     he’d bought for Zahna. He flipped on the stereo system, and Tina Turner’s lusty voice filled the room while he poured the
     wine. Zahna was already intensely coked out.
What the hell,
she thought;
this could be fun.
    But he
did
love his Zahna best, loved her only, she knew. Clio was just another kinky diversion, and that was one of the things that
     made him the most exciting man she’d ever known.
    She also knew that he’d just married Janet for business reasons, that he needed Janet Orson and her connections right now
     to help get his career out of stall, and when that happened he would divorce her like he had the other two and he would marry
     his Zahna. Otherwise, why was he still seeing her? Why had he never
stopped
seeing her, never stopped
needing
her?
    Zahna shook out of her reverie as the station clock came up on midnight.
Oh yeah,
she thought.
Turned out
that
was a crock.

15
    M eg Davis turned her small sports car west onto Santa Monica Boulevard toward the ocean, headed for Malibu. It was a week and
     a day since Jack Nathanson’s funeral, and she still couldn’t stop the flashbacks. Driving stiff-backed, teeth clenched, a
     vise grip on the wheel, she tried to keep the thoughts from coming. She turned on the radio, punched in a heavy-metal station,
     turned the volume up high. But still, she couldn’t push the waking nightmares out of her head.
    She was ten years old again, on the set of
Black Sabbat.
It was late summer, and often above 100 degrees in the Massachusetts countryside that was meant to look like the Salem of
     1692. She would spend hours clamped in the wooden pillory while extras heaved huge Styrofoam stones, dipped in slimy mud and
     ooze, that bounced off her head and face. The crew worked in shorts and sandals, T-shirts and halter tops, while Meg endured
     the stifling heat for hours on end in Puritan garb—a floor-length gown of coarse black wool, her head covered with a heavy
     wimple drawn and tied in folds under her chin—sweating for real, a good little girl, cooperating, getting it right.
    Jack Nathanson was the star, playing her character’s father, a minister, a once lofty clergyman of New England’s Colonial
     dayswho now stood accused of being a warlock and harboring a coven of witches, including his beautiful wife and his sweet daughter.
    Mr. Nathanson had told her mother that he could get a performance out of Meg that the world would remember if