Free What's a Girl Gotta Do by Sparkle Hayter Page A

investigating anybody, or everybody. But why?”
    “And why me? It’s not like I have power or
money—or influence for that matter, not while I’m in Special
Reports.” “
    Well, you’re off the hook with the cops,
anyway,” she said. “Too bad the news media was there. .. .”
    “Enough about my petty problems. They’re too
depressing,” I said. “You wanted to talk about that reporter
spot?”
    “It can wait. The Browner job may not come to
pass anyway. I would like to get away from Jerry, but I like
working with you. We’re a good team.”
    Yes, we were, but I harbored few illusions
about it lasting very long. Claire assisted me, but she was looking
far beyond me and one day would cheerfully and politely leapfrog
over me. Claire was great at finding the story, the right people to
interview, those proverbial pictures worth a thousand words. She
was fantastic in the edit room, putting sound and pictures
together, and she had two important attributes I lacked, confidence
and poise.
    Our food came. “Mmm, little chicken embryos
whipped into a froth and fried,” I said. “Speaking of Spurdle, you
know what McGravy told me today? Jerry wants me in Special
Reports.”
    “McGravy’s right. Jerry’s not doing you a
favor by letting you live out your exile there. He’s got personal
reasons,” she said wickedly. “He likes you.”
    “That’s what I don’t understand. I give him
shit all day long.”
    “He’s in love with you,” Claire said,
matter-of-factly.
    “Give me a fucking break.”
    Claire smiled. I think she was enjoying my
discomfort with this idea.
    “He’s in love with you, Robin,” she said. “He
thinks he can bring you around, like in some Tracy-Hepburn flick
where the spunky career woman at war with her boss realizes she’s
really in love with him and falls into his arms and French kisses
him in the last scene and . . .”
    “Oh! Stop! That’s so gross. Don’t say French
kiss and Jerry in the same sentence when a girl’s trying to
eat!”
    “Sorry.”
    “Ugh, ugh,” I said, trying to spit the very
idea out before it attached itself to my subconscious.
    “Well, anyway, they live happily ever after
and have sex every night and breed little Spurdles,” Claire
continued.
    “Stop!”
    “What do you think Jerry’s like in bed?” she
went on mercilessly.
    “Oh jeez. Oh God. Ick. What’s he like in bed?
Ugh. Like chiggers, maybe.”
    “Okay,” Claire said. “What about this? If you
had to either have sex with Jerry Spurdle or else do a really gross
thing, what’s the worst thing you’d do before you’d have sex with
Jerry?” Claire often came up with peculiar riddles involving a
choice between two or three hellish options. Another of her riddles
was, would you rather look good and smell bad, or smell good and
look bad?
    “I’d rather eat live insects by the handful,”
I said. “Of course, unlike you, I am a meat eater.”
    Claire shrugged. “I think it’s kind of sweet
that someone as disgusting and venal as Jerry Spurdle can still
entertain a romantic fantasy.”
    “Oh God. It really bugs me to think that I am
in Jerry’s fantasies. I wonder what I do in them. Ugh. Something
truly foul, I’m sure.” I put down my fork, my appetite
irretrievably spoiled. “If I have a sex dream about Jerry tonight,
Claire, I am going to blame you.”
    She leaned back and laughed. I have romantic
fantasies too—in fact I think a minimum of four are required just
to get through the average day—but mine do not include Jerry. I
have to admit a bit of inverted sexism, in that I often look on men
as sex objects. I can’t help it. When I meet an interesting man, I
automatically wonder what it would be like to have sex with him.
Men are not only sex objects, but they are sex objects also. The
thing is, I still sort of believed in love. I was kind of agnostic
about love, actually, but I hadn’t lost hope completely. I was
waiting for the feminist wet dream, Spencer Tracy. And while