Free Dirt by Stuart Woods

business had been hushed up, and Ida Louise had missed giving her valedictory address at graduation, departing early for New York and Barnard, caring not who saw her bruises in the day coach of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. For the rest of her life, the smell of sweaty athletic clothing would cause her to have unreasoning panic attacks. She had never again entered any sort of locker room, preferring to exercise outdoors or at home. The event had, though, instilled in her the iron determination that for the rest of her life it would be
she
who controlled every aspect of her sex life. She had made the mistake of allowing someone else to do that, and she would never make that mistake again.
    Her first act on arriving in New York had been to find a lawyer and legally change her name to Amanda Delano, which name her cooperating high school teacher had already placed in her school records and scholarship application. Amanda had a much nicer ring than Ida Louise, and thereafter she had not disabused her college friends from thinking that she was one of the mill-owning Atlanta Delanos.
    At Barnard, Amanda had remained celibate for a year while pouring her sexual frustration into her studies and the school newspaper, for which she wrote a column on campus social life. When she could no longer tolerate a life without sex, she began to seek out older, often married men — assistant professors, usually, who demanded no fulltime relationship and who could recommend her for the best classes and teachers. After graduation from Barnard she got a job on the old
Journal-American
and, very soon afterward, began an affair with a forty-year-old assistant managing editor, one Robert Dart, who she knew was headed for a top job at the paper. Within a year he had promoted her twice, given her her own column, and divorced his wife of fifteen years to marry Amanda.
    The marriage was hell for both of them, but it had ended well for Amanda when Bob Dart had dropped dead on a squash court and left her his name, a cooperative apartment in a good neighborhood, and two hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. She had hardly been set for life, but now she had a career, a certain respect as the widow of a well-known journalist, and, above all, the column. When the
Journal-American
had folded, Dick Hickock’s predecessor had recruited her and syndicated the column. Amanda Delano Dart had made herself powerful.
    Amanda pulled on a pair of stockings and secured them to her garter belt. Her legs were too long for most pantyhose, and she felt somehow more alluring in a garter belt anyway. She slipped silk panties over the stockings and stepped into a short, low-cut black dress from her favorite, Chanel, that showed off both her good legs and her firm breasts. She needed no bra, and with the twitch of a shoulder she could give a properly attentive man a glimpse of nipple. A pair of black alligator Ferragamos and a modest diamond necklace and earrings completed her outfit.
    She walked into the living room and gave it a quick once-over. She had long since trained her housekeeper, Bela, to perfection, but knowing that Amanda noticed kept her that way. She strolled into the dining room and checked the place settings, then toured the kitchen to see how the caterers were coming along. The television was on in the kitchen, and she was stopped in her tracks by the lead story on
Gossip Tonight,
which followed the evening news. An “anchorman” was saying: “Word is out around New York and L.A. that two of gossip’s leading figures have figured unflatteringly in a newsletter-by-fax called
DIRT,
which has been going out to a list of movers and shakers over the past week. The lady was allegedly caught in a most compromising position in a New York hotel, and the gentleman, who has taken part in a number of public outings of gay men and women, was said to have been photographed during a sex act with a pizza deliveryman. Can libel suits be far behind? It will be