Something wonderful.

"May I have my money back, please, Mrs. Garcia? Take out whatever you need to cover your time today."

Mrs. Garcia looked worried. "Are you sure about your decision, Francesca? You're already ten weeks pregnant. You don't have much more time to undergo a safe abortion. Are you absolutely sure?"

Francesca had never been less sure of anything in her life, but she nodded.

She broke into a little run as she left the abortion clinic, and then a skip to cover the last few feet to the Dart. Her mouth curved in a smile. Of all the stupid things she had ever done in her life, this was the stupidest. Her smile grew wider. Dallie had been absolutely right about her-she didn't have a single ounce of common sense. She was poorer than a church mouse, badly educated, and living every minute on the cutting edge of disaster. But right now, at this very moment, none of that mattered, because some things in life were more important than common sense.

Francesca Serritella Day had lost most of her dignity and all of her pride. She wasn't going to lose her baby.

Chapter 20

Francesca discovered something rather wonderful about herself in the next few months. With her back pressed to the wall, a gun pointed to her forehead, a time bomb ticking in her womb, she learned that she was quite intelligent. She grasped new ideas easily, retained what she learned, and having had so few academic prejudices imposed upon her by teachers, never let preconceived notions limit her thinking. With her first months of pregnancy behind her, she also discovered a seemingly endless capacity for

hard work, which she began taking advantage of by laboring far into the night, reading newspapers and broadcasting magazines, listening to tapes, and getting ready to take a small step up in the world.

"Do you have a minute, Clare?" she asked, sticking her head into the record library, a small tape cassette pressed into the damp palm of her hand. Clare was leafing through one of the Billboard reference books and didn't bother to look up.

The record library was actually nothing more than a large closet with albums lining the shelves, strips of colored tape affixed to their spines to indicate whether they fell into the category of male vocalists, female vocalists, or groups. Francesca had intentionally chosen the location because it was neutral territory, and she didn't want to give Clare the added advantage of being able to sit like God behind her desk while she decided the fate of the supplicant in the budget seat opposite her.

"I have all day," Clare replied sarcastically, as she continued to flip through the book. "As a matter of fact, I've been sitting in here for hours just twiddling my thumbs and waiting for someone to interrupt me."

It wasn't the most auspicious beginning, but Francesca ignored Clare's sarcasm and positioned herself in the center of the doorway. She was wearing the newest item in her wardrobe: a man's gray sweat shirt that hung in baggy folds past her hips. Out of sight beneath it, her jeans were unfastened and unzipped, held together with a piece of cord crudely sewn across the placket. Francesca looked Clare squarely in the eyes. "I'd like a shot at Tony's announcing job when he leaves."

Clare's eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead. "You are kidding."

"Actually, I'm not." Francesca lifted her chin and went on as if she had all the confidence in the world. "I've spent a lot of time practicing, and Jerry helped me make an audition tape." She held out the cartridge. "I think I can do the job."

A cruel, amused smile curled at the corners of Clare's mouth. "An interesting ambition, considering the fact that you have a noticeable British accent and you've never been in front of a microphone in your

life. Of course, the little cheerleader who replaced me in Chicago hadn't ever been on the air either, and she sounded like Betty Boop, so maybe I should watch out."

Francesca kept a tight rein on her temper. "I'd like a chance anyway. My British accent will give me a different sound from everyone else."

"You clean toilets," Clare scoffed, lighting a cigarette. "That's the job you were hired for."

Francesca refused to flinch. "And I've been good at it, haven't I? Cleaning toilets and doing every other bloody job you've thrown at me. Now give me a shot at this one."

"Forget it."

Francesca couldn't play it safe any longer. She had her baby to think about, her future. "You know, I'm actually starting to sympathize with you, Clare."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You've heard the old proverb about not understanding another person until you've walked a mile in his shoes. I understand you, Clare. I know exactly what it's like to be discriminated against because of who you are, no matter how hard you work. I know what it's like to be denied a shot at a job-not from a

lack of ability, but because of the personal prejudice of your employer."

"Prejudice!" A cloud of smoke emerged like dragon fire from Clare's mouth. "I've never been prejudiced in my life. I've been a victim of prejudice."

This was no time for retreat, and Francesca pressed harder. "You won't even take fifteen minutes to

listen to an audition tape. I'd call that prejudice, wouldn't you?"

Clare's jaw snapped into a rigid line. "All right, Francesca, I'll give you your fifteen minutes." She snatched the cassette from her hand. "But don't hold your breath."

For the rest of the day, Francesca's insides felt like a quivering mass of aspic. She had to get this job.

Not only did she desperately need the money but she absolutely had to succeed at something. Radio was a medium that functioned without pictures, a medium in which sage green eyes and a perfect profile held no significance. Radio was her testing ground, her chance to prove to herself that she would never again have to depend on her looks to get by.

At one-thirty, Clare stuck her head through the door of her office and beckoned to Francesca, who set down the fliers she'd been stacking in a carton and tried to walk into the office confidently. She couldn't quite pull it off.

"The tape isn't terrible," Clare said, settling into her chair, "but it's not much good either." She pushed

the cartridge across the desktop.

Francesca stared down at it, trying to hide the crushing disappointment she felt.

"Your voice is too breathy," Clare went on, her tone brisk and impersonal. "You talk much too fast and you emphasize the strangest words. Your British accent is the only thing you have going for you. Otherwise, you sound like a bad imitation of every mediocre male disc jockey we've had at this station."

Francesca strained to hear some trace of personal animosity in her voice, some sense that Clare was being vindictive. But all she heard was the dispassionate assessment of a seasoned professional. "Let me do another tape," she pleaded. "Let me try again."

The chair squeaked as Clare leaned back. "1 don't want to hear another tape; it won't be any different. AM radio is about people. If listeners want music, they tune into an FM station. AM radio has to be personality radio, even at a rat-shit station like this. If you want to make it in AM, you have to remember you're talking to people, not to a microphone. Otherwise you're just another Twinkie."

Francesca snatched up the tape and turned toward the door, the threads of her self-control nearly unraveling. How had she ever imagined she could break into radio without any training? One more delusion. One more sand castle she had built too near the water's edge.

"The best I can do is use you as a relief announcer on weekends if somebody can't make it."

Francesca spun around. "A relief announcer! You'll use me as a relief announcer?"

"Christ, Francesca. Don't act like I'm doing you any big favor. All it means is you'll end up working an afternoon shift on Easter Sunday when nobody's listening."

But Francesca refused to let Clare's testiness deflate her, and she let out a whoop of happiness.

That night she pulled a can of cat food from her only kitchen cupboard and began her nightly conversation with Beast.

"I'm going to make something of myself," she told him. "I don't care how hard I have to work or what I have to do. I'm going to be the best announcer KDSC has ever had." Beast lifted his hind leg and began grooming himself. Francesca glowered at him. "That is absolutely the most disgusting habit you have, and if you think you're going to do that around my daughter, you can think again."

Beast ignored her. She reached for a rusty can opener and fastened it over the rim of the can, but she didn't begin turning it at once. Instead, she stared dreamily ahead. She knew intuitively that she was going to have a daughter-a little star-spangled American baby girl who would be taught from the very beginning to rely on something more than the physical beauty she was predestined to inherit from her parents. Her daughter would be the fourth generation of Serritella females-and the best. Francesca vowed to teach her child all the things she had been forced to learn on her own, all the things a little girl needed to know so that she would never end up lying in the middle of a dirt road and wondering how she'd gotten there.

Beast disturbed her daydreams by batting her sneaker with his paw, reminding her of his dinner. She resumed opening the can. "I've absolutely made up my mind to call her Natalie. It's such a pretty name-feminine but strong. What do you think?"

Beast stared at the bowl of food that was being lowered toward him much too slowly, all his attention focused on his dinner. A small lump formed in Francesca's throat as she set it on the floor. Women shouldn't have babies when they had only a cat with whom to share their daydreams about the future. And then she shook off her self-pity. Nobody had forced her to have this baby. She had made the decision herself, and she wasn't going to start whining about it now. Lowering herself to the old linoleum floor, she sat cross-legged by the cat's bowl and reached out to stroke him.

"Guess what happened today, Beast? It was the most wonderful thing." Her fingers slipped through the animal's soft fur. "I felt my baby move…"

Within three weeks of her interview with Clare, a flu epidemic hit three of the KDSC announcers and Clare was forced to let Francesca take over a Wednesday morning shift. "Try to remember you're

talking to people," she barked as Francesca headed for the studio with her heart beating so rapidly she

felt as if the blades of a helicopter were chopping away at her chest.

The studio was small and overheated. A control board lined the wall perpendicular to the studio window, while the opposite side housed cubbyholes filled with the records that were to be played that week. The room also contained a spinning wooden rack for tape cartridges, a large gray file box for live commercial copy, and, taped to every flat surface, an assortment of announcements and warnings.

Francesca seated herself before the control board and clumsily settled the headset over her ears. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. At small stations like KDSC, there were no engineers to operate the control board; announcers had to do it for themselves. Francesca had spent hours learning how to cue records, operate microphone switches, set voice levels, and use the three tape cartridge-or cart- decks, only

two of which she was tall enough to reach from the stool in front of the mike.

As the AP news came to an end, she looked at the row of dials on her control board. In her nervousness, they seemed to be changing shape in front of her, melting like Dali watches until she couldn't remember what any of them were for. She forced herself to concentrate. Her hand flicked to the AP selector switch. She pushed the lever that opened her microphone and potted up the sound on the dial beneath. A trickle of perspiration slid between her breasts. She had to do well. If she messed up today, Clare would never give her a second chance.

As she opened her mouth to speak, her tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. "Hello," she croaked. "This is Francesca Day coming to you on KDSC with music for a Wednesday morning."

She was talking too fast, running all her words together, and she couldn't think of another thing to say even though she had rehearsed this moment in her mind a hundred times. In a panic, she released the record she was holding on the first turntable and potted up the sound, but she had cued it too close to the beginning of the song and it wowed as she let it go. She moaned audibly, and then realized she hadn't turned off her mike switch so that the moan had carried out over the air. She fumbled with the lever.