New Jersey - One of the Boys (Americana 30 - New Jersey)

CHAPTER ONE

TWO SMALL ROUND TABLES were shoved close together in the dimly lighted hotel lounge. There was hardly an inch of surface that wasn't covered with drinks, ashtrays, pretzel dishes and candle-burning globes. Almost a dozen chairs were crowded around the two tables, all of them occupied by men, except one.
Petra Wallis was the sole female in the group, but she was accustomed to that. At five foot nine she was as tall as most of them. Despite her khaki blouse and slacks of a mock-military fashion, there was nothing masculine about her. The very blandness of the unisex-designed clothes accented her slim willowy frame and served as a contrast to the long wheat-blond hair pulled away from her face and secured with a gold clasp at the back crown of her head. The length of it fell straight down her back in a shimmering silk curtain of gold.
Nature had blessed her with a flawless complexion and strong, classical features. Her jaw line slanted cleanly to her pointed chin. Her mouth was wide with a sensually full lower lip, her nose straight with the faintest suggestion of an upward tilt at the tip. And her sea-green eyes possessed a naturally thick fringe of dark brown lashes.
Pet, as her co-workers affectionately called her, had often been told she was model material, but she wasn't interested in being in front of the camera. She preferred being behind it.
In the confusion of several conversations and jokes punctuated with laughter, Pet asserted herself with ease. "Have any of you seen the inside of Charlie's van?" Her teasing question was answered by a couple of chuckles while Charlie Sutton, who was sitting across from her, smiled like the Cheshire cat.
"You rode down here with Charlie, didn't you, Pet?" one of the men prompted.
"I did. Although after I climbed in that thing, I wondered whether I was asking for trouble or Charlie was asking for a slap in the face!" Her laughter was a rich, husky sound. "The van looks so innocent on the outside."
"Did you get it all fixed up the way you wanted to, Charlie?" one of the other men asked.
"Almost," he shrugged with a twinkling light in his brown eyes. "There are still a couple of things I want to add."
"I can't think what they'd be!" Pet retorted in an exaggerated reaction, and turned to the others. "He claims he uses it to go camping. It resembles a bachelor's playpen on wheels—silver shag carpeting on the floor, walls and ceiling; a single bed with a black fake-fur spread; a built-in bar," she began describing the inside of it. "The stereo speakers are hidden throughout. A flick of a switch and you have music to make love by. There's even a compact refrigerator to supply ice for the bar drinks!"
"You should have put those mirror tiles on the ceiling, Charlie," someone suggested. "What do the wife and kids think about it, Charlie?" another person teased.
"Sandy loves it," Charlie insisted. "We can slip away for a weekend and have all the comforts of a motel room without the cost."
"It's all prepaid in the money you spent fixing the van," Lon Baxter stated from his chair next to Pet's, and reached for one of the glasses of beer on the table.
"Whoops! That's mine, Lon." Pet rescued her drink and put another glass in his hand. "This is yours."
"How can you tell?" He looked skeptically at the half-empty glass of beer she had substituted for the fuller one.
"Unless you've started wearing lipstick, this has to be mine." She laughingly showed him the peach-colored imprint on the rim of the glass.
"In this light I don't see how you can see anything." He groped in mock blindness, pretending to discover the bareness of her forearm. "Ah, what's this?"
Setting his glass down, he took advantage of the fact that Pet was still holding hers. He turned in his chaff to get closer to her while his other hand slid across her stomach, stopping on her rib cage just below the swelling curve of a breast.
"It may be dark, Lon," Pet smiled sweetly, "but I know exactly where your hands are. And if your left hand moves one more inch, you're going to get an elbow in the throat."
The warning was issued with deliberate casualness, but it was no less sincere because of it. Conscious of the others observing this little byplay, she knew she had to put Lon firmly in his place without making an issue of it.
Lon Baxter was one of the few single men in the camera crew. Young and good-looking, he made passes at anything in skirts, certain he was irresistible to women. Admittedly, Pet found him attractive, but she had learned a long time ago that if she wanted the respect of her fellow workers, she had to stay clear of any romantic entanglements with them.
Lon she probably would have avoided under any circumstances, since she doubted he had a faithful bone in his body, but there had been a couple of men she wouldn't have minded dating. She had tried mixing her social life with work a couple of times, but the involvement invariably caused friction on the job, so since then she had made it a rule to date only men who were outside the television industry.
With an exaggerated sigh of regret Lon withdrew his hand and sat back in his chair, reaching for his beer. His retreat was noted by the others with a few taunting chuckles.
"Shot down again, huh, Lon?" somebody teased.
"Ah, but I'm alive to pursue her another day," he winked. Pet hadn't believed for one minute that he had given up.
"Why don't you put the poor guy out of his misery, Pet, and let him catch you once?" Charlie suggested, knowing exactly what her opinion of Lon Baxter was.
"I know what my competition is going to be in these next couple of weeks," she replied, not taking offense at the ribbing. "I'm not in the class of Ruby Gale, singer turned sex goddess. Lon won't even notice me after he's spent a day looking at her through his camera."
"Ruby Gale, the new Jersey Lily." Andy Turner, the fourth cameraman in the production crew, lifted his glass in an acidly cynical toast to the star of the television special they had come to tape.
Pet, Charlie, Andy, and Lon made up the team of four cameramen. She loathed the tag "cameraperson." The term seemed unnatural and a needless attempt to differentiate her sex, but she usually had to endure the label.
"She is fantastic!" One of the sound technicians spoke up in the singing star's defense. "Do you suppose she'd mind if I asked for her autograph? My wife and I have every one of her albums."
"I wouldn't ask her for anything until the special is all done," Andy advised. "She can be a royal bitch."
"You've worked with her before, haven't you?" someone asked.
"On an awards special a couple years ago," he admitted. "All she had was one song and an award to present, maybe five minutes of the entire show, but her incessant demands created total chaos. I've seen my share of temperamental performers, but Ruby Gale is the worst! This isn't any picnic we're on."
"Dane can handle her," a lighting technician insisted.
A grimness pulled at the corners of Pet's mouth. "Dane Kingston, the big man himself, is going to be here. I understand this production is going to carry his personal stamp as both producer and director."
"I thought Sid Lawrence was the director," one of the gaffers questioned her statement.
"He's just the assistant director," Andy retorted. "When you're Ruby Gale, you can demand number one and get it."
"Dane is probably going to be on hand to protect his investment," Charlie suggested. "After all, this special is costing him a hefty chunk of dough. I'll bet he wants to be sure it stays within the budget."
"And I'll bet he makes a hefty chunk of dough out of it," someone remarked enviously from the adjoining table.
"I agree he's here to protect his interests," Pet inserted dryly. "Money as well as Ruby Gale."
"What do you mean?" Joe Wiles, one of the lighting technicians and the grandfather of the group, frowned at her comment.
"Dane Kingston and Ruby Gale are what the gossip columnists describe as a hot item. From all accounts, they're having a very torrid affair." A disdainful kind of sarcasm thinly coated the information Pet relayed. She tapped a cigarette out of the pack lying on the table.
Ever attentive to the female, Lon leaned over to light it for her. "Some say he wined and dined her just to get her to sign to do this special," he remarked.
"She's a highly talented performer, but if she's the bitch you say she is, Andy—" Pet blew out a thin stream of smoke while sliding a look at the sandy-haired cameraman "—then it seems to me that she and Dane Kingston are perfectly mated."