LITMIR.BIZ

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I thought you might like to come along.”

      “What’s the story?”

      “She won a national sales contest sponsored by a cosmetics company, and—”

      “Victoria McKimber?”

      “Yeah. How did you know?”

      “I saw her on TV this morning,” I said. “But she was in New York. She was on The Morning Show.”

      “She would have been on Late Night tonight, but she had to come home.”

      “Home?”

      “Yup, she’s one of our own. Works at the Beavertail Ranch in Pahrump.”

      “I’d love to go, but I can’t leave now,” I said. “It’s Monday, and—”

      “I know,” David said, “but she doesn’t get in until this afternoon. I’m meeting her at the Silverado at five. You can ride with me if you like, and I can bring you back here afterward.”

      The Silverado is a “locals’ casino” a few miles south of the airport. I had never been there even though the person handling their publicity offered me free tickets to a magic show every time I talked to her. I was going to have to skip lunch and talk fast to get all my Monday calls and calendar updates done, but Chris Farr had an editorial meeting at four o’clock. If I got caught up, he wouldn’t mind if I left half an hour early.

      I was about to meet a real live hooker who was smack in the middle of her fifteen minutes of fame. And for fifteen minutes, the Calendar Girl could feel like a real reporter instead of the title of an old Neil Sedaka song.

      David Nussbaum reappeared at my desk just as I was making my last call, and we walked out to the parking lot together. David is an East Coast Jewish preppie who wears tweed jackets, rimless glasses, and Hush Puppies. But instead of the Saab that would complete his Ivy League style, he drives a Jeep, and it isn’t one of those upscale soccer mom models. It’s a basic canvas-topped Army man vehicle. It’s even got two extra gas cans strapped to the back, as though David’s never sure when he might get an assignment in the middle of Death Valley.

      Not that I think it’s fair to judge someone on the car they drive. I mean, I hope no one thinks mine is a four-wheeled personality statement. I drive a white Chrysler minivan, a “Town & Country” I would never in a geologic age have selected for myself. My father chose it using the flawed logic that I’d be safer driving a large vehicle. He drove the thing—“right off the lot”—out to Princeton in October of my senior year. My mom followed in their BMW, and they handed the keys to me over dinner. “Happy Birthday!” they said. My birthday’s in March, so the car was definitely a surprise. So was the fact that it looked like the sort of thing a suburban housewife with a large brood might drive.

      The supreme uncoolness of my ride was not lost on my best buddy Jessica.

      “It looks like a Kotex!” she proclaimed as soon as she saw it. “Big enough for those extra-heavy days!”

      She had a voice like an alpenhorn, and I had managed to pause in front of Witherspoon Hall at rush hour.

      “Dude! It’s a freakin’ maxi pad!” she added in a voice that could shatter glass, and that sealed my poor minivan’s fate. From then on, it was known as the Maxi Pad. Contrary to my father’s safety-conscious thinking, it wasn’t really a plus that the car seated seven people with dedicated seat belts, because it could carry at least double that if the riders were willing to share. Whether I liked it or not, I was an instantly popular designated bus driver. By the time I graduated, “the Maxi Pad” had mercifully shrunk to “the Max,” and “the Max” it has remained, but only because I’m used to it and no one in Las Vegas knows what it’s short for. I’d trade it in for a Jeep like David’s in a New York second, but I know it would hurt Dad’s feelings. And I have to admit that I like being able to buy bookcases and take them home without renting a truck.

      Anyway, David’s Jeep was covered in a thin layer of dust, which made me wonder if he might actually get assignments in the howling desert.

      “Sorry it’s dirty,” David said as he opened the passenger door and moved a plastic bag and a stack of mail to the back. “I had to cover the groundbreaking for a housing development in North Las Vegas. No pavement.”

      We took the freeway south to Blue Diamond Road and arrived at the Silverado with ten minutes to spare.

      “I told her I’d meet her in the coffee shop,” David said as we wove our way through the slot machines.

      The coffee shop was sparsely populated, and even in the dim light it was easy to see that Victoria wasn’t there. A hostess showed us to a table near the entrance.

      Before we could check the menu, Victoria materialized in front of us, enveloped in a cloud of musky-smelling perfume. She was wearing the same outfit she’d had on for The Morning Show: a purple leather miniskirt and a low-cut black leotard top. She’d clipped her hair into one of those deliberately messy up-dos, and she was carrying a zippered shoulder bag big enough to hold a body.

      “Victoria McKimber,” she said, holding a scarlet-taloned hand out to me.

      “Oh! Hi! I’m Copper Black,” I said, “and this is—”

      “You must be David,” Victoria said. “Thanks for coming down here to meet me. I came directly from the airport.”

      “The pleasure’s mine,” David said. “Please, have a seat.”

      “Thanks,” Victoria said, but she didn’t sit down. Plunking her huge shoulder bag on the table, she rummaged through it and extracted a glasses case. Then she pulled out a package of batteries, a gold cigarette case, a disposable lighter, a notebook, two pens, and a small tape recorder.

      I couldn’t help staring as she unpacked. She was so … constructed. Not one square inch of her was accidental, and there were many square inches. She was a lot taller than I’d expected, taller than me, taller than David even. I glanced down and saw that her stiletto heels had something to do with it, but even flat-footed she had to be nearly six feet.

      “I hope you won’t mind if I record our conversation,” Victoria said as she sat down. “My lawyer’s advice.”

      “Not at all,” David said, “as long as you don’t mind if I do the same.”

      Victoria laughed, and her laugh struck me as being just as calculated as her appearance. Slightly breathy, intentionally sexy. “Of course not,” she said as she snapped batteries into her tape recorder.

      Just then, the waitress came back. We all ordered coffee, and David started asking questions.

      This wasn’t the first time I’d seen David in action. He had invited me to an air show at Nellis Air Force Base when I first started working at The Light, and in the last few months I’d tagged along to a motorcycle rally in Laughlin, a bomb scare at a high school, a tour of a gypsum mine, and the opening of a new fire station on the Las Vegas Strip. But as I listened to him talk to Victoria, I realized that this was the first real one-on-one interview I’d watched him do, and he was good. Better than Kathie Pitchford, even. In three minutes, Victoria had repeated everything she’d said on TV, and David was probing deeper.

      “How old are you?” he asked.

      “Forty-seven,” she said. “A prime number.”

      “And you’ve been selling American Beauty products since 1999?”

      “November of ’98. I’m their top distributor in this region. Utah-Nevada-Arizona-New Mexico. And I’m damned if they’re going to take that away from me.”

      “How do you manage it? I mean, isn’t your work at the Beavertail a full-time job?”

      “Yes, when I’m there, which is usually two weeks a month. I’m due back out there Thursday, as a matter of fact, unless this American Beauty mess blows completely out of control.” She sighed a stagy sigh and patted

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