I tapped the shoulder holster under my arm. “I’ll even shower with it.”
We both left for home and I took a detour down by the beach and parked in a space facing the ocean, feeling the need to unwind a little. I turned on the in-dash mp3 player and let the sounds of the Supremes come soft out of the speakers.
There was still red in the sky, and the sound of the ocean was a soothing undercurrent beneath music and the talk and laughter of young people hanging out on the sand and grass until the last moment before going home.
Three cute female teenagers trotted to the GTO to look it over. They looked me over, too, which was a little odd since I doubted they were much older than fifteen or sixteen, that age when they know so little and yet so very much. Maybe I wasn’t so old after all.
“Nice car,” said the brunette in the red bikini. “Nice music, too. The Supremes are so good, aren’t they?”
I was surprised she knew. “They sure are.”
The longhaired blond beside her said, “My favorite song of theirs is Reflections. Their other stuff is good, too. All the Motown music is great.”
I pointed at the player, “You listen to this?”
The third girl in their group, another blond with a pixie cut and a tiny purple bikini made of dental floss and three band-aids said, “It’s great music, happier than what we have now. You feel the songs, you know? Nowadays there’s more anger and stuff, lots of yelling instead of singing.”
“Some new music is pretty good, though,” I said.
They nodded, then Pixie Cut said, “We listen to some new music, but a lot of this, too. This and the eighties. You’d be surprised how many kids our age are into music from the sixties.”
The next song started. The Beatles, Yesterday. The brunette asked me, “What was it like to dance to those songs when they first came out? Were you a hippie back then?”
There went my ego.
**
The next day Hondo and I had several auditions apiece at different locations across town. Marcus split his time between us, filming us doing things that caught his eye.
The auditions involved a huge amount of driving, sitting and waiting hours for three minutes in front of the camera, then driving to the next one and doing it all over again. The good thing was we both used our phones to contact people who might have seen the girl. The bad thing was no one had seen her. We both arrived at the office late that evening.
I brought donuts into the office for a snack and Hondo already had coffee poured. We each got a donut and I plopped into my chair, “How’d your auditions go?” I asked.
“One was good. The others, I’m not sure.” He stood, got the donut box off my desk and put it on his table.
“What, don’t you trust me?”
Hondo talked around a big bite of donut, “Nope. I’ll give you one every time I get one, not before.”
“Boy, you’re testy.”
“Hungry, not testy.”
>
As we finished our donuts, the phone rang and Hondo punched the voice box so we could both speak. It was Emma.
“The ratings are number four! Number four with our very first air! We have a winner, gentlemen!”
Hondo said, “Did you get any calls from the girl?”
“At the station? No calls from her, but hundreds of calls from viewers. They all loved it and wanted more.”
I rose from my chair and acted like I was stretching, then moved from behind my desk and eased toward Hondo’s while he talked to Emma. “Is Marcus coming over in the morning?”
“Yes, he’s excited about working with the two of you. Where will you be working tomorrow?”
“We haven’t decided yet, but we’ll talk it over and be ready to go when Marcus gets here.”