The Word Master (2 page)

I nodded.

Why the hell not.

“What about words? Are there restrictions?”

Nancy looked amused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, can I say words like cock and pussy on the radio?”

She grinned and there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Honey, you can say any damned thing you want,” Nancy husked. “At that time of the morning, no one will give a damn.”

Chapter 2.

I climbed the stairs slowly to my little apartment. The dingy corridors and passageways smelt of musty corners and cigarette smoke. I threw the keys onto an unopened cardboard box. I had moved in a month ago, and still not unpacked. This wasn’t a home – it was just four drab walls without a sense of soul.

I fell onto the unmade bed and slept until 9pm.

When I got back to the radio station it was after eleven. A grizzled old security guard with rheumy red eyes let me into the building and watched me suspiciously until I stepped into one of the elevators. I reached the eighth floor, and emerged into the subdued gloom of the radio station’s unattended reception area.

I stood and stared at the long reception counter. I could hear music playing, and a moment later a station ID call. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jeans and waited patiently. To my left was a passage that led past offices, and behind the counter was a long wide window of darkly tinted glass.

“Hello?”

Nothing. No one.

The nearest office door was open and I started tentatively down the passage, feeling like an intruder. I leaned in through the open office door and saw a desk littered with newspaper clippings and a computer. On one of the walls was a cardboard chart. I peered more closely. Someone named Jessica was giving up chocolate, and had so far survived forty-one days without a Snickers.

The other office doors were shut. I called out again, and suddenly a woman emerged from behind a closed door to my right.

She was maybe thirty years old, with a beauty to her features that was understated. She had emphasized the size and shape of her eyes and the bone structure of her cheeks with careful makeup and wore her blonde hair out so that it swished unfettered across her shoulders. She was dainty – tiny feet and exquisite hands that peeped from the cuffs of her blue silk blouse. The woman frowned, pinching her lips together in sudden consternation.

“You’re Jericho James?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

The woman didn’t smile. She furrowed her brow. “I’m Cecily Glover,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll be your producer.”

The woman turned on her heel and eased open the door, ushering me into the softly lit interior of an office. There was a lamp on a desk, the pale yellow light spilling in a pool across a bank of computer monitors and a sheath of papers.

“This is where I work from,” Cecily said, keeping her voice hushed. “Through that window is where you will be working.”

There was a wide pane of glass between where we stood and another, similar room. In the room opposite, I could see a middle-aged man sitting at a desk with his face pressed close to a microphone.

“That’s the studio,” Cecily said, and walked with crisp clipped steps to a light switch on the wall. “Duncan is just pre-recording the end of his show.”

Cecily brought up the lights in the room and stood with her hand on her hip, emphasizing the narrowness of her tiny waist. She waved at the glass and the announcer in the room opposite flapped a meaty hand in the air without enthusiasm. Cecily perched her bottom against the edge of her desk and turned back to face me. She crossed her ankles and folded her arms over her chest, making the stuff of her blouse shimmer and move around the mounds of her breasts.

“Have you done radio before?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Never,” I admitted.

Cecily chewed her lip and nodded. “I didn’t think so,” she sighed. Her eyes flickered surreptitiously down my body for an instant and then drifted back to my face, her expression a hint of voyeuristic guilt. “Have you done public speaking before?” Her voice had taken on a sudden edge of husk.

I shook my head again. “No.”

Cecily gnawed thoughtfully on her lip for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders with a little sound of weary resignation. “Fine,” she said. Her tone became business-like. “Well my job as producer is to make you sound good,” she said. “I take all the calls here and then feed them through to the studio. There will be a computer screen near where you sit. On that screen will be each caller’s first name, and a little about the reason for their call. You just have to answer the questions.”

I nodded. “There will be someone else in the studio with me, right?”

Cecily began to smile, but it was an expression without warmth or humor. “Yes,” she said. She nodded her head and the shimmer of her hair rippled like a wave in the light. “You will have an announcer. She will do all of the on-air work, juggling the music and commercials. And she will introduce each caller before opening the mic for you.”

“And then I just talk, right?”

Cecily nodded her head. “We record every call, so you don’t have to worry too much. Just be yourself, and answer each question as quickly as you can.”

I frowned, and held up a hand for pause. “You
record
every call?”

“Of course,” Cecily said smoothly. “We play a block of music and commercials and while they are being broadcast on the air, we take calls and record the conversations.” Cecily pushed herself away from the desk. She touched at an errant tendril of hair and I could see the bright-red polish of her fingernails. “It stops conversations getting out of hand, and it gives me the chance to edit out anything that shouldn’t go to air.”

“Like swearing?”

Cecily shook her head. “No. Miss Collett has already sent a memo about that. You can say whatever you want.”

I frowned. “Then why record the calls? Why not just take them live as people phone in?”

Cecily looked at me quizzically, and there was a sudden sparkle of dry amusement in the dark pools of her eyes. “Because we don’t know what is going to come out of the mouths of the callers,” she said. “Some of the women you are going to talk to can be kind of crazy about BDSM erotica.”

Cecily started to smile and then I saw her eyes shift past my shoulder. An instant later I felt somebody touch my arm. I turned my head to find another woman standing close beside me. She had a gorgeous flowing mane of red hair that seemed to spark and radiate with electric fire. Her hand on my arm had a disconcerting intimacy. Her eyes were emerald green, filled with brazen mischief and her skin had that soft flawless complexion of a model. The woman lifted her head and her lips were soft and glossy. She thrust out one hip provocatively and brushed herself against me so that I could feel the warm press of her breasts and see the deep cleft of milky cleavage that showed above the top of her blouse. She arched an inquisitive eyebrow at me that seemed like an invitation.

“Tell me you’re Jericho James,” the woman breathed.

I nodded my head and the woman’s smile spread across her face like a warm tropical sunrise. She licked her lips with slow predatory deliberation and I felt her fingers on my forearm tighten. “I’m April Sullivan – your on-air announcer,” the woman said with a vivacious little gasp. “I’m the woman you’re going to be spending your nights with from now on.”

Chapter 3.

The door to the studio was down another short passage. I followed April, watching the sway of her hips and the long lithe step of her legs. She held the door open for me and then reached into a handbag slung over her shoulder.

“Duncan is a pig,” she said. She wrinkled her nose and squirted perfume in the air. “The man doesn’t wash.”

April left the studio door open and cast a glance at a large clock on the far wall. She sighed and dropped her handbag to the floor. She was wearing a long woolen scarf, slung loose around her neck. She unraveled it and tossed the scarf carelessly over the back of a large leather chair that was behind a desk.

“Okay,” she said with another sigh. “This is the studio,” she made a gesture that embraced the little room. “You sit over there. I sit here.”

April pointed to another chair on the far side of the desk, near the long boom arm of a microphone. “Get yourself comfortable while I check with Cecily about what we’re going to do tonight, okay?”

I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. April went back towards the open studio door and paused for an instant on the threshold. “Oh, and clothes are only optional in this studio,” she said with a breathy little wink and the flash of a lipsticked smile from over her shoulder. “If I come back and you’re sitting there naked, I won’t be offended.”

April pulled the door closed behind her and I stood for a moment in the silence of the gloomy studio.

The room was small – maybe twelve feet square – dominated by the big L-shaped desk that was covered with a bank of computer monitors and cables. There was a microphone positioned over the desk, with a set of headphones hung from the long articulated arm. I noticed another set of headphones draped over the boom of the microphone where I was to sit. The walls of the studio were covered with grey foam for soundproofing and the available floor space was covered with cords of black cable that disappeared through a panel in the opposite wall.

I sat in the chair across the desk and glanced through the window to Cecily’s office. The two women were leaning close together, their body language conspiratorial. I saw Cecily’s dark eyes flick towards me and then away again. She muttered something to April and the announcer threw back her head and laughed deliciously.

The studio was dark – lit only by the glow of the computer monitors – giving the confined space of the room an otherworldly feel, like the flight deck of some isolated, remote craft that was lost and alone in the night. I could feel chilled air being pumped into the studio from an air-conditioning vent in the floor, and as the clock on the wall ticked closer to midnight I felt my apprehension begin to rise.

April came back into the studio just five minutes before midnight. She gave me a wicked little smile and then drew her chair in close to the desk and arranged her microphone so that it was close to her mouth. She snatched up the headphones and held them in her hand. In the background, I could hear a new song starting, playing over the airwaves.

“After this song, there will be a couple of minutes of commercials and then three minutes of news that we take as a feed from our headquarter station in New York,” April said casually. “After the news ends I’ll introduce you to listeners and we’ll go into a block of songs. If anyone wants to talk to you, that’s when it will happen.”

I nodded. I felt a lump of anxiety rise in the back of my throat. April was watching me carefully, her eyes slanted with a kind of speculative sexuality. She gave me an encouraging smile. “Relax,” she said softly. “You will be fine.”

I nodded. April slipped the headphones over her ears and I reached for the set that dangled from the boom of my microphone. I put them on and then drew the mic closer so that I was sitting comfortably. I let out a long breath as the second hand on the clock ticked over to midnight and a fanfare of dramatic music announced the news bulletin.

Across the desk, April was frowning at one of the computer monitors. She had a keyboard in front of her. She tapped away for a few moments. Past her shoulder I saw Cecily drop into her chair and draw herself towards her desk. She had a phone in her hand, raising it to her ear. I watched her from the corner of my eye and saw her glance in my direction, then look away quickly.

I heard another fading stab of fanfare, and then suddenly April was talking…

To the world.

“Hello, love-struck and lonely listeners, this is your one and only April, on the air to make this Boston night a little more bearable for those of us guys and gals who just can’t get enough love – or can’t get over the one we loved and lost.” Her voice was a husky, intimate purr, carefully modulated into a kind of sultry croon. She sighed like she had a broken heart, and then her voice rose into a bubble of vitality.

“But despair not, ladies and lovers. Tonight isn’t like any other night,” she said. “Tonight is special, because in the studio with me, for the very first time, I have a BDSM Master – a man who knows women and understands the art of domination.”

April tapped a key on the keyboard and I heard sexy saxophone music in my headphones. “His name is Jericho James, ladies. And he is Australian.” More music, swelling. “Jericho is here to take your calls, so if you have a question about BDSM, or submission… or maybe just a question about love and sexuality – give Jericho a call on –” April announced the station’s talk-back number and then thumped another button. Music came up, filling the room with a grinding bass beat and the plaintive voice of a man singing about the woman of his dreams. April tugged off her headphones and combed her fingers through her hair as she sat back in her chair with a sigh.

“Okay,” she said with a smile. “You’ve been introduced. “Now we just wait and see whether anyone wants to talk to you.” She folded her arms across her chest so that the creamy flesh of her breasts threatened to spill from her blouse. I noticed she had undone another button. I could see the delicate dark lace of her bra – a stark contrast to the milky pale skin.

April sensed the direction of my gaze and the corner of her mouth curled into a knowing little smile of satisfaction. She said nothing.

There was a sudden buzz of audio feedback in the room and then Cecily’s voice came through a speaker mounted high above the door. “Jesus!” she said in a flustered gasp of incredulity. “The whole fucking switchboard just lit up!”

April turned round in her chair and stared back through the glass window. Cecily was on the telephone, the receiver cradled on her shoulder and typing on a keyboard furiously. April swung back to face me across the desk with a wide-eyed look of wonder.

“I guess you’re a hit,” she said. She stabbed her finger on a button that was on the edge of her desk. “How many calls?” she asked, not turning around to face Cecily again but merely staring at me, studying my expression.

There was a brief pause. I saw Cecily drop the phone and get up out of her chair to lean closer to the window. “Fifty lines all waiting,” she said in disbelief. “Take line six.”

April licked her lips and gave me a flirtatious smile. “Hold on, honey,” she said across the desk. “The ride is just about to start.”

She tapped the keyboard and then inched herself a little closer to the microphone. She had the headphones slung around her neck. She set them quickly back over her ears.

“Hello, and welcome to WGHX-95.8, Boston talk-back radio. You’re on the air. Do you have a question for Jericho?”

There was the briefest moment of delay, and then a woman’s voice filled my headphones. She sounded like she was in her thirties.

“Hi,” the woman said. “Can I ask a question?”

“Sure,” April said. “Jericho is waiting to talk to you. What’s your name?”

“Gabrielle,” the woman said. She sounded polite and educated.

“And where are you calling from, Gabrielle?”

“Medford.”

April smiled and it lightened her voice. “Okay, Gabrielle from Medford, meet Jericho James from Australia. He’s all yours…” she said. “Ask your question.”

There was another brief pause. This one was longer and more meaningful so that it seemed more like hesitant reluctance. I took a breath and filled in the dead air.

“Hi, Gabrielle,” I said. “Thanks for your call. How can I help you tonight?”

April gave me a jaunty thumbs-up.

“Hello,” the woman sounded flustered, or maybe embarrassed. “Are you really into the BDSM lifestyle?”

“Yes,” I said.

I heard the woman sigh and there was a reedy nervous waver in her voice. “Okay,” she said. “Then maybe you can give me some advice. I really need someone’s help.”

I glanced across the desk. April was watching me, her expression now enigmatic. I shut her out of my thoughts and focused my attention on the voice of the woman caller.

“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.

The woman sighed again. “I read a lot of erotica novels about the BDSM lifestyle,” the woman named Gabrielle declared. “For me it is an escape. I’ve been married to the same guy for twelve years, and things in the bedroom have become routine… do you know what I mean?”

I nodded my head for no reason, and then realized I had to talk. No one could see me. “Yes,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

“Well, lately my interest has become more… more intense,” the woman’s voice lifted a little. “And a week ago I went to my husband and tried to talk to him about my fascination and my curiosity. I thought that after a dozen years together, BDSM might have been a way for us to spice things up in our bedroom – and the fantasy of being sexually submissive to a man has become something that appeals to me strongly.”

“And how did your husband react?”

“Not well,” Gabrielle’s tone became crestfallen and haunted. A rising bitterness came through her voice. “He told me it was ridiculous, and he wanted to know where the idea had come from.” There was a short pause and then the woman’s voice leveled out into a bleak monotone. “In the end, we got into a fight. My husband said there was no reason to change what we were doing sexually, and that he wasn’t interested.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“Rejected,” Gabrielle said. “That’s why I called the station. I wanted to know what you suggest I do to make my husband as interested in BDSM as I am.”

I took a breath. The woman wasn’t going to like what I had to say.

“Gabrielle, you probably can’t do anything,” I explained bluntly. “The fact is that most men in a settled long-term relationship are wary of change in the bedroom because it threatens them.”

“Threatens them?”

“Yes,” I said. “Most guys are pretty fragile about sex. Their self-esteem is built on their own perception of their prowess. So going to your husband and suggesting trying BDSM is something that many men in the same situation as your husband would take as a criticism of their current efforts. Does that make sense?”

‘No,” Gabrielle said, and I could hear the confusion in her voice. “I understand what you are saying – but the idea makes no sense to me.”

“Nor to millions of other women around the world,” I smiled in the eerie gloom of the radio studio. “Women don’t understand men, and we men certainly don’t understand you women. But the point here is that your husband is probably not rejecting the idea of trying something new in the bedroom – he’s refusing to budge because he has probably taken your suggestion as a criticism of his ability to please you. In instances like this, the man often withdraws completely – at least in terms of sex – because he feels like you are unsatisfied, and he doesn’t know what to do about it because he probably has limited sexual experience.”

On the other end of the line, Gabrielle was making impatient sounds as if she wanted to cut across me. “We haven’t had sex since the argument,” she said in confirmation.

“And you probably won’t for some time,” I guessed. “Until your husband figures out he needs to change in order to please you. Until then, he’s going to be withdrawn and remote.”

“Really?”

“Probably,” I said. “That’s how most guys would deal with this kind of criticism.”

“But I wasn’t –”

“I know,” I cut in smoothly, and Gabrielle’s protest dropped away. “You went to your husband with the best intentions and with a desire to improve things in your relationship. I’m not suggesting anything otherwise. I’m simply saying that he probably didn’t take your intentions the way you wanted him to. His immediate reaction would be to take offense instead.”

Gabrielle sighed into the phone and I could hear the soft sounds of her breathing on the line. “What do I do?” she asked forlornly.

“Don’t give up,” I offered a glimmer of hope, “but don’t push the issue either. If your husband is a genuine guy who honestly cares about you and your relationship he
will
want to reach out to you eventually. In this situation, the best thing you can do is to leave a few of your BDSM books lying around the house. Eventually your husband will pick one up, or he will go online to learn more about the lifestyle.”

“Do you think?” Gabrielle sounded suddenly hopeful.

“Yes,” I said. “I do – if he’s genuinely interested in pleasing you and sustaining the marriage. Sooner or later he will begin to do his own research and his own investigating about what is involved in the lifestyle.” I paused for a moment and tried to put emphasis into my voice. “The most important thing you can do is be responsive,” I said as a warning. “When he does show signs of wanting to talk about the issue, don’t bombard him. Don’t pressure him. Let him come to you, and then let him set the agenda of the discussion. He will need to go at his own pace, and he will need to believe it’s under his control. In fairness, you have had a lot more time to think about and process this idea because you’ve been reading erotica novels and thinking about how you might enjoy the BDSM lifestyle, but remember it is all new and very foreign to your husband. You’re taking him a long way out of his comfort zone, so you will need to be patient.”