that stuff now and then. You wanta come into the studio and say hello?"
"No, thanks. This is all I need, Eddie. Thanks for the 'added value content.'"
"It's a howl. Sheena accidentally had it hailing in the studio a couple weeks ago. Funny, we've been having a lot of freakish weather lately, but no indoor hail."
"It's the Midwest," I said. "Freakish weather is our biggest tourist attraction."
"Must be weird living in sunshine year-round in Vegas."
"Yeah, it's weird living in Vegas, but it's not all sunshine," I said in vague understatement.
"Can I help you off the loading dock?"
Fast Eddie bent to stretch out a lank arm with a helping hand on the end of it.
"Eddie, the gentleman? You must really miss me," I commented as I grabbed his hand, although I appreciated his easing me through the four-foot drop.
He straightened up to tower above me, shaking his head, even his mustache drooping morosely. "You have no idea."
WITH QUICKSILVER ABSENT and unable to play guard, I'd left Dolly locked with her top up.
So when I opened the driver's door with my old-fashioned key - direct interface, imagine - I sat in the interior shade and played Slo-mo Eddie's treasure trove of scenes.
I watched his recording of my stand-up report on the dark country road by the cattle mutilation scene earlier that spring ... as if from years later or a planet away. It was a good story, told without glitches, but I seemed so young and polite and parochial-school girl.
I'd reeled off the bit-role lines Hector Nightwine had given me on CSI V in Vegas a week ago with a new edge that came naturally. The portly producer was hoping my performance would either lure my double, Lilith, back to the CSI fold, or establish me as her replacement. I hoped it would lure Lilith too. I wanted to know how long she'd been doing her twin act in my life before I'd spotted her on CSI.
The image of the old, WTCH-TV Delilah made me rerun leaving Wichita two months ago. My first fill-up stop for Dolly at a remote Colorado gas station had forced me to fend off a trio of creepy backwoods guys and burn rubber out of there.
Having to dodge booty bounty hunters going after my "CSI-autopsy-star" twin the moment I left Kansas had made me a lot warier and assertive. And way less polite. Not to mention that certain confidence I derived from finally getting a sex life. Knowing how the other 99 percent lived sure increased one's daily savoir faire.
Sighing as my sweet innocent self disappeared from the small screen, I soon was snickering at Undead Ted as he practiced resting his supposedly "supplemented" fang-tips on his lower lip before going "live" on camera.
When he was caught touching up his tinted lip gloss, I fast-forwarded past, my own recent passion-pit adventures with lip gloss making me blush like a schoolgirl again. Damn! Would my pale skin always make me a patsy for the unwanted flush? Probably.
I made a fierce face at the telltale screen, then slowed it to normal.
Seeing Undead Ted and Sheena lip-locking against the station blue-screen was like watching the Christmas Chipmunks with their braces in gridlock. There was enough bleach on those teeth to off Sheena. At least, I assumed, witches remained human enough to off. But then, my idea of a happy ending was Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. Or, more apropos to the current location, The Wizard of Oz.
While cruising the snips of my old news reports, I realized that I'd definitely grown by leaving my once-safe niche at WTCH. Eddie had ended my trip down bad-memory lane with Sheena's later interview with the Sunset City resident of the new management's choice.
Sheena was an anorexic blonde with inflated bust and lips. Unlike a lot of "weather gals" who'd forged the way for weather witches to take their places, she was more about her looks and attitude than making "dry" weather statistics fascinating and relevant to the viewers.
Weather guys and gals had always been the geeks on the highly photogenic TV news teams of my growing-up era. The viewers sensed they had a real passion for their high-and low-pressure areas, that naughty acting-out El Nino, the evil confluence of clashing hot and cold fronts that makes the perfect storm.
Lightning and thunder were still-living gods that could throw panic into human cardiac systems in the heartland, but we had our über-outlaw, our supernatural sky-dancer, our bane and our bragging point.