Drama Is Her Middle Name Page 5

  Ritz started doing newspaper interviews and magazine interviews. She was featured on Extra and Access Hollywood. VH1 was hollering for her. She even made an appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show to talk about the shameful state of the news field. There was Stephen Glass, Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, and now Delilah Summers.

  Ritz’s relationship with Ruff changed instantly. Soon he’d turn into Ritz’s very own public relations rep as he and Ritz had daily discussions about which shows to do and which ones to avoid and what angle to take.

  “Tell the Enquirer to fuck off,” Ruff said. “We have to have some limits! But O’Reilly?! Damn, girl. You have arrived!”

  “Shiiiit,” Ritz said. “He ought to add his own ass to that list of fallen news heroes. Didn’t he have to settle out of court with some chick who accused him of sexual harassment? That’s the kind of shit I’m talking about!”

  “Easy, killa,” Ruff said. “You’re going to go on The O’Reilly Factor and you’re going to make nice. He has five million viewers, and we want to get a few of them on WHOT. You can work that. I know you can.”

  “Why, of course,” Ritz purred. “You know I will make it do what it do.”

  And they both broke out into a private chuckle. Soon Ruff realized that he really liked Ritz. She was “a bitch with balls,” a woman after his own heart—tough enough not to let people take advantage of her, but soft enough to know how to be a lady. Ritz liked Ruff, too. He was the first and only boss she had who was completely up front and honest with her.

  Ritz found most people in radio to be very shady. “Hell, it’s that way with most people in life,” she thought. They would smile in your face, telling you everything was fine, while taking out a knife to stab you in the back. Not Ruff. He would look you square in the face and stab you in the front—if that’s what he was going to do. Ritz always knew where she stood with him, and he never lied to her.

  Their relationship didn’t progress beyond mutual admiration. Ritz had a rule about crossing lines with her bosses. Ruff was from the rules-were-made-to-be-broken school. He would break all of the rules for Ritz, but she would have to make the first move—which she was not inclined to do. Until she did come around, Ruff was relegated to chief cheerleader and mentor and, of course, boss.

  It was one in the afternoon, an hour before Ritz’s debut in her new slot. Ruff made sure she had everything she needed and everything she wanted—including Chas. She had convinced Ruff that she needed a producer to take her to the top. Chas didn’t have the typical radio experience, but Ruff hired him anyway.

  “I trust you, Ritz,” he said. “But if it doesn’t work, I’m bouncing both of your asses out of here! Don’t fuck this up.”

  She sat on the toilet of the handicapped stall in the station’s bathroom. She was nauseous and didn’t want anyone to see her looking anything but confident. Her hands were sweating and for perhaps the first time in her adult life Ritz was scared.

  “What if?” was the question that kept swirling around her head. “What if I do fuck this up?”

  She felt completely alone. Ritz didn’t have Tracee to lean on. She wasn’t speaking to her Aunt Madalyn. She couldn’t dare tell Ruff about her fears. She could talk to Chas, but he would tell her what she already knew: “Girl, you better suck this up. You only have one chance to make a good first impression, and this is your chance!”

  Ritz gluped down some Maalox that she had in her bag just in case, splashed her face with cold water, reapplied her makeup, and got ready for the debut of the Ritz Harper Excursion: One Trip You Will Never Forget! She and Chas came up with that one in a brainstorming session over the weekend. He coached her on how she would present her show with drama and pomp. He even lined up some explosive guests for her debut week. Everything was planned to the letter. But there was still that little voice inside of Ritz, that little voice of doubt.

  Ritz’s first hour on the air went smoothly. She started off chatting with her new listeners and talking about how excited she was to be there with them. She invited them to call in. Ritz loved talking to “her people,” as she referred to the loyal listeners of her night crew. She was determined to create the same family-style environment in the afternoons, as well.

  “You’re on with Ritz, who’s this?”

  “Bitch, who the fuck do you think you are!” It was Delilah Summers. Ritz was thankful for the seven-second delay and even more thankful for Aaron, the engineer who was a holdover from Dr. Mark’s show. He was a pro and not only quick on the bleep button, but also smart. He left in the FCCACCEPTABLE “bitch” and only bleeped out the “fuck,” so the audience could get the full dramatic effect.

  “Delilah?” Ritz said in the sweetest voice she could muster. “Girl, long time no speak! How are you! What can I do for you?”

  “Oh, you’ve done enough, bitch!” Delilah’s speech was slurring, and it was clear that she was under the influence of alcohol. “I ought to come down to that station and fuck you up. Better yet, I wouldn’t dirty my hands on your shanky ass! Bitch!”

  It was quite a departure from the usually well-spoken perfect diction that defined Delilah Summers. She sounded like the straight-up from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, chick that she really was. Like Tina Turner, Eartha Kitt, Maya Angelou, and even Madonna, Delilah Summers had found a way to erase all ethnicity from her vernacular and delivery. She was the quintessential crossover personality. But one call to Ritz erased all remnants of the image she had worked so many years to craft. Ritz put her business in the street and her career in the toilet, and with one call, Delilah Summers flushed it.

  “You are such a jealous, grimy bitch,” Delilah continued. “After all I’ve done for you . . . Ritz, you will get yours. You will get yours!”

  And she hung up.

  “Well!” Ritz said. “I guess she was mad, huh? I don’t blame her. But I will tell you all this: What hasn’t caught you hasn’t passed you. She shouldn’t be mad at me, she should be mad at her damn self.”

  Deep down inside (and that place was growing deeper by the day), Ritz did feel a little remorse. She and Delilah had been friends—even if it wasn’t an equal relationship. Delilah had worked hard, and Ritz had learned a lot from her. But oh well. If bringing Delilah down put Ritz on top, so be it.

  “I deserve being here more,” Ritz said to herself, trying to convince herself of that. “She didn’t look out for me. Not once. Fuck her!”

  The phone lines lit up just as they had the first night of the Delilah Summers scandal. And there were calls from all of the entertainment and newsmagazine shows—including 60 Minutes—wanting a response from Ritz. It was announced that afternoon that Delilah Summers was let out of her network contract for “personal” reasons. While her star had fallen, Ritz’s was on the rise.

  7

  ON THE AIR

  “You’re on with Ritz. What’s on your mind?”

  “Hey, girl! This is Sheila from Atlanta, and I have a problem. I have been seeing this man for about a year now. But I met this other guy and I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Okay?” Ritz said. “This man you’ve been seeing, would you consider him your boyfriend? I mean, you say you’re seeing him, but are you in love with him? Are you all talking marriage? What’s the deal?”

  “We have a little boy together and yes, we’re talking marriage.”

  “Oh my!” Ritz purred.

  “I love him,” Sheila from Atlanta said. “I really do. He’s a great father. He’s a great boyfriend. But we’re not compatible in bed. I want it all of the time and he doesn’t.”

  “Ooooooh!” Aaron, the engineer, howled. Ritz kept his mike open because Aaron was good for a dumb-ass comment or sound effect during the show. He also provided lots of color that Ritz liked.

  “Yes, you do have a problem,” Ritz said.

  “I don’t want to cheat on him, but this other man who I met online is so freaking sexy. We’ve talked on the phone, and Ritz, without even touching me, he made me come
harder than I ever came with my man.”

  Aaron was quick on the “beep” button when she said “come.” He was always ready. Ever since that whole Janet Jackson titty flack at Super Bowl XXXVIII and Howard Stern’s many, many violations that cost him and his station millions, Ritz didn’t take any chances. She skirted the line often but she never crossed it. She wasn’t messing with the FCC, which she called the Fucking Cunt Commission.

  “Fantasies are fine,” Ritz said. “In fact, I think they’re healthy. And as long as you two don’t actually get together, I say use your Internet jump-off and fantasize about him while you’re in bed with your man. See if that works. And during those times when your man isn’t in the mood, I suggest you get you a Jackrabbit vibrator. They have a new one out called the Impulse and, girl! Well! I won’t tell you . . . you go see for yourself. And if I were you, I would pull out my old Jackrabbit and go to work in front of him. Trust me, if he doesn’t get the hint, then he’s not a real man. And if it doesn’t work—I mean, everything I’ve told you—holla back.”

  “Thank you, Ritz!”

  “Oh, my pleasure,” Ritz said. “I mean, it will be your pleasure!”

  “Ooooh!” Aaron howled again.

  “Next caller,” Ritz said. “You’re on with Ritz!”

  During the first break, Ritz took a sip of her diet Pepsi, one of five she drank during her shift.

  “Jamie, I’m ready for another,” Ritz yelled to her latest intern, who was busy getting the hundreds of faxes coming in, checking the e-mails, answering the phones, and loving it.

  “Okay, Ritz,” Jamie said, never letting anyone see her sweat. Jamie was a third-year student at New York University and ambitious as hell. Her banker father taught her the No. 1 rule of success: Identify the power and stay close to it. “It’s the only way you will conquer it, sweetie. You have to be at the right hand of power.”

  Jamie went above and beyond the call of duty for Ritz and never complained. In fact, she always seemed to have a smile even when Ritz humiliated her on the air.

  “Um, intern!” Ritz would scream on the air. “This diet Pepsi is not cold enough! What’s your problem?! People, can I tell you how hard it is to find good help?”

  Jamie never showed any frustration. She would just go back and get a colder diet Pepsi, pressing it against her arm to make sure that it was indeed cold. She then put the cool one in the tiny freezer in the half fridge in the Ritz’s “office.” The station pimped out an entire large corner of the utility room to give Ritz her own space. All of the corner offices were taken by executives. Ritz’s makeshift office turned out to be among the biggest. It was definitely the most colorful. She decorated it with an animal-print rug, painted the walls pink—her favorite color—and adorned them with photos from her most famous interviews. She had pictures with Angela Bassett and Janet Jackson, O.J. Simpson (one of her favorites. She was surprised by how sexy he was), and even Jennifer Lopez, whom Ritz interviewed when J. Lo was the hottest thing going—back when she was with P. Diddy, who was just Puffy then and Ritz was still doing nights. Now the tables had turned but J. Lo was still one of her favorites.

  Jamie rushed back to the studio with the ice-cold diet Pepsi and discreetly placed it on the desk in front of Ritz, who picked it up without even looking.

  “Now that’s better, intern,” said Ritz, who never called her interns by name on the air because they never lasted longer than three months and she didn’t want her audience to get attached. Keeping them nameless kept them anonymous and, therefore, nobodies. But Jamie was in her sixth month. Ritz, despite the hard time she gave her, actually adored her.

  “That Jamie is trying to make herself invaluable,” Ritz told Chas after the girl’s first week on the job.

  “This one may be a keeper,” Chas said.

  “Nah, I doubt that,” Ritz said, not wanting to concede. But when Jamie’s three-month stint was up, no one said anything. They just kept her on.

  After slipping the icy diet Pepsi into place at Ritz’s right hand, out of the way of the stack of faxes, magazines, and other papers, Jamie took her seat to finish screening calls. The phone lines never stopped, and it was Jamie’s job to weed out the nut jobs from the whack jobs. The whack jobs were the most coveted callers—like James in St. Louis who once called to get advice about what to do about his fifteen inch penis. He was having a hard time, literally, getting a steady girlfriend. And there was Stephanie from Westchester, who had slept with practically every star athlete in the world. She was always good for some gossip about someone no one ever expected to hear about.

  The nut jobs were plentiful. These were the people who just wanted to be on the air and really had nothing to say. They were just plain crazy. That kind of crazy didn’t make for good radio. It was tedious.

  But Ritz loved the whack jobs. She even got a collect call once from a maximum security prison. Jamie wasn’t sure whether to let it through, but her instincts never let her down.

  “Ritz, we have a confessed pedophile on line three, calling collect,” Jamie said, hoping not to get yelled at. “Maybe you should take him next!”

  “Excellent!” Ritz said.

  “Hey, this is Ritz, who’s this?”

  “This is Gene. I’m calling from Dannemora,” he said.

  “That’s a prison!”

  “Yeah. I hear you talking about Michael Jackson and what you would like to do with pedophiles, and I’m here to tell you, none of that shit you’re talking will work.”

  Aaron was ready on the bleep button.

  “When I raped my daughter, I knew inside it was wrong but I couldn’t help myself. I can’t explain it. It’s like another thing came over me and I was watching myself doing it, telling myself not to, but I wouldn’t listen.”

  “You raped your daughter?” Ritz asked, trying not to let too much disgust show in her voice. She hated this man whom she had never met, but she wanted him to stay on the line. She didn’t want to lose him—not until she milked him for his story.

  “Yeah, and I kept doing it,” he said.

  “Did she tell on you?”

  “Nah, not at all. She thought it was her fault. I was good at convincing her of that.”

  “So how did you end up in jail?”

  “I raped my girlfriend after the bitch pissed me off. She went to the cops, the bitch!”

  “How long are you in for?” Ritz asked.

  “Oh, since this is the second time I got caught, I got twenty-five years. They have me in some treatment, group-therapy thing where I have to talk about my issues with other rapists and pedophiles.”

  “So how do the other inmates treat you?”

  “Oh, I’m not fucking with them and they don’t fuck with me,” he said. “I know they say that people like me get raped in prison—but it ain’t happened yet. And I don’t see it happening.”

  “That’s a shame,” Ritz slipped out. “So you say my solution—castration—won’t work?”

  “Nah.”

  “But wouldn’t that be getting rid of the weapon?”

  “Nah, Ritz. The weapon ain’t between my legs. The weapon is between my ears. You have to change the way a man thinks. Even if he don’t have a dick, he will find another way to rape if his mind ain’t right.”

  “Is your mind right?”

  “Not yet. I belong in jail. I ain’t ready to get out. I would rape again, I believe.”

  “Wow, that’s real honest of you.”

  “Well, you say you like to keep it real. That’s as real as it gets.”

  “It sure is! You’re listening to the Ritz Harper Excursion, better than any trip you’ll take, y’all. And we’ll be back after these messages!”

  The red “On Air” sign went out as Aaron played bumper music leading into the commercial set.

  “What the fuck?!” Ritz said. “I’m still shaking.”

  “Yo, dude was mad icy,” Aaron chimed in.

  “I’m entering that segment for the Air Awards,” Chas said, alw
ays thinking about the show and the product. “That was some gripping shit.”

  “Where’s the Moët?” Ritz said. “After that, I need something a little stronger than soda. Besides, isn’t my girl coming any minute?”

  The studio was abuzz over the arrival of Mariah Carey— who might be the only guest who could top the pedophile. She was one of Ritz’s favorite people to interview because she was one of the few “in the business” Ritz actually liked and respected.

  Advice was just one of the features that had catapulted the Ritz Harper Excursion to the number-one spot. In less than a month, Ritz was syndicated to four cities—Philadelphia, Hartford, Washington, DC, and the flagship in New York. There was talk of adding ten more within the year. Other cities wanted their Ritz fix, too, but Ruff didn’t want to move too fast.

  People loved the advice, but the real reason they tuned in was for the celebrity interviews. Ritz had found a formula that was part Oprah Winfrey, part Jerry Springer. She got all of the high-profile artists, entertainers, and authors on her show, but there was always, always a twist—which her audience counted on. Ritz had millions of listeners, and they were all part of a special insiders’ club.

  Ritz had developed a secret language with her audience. When a guest was on and Ritz wanted to say something about the person without the guest knowing, she had sound effects to let the audience know what she wanted them to know.

  She interviewed legendary rapper Biz Markie. He was an idol in many circles and was there to promote his new reality show. Every time Biz opened his mouth, Ritz gave him the business—one look at Aaron, and the sound of a dentist’s drill would go off under whatever Biz was saying. Not once did Ritz mention that Biz Markie’s mouth looked like he had been chewing metal bubblegum. She never had to say that he looked like he had gingivitis and periodontal disease. The dentist’s drill said it all.

  If someone was pretending to have a lot of money and was, in reality, broke, Ritz would have Aaron play the sound effect of a cash register being hurled out of a window. Cairo, from the R&B group Cotton Club, who made a solo splash in the 1990s with the biggest one-hit wonders of the decade, rolled through, and Ritz let him have it.