“Yup.” A tiny spark of hope flickered in her belly. The Nielsen ratings were due out any day, which meant they’d soon know about any listenership changes that happened in October, November, and December—in other words, the months following the morning-show split. No amount of stern internal commands had been able to quash her foolish optimism. Because what if? What if the station’s audience numbers dropped? What if Brandon changed his mind?
Dave moved his fingers through silent chord progressions, his favorite activity to channel excess energy, as Mabel watched Skip through the glass going through the motions of his show. “My numbers’ll be down. It’s inevitable.”
“But that’s good, Eeyore,” she said. “If you improved, then That Arrogant Asshole was right all along.”
“But if I haven’t improved, it means I’m a shitty deejay.”
“Right, but we already knew that.”
His small pained noise was a tiny rebuke.
“Oof, sorry.” A closer look revealed the strain around his eyes. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
The strings squealed as Dave slid his fingers over them. “We both know the show isn’t as good without us working together. I just hope that doesn’t mean I’ll be out of a job if the book really is that bad.” He kept his eyes on his guitar.
“Please, they’d never fire you. You’re Mr. Beaucoeur Radio.” She leaped off the couch and started pacing. “I just want the wait over with already! Who the hell knows what the ratings will be? Plus there’s Jake’s focus group research, and God only knows what Brandon’ll do with that. Gah!”
She flung herself back down, and this time Dave actually strummed his guitar, plucking out an ominous riff suitable for the drama of the situation, at which point Skip whipped the studio door open.
“Take it somewhere else, you two. Your palpable anxiety’s seeping under the door.”
Their wait ended at noon on Wednesday when Robbie stuck his pompadoured head into the secondary studio where Mabel was working on commercials. “Ratings are out. Brandon wants to see you and Dave in his office in two hours. Book’s in the greenroom.”
He hadn’t even finished speaking before she ripped the cans off her ears and bolted out the door. Dave was already holding the book and scanning the results, so she stood on her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder.
“Hooooooleeeeey shiiiiiiit,” he said.
He wasn’t wrong. The spring numbers had placed the Brick at number three in the Beaucoeur market, with their morning show as the second-most listened to. Not so in the fall results Dave was holding. Ratings for the past three months now had them trailing the Top 40 station and the country station like usual, but the all-talk station had bumped the Brick down to number four by a fairly large margin.
“We went from an 8.7 percent audience share to a 5.1?” Mabel asked, horrified. “How did that happen?”
“My fault,” Dave said flatly. “Look.”
She inhaled hard at the morning-show numbers. The spring ratings had Dave and Mae in the Mornings at a 9.3 audience share. The new numbers had the Mae-less show sitting at a 4.0. She’d never seen a drop that big before.
“Not your fault.” Her voice was harsher than she intended it to be, but she hated the shell-shocked look on Dave’s face. “You were struggling to keep all the oars working in the right direction with a new copilot at the helm every week. Of course the numbers are rocky.”
Dave shoved the report at her and collapsed onto the couch, running his fingers through his hair.
“Not good, not good, not good,” he muttered, then looked up at her. “Well,you’regood.”
She flipped to the afternoon-drive numbers. Sure enough, she was pulling in more of an audience than Roman had been at the same time in the spring, up from 5.6 to 6.7. Surprising, since she’d been intentionally sucking for two of those three months. Not that she’d say that in front of a panicking Dave.
“I told you you’d be fine without me,” he said. “You make me funny, and you’re great on your own.I’mthe train wreck.”
She dropped the papers on the desk and stalked over to him, leaning down to put both her hands on his shoulders. “David Winnebago Chilton—”
“Winston,” he muttered.
“DavidWinnebagoChilton,” she said, raising her voice, “if you don’t shut your pity hole, I will shut it for you. You hosted what should be a two-person show solo for a month, and then you had to parade a group of ill-prepared, marginally talented party girls though on-air auditions. Ofcourseyour numbers are wonky.”
He leaned forward, his head lolling. “Tell that to my unemployment officer.”
She was saved from answering when the greenroom door opened and Jake strolled in. He crossed to her and, without a word, pulled her into his arms, bent her dramatically backward, and kissed her hard. They broke apart when Dave pointedly cleared his throat, and Mabel, fanning herself a little, said, “I didn’t know you were stopping by the station today!”
“Brandon just called so we could go over the most recent ad-revenue numbers. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know he’s not happy.”
“Great,” Dave moaned.
