Mr. Perfect Read online

  “Hello, I’m Julia Belotti, with GMA. I assume you’re the Ladies of the List?” She laughed at her own joke as she shook hands all around. “I’ll be doing your interview. But aren’t there four of you?”

  Jaine refrained from making a show of counting noses and saying, “No, I think there are only three of us.” That was smart-ass stuff, the sort she typically held back.

  “T.J. is late,” Marci explained.

  “T.J. Yother, right?” Ms. Belotti wanted to show she had done her homework. “I know you’re Marci Dean; I caught the local bit that was aired.” She looked at Jaine, her gaze assessing. “You are …?”

  “Jaine Bright.”

  “The camera is going to love your face,” Ms. Belotti said, then turned with a smile to Luna. “You must be Luna Scissum. I must say, if Ms. Yother is as attractive as the rest of you, this will be a real hit. You do know the buzz your List is getting in New York, don’t you?”

  “Not really,” Luna said. “We’re surprised at all the attention it’s been getting.”

  “Be sure and say something to that effect when we’re taping,” Ms. Belotti instructed, checking her watch. A tiny frown of annoyance began to pleat her brow; then the door opened and T.J. entered, her hair and makeup flawless, her dress a rich blue that flattered her warm coloring.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, joining the little group. She didn’t offer any excuse, just the apology, and Jaine gave her a sharp look, seeing the fatigue under the makeup. They all had a good reason for looking fatigued, considering the hour, but T.J. had added stress.

  “Where is the ladies’ room?” Jaine asked. “I’d like to check my lipstick, if there’s time, then find a cup of coffee if there is any.”

  Ms. Belotti laughed. “There’s always coffee in a television station. The ladies’ room is this way.” She directed them down a hallway.

  As soon as its door swung shut behind them, everyone turned to T.J. “Are you all right?” Jaine asked.

  “If you’re asking about Galan, yeah, I’m all right. I sent him to a motel last night. Of course, he may have called his girlfriend to join him, but that’s his choice.”

  “Girlfriend!” Luna echoed, her eyes widening in shock.

  “Son of a bitch,” Marci said, leaving it to T.J. to decide if she was calling Galan that or just using it as an expletive.

  Jaine said, “He doesn’t have much leverage now to use against you on this list thing, does he?”

  T.J. laughed. “None, and he knows it.” She looked at their concerned faces. “Hey, I’m okay. If he wants out of the marriage, I’d rather know now before I waste more time trying to keep things going. Once I decided that, I stopped worrying.”

  “How long has he been having an affair?” Marci asked.

  “He swears he isn’t, that he hasn’t been physically unfaithful. Ask me if I believe that.”

  “Oh, sure,” Jaine said. “I believe the sun rises in the west, too.”

  “He might be telling the truth,” Luna put in.

  “Possible, but not likely,” Marci said with the voice of experience. “Whatever they admit to is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s human nature.”

  T.J. checked her lipstick. “I don’t think it makes much difference. If he’s in love with someone else, then what does it matter whether or not he’s slept with her? Anyway, forget about him. I am; if there’s any making up to do, he’ll have to be the one to do it. I’m going to play this list thing up as big as it’ll get. And if there’s any sort of book offer, I say we go for it. We might as well get some money for all the trouble we’ve been through.”

  “Amen to that,” Marci said, and added, “Brick left. His feelings were hurt.”

  They gaped at that, trying to imagine Brick with feelings.

  “If he doesn’t come back,” she complained, “I’ll have to do the dating thing again. Man, I hate the thought of that. Going out dancing, letting men buy me drinks … it’s awful.”

  They were laughing as they left the ladies’ room. Ms. Belotti was waiting for them. She directed them to the coffee urn, where someone had procured four mugs for them. “We have a small set ready for taping whenever you get settled,” she said, a subtle way of telling them to shut up and sit down. “The soundman needs to get you miked and sound-checked, and the lighting has to be adjusted. If you’ll come this way …”

  Their purses were stashed out of sight, and coffee mugs in hand, they settled on a set decorated to look like a cozy living room, with a sofa and two easy chairs, a couple of fake ferns, a discreet lamp that wasn’t turned on. A guy who looked about twenty years old began attaching tiny microphones to them. Ms. Belotti clipped on her own microphone to the lapel of her jacket.

  None of them had been intelligent enough to wear a jacket. Luna’s gold wrap dress was okay, as was the collar-bone skimming neckline of T.J.’s dress. Marci wore a sleeveless, mock-turtleneck sweater, which meant the only place the microphone could be attached was right on her throat. She would have to be very careful moving her head or the resulting noise would blot out everything else. Then the soundman looked at Jaine’s red scoop-neck sweater, and said, “Uh-oh.”

  Jaine grinned and held out her hand. “I’ll clip it on. Do you want it to the side or right in the middle?”

  He grinned back at her. “I’d like it right in the middle, thanks.”

  “No flirting,” she admonished as she slipped the mike under her sweater and clipped it to her neckline, between her breasts. “It’s too early.”

  “I’ll be good.” With a wink, he taped the cord to her side, then returned to his equipment. “Okay I need all of you to talk, one at a time, so I can check the sound.”

  Ms. Belotti began an easy conversation, asking if they were all from the Detroit area. When the sound was duly checked and the cameras were set, Ms. Belotti looked at the producer, who then did the countdown, pointed to her, and she went smoothly into the lead-in comments about the famous—“or infamous, depending on your point of view”—List that had swept the country and was being discussed over breakfast tables in every state. Then she introduced them in turn, and said, “Do any of you have a Mr. Perfect in your lives?”

  They all laughed. If only she knew!

  Luna nudged Jaine’s knee with her own. Taking the cue, Jaine said, “No one is perfect. We joked at the time that the list is really science fiction.”

  “Science fiction or not, people are taking it seriously.”

  “That’s up to them,” Marci put in. “The qualities we listed are our ideas of what would make the perfect man. A group of four other women would probably come up with different qualities, or list them in a different order.”

  “You do know that feminist groups are outraged at the physical and sexual requirements on the List. When women have struggled so long not to be judged by their looks or bust size, they feel you have damaged their position by judging men according to their physical attributes.”

  Luna raised one perfect eyebrow. “I thought part of the feminist movement was to give women the freedom to be honest about what they want. We listed what we want. We were honest.” This line of questioning was her cup of tea; she thought political correctness was an abomination and never hesitated to say so.

  “We also never thought the List would become public,” T.J. put in. “Its release was accidental.”

  “You would have been less honest if you had known the List would be published?”

  “No,” Jaine cracked. “We would have upped the requirements.” What the hell; why not have fun with it, as T.J. had suggested?

  “You said you didn’t have a Mr. Perfect in your life,” Ms. Belotti said smoothly. “Do you have a man at all?”

  Well, that little dig had been slipped in with the ease of an expert, Jaine thought, wondering if the slant of the interview was to paint them as women who couldn’t keep a man. Grinning a little, she had to admit that, given all their circumstances, the slant was pretty damn accurate. But if Ms. Belotti wan