12

ON THE AIR

“Okay, Mark from Manhattan, the show is about over and I’m going to have to let you go,” Ritz said in her best, exasperated I-can’t-believe-this-nigga-is-still-talking voice.

“All I’m saying, Ritz, is that sometimes these hos need a pimp-slap from they man just so they know we care,” Mark from Manhattan said. “Don’t you remember your parents disciplining you out of love?”

“Uhhh! Mark, we have to go! I have to go and you most certainly have to go! I am unfortunately out of time. I love you for listening!” Ritz gave the signal and Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” brought her show to a close. The song was old, but the beat was timeless and the message that her show would be eternally hot could never be lost.

As soon as the red “On Air” sign shut off, the studio erupted into laughter. Everyone was laughing except Ritz. She was in one of her moods. Was it melancholy? Was she antsy? She couldn’t put her finger on it. Jamie and Chas ignored her. They had learned to do that because recently they never knew what kind of shade Ritz would be throwing from day to day. She was turning into a real diva—attitude and all. Aaron and Chas and now Jamie worked hard to keep the ambience of the studio fun. Ritz could be so over the top that they needed to keep the balance.

“Yo, did you hear how serious that brother was about pimp-slapping his woman?” Aaron said. “Chas, maybe we can find his girl and bring her on the show. I bet he’s full of shit. I bet we’ll find out that he’s the one getting pimp-slapped.”

Chas could find anyone. Since he came on the show, there wasn’t an interview Ritz couldn’t have. Chas wasn’t only well connected; he was so charming even straight men were attracted to him. He had that way about him. And since he had come to the station to work with Ritz, her show was doing better than anyone ever imagined.

Stations that had previously been ambivalent were now taking a second look. The Ritz Harper Excursion meant instant syndication success. It was heading toward full-out national syndication. Folks in Los Angeles and Miami wanted a piece of Ritz, who was enjoying her new lifestyle with its million-dollar-plus salary—which came on the heels of her hitting incentives every time her show came in the top three in the ratings.

Chas was proud. He was proud of his team.

He was particularly proud of Aaron and how he’d developed. When Chas came aboard, Aaron—a dark-skinned brother with curly hair and glasses, who if he wasn’t so skinny could easily be mistaken for New York Jets running back Cur-tis Martin—was the board operator for Dr. Mark. He was on his way to being fired when Ritz moved to afternoons. Aaron didn’t take shit from anyone and was fed up with what he deemed “the niggerish way” the station was being run. Management was fed up with him telling them how “niggerish” everything was. He was talented, but his anger and attitude overshadowed his talent at times. Aaron and Chas hit it off from the door and Chas schooled Aaron on how to play the game.

“Hey, what’s your goal?” Chas asked. “To win, right? Well, my little brother, you have to know the rules and then learn how to play this game. Your first move is to lose the attitude.”

Aaron did. And he became an integral part of the Ritz Harper team. He was even making a little name for himself with the on-air comments he was allowed to slip in from time to time. Ritz would use him when there was a lull during the five hours. She would harass him about his date the previous night and even talk to him about his foot fetish.

Once when she was interviewing sexy R&B ingenue Maria Marie, Ritz got the young singer to take off her shoes and show Aaron her feet. He went crazy and sucked on her big toe—and Maria Marie let him—on the air. It was classic, and it was these kinds of shenanigans that the Ritz Harper Excursion became known for.

Jamie, the intern, was sometimes disgusted by Aaron’s antics. But most of the time she found him amusing. Secretly, Aaron was absolutely in love with Jamie. She, however, wouldn’t give him a bit of attention.

The internship program was developed by Chas, who reached out to the broadcast and media departments of the local colleges. It was the first and only internship program at the station. Chas had Ritz announce a tryout for interns over the air and had them submit their bios and résumés. He personally interviewed the ones who seemed like winners. Chas put them through a grueling interview, but the real test came when they had to work with Ritz. During the five-hour show she would have them do everything from going across town to pick up her custom-made hair from Beverly Lugo Hair on Second Avenue, to going to Junior’s in Brooklyn to satisfy her craving for strawberry cheese pie with amaretto chips. (At least she never made any of them walk to Junior’s the way P. Diddy did on his Making the Band MTV reality show.)

Most of the interns ended up quitting in humiliation. The last one before Jamie was Brad, a senior at Hunter College. Ritz sent him to the store to get her some Kotex super tampons.

“They have to be Kotex!” Ritz said. “Don’t come back here with no Tampax or Playtex. I don’t wear those!”

Brad just didn’t come back. Jamie was the next intern and she stuck it out. She passed the humiliating initiation period, which was Ritz’s idea.

“You have to weed out those who really want to be down from those who just want to hang around,” she would say. Jamie really wanted to be down.

At twenty, she had a solid head on her shoulders and really knew what she wanted to do—she wanted to be in the business and, one day, on the air. Jamie wanted to learn every aspect of radio from the bottom up. On Ritz’s show, Jamie was getting a top-drawer education.

Jamie, at five foot five, was a very pretty, brown-skinned girl with shoulder-length hair that she styled in a roller set that gave her a head full of bouncy curls. Jamie was serious and determined. She was on a mission. Chas saw that in her eyes from the first day he interviewed her. And she stuck close to Chas, learning all of his tricks and taking mental notes of all of his contacts and connections. And becoming more invaluable by the day.

Chas kept the show current. Ritz would be breaking news way before the New York Post’s “Page Six” or the Daily News’ “Rush & Molly” ever knew what was going on. They started listening to her show to fill their pages the next day. Chas would get a call from one of his sources all hours of the day and he would feed it to Ritz, who would have it over the air before he flipped his cell phone closed.

He was the big brother. He was the regulator. He was not only the producer, but he also kept everything and everyone in the studio on the same page.

They had turned into a little family—Ritz’s dysfunctional, crazy, out-of-control family. Ritz needed the family atmosphere. Her world outside of the station was growing more and more strange. She couldn’t really go out the way she used to because she was becoming so famous. The station had finally invested in promoting her, and her face was on bus ads, subways ads, and billboards around the city and throughout New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Ritz’s face was becoming as well known as her voice. And the many television appearances she was making for some explosive interview or another were creating even more of a buzz around Ritz. There was even talk of a magazine-style show on VH-1.

Ritz wasn’t comfortable in front of the camera. Her first love was being behind the mike and on the radio. She was at home there, but she was losing some of her inhibitions. For the first time, Ritz felt like she had people who had her back and that she could go out on a limb and there would be someone there to catch her if she stumbled or fell. Until now, Ritz had never trusted anyone to have her back. She couldn’t. People always let her down. And honestly, she had never been the type of chick that people really wanted to look out for.

Ritz had only one true friend in the whole wide world— Tracee Remington. She was the one person who completely understood the madness that was Ritz. She knew the vulnerable Ritz, the sensitive Ritz, the soft Ritz that nobody—not even her studio family—knew. Hell, her own aunt and uncle didn’t know that Ritz too well. But Tracee did.

Chas had glimpsed other sides of Ritz, but not as deeply as Tracee.

Ritz was slowly letting her guard down around Aaron and Jamie. She was starting to trust, just a little. Tracee would caution Ritz not to be so skeptical.

“You don’t trust people because you don’t trust yourself,” said Tracee. “That’s all a reflection on you. You have to have faith and know that no one can do anything to you unless you let them. Everyone isn’t out to get you. Everything happens in the fullness of time, and everything happens for a reason. You have to see the blessing in every situation, and even in your enemies you have to be able to see the good.”

It was because of Tracee’s advice that Ritz was open to Chas and let him into her world. Connecting with him was one of the best decisions Ritz had ever made.

Chas was always the last one out of the studio, constantly on the phone booking guests and setting up interviews. Most evenings after walking Ritz to her car, he would go back up to the station to make more phone calls and work on show strategy. Or Chas would go to a club, which was really more work than fun. Every now and then he would hang out with Ritz. Chas was the only one at the station who had been to her home.

Friday was supposed be their brainstorming night.

“Mr. Chas, are you free to work on the show tonight?” Ritz asked as they walked to her car on Friday. “Or do you have another date?”

“Look, don’t be jealous,” Chas said, poking Ritz playfully in the side. “I cannot help it that I am in high demand.”

The comment stung Ritz a little but she never let on. She was a little jealous of Chas’s social life. Not that she would go out with as many men as he did or go to as many clubs. She just wanted to be asked. It seemed as if the more money she made, the more successful she became, the less attention she got from the opposite sex.

Chas wasn’t trying to rub it in. He was simply trying to deflect. The truth was that he wasn’t getting as much action as it appeared. He was hustling for the show. His “dates” were really contacts, opportunities for more exclusives. His “clubbing” was really spying to get more exclusives for the show. He liked Ritz and others to believe that he was some sort of magician who could pull stories for the show out of a hat, when in reality he was humping his behind to make sure that Ritz—and really his—star kept rising.

“You know what? I will cancel all plans tonight,” Chas said. “It will be me and you. Let’s order some Indian and pick it up on the way to your place. What’s that spot on South Orange Avenue?”

“Neelam?” Ritz responded.

“Yeah, that one.”

“Okay. I have a few ideas I want to run by you,” Ritz said.

“I can’t wait!” That’s what Chas’s mouth said, but he really didn’t want any ideas from Ritz. He had all the ideas she would ever need. But he decided a long time ago to humor her.

He remembered reading in one of the many Machiavelli-style books that he seemed to devour whenever he got the chance that real power is in what is not seen. The truly powerful leave no fingerprints.