by Baxter Black
It had taken a year to develop and another six months to plan a market strategy. It was at this point that a search had begun for the perfect spokesperson. Turk could not afford to hire the usual football, baseball, or basketball star. He opted instead to choose his endorsable athlete based on looks. He’d pay him less but promote him more.
On this fine morning on the tenth floor of one of the twenty-story buildings in the Tech Center on the south end of Denver, Turk sat at the head of his twelve-foot-long conference table and listened to his marketing team.
Seated around the table were Nova Skosha, celebrity recruiting agent, File Blitzer, road manager, a secretary taking notes, and Turk’s financial officer. Nova was reporting that she had contacted Straight Line and that his response had been positive.
“So, what’s he like?” asked Turk.
“Well, studly, for one thing,” she said.
Turk nodded. He knew this was an academic observation by Nova, not a lascivious or romantic one. She was almost asexual, with her practical haircut, hip but simple clothes, and big glasses She was one of those professional women who are drawn to political, newsroom, musical, or theatrical pursuits, always working backstage, behind the scenes, out of the spotlight but always serious about their work.
“I watched the clips you sent of him riding, performing. He looks like he knows what he’s doing. I put the DVD on slow mo, and he reminded me of a bird flying,” said Turk.
“I’ve been following through the Sports News, the rodeo paper. He is doing well and this last week has risen to number five in the world standings in the saddle bronc,” she said.
“Out of what?” asked File.
“The top fifteen qualify to compete in the national finals in Las Vegas this December. He has qualified, finished in the top fifteen for the last five years and the world championship once. It would be a real bonus for us if he were to win the world championship again this year!”
Nova then laid out her plan to introduce Straight at the annual bucking horse sale in Miles City, Montana, on the third weekend in May. “Like I said, I’ve already talked to him, and he is excited.”
“He’s plenty macho,” offered File Blitzer. “Got the cred. If he can pull this LIP LASTER off, it will be the greatest unisex campaign since Joe Namath put on pantyhose!”
“Then,” he continued, “we find the perfect girl, a counterpart for Straight, put ’em together . . . who knows what magic will happen? We’ll make stars out of them! And . . . I might have just the right girl!”
From a folder, File withdrew three promo photos and passed them to Turk.
One picture showed a shapely redhead in a cheerleading pose. The second one, a blonde wearing a bikini, and the third, a striking brunette astride a chestnut Standardbred hunter-jumper, in equestrian English riding gear. She brandished a quirt coquettishly.
“Are these all of the same woman?” asked Turk.
“Yes. She’s done lots of modeling, acting. You can see she’s a looker, and she can play any part!” said File.
“You are right about that. She’s hot!” said Turk.
“Her name is Oui Oui Reese. She auditioned for the Denver Broncos cheerleaders and was selected as an alternate,” explained File.
“Okay,” said Turk. “Let’s see how Miles City goes, then we’ll look at the ladies.”
The meeting ended.
Back in his office File put in a call on his cell phone. “Oui Oui,” he spoke, “I brought you up in the meeting . . . Turk says you’re hot!”
“Oh, File!” Oui Oui exclaimed, “I love you, I love you, I love you! Can we have dinner, even lunch? You can tell me all about it?”
“Your apartment tonight?” he asked.
“Oh, this is so momentous, splendiculous. I’m so deserving. Filely, you know how I hate to cook. How ’bout we go to Morton’s, no, the Longhorn, some place fancy we can celebrate!” she said.
“Well, remember, this is not a sure thing yet, but at least we got a foot in the door.”
“But you can make it happen, my little Filefeifer. I know you can, and it will mean so much to me and my career and our relationship. That’s why I love you, love you, love you! Oh, and Sweetiefiles, could you pick me up a package of those scrumptious Russian cigarettes I love, love, love. It won’t be far out of your way, and I’ll be ready at seven. No! Six-thirty. No! Seven. No! Seven-thirty. No! Seven. No! Seven-thirty. There’s a Princess Di bio on A&E that I must, simply must, see! So, seven-thirty, on the dot. You know how I hate waiting. Love, love, love, love and kisses! Bye, bye, my ferocious Filomatic!”
File hung up with the palpable memory of her elusive pulchritude.
CHAPTER 11
May 19, Thursday
Straight Hooks Up with OTT and Goes to Miles City
Straight pulled his Dodge 2500 diesel pickup into the parking lot in front of Boyle’s Aviation at the Centennial Airport in Arapahoe County just south of Denver. He parked the rig, unloaded his clothes bag, and locked the vehicle. Cooney planned to arrive at Denver International Airport later that day on a 5:00 p.m. flight, catch a cab to Centennial, pick up the Dodge, and make a leisurely two-day drive to Miles City.
Straight walked through the glass doors into the waiting area at Boyle’s Aviation at Centennial Airport, south of Denver. Nova Skosha rose, a vision in black pants and black, long-sleeved pullover, from a black leather couch and walked right to him smiling. She was sleek, with her short, straight, black hair, a boyish figure, wire-rim glasses, and pale makeup. She was twenty-nine years old but could pass for older or younger. She had an ageless quality about her.
“Straight!” she greeted him. “So good to see you again! We are so pleased you’ve agreed to be the spokesman for OVER THE TOP, or OTT, as we call it.”
They had not seen each other since they had met in Houston two months ago. In the last three weeks since then, they had spoken by phone and e-mailed several times, working on the contract and planning the Miles City trip.
“This is File Blitzer. He’s our road manager. He makes sure the booth gets set up, you get to your appointments, handles all the arrangements. He’s a detail man.”
File extended his hand. “Glad to meet you, Straight. Nova has told us all about you, and we are pumped!”
File had a smooth, baritone, radio broadcaster voice. He was fortyish, with his thinning, dark hair in a ponytail, a stubble mustache and goatee. He, too, was wearing a black turtleneck and black slacks.
To Straight they looked like chess pieces. Pawns or bishops, he couldn’t remember. He hated chess. He could never beat his brother.
“Turk expressed his regrets he couldn’t be here to meet you. He’s in Miami trying to sign Shaq O’Neal for a new product called Pate Shine and Shield. But he looks forward to meeting you soon,” said Nova.
“I will fill you in on the itinerary when we get on the plane,” explained Nova. “And show you the new logo shirts. If you don’t mind, we’ll give you some tips, some coaching for doing interviews, product placement, that sort of thing. Our publicity department has arranged media, several public appearances, autograph signings. We will be working with Steve Holip, who does local radio . . .”
“Steve Holip?” interrupted Straight. “Real estate? Horse trainer? The Saturday morning swap meet on KTAL radio in Miles City?”
“Party animal, eccentric art collector, Slippery Steve,” Straight didn’t say.
“I don’t know?” admitted Nova. “We got his name from an ad agency in San Francisco when we were looking for an advance man in Miles City. I’ve spoken to him several times setting up this trip. He even arranged for you to be the parade marshal Saturday morning!”
“Sure sounds good to me. And any help you can give me, I’m sure obliged,” said Straight.
“Good. The airplane is waiting,” she said and ushe
red him toward the door.
Within thirty minutes the Bombardier Learjet 85 leased to OTT ATHLETIC COSMETICS was at twenty-nine thousand feet and taking Straight Line on a direct course into the metaphorical Disney World of show business.
Friday at noon found Straight underneath the bleachers in the corner of a long barroom, signing promo photos, Copenhagen cans, hats, bare arms, T-shirts, boot tops, and programs and posing for an unending stream of photographs. File Blitzer was passing out free samples of LIP LASTER. Both stood in a booth underneath a banner proclaiming Over the Top, Straight Line Lip Laster X for Extreme Conditions!
Steve Holip’s friend Darnell was chronicling it all on videotape. It was all very heady for Straight.
The Miles City Bucking Horse Sale is not a PRCA-sanctioned rodeo; it is a livestock auction. For more than fifty years, horsemen, ranchers, and traders have brought in bucking bulls and broncs that they wished to sell as rodeo stock. After each animal bucked out of the chute in full regalia with a man aboard, the auctioneer would immediately offer the beast for sale.
The rodeo stock contractors were the buyers. They were sitting in a special grandstand next to the chutes so they could get a good view of the animal in action. As many as 250 head would be sold over the weekend.
Cowboys would come from miles around to ride the beasts. They would compete for a pot and might get on three or four head each per day. Usually none of the riders was a card-carrying PRCA member, which required that they had earned at least $1,000 in rodeo competition.
Members of this band of eighteen- to twenty-two-year-old testosterone machines fueled each other’s machismo and kept throwing themselves in harm’s way until their bones ached and their hats crumpled.
So, for a nationally ranked PRCA bronc rider to be on location, even if he wasn’t riding, was a sign of respect and validation of the whole weekend and the efforts of the young rough stock riders. Straight was a celebrity here.
While he was on duty, with File helping, Nova took Darnell to videograph some of the action. They worked their way across the racetrack and around behind the bucking chutes.
Nova was telling Darnell what to shoot. They climbed onto the catwalk behind the chutes where the riders stood waiting to mount their rides.
“My gosh! Is that a woman?” asked Nova, pointing to a cloud of reddish-blonde curls boiling out from beneath a big black hat. The rider was over the chute getting down onto the horse’s back. Her head was bent forward concentrating on her grip on the rein.
“Shoot her! Shoot her!” commanded Nova just as Pica D’TroiT leaned back in the saddle, took the slack, and nodded her head.
As the gate swung open Nova caught a glimpse of the rider’s face: eyes squinted, jaw tight, white teeth clenched, and lips like the bell on a slide trombone! Rolling Stone lips! Mick Jagger lips! Julia Roberts lips! Queen Latifah lips! Angelina Jolie lips! Refrigerator Perry lips! OVER THE TOP outrageous, orchidacious, labile, lovely, luminescent, lascivious, ATHLETIC COSMETICS lips!
Nova watched in awe as the petite bronc rider reached and raked, rocked and fired, rolled and reloaded. Pica completed the 8-second ride, then got off balance and was converted unceremoniously into a lawn dart. She belly flopped into a well-trampled mud puddle and twirled slightly like a leaf pirouetting on the surface of a lazy stream.
“Who is that?” asked Nova to the cowboys on the catwalk beside her.
“Pika Detroit,” said two in unison, not knowing the correct spelling of her name.
“My gosh,” said Nova, “I think I’ve discovered the next Michael Jordan!”
She grabbed Darnell, and they headed around to where the riders congregated between rides. Pica was talking to another bronc rider. She had unbuckled the chaps from her thighs so they hung loosely from her waist like an untied apron.
“Do a little filming here please, Darnell,” Nova instructed. “Film her in her surroundings without being conspicuous.”
Nova took in the crowd that milled in the competitors area. There was a generous mix of older cowboys with big bellies; Indians in T-shirts, sunglasses, and cowboy hats; young men in their late teens and early twenties wearing chaps, boots, and spurs, shirts with numbered placards pinned to their backs, hats in all stages of crumpled and muddy, and a beer in hand.
Pica was listening to a rider not much taller than she. Another rider looked on, sipping his beer. “I think you got a seventy-one,” he was saying.
Nova studied Pica the way a horse trainer looks at a two-year-old filly, a taxidermist looks at a mountain goat, and a plastic surgeon looks at asymmetry: “Five foot two or three, well-proportioned,” she surmised, “even in a western shirt. Bountiful hair the color of the skin of a peach: reddish, yellowish, strawberry blonde, a lightly freckled complexion, blue eyes, and audaciously brazen lips!”
At that moment there was a streak of mud across Pica’s right cheek that extended to the brim of her black hat. Nova waited until the cowboys drifted off and then approached her.
“Pretty good ride,” said Nova.
Pica turned to the woman’s voice. Nova was at least three inches taller than she was, but who wasn’t, with highlighted black hair and the black-on-black uniform of the New York theater.
“I’m Nova Skosha, OVER THE TOP ATHLETIC COSMETICS, and you are somethin’ else!”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Pica suspiciously.
“I’m not sure either,” said Nova, “but you are either a PR person’s dream or an albino tiger beyond exploitation.”
Pica just stared.
“Forgive me,” said Nova. “I just saw you ride. I’m looking at your lovely . . . fashionable . . .” she searched for better words, “marketably unique look. I work for OVER THE TOP, like I said, and I’m wondering if you have any interest in talking about modeling, using your image . . .”
“Modeling?” said Pica, with a hint of distaste.
“Maybe not modeling, per se, but doing a photo shoot, for instance,” explained Nova.
“Modeling, like, what?” asked Pica.
“How ’bout lip balm?” said Nova.
“I don’t know,” said Pica, “but right now I’ve got another horse to ride.”
“Can I take you to dinner tonight?” asked Nova.
“Talk to me after,” Pica replied and turned back toward the bucking chutes.
That night Pica went to supper at Steve Holip’s house north of Miles City, where Nova, File, and Straight were all staying.
Pica had driven from Pincher Creek in her own pickup with a camper shell. She parked it in Holip’s driveway, where they allowed she could park her rig and spend the night. She had no time for a serious makeover before supper, but she had a natural radiance that negated her hat hair and lack of makeup.
She agreed to ride in the back of Straight’s parade marshal’s wagon tomorrow morning as a guest and to come by the OVER THE TOP booth for a few minutes to see Straight in action.
Nova was excited; Straight was just a little uncomfortable, knowing of Cooney’s crush on Pica; and File was not the least bit happy entertaining possible competition for his lovebird, Oui Oui Reese.
As for Pica, she had broncs to ride Saturday afternoon and a call to make tonight. She excused herself from the crowd at the table and went to her camper. She crawled into the bedroll and opened her phone. “Dad,” she said after he answered, “sorry to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” he said thickly, “haven’t been asleep long. Are you all right, PC?”
“Fine. I’m fine, Dad. I rode two outta three this afternoon. Up three times tomorrow.”
“Good. I’m proud of you, ya know.”
“I know, Dad. I wish you were here.”
“Me, too, but I had work to do,” he said.
“Dad, I need to run something by you.”
“Sure, Baby, what is it?”
She explained OVER THE TOP’s proposal.
“Well,” he said with an auditory smile, “ya know, Straight, he always seemed like a good boy. From Buffalo, I think. Don’t know his folks too well. Ranchers. If he’s in it, that’s to their credit.”
“I’m not sure if I’d, ya know, like posing for pictures, signing autographs, and all that. I don’t know too many outfitters who do modeling!”
“Lemme tell ya, Darlin’, if somebody paid me to model Bermuda shorts, I don’t know if I’d do it either, but you’re a pretty woman, even if you are strong. But trust your intuition. If you don’t have to compromise your principles . . . and you’re always putting on Blistik. If their lip balm works as good, then you might get a lifetime supply free, and you’d still be telling the truth.”
“I want to ride broncs, Dad,” she said.
“I know, Love, but life doesn’t always go our way.” After a pause he asked, “What’s Straight Line like?”
“Nice enough. He’s sure named right. Stands up straight, does everything, ya know, by the book. I think I make him nervous.”
“Darlin’, you make a lot of people nervous, including your mother!”
“I guess so,” she laughed.
“Hear those folks out, Love,” he said. “It’s another window into your future. Who knows, it might actually be a door!”
“Love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too, PC.”
“Adieu.”
“Adieu, too.”
CHAPTER 12
May 20, Saturday
Cooney Arrives at Miles City
It has been said by scribes more profound than this poor author that “no good deed goes unpunished!” Even as Jesus buttered the bread of Judas, he knew of what he spoke.
In the case of Cooney Bedlam, he was in that long line of well-meaning Samaritans who cannot leave well enough alone.