Nina was running out of material.

            Once the most prolific reporter of smut, trash, gossip and sleaze for Hollywood’s most notorious virtual tabloid, The Back Room Chronicles, she was starting to wonder if she had gotten caught up in a retro-whiplash change of morality sweeping over show business like the bubonic plague.  Isn’t anybody doing drugs with their kid’s babysitter anymore?  What about Scientology?  When did that ever become mainstream?, she wondered, almost out loud… that third Scotch and rocks was starting to look like a mistake, and she thought she heard herself mumbling under her breath.  Nobody is getting freaky anymore.

            If they were going to get freaky, this was the place to do it.  Tie, one of the newest bars in west L.A., already seemed to be overstaying its welcome.  She was hoping to find some juicy stuff, but it was a morgue.  Paranoia was starting to creep in… was she already losing her touch on the pulse of this business?  She couldn’t even pick a decent bar to work.

              She was debating on whether or not to call it a night when a youngish woman slid into the barstool next to hers.  Rather mousy and frumpy – at least by L.A. standards – she had already taken a few drinks under her wing before she left the house, judging by her slumped shoulders and marshmallowy speech.

            “Why the **** did I move out here?”, she asked Nina, not really looking at her but glancing around the bar wistfully instead.  “This town sucks ass.  I should have never left Chicago.  At least there were decent men in Chicago…”, she slurred as the bartender gave her a severely watered-down gin and tonic.

            “This is where women go when they want to hook up with a movie star… and there’s plenty of opportunities here.”, Nina replied, not sure why she was even bothering to talk to her.

            “I know that… I’m a screenwriter, you know.  A real one.  I’m not a waitress who is trying to be a screenwriter…”, she pointed out, leaning closer to her but still not looking her way.  “I actually have sold something… but it doesn’t matter worth a flying SHIT.”.  She thought she was whispering, that much was obvious, but her voice carried far and wide across the room.  Nina couldn’t help but giggle at her boorish behavior.

            “So how long have you lived here?”.

            “Almost a year now.”

            “And you haven’t met any celebrities yet?  No famous faces at all?”.  At this point, she was desperate for something, anything, that she could parlay into news… even if it was a blind item that a third-grader could figure out.

            “Well…”, she drawled, suddenly transfixed by some inane commercial on the TV mounted over the bar.  When it was over, she looked back at Nina, tugging on one of her bra straps awkwardly.

“OK….I’ve never told anyone this before, but I seduced a celebrity once.”

            Immediately, her ears perked up, but she played it cool.  “Oh, really?”, she asked slyly. 

            “Well, he’s sort of a celebrity.  I guess you could call him that now, since he’s on that ‘Hello America’ show and everyone watches him or has at least heard of him.  People recognize him on the street every day, I’m sure…”, she paused, fidgeting with her bra strap again.  “A lot of people even recognized him back when I knew him.  They have no clue what he’s really like… but I do.”.

            “So who was he?  I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”, she said, but just knew she would tell her everything.  She was that kind of chick… a mousy little thing that slunk around the office all day, daydreaming of a better life but keeping it to herself.  But when you gave her a couple of drinks, her mouth flew open and her modesty hit the door. 

            “I used to work at a TV station in Chicago.  I started as a proofreader, checking the news reports for grammatical errors, factual errors, stuff like that.  Really dry, boring work.  It was just a temporary job… at least, it was supposed to be.  I was stuck there a lot longer than I wanted to be, moonlighting at the station while spending my days working on my screenplay.”.  That glass is getting dry, Nina thought, flagging the bartender to bring her another drink.  After accepting graciously, the girl continued.  “I was really lucky to have a job that paid the bills and allowed me time to do this, so I couldn’t complain.  There was one very nice perk to my job… it was kind of embarrassing, and at first I didn’t want to tell anyone.  When I finally confessed to my friends, they thought I was a freak, but I didn’t care.”.

            Nina’s palms started to itch.  “Really?  Well, ‘fess up!  I wanna know who this guy is!”.  She idly fingered the mini-recorder in her purse, making sure it was running.. 

            By now she was getting a bit glassy-eyed.  After staring at the TV for a few seconds, she looked over at Nina bashfully.

“His name was Dave Spritzel, but he went by Dave Spritz.  Have you heard of him?”.  She grinned sheepishly and looked down at her drink when she said his name.

Nina tried to hide her disappointment, but in reality she wanted to scream!  What the hell kind of story is this turning out to be?, she wondered, but let her continue.  “Ummmm… yeah, I think so.”.  Actually, that name was more than familiar to her, but he was certainly nobody noteworthy, at least not in her business.  Still, if she could get a little dirt on him, it might be the basis for a great story.

  “I thought it was kind of lame, but the big guys seemed to like it.  I still remember the first time I saw him… I had only been there two days, and I was nervous as hell… when I was hired, I was warned about the deadlines and the need for accuracy and all that, but that’s not what rattled me.  For me, it was a matter of having to speak to those people who would be using my reports.  I used to be kind of shy, I guess, and when I took the job I was hoping I wouldn’t have to talk with them too much.  So when I was told to deliver the finished copies downstairs to the studio, I was freaking out a little bit.”.

Does she ever get to the ****ing point, or does she ramble like this with everyone?, Nina thought, shifting her weight on the barstool.

The woman didn’t seen to notice her fidgeting.  “When I went downstairs, some of the newscasters were already there.  It was really early in the morning, maybe 4 a.m. or so.  Normally, the reports would already be there waiting for them, but the copier had broke down.  By the time we got it fixed, there was less than a half hour before broadcast.  After giving the reports to the newscasters, I was asked to deliver coffee to Dave.  Like I said, I had never seen him before…. I was new in town, and didn’t watch TV.  Weird, but true… I had no idea who he was.”.

Nina interjected politely.  “So you banged him in the dressing room, or what?”

She ignored the question and plunged on.  “The other go-fers that worked there were very nice, and showed me where his dressing room was… well, I guess you would call it that.  It was just a walk-in closet, really, and I was kind of surprised at how small it was.  So I knocked on the door, and I heard this voice ask me to come in… I thought it sounded kind of sexy.  Not sure what it was… kind of this self-assured thing about it.  He was sitting there, in front of the mirror, fixing his hair.  It had this part that kind of flopped over to the side, a really boyish look, but it was actually kind of cute on him.  I’m not sure what I expected him to look like… I guess I thought he would be old or fat, like Willard Scott, but he was lean, and he wasn’t wearing his jacket so I could make out the definition in his shoulders.  When he turned around, I noticed he had these amazing eyes… they were light blue, really clear, with this really serious expression.  His lips were full and kind of pouty, and he had really strong cheekbones, even back then.  Damn, he had nice cheekbones.  I notice those kinds of things, I guess.”

Listening to her description of him, Nina was taken aback.  Was she really serious?  She thought Dave Spritz was some kind of sex god?  She tried not to giggle as she downed her glass of Scotch.  When she looked up, the girl was giving her a questioning look.  “Oh, sorry, I was just thinking of something that happened earlier… please, continue.”.   

“So I guess I kind of looked stupid just standing there holding the coffee, but I couldn’t help it.  Everything about him was so sexy to me…. I was getting excited looking at him, at his really big hands.  Have you ever noticed that?  His hands are freakin’ huge.  It was so hot, just watching him primp like that.  He gave me a funny look and then went back to messing with his hair.  He never said a word to me, but I found out later from one of the go-fers that he thought I was staring at his hair.  He’s really paranoid about it, and nobody knows if it’s real or not.  Now that I look back on it, it’s kind of funny, but I felt bad at the time.  I didn’t care if it was fake.”

“Oh, sweetie… it’s not real.  Everyone knows it’s not real.  You don’t have to have sex with him to know that.”, Nina snorted.  The girl shot her a dirty look, but she didn’t care.  “Bryant Gumbel has rugs on the floor of his car that are more authentic than Dave’s hair!”.

“That’s not true!”, she screeched, startling the bartender and a couple of old guys on the far corner of the bar.  “And if you’d ****ing listen to the whole story, I’ll tell you how I know it’s not true.”.

Normally, Nina would never consider letting someone talk to her that way, especially a mousy little drunk broad like her, but she found herself intrigued by this whole scenario… she could see the title of the article in her head, in bold red lettering:  “Partly Horny, With a Chance of Scandal”.  Well, okay, maybe that sucks.  I’ll work on it.