Dru’s door was open. I stuck my head in and asked, “Hey, you busy?”
Dru looked up from the massive computer screen on her desk and gave me a smile. “Hey, you,” she said. “What’s up.”
“Can I talk to you about something?” I asked.
She pushed back from the computer and waved me in. “Sure…
I closed the door and pulled up a chair so we could talk quietly. I said, “I need some business cards.”
She blinked at me. “You mean you need to order more business cards? I think Walter’s secretary handles that. I just lay them out and send her the file for the printer.”
“No, I don’t need more of my Sports Insider business cards,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t even give those things away. I need a special business card, one that will get me in the door at Kings Stadium.”
Dru leaned back and folded her skinny arms over her flat chest. She gave me a sideways look. “What’s going on, Kate? And don’t give me the old ‘it’s better if you don’t know’ routine. If I’m going to forge a card for you, I need to know why.”
I glanced at the closed door and leaned in to lower my voice. “Do you know who Sean Donovan is? Wide receiver for the Kings?”
“Of course,” she scoffed. “Lesbians follow football, too, you know. What about him?”
“I want to interview Sean Donovan,” I said. “But he won’t talk to anyone from SIO. We’re even banned from the stadium. So, I was thinking…”
“You were thinking that you could pretend to work for another magazine, which means you’d need a business card with that other magazine’s name on it,” she said. A devilish grin crossed her thin lips. “Let me guess… Playboy? Maxim? GQ?”
I smiled at her. “How did you know?”
She waved a hand in the air between us. “Sean Donovan is a swinging dick,” she said, rolling her eyes. She nodded at my boobs, which were pushing against the material of my t-shirt. “You go in with the right business card and the right blouse, you flash a little cleavage, and you might get an interview. Heck, you might get laid. Is that the idea?”
I bit my lip. It sounded crazy when she said it. I said, “Yes, that’s the idea. I mean, not the getting laid part, but the rest. Do you think it’ll work?”
“You’ll never know unless you try,” she said, turning to her computer and resting her fingers on the keys. “So, Playboy or Maxim?”
“Playboy, I think.”
I watched her Google the words “Playboy logo”.
The screen filled with images of the famous bunny head. She selected one of the images and pasted it into the business card template she had called up in her graphics program.
Next, she clicked a link to get the address of the Playboy offices in New York City, then added that to the template.
“What’s your cell number?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at me.
“Why?”
“For the card,” she said, tapping a finger to the screen. “You don’t want me to put the real Playboy office number on there. What if he tries to call Playboy to check you out and discovers that you don’t really work there?”
“You’re really good at this,” I said. I gave her my cell number and she typed it into the template. I smiled at the screen. It looked like an actual Playboy business card.
“Okay, next, what name do you want on the card?”
I frowned at her. “What name?”
“You can’t use Kate Asher,” she scoffed. “What if he Googles you and discovers that you work for SIO? Besides, you need something sexy, like a real Playboy Playmate’s name.”
“I’m not posing as a Playboy Playmate,” I said.
“Don’t fool yourself,” she said, glancing at my boobs again. “He’s not going to give a serious journalist the time of day, but if he thinks you’re a former Playmate trying to score points with her boss by doing a story on him… Hell, he’ll probably try to fuck you even before you start trying to interview him.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, scratching my chin. “How about Katie Holmes? Holmes was my mom’s maiden name.”