Drama Is Her Middle Name Read Online Free

to see that all men weren’t really that bad, as her
mother had led her to believe they were. Uncle Cecil was not
only one of the nicest people Ritz had ever met, he absolutely
adored Aunt Madalyn and said all the time that he was “tickled pink” to have a daughter, because he and Aunt Madalyn
couldn’t have kids. Ritz never knew whose “fault” it was, but
she did know that living there, she was treated like a porcelain doll, a little princess. While her mother worked hard to
give her little things, it seemed like Uncle Cecil and Aunt
Madalyn always had money for big things. Aunt Madalyn
didn’t work. Uncle Cecil owned a contracting company and
while he kept long hours, he always had a pocket full of cash.
When he got home, he would take his ladies out for ice
cream after dinner. Aunt Madalyn always had dinner ready
for him when he came home. To Ritz, it seemed that Aunt
Madalyn and Uncle Cecil were a throwback to those 1950s
shows like
Leave It to Beaver,
except they were dipped in
sepia.

3
    MARCH 2005
    Ritz punched the alarm code to her Jersey City apartment, set
her keys on the tiny, marble-top table at the front door, sat in
her comfortable, chenille-covered chair, and grabbed the remote and the unfinished Black & Mild blunt from her Orrefors ashtray. This was her routine. Ritz loved routine and
order because so much of her life had been chaos, beyond her
control. From the death of her mother to the crazy course of
her career—there was so much that Ritz could simply not
control that the things she could control, she controlled to
the extreme.
    Smoking a blunt gave her a strange sense of control and
power. It was her secret rebellion—a breaking away of always
doing the right thing. It was also something she did that no
one—virtually no one—knew.
    â€œGirl, you are already crazy, the last thing you need is some
weed on top of all of that!” Tracee had said, the first time she
saw Ritz roll a blunt. The two had been hanging out for a
year, but it was the first time Ritz really let her hair down in
front of Tracee.
    â€œThis is what keeps me from being completely crazy,” Ritz
said. “Here, you should try it. It might loosen your tight ass
up, Miss Prude.”
    â€œEverybody I know smokes. It’s the one thing that sets me
apart,” Tracee said. “It was the one thing I
thought
we had in
common.”
    â€œSo are you going to stop liking me now?” Ritz asked as she
took a long pull on her blunt and blew a thin smoky stream
into the air.
    â€œWho said I liked you?”
    The two fell back on the couch and giggled and ate.
Tracee didn’t need the munchies to enjoy eating. And Ritz
didn’t need her blunt to know that Tracee was the best friend
she had ever had. In both radio and the music business there
were few mentors for women. Every successful woman looked
at newcomers as competition, potential threats to their position. It was next to impossible to have a female friend to trust
in those businesses. Ritz was happy she had Tracee and vice
versa.
    Ritz took another toke of her blunt. Pangs of loneliness
were starting to set in. The smoke was quickly absorbed into
her Ionic Breeze air filter.
    Why did she have to move all the way the fuck to Florida?
    Daydreaming about missing her friend had become part of
her routine. It had been about a year since Tracee had moved.
And Ritz was realizing how empty her life was. The weed and
the daily grind of the station provided some comfort, filled in
some of the spaces. But . . .
    Girl, you need a change. You need a real change.
    Ritz’s routine was too routine. Her show was nearly perfect. Her intros, flawless. She read commercials better than
most. She was a great interviewer. She even handled her outrageous callers with aplomb. Ritz was a pro. A pro’s pro. But
for some reason, she still wasn’t satisfied. It didn’t seem to be