It took half an hour to get there, riding the bus. I hadn't showered and was feeling grouchy. Whatever it was Ozzie was going to throw at me, I just wanted to get it over with.

The door to his office was open. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and slouched. "Ozzie?"

He didn't look up from the mountains of paper, books, and newspapers spread over his desk. A radio in the corner was tuned to KNOB. A news broadcast mumbled at low volume. "Come in, shut the door."

I did. "What's wrong?"

He looked up. "Wrong? Nothing's wrong. Here, take a look at this." He offered a packet of papers.

The pages were dense with print and legalese. These were contracts. I only caught one word before my eyes fogged over.

Syndication.

When I looked at Ozzie again, his hands were folded on the desk and he was grinning. That was a pretty big canary he'd just eaten. "What do you think? I've had calls from a dozen stations wanting to run your show. I'll sign on as producer. You'll get a raise for every new market we pick up. Are you in?"

This was big. This was going national, at least on a limited scale. I tried to read the proposal. L.A. They wanted me in L.A.? This was… unbelievable. I sat against the table and started giggling. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. There was no way I could do this. That would require responsibility, commitment—things I'd shied away from like the plague since… since I'd started hanging out with people like T.J.

But if I didn't, someone else would, now that the radio community had gotten the idea. And dammit, this was my baby.

I said, "I'm going to need a website."

That night I went to T.J.'s place, a shack he rented behind an auto garage out toward Arvada. T.J. didn't have a regular job. He fixed motorcycles for cash and didn't sweat the human world most of the time. I came over for supper a couple of times a week. He was an okay cook. More important than his cooking ability, he was able to indulge the appetite for barely cooked steaks.