Shot Girl by Karen E. Olson Page A

the young woman in the illustration was shown from the back, naked except for a trail of poison ivy from her shoulder to her ass. It was pretty provocative, but at the same time pretty cool. I wondered how the public would take it while drinking their Sunday morning coffee.
    "Neat picture," I said, looking over Wesley’s shoulder. "Who’s the girl?" The photographers liked to use the rest of us as their guinea pigs for these illustrations. We had a lot of fun trying to figure out whose eyes were in the picture for the glaucoma story or whose biceps were accompanying the piece about how to stay fit after the holidays.
    "Intern," Wesley said, adding a few more leaves to make sure the girl’s ass crack was covered up.
    The Herald hired college journalism students for the summer as unpaid interns. They would get class credit, but no cash for their efforts. They were like child labor, writing actual stories because our staff was so depleted because of vacations. This girl was hard to recognize, since her face wasn’t showing. Her mass of dark hair was pulled up in a makeshift bun. But the one thing that wasn’t left to the imagination was the slender body that the swag of poison ivy couldn’t disguise.
    "Who is she?" I asked. "Haven’t seen her around here yet."
    Wesley clicked the mouse and said, "She just started this week, but she’s only working half-time because she’s got some paying job at night. Goes to Southern. Name’s Felicia."

Chapter 8
    "Felicia" isn’t one of those popular names. And a night job? Shot girls work at night.
    Because I’m socially inept, Tom had to explain that a shot girl works at a bar, buying shots in test tubes at cost and then selling them independently for the same price but getting huge tips because the girls are usually attractive. They also allow the men in the bar to buy them shots, which means they get shitfaced and, ultimately, pretty friendly with their clientele. Tom also said shot girls are usually college students who can make upwards of three hundred dollars in profit every night.
    Nice money if you can stand the work.
    I wondered if the Herald ’s Felicia was Ralph’s Felicia. Damn Tom and Jack Hammer for making me curious about the girl. Tom seemed to have a real reason to try to find her, but why would Jack even bring her up? What did he know? I should’ve pressed him for his phone number.
    But right now I couldn’t worry about that. I had to get someone out to shoot the garden. I explained the situation to Wesley, who knit his brow in a frown.
    "Not supposed to do that without an assignment," he said.
    "Where’s Ben?"
    "Lunch."
    I had a shot. "Come on, Wesley. I just found out about this assignment, and you’d do a great job with it." I wasn’t bullshitting, either. I knew if anyone could make this interesting, he could.
    Wesley sighed. "I’ve got a little time before my next assignment. I could run over there. But if anyone’s running late, I won’t be able to stay."
    I had a feeling Shaw would make sure everyone was there when he said they would be. I nodded and thanked him, stopping by Marty’s desk on the way out.
    "Going to meet with Shaw in an hour. Wesley’s going to shoot something."
    Marty smiled. "That’s great, Annie," he said, like he was praising a goddamn puppy. "I’ll make sure to fill out an assignment sheet to cover our asses with Ben." I knew he was doing that to try to make me feel better that I was being forced into it. I wasn’t going to argue with him.
    I started to leave, but then stopped. "Wesley says we’ve hired some intern named Felicia."
    Jane Ferraro, one of the paper’s three suburban editors, swiveled in her chair so fast I thought she was going to get whiplash. "Have you seen her?" she demanded, but not in a bad way. I liked Jane; she’d been hired about six months before and had the type of Mary Pop-pins /no-nonsense attitude that was necessary when dealing with bureau reporters just out of college who thought they were