I think I am, the long-haired, long-legged blonde thought, torn between excitement and alarm, about to have my first affair with a married man.
Her name was Louise Dutton, and she pursed her lips thoughtfully and cocked her head unconsciously to one side as she considered that improbable likelihood.
She was at the wheel of a yellow, six-year-old, 1967 Cadillac convertible, the roof down, moving fifteen miles over the posted forty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit northward in the center lane of Roosevelt Boulevard, which runs through the center of Northeast Philadelphia, from Broad Street to the Bucks County line.
Louise Dutton was twenty-five years old, weighed 115 pounds, and her blond hair was real–a genetic gift from her father. She had graduated three years before (BA, English) from the University of Chicago. She had worked a year as a general-assignment reporter on the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Clarion; six months as a newswriter for KLOS-TV (Channel 10), Los Angeles, California; and for eleven months as an on-camera reporter for WNOG-TV (Channel 7), New Orleans, Louisiana. For the past five weeks Louise Dutton had been co-anchor of “Nine’s News,” over WCBL-TV (Channel 9), Philadelphia: thirty minutes of local news telecast at six p.m., preceding the 6:30 national news, and again at 11 p.m.
