Ashley sighed and put on her comically oversized earrings. It was hands down the stupidest thing for a DJ to be wearing, but ever since they installed the cameras to show the behind the scenes of the Able Abel Drivetime Morning Radio Showgram, she was expected to dress the way she did in her cast photo. When she took her cast photo, she didn’t think that someone would be stupid enough to decide to put damn cameras so everyone could see every little thing she was doing. No more rolling out of bed and coming to work, which had been the previous perk of working for a morning radio show.
She was certain that it it was Abel who did it. His real name was Leslie Abelington, but referred to himself as Abel to fit the program and the slogan that made him laugh so hard his 300 pound frame shook every time he said it: “Abel was always ready and able!” then he’d make a crude gesture with his fingers. But he was constantly looking for brand new ways to be cutting edge and make himself appear like he got what kids today wanted, forgetting completely for a fact that he was a 40 year old man. He shaved, dressed in too tight clothes, even had a model that played his girlfriend on the air and in the clubs while pretending to always have fun sharing way too much about his sex life. On Tuesday she was scheduled to call in about the alleged affair he was having with a local singer to help boost her career a little bit. Ashley shook her head, and went over her copy for the day, trying to figure out what Abel was going to cut and what he wasn’t.
She was answered when he didn’t so much sit as collapse into his chair. Everything about him was carefully constructed to make him appear hung over this morning, he was supposed to be out rocking to a local concert until just before he came in, rather than taking a bath and turning in early after drunk dialing Ashley and begging her to come over for a booty call.
Six more months, she reminded her self. Six more months and she was going to get her own show in the Boston Area. Able knew nothing about it, which was the sweetest part of the deal.
“So, what do we have on the agenda for this morning, Ass-leigh?” Abel said, shuffling through his papers.
“There was another report of strange lights coming from the Globotex Corporation,” she said, “They had to shut down the street so we’re going to lead off with that.”
Washington, DC drivers cared about traffic on a Monday morning first, everything else second. If Dragons started hoarding gold in the White House and declared themselves the new dominant species in DC, the first question would be exactly how it affected traffic. Their target demographic cared second if starlet A was still hooking up with major A-list Star B, so she was prepared to bring out the story as Abel slammed down his papers.
“Snore. Snore snore snore, snore snore.”
“But I was going to cut into this story about ... “
“I’m still snoring, snore snore snore, snore snore,” Abel leered over to a young intern who was rehearsing her lines. She was about to call in pretending to have some problem she read in an advice column over the weekend. Ashley glanced over too. She was able to check out the female interns a little more subtly.
“You do know it’s Monday morning, the first full day of college, Les,” she said, which earned her a sideways glare. “Traffic is going to suck. A major company in the heart of DC with strange lights coming out of it, shutting down traffic... that’s only going to cause problems. You know we have to lead with it.”
Abel opened his mouth, then shut it because she was right. His mouth, incapable of forming the words, simply went to a half smile as he looked her up and down. “Why are you so fascinated with this Globotechnica--”
“Globotex Corporation,” She corrected him.
“Globo-whatever company. You’ve pitched like nine stories on this in the past week.”
She wanted to go into the fact that Globotex Corporation popped up overnight and was suddenly in the big league of other Defense Consultants in the area. She wanted to go into the fact that this was the third night in a row that strange lights were seen coming from the top floor, and this was the third night that the cops were called. Something strange was going on there. Ashley wasn’t always going to be reading the news, then later hosting, a morning radio show. She knew that something was going on. She didn’t know what, but it was something big. Just had driven past it four times over the weekend, seeing who went in, and who went out, she never saw anything. Once she had even gotten the courage to try to come in, but was greeted by an attractive but unhelpful receptionist.
However, all of this was going to go over Abel’s -- who was currently trying to get the attention of one of the male interns so the could check out the cleavage of the aforementioned rehearsing intern --head. So she smiled, and let it go.
“Anyway,” Abel snapped back and forgot the conversation, “I meant to tell you that you are going to have to work this weekend. You, Tiffany and Aaron are going to host some charity event.”
Aaron was their producer who popped up to be berated by Abel from time to time. He was a nice enough guy but really ran nothing. Tiffany was Abel’s pretend girlfriend. It was an odd combination to be hosting.
“Tiff is going to go on about catching me with that singing slut during the event.”
Ashley was sure that the singing slut had a name, but it didn’t really matter right now.
“And you want us to play it up for the audience,” she said with a sigh. “How much longer is this going on?”
Abel let out his creepiest smile, which was saying something, “Just until this chick gets some more exposure. Her manager is paying a lot to get us talking about her.” Ashley also knew that he was getting paid handsomely under the table. “But I thought you’d be interested because your Globotechy place is sponsoring it.”
Now Ashley was interested. “Wait, I’m going to get to go inside the Globotex Corporation headquarters?”
“I don’t know about that, but you’ll at least get to meet people that work there... Jamie! Jammin’ Jamie, that’s her name!! That’s a stupid name,” Abel looked generally depressed for a minute, then went back to his papers. He started talking about some other show prep, but that didn’t matter at this point. Ashley was already making plans for finding out exactly what these people did. Then maybe she wouldn’t need to steal his spot...
Ashley stopped practicing her various award acceptance speeches in her head as the “On Air” sign started to flash.
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