Chapter 3
It
was two o’clock on Friday afternoon, and Gennie was finishing up her report.
She was glad to have it finished before five and she was extremely
grateful that Hal, her boss, hadn’t given her any other projects today.
If she was lucky, she might even get out a little early. She sent her final report to print and as she got up to
retrieve it from the printer, she saw Stacey excitedly running toward her
waiving a piece of paper in her hand.
“Gennie,
Gennie, Gennie, Oh my God!” she shrieked as she grabbed her in an enormous
bear-hug.
She
rarely ever called her anything but Gen, so naturally, Gennie expected the
worst. Exactly what the worst was,
she wasn’t sure, but she expected it anyway.
She leaned away from her over-anxious friend and looked her up and down,
suspicious of what any correspondence in the administration office could have to
do with her.
“Excuse
me, but what could this possibly be about?”
“What
did you say was your biggest wish?”
“I
don’t know…win the lottery?” She
looked at Stacey like she was crazy. “Don’t
tell me, you got a letter from Ed McMahon saying that I did?” she joked.
“Not
quite.” She was grinning from ear
to ear. “You’re going to want
to kiss Postman Pete and say thank you…” she stressed with that hint,
hint, nudge, nudge look in her eye waiting for Gennie to take the bait.
She wasn’t biting.
“Sorry,
but if you’re trying to lead me somewhere, I have no clue where you’re
going.”
With
an over exaggerated sigh, Stacey gave up trying to spark excitement with
subtlety. “OK, at lunch you said
you’d like to say thank you to someone….” She let the sentence dangling
out there. OK, so she
hadn’t given up all hope on the subtle approach just yet.
“Oh,
the Goo Goo Dolls?” Gennie was
confused now.
“Yes”
she let out an exasperated groan. Her
friend was a little slow on the uptake.
“Are
they coming here?” Gennie wondered excitedly.
“Well,
not exactly. We got this letter
from the MTV people today saying they’re having a kind of hush-hush contest
for people like us. At least,
that’s what it looks like. Anyway, you submit a bio on yourself, kind of a
resume, I guess. And if they pick
you, you get to go on tour with the Goo Goo Dolls for a week.
I mean, you’d even be living on the bus with them and everything!”
“Really?”
She was still suspicious. “What
do you mean ‘people like us’?”
“Says
here they were only notifying people in the radio and TV industry.
It’s for some kind of new show they’re working on.”
“So
you think they’re looking for people from the business office, do ya?” She
laughed out loud at the thought. “Somehow,
I don’t think I’m what they have in mind.”
“You
should go for it anyway. Here
are the forms to send in. The
deadline is April 21st. I didn’t even tell anyone else here. I want you to have the best shot.” She was proud of herself for being such a thoughtful friend.
“Wow!
Thanks, Stace. I’ll look over them this weekend,” she smiled
dismissively.
“Well,
gotta get back to the grind before they notice I’m missing.
See ya. Call me tomorrow.”
And with that Stacey bounded back to the elevator and was gone.
Gennie
didn’t know what to think, so she just set the papers down by her purse and
once again set off on her original mission.
She gathered her document from the printer and decided that once she
outlined everything with Hal, she was going home. It had been a long, strange day.
As she was getting ready to leave she took the forms in hand and considered just throwing them away. ‘They’d never pick me anyway…not with what I do here.’ But for some reason, she reconsidered, folded them in half, and stuffed them into her purse before heading home. She figured she’d read them later after she got back from dinner with Eric, her kinda sorta boyfriend.