Chapter 58
Dear Mr. Sullivan,
KTOW Radio has been a major part of my life for the past six years. I have truly enjoyed coming to work here and feel I have benefited both personally and professionally from the wonderful friendships I have made and the events I have been fortunate enough to experience in my time here.
So, it is with great sadness that I must tender my resignation. I have been given an opportunity that I feel I could not pass up and therefore, have sadly made the decision to leave my position here at KTOW. Know that I will always hold fond memories of my days as an employee of this station. Please accept October 15th as my final day of employment. I will miss everyone here terribly.
Sincerely,
Genevieve Redlin
Hal didn’t know what to make of this letter. He’d seen her only occasionally in the past several weeks and he had no idea that she was even considering leaving. In fact, he didn’t suspect a thing the day she handed him a sealed envelope addressed to him. He’d been in a hurry that morning so he graciously thanked her, tossed the envelope down on his desk, packed up his brief case and made a hasty exit to a meeting- he didn’t want to be late. For over a week now, this letter had set, unopened, on his desk, gradually getting covered with other things he thought were more urgent, until today when he finally uncovered it. He was wondering why Gennie had been acting so strangely around him lately. She thought he’d read the letter and wasn’t even going to ask her about it! He felt terrible. “She must think I’m a pretty cold hearted guy,” he mumbled to himself as he tried to figure out how to rectify this situation. “Oh hell,” he groaned as he peeked at the calendar and noticed that today was the twelfth. With a deep sigh and a quick mini massage of his temples, he got up from his important looking, faux leather chair and set off to find Gennie.
There she was, at her desk, pulling some goodies from a gift bag presented to her by someone he thought worked in accounting. This little display didn’t make him feel any better. Evidently, he was the last one to know about her departure.
“Gennie, may I speak to you in my office for a minute?”
“Sure, Hal,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be right there.” She gave a quick hug and a thank you to the lady from accounting, said goodbye, and headed into his office.
“What can I do for you, Hal?”
“Gennie,” he said sadly, “I just read your letter this morning. It sort of got lost in the shuffle on my desk.” He gestured with a pathetic look toward his messy workspace. “I really have to say I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you were leaving. I’ve just been so busy lately.”
“It’s Ok. You know now. Better that you read it before I stopped showing up!” she laughed. “Then you would’ve really wondered!”
Hal shook his head. He didn’t feel any apology would be good enough under the circumstances. “It’s just that I was gone on vacation for two weeks around Labor Day, and then I got back and had to go to that programming conference in Dallas. That was, what, another week?”
“Yeah, I know you’ve been gone a lot. I guess it didn’t help matters that the week you came back to the office, I was gone again,” she sighed with some regret.
“Yeah,” he leaned back in his chair, “You went to Europe? Is that right?”
She just nodded. She felt kind of silly now because she did abandon him in a time of great need. When she got back, she learned that her department was swamped with a major project the whole time she was away.
“And this past week I’ve been going nuts with this schedule and the whole ‘ratings war’ they’re talking about with that upstart station across town.”
“I know,” she replied glumly. “Weird, huh?”
“Very weird. Who knew we could lose our number one spot so quickly?” He sighed, but instantly shook it off and picked up her letter. “So Gennie, please tell me that the offer you couldn’t pass up isn’t from them. I can’t afford to lose you to the competition.”
Her eyes went wide with surprise. “Oh, no! I’m not gonna work for them!” she smiled. “I’m moving out of town. California.”
“Another job offer?”
“No, not exactly,” she responded cryptically.
Hal scrunched up his face and looked her straight in the eye. “Tell me something Gennie, cause I’m dying to know. Is there any truth to the rumor?”
“The rumor?” she asked as though she had no clue what he was referring to, even though she was well aware what he meant.
“The rumor.” He peered at her with straight face, even though he really wanted to laugh. He thought it was a completely crazy bit of gossip; one started by a bunch of lower level employees with lots of imagination and not enough to do. “The scuttlebutt around the office is that you’re seeing someone on our play list.”
She chuckled; she’d never heard him referred to quite like that before. “Well, Hal, you know I’ve been seeing a few people on the play list. That’s why I was gone and living in a bus for a week.”
“That much I know, Gennie. But,” he said with a laugh, “I hear you had Johnny Rzeznik in town to visit you while I was gone.” He shook his head trying not to make it too obvious that he thought the idea was silly. “Imagine- a real live rock star walking through the offices of KTOW radio in Tulsa, Oklahoma!” he smiled. Talk about ridiculous! “And,” he added with a chuckle, “Some people are saying you were with them in Europe! I asked your friend Stacey and all she told me was that you had one of those great overnight deals to go to London. Now, I’d like to put the gossip to rest before you leave.”
She paused thoughtfully for a moment. “He was here, Hal.”
“Who? Rzeznik?” he eyed her incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“In my offices? You’re joking, right?”
“No.”
“And your great overnight deal…”
“I went to visit while they were on their European tour.”
“Are you serious? You really are dating the guy?” This still seemed a bit outlandish.
“Yeah, Hal. That’s why I’m moving to California,” she blushed. “There’s no job with the competition, no illustrious career in entertainment- nothing that exciting. Just going there to be with my boyfriend.”
His mind raced to obtain an exclamatory phrase suitable to the office, he settled on: “Jiminy Christmas!” He rolled his eyes; so it wasn’t one of his better expletives, but it conveyed his thoughts pretty well, he figured. “Well, uh, Gennie… are congratulations in order? I don’t know what one says in a situation like this.”
As she smiled, her already blushed face went from pink to bright red. “Gee Hal, I don’t know what you say in this situation. I’m not getting married, or starting a new job, or anything, so I’m not sure congratulations are appropriate,” she said with a giggle. “How about ‘bon voyage’? That’s generic enough for a farewell. Wish me luck? Something along those lines seems about right.”
Hal nodded, but was already far into his next thought. “Gennie,” he said absently, his thoughts seemingly spouting from him as they came to his mind, “I’ve got a brilliant idea! Tell me what you think…”
An hour later, Stacey’s phone rang.
“Stacey Taylor!” she answered cheerily.
“Stace, meet me downstairs in ten minutes. I gotta talk to you about something.” She almost disconnected, but added, “Oh, and I’m buying lunch.”
At the appointed time, the elevator played its familiar chime as its doors parted to reveal Stacey standing there, wondering what the fuss was about. “What’s up Gen? You need to talk?” She then eyed her a little more suspiciously, but still with a smile. “Or is this gonna be a trick to get me to come help you pack?”
“No trick,” Gen smiled as they walked out to the car. “You know I’m not taking much with me but my clothes and my cats.”
“So you’ve said, but you never know.” She ducked into Gen’s shiny black car and rolled down the window a crack to release the heat. It may have been October, but it was still warm enough to make the car feel like an oven. “You know, didn’t you tell me he has cats too? What’s that gonna be like, you think?” she chuckled at the thought.
Gen rolled her eyes. “I know. We can only hope that they don’t try to kill each other. It ought to make for an interesting first few days.” She chatted on aimlessly about other such innocuous topics for a few minutes till they reached their lunchtime destination. They were seated, gave the waiter their order, then Gen got down to the business at hand. “Stace, you’ll never believe it!” she said with a grin. “Sullivan just read my resignation letter today. He never knew I was leaving!”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. He feels really bad about it. Said he’d miss me and stuff. But first he was worried that I was leaving to go to the competition.” She got a giggle in her voice as she recalled his initial reaction. “That new station is really eating his lunch, I guess. He’s stressed.”
“Tell me about it. The big wigs upstairs are really flipping out over this. They call these major meetings just about everyday. I actually had to call some people back from their vacations, it’s that important!”
“Yeah, I know,” Gen replied glumly. She hated to leave the station at such a stressful time. The staff there were her friends and it just wasn’t a very good time for her to leave them in a bind. “That’s sorta what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Stacey looked a little surprised. She figured Gen would be grateful to be leaving at a time like this; now she could devote her time to being happy and stress free. “You need to talk to me about our ratings fiasco?”
“Yeah, well, kinda. Sullivan had this great idea when he found out the real reason I’m leaving.”
“You told him about John?” she asked amazedly. She thought Gen wanted to keep this quiet.
Gennie nodded, “Yeah. I mean, he asked, you know. I couldn’t just lie. He heard the rumor going round the office.” She rolled her eyes. “Why on earth did he have to come into the office that day?” she wondered aloud about John. “He should’ve known that people were going to notice. I mean, hell, I work for a station that broadcasts his voice, it seems like, every ten minutes!”
“That’s true.” Stace took a long drink of her diet Coke. “I’m supposing that he wants this to be hush-hush just like you do?” They’d never really had this conversation before, so she didn’t know if it was Gen’s modesty or John’s desire for privacy that was behind this need for secrecy.
“Well,” Gen mused thoughtfully. “It’s not that he wants it kept secret, that’s more for my sanity, but he doesn’t want this to turn into a media circus. If word got out about him being around here, he’d have no peace.”
“Right.” Stacey stated with a perplexed look on her face. She was puzzled. “Gen, he’s not here. And… what does this have to do with Hal Sullivan?”
Popping a tortilla chip in her mouth, Gen shrugged. “He’s not here now… but he will be in a couple of days. That’s the thing. He’s driving with me to LA, you know.”
“So where does Hal come into this?”
“Well, Hal’s brilliant ratings scheme is to have John come to the office for an interview, maybe a contest giveaway- lunch with him or something.”
“No shit?” Stace laughed.
“No! And the crappy part is, nobody is supposed to know he’s here though. He’s kinda sneaking out of some other stuff so he can do this with me.” She sighed. “Should I ask him to do it or not?” This was a real dilemma.
“If it’s a secret that he’s in town, then I guess he can’t do it, right?” Stace asked as she munched on a chip. “I say, ask him so you can tell Hal that you have, then when he says no, just tell Hal that you’re really sorry and you wished it could’ve worked out.”
“But see, I know John. If I ask him, he’ll do it, you know. So I don’t know if it would be right for me to ask.” She paused and took a big gulp of iced tea. “On the other hand, it would be a great ratings coup for the station. I’d really like to do it, you know, one last gesture before I leave.”
“Ah, Gen. Such a conundrum you’ve got there.”
“I know.”
“Maybe you should talk to John about this. It seems logical, doesn’t it? Tell him your dilemma and come to a decision together.” She winked knowingly at her friend, “Kinda like bein’ married, you know.”
“Thanks, Stace. You’re a life saver!” She smiled, “How come you can make everything seem so reasonable when you say it? But when I say the same thing, it sounds utterly ridiculous!”
Stacey laughed, “Years of practice, my friend, years of practice.”
Gen smiled, but started to get teary eyed. “I’m gonna miss you Stace. I think this whole move is gonna be a lot harder than I thought.”
“I’ll miss you too. But you’ll be fine. Remember, you’re flying me out for a visit to sunny California real soon, right?” she teased.
“You know it!” she said, drying her eyes. “Anything for my best friend.”