I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to such a crude remark about bodily functions. My mother would have frozen him out with her official Southern Belle death-stare. I laughed.
The guy must have taken it as encouragement to keep going.
“Seriously, Chernobyl never saw toxic fallout of this magnitude.” He gave me a goofy grin, and I couldn’t help smiling back.
“Well, thanks for the warning. I’d hate to put the whole building on nuclear alert.”
I ordered my food—not the barbeque—and waited off to the side. After Unicorn-Boy placed his order, he came over to join me.
He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jason. Not usually surrounded by a gaseous cloud, by the way. Learned my lesson—see—I smell great today, right?” He leaned super-close to me and offered his neck for a smell-test.
What an odd person. I found myself playing along, sniffing him and pronouncing him odor-free.
“I’m Kenley.”
“So, Kenley, how’d you like to share a lunch table with a pleasant-smelling guy today?” he asked when we both received our trays of food.
“Sure. Why not?”
We found a two-top and sat down. We chatted easily all the way through the meal. He asked me first about my job, nodding when I told him I worked at WNN.
“Yeah—I figured you for a newsy—so serious.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a Tooney. I work in master control there, which means I basically watch cartoons for a living.”
“Ah, it’s all starting to make sense now,” I said.
The Toons Network shared the building with WNN’s Atlanta headquarters, both entities owned by the same quirky media mogul, Tom Thompson.
“So what do y’all do all day long over there? Smoke pot and pull whoopee cushion pranks?” I asked.
“Pretty much. What do you newsies do—voodoo rituals to conjure natural disasters, blood, and twisted metal?”
“Pretty much.” I smiled, liking him. “No seriously—is broadcasting what you went to school for?”
“Heck no. I was an English history major. I went to school to prepare for a successful career in serving up gas-inducing barbeque sandwiches. I was lucky to get this job. I mean, the prospect of living in my parents’ guest room for the next forty years isn’t too exciting, but the work’s not bad so far. How about you—go to J school?”
I nodded, taking a sip of my soda. “I declared journalism as my major freshman year and never looked back. Got a job anchoring and reporting in a tiny market in East Georgia right after graduation and worked there a couple of years before moving back here.”
“You’re so lucky you knew what you wanted to do. I’m still trying to figure it out. So what made you want to go into TV?”
I felt my face heat in an instant blush. I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Come on. Yes you do.”
“Well, I actually wasn’t too sure about what I wanted to do. TV is sort of what everyone told me I should do.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s kind of embarrassing, really—and I know it’s hard to believe—but people were always saying things like, ‘You’re so pretty, you should be on TV.’”
I wrinkled my nose, remembering. “My mom used to take me to modeling gigs and commercials and stuff when I was a kid, but then I stopped growing at five-seven—too short to model, so she sort of pushed me to do TV news.”
“Yeah, yeah. I can see that,” he said, being nice. “Nothing wrong with working what you got.” He cocked his elbow, placing one hand behind his head and fluttered his eyelashes in a ridiculous-looking model pose.
I laughed. “No, really it is wrong. That’s no reason to get into news. I mean, I’m ashamed of it now. Thankfully, it turned out I really loved covering stories and writing for newscasts. And I was pretty good at it. The behind-the-scenes stuff felt better to me—more like I earned my job or something. And that’s what I do now—I’m not on camera anymore. But I’m sure you could tell that.”
“No. If you’d said you anchored at WNN, I totally would’ve believed you.”
“Shut up.” I looked down at my plate.
“No seriously. You’re not all tarted up and stuff with the makeup and the tight clothes.” He paused and pointed at me. “Don’t get me wrong—you’d be smokin’ like that, but you’re still hot.”
I crumpled my sandwich wrapper. “Okay seriously—shut up. I’m not hot.”
“Fine. You’re a heifer. Totally hideous. Want to go out tonight after work?” Jason took an enormous bite of his sandwich, chewing vigorously as he awaited my answer.
I stared at him for a minute, my grin developing from the inside out. He was silly and fun and definitely not rich.
“Sure. Meet you back here at six-thirty?”
We ended up going to Darby’s, apparently a favorite hangout of the Toons Network folks as well as the Overstreet Live crew. Jason claimed they served the best mouth-blistering Buffalo wings in the city.
“And I am in the mood to torch my tongue,” he said. “Plus, they’ve got six-dollar pitchers on Monday nights. See? I’m a cheap date.”
When I did a double-take, he added, “Just kidding. Though if you wanted to go halfsies—no seriously, just kidding.”
I asked the hostess to seat us at a table in the corner, far from the bar, hoping to get to know Jason better and avoid the WNN crowd (and Larson) if they happened to come in. She did as I asked, but we didn’t end up spending the evening in quiet conversation.
We’d been there about ten minutes when Jason spotted a group of his co-workers and shouted to them across the bar. They came over with smiles and high-fives, pulled a nearby table up to ours, and joined us.
As others drifted in after their shifts, our corner became more and more crowded and raucous.
It was fun, actually. And I wasn’t the only one who found Jason entertaining. He was clearly popular at work.
He spent the evening stuffing himself with more hot wings than I would have thought possible and telling stories that had our entire table laughing. I mostly smiled and tried to avoid getting sloshed with beer from the numerous pitchers being ordered and poured around me.
After a couple of hours, the hilarity wore a bit thin—there’s nothing quite as tiresome as being around drunk people when you’re sober.
At times I’d definitely been one of those drunk people, but knowing I had a long drive home tonight, I’d limited myself to one beer.
Jason, on the other hand, had been challenged to quite a few shots and downed them in quick succession. What had started out as a promising evening had taken a definite downturn.
I reached across the table and touched his hand. “I think I’m going to head out.”
He gave me the smiling head nod and held up a finger while finishing a story.
Needing to find the ladies’ room, I didn’t wait around. He was still talking as I left the table.
I moved through the crowded bar heading for a back hallway I hoped would lead me to the bathrooms.
Word of six-dollar pitcher night had apparently spread far and wide. Or maybe Darby’s was always like this. The place was packed thickly with a mixture of Monday Night Football fans and young professionals who had no need or desire to go straight home after work.