Note: None of these characters belong to me.


Monopoly


"Oh, hi." Matthew said, he sat down his sandwich.
"Hi." said Joe.
"Hello," I replied to them. "How is your lunch?"
"Good," Joe replied, they were both giving me very short and quick answers. I smiled at them and left the break room.
I noticed Catherine and Bill sitting up in the booth while Bill was doing his McNeal Perspective. I just stared through the glass. I wasn't for sure if I liked this job too well, I thought to myself. The people were friendly, it was just that I wasn't doing what I was used to, the news.
I went home a few hours after that. Well, I went to the hotel room that I was supposed to call home. I wasn't for sure what was going on. I decided to call Lucinda and ask her what the hell was going on.
"Hello,"
"Hello, dear Lucinda." I said.
"Hello, Darling!! How is the Big Apple?"
I had to explain my first day to her, I told her how I felt and asked her what she was going to do about it.
Then I heard the news.
"Audrey, I hate to tell you this, but I was in the understanding that you were staying there until you got the ratings up."
I was stunned, "That could take months."
Lucinda apologized, but said that she really owed this favor to Mr. James and that he needed the help on top of that. I reluctantly agreed to stay in New York, but told Lucinda that I could not live out of a hotel for that long. She said that I could stay in her penthouse on the Upper West Side until I left New York. I was very displeased with the news of me staying.

**********************************************************

A couple of weeks had passed and I had been working day and night to help get WNYX's ratings out of the toilet. I had even taken the liberty of bringing in extra coffee to the station because Dave and I were drinking so much that I felt like it was causing a strain on the budget.
But this certain day, there wasn't much news happening. It was so slow that day that Dave even assigned Matthew a small story. Dave and I had been working so closely together, at Jimmy's request, that I never even noticed the jealous glares that Lisa shot at me during staff meetings.
Dave asked me to go to lunch with him that day, I was delighted to get out of the office because I had eating lunch nearly every day there.
"On behalf of the office, I would really like to say that your presence here has made our job a lot more delightful." he said after we had ordered.
I smiled at him, "Thank you. That really means a lot to me."
"Mr. James tells me that you are also doing a piece with NBC?"
"Yeah, they figured since I am going to be in the city for a while that they would make good use of me."
"Well, at least you are going to be able to do something else besides looking through paperwork and at numbers all day." he smiled.
"Yeah, and it will be good for me, I thought that I might lose my touch."
"Oh, I doubt that."
Our meal was delivered and we had a nice time at lunch together.

Back at the station things were going so slow, it was the end of February and usually everyday something big was happening. But I guess the city was sleeping that day. Bill and Catherine walked out of the booth after his show and sat at their desks, Bill just sat staring at Matthew as he blew his nose and organized his vitamins. Catherine got up and went to the restroom while Joe, Beth, and Lisa surrounded Lisa's desk while Joe fixed her computer. I, on the other hand, sat at the conference table with a pile of papers in front of me that I had to go through. I had to go through daily readings, hour by hour, of comparing ratings of other AM news stations in the city. Great fun, ay?
I felt like my eyes were going to shoot out of my head, I had even wore my glasses that day, but they were still sore. Dave had come out of his office and started clearing off the table, I looked up to see what he was doing, and then I asked him.
"Well, I thought that maybe since you have been working so hard all day, that you and I could sit down and have a nice game of Monopoly."
I laughed at him, "No, really, I have a lot of numbers to go through here."
"No, we are going to play Monopoly, it is even my Star Wars Edition."
I took my glasses off and smiled. "All right, as long as I can be Princess Leia."

Part 5