“Ever think maybe you’re in the wrong line of work?” Dana, the perky, annoying, dress to impress the wrong kind of people, reporter from the Atlanta Daily News, asked in a bored, when will this be over, tone. She flipped Skittle after Skittle into her mouth, taking care to chew the requisite ten chomps her mother probably taught her so she wouldn’t choke on her food. How anyone could chew on tiny candy for that long, Jessica didn’t know. It was irritating. Like a bad rash in the least comfortable spot.

“No. Why?” Jessica Huell shrugged, rolling her shoulders back to take her mind of the fact that the longer she sat there with no action, the longer she had to sit listening to Ms. Reporter chew. So much for the great article the reporter planned to write about Atlanta’s Most Interesting Professionals. This was about as interesting as cleaning dog poop off the bottom of your shoes. Clearly, Jessie’s execution of her current job was proving to be a dud, with a capital D, and she’d really hoped the exposure from the proffered feature in the newspaper would swing a little more business her way. She should have known by the way her day had gone that tonight would be like this. Her eleven o’clock showed up a half hour late wearing a mink stole and nothing else. Not even shoes. No explanation was given. Of course, the stench of whisky on her breath might have had something to do with it. The lunch time crowd at her favorite dive, The Crown & Anchor, where they make this chicken pot pie that’s to die for, made her not five, not ten, but fifteen minutes late for her one o’clock manicure and pedicure. Her toes and fingers were half French, half American. Then Mr. three o’clock shows up and laughs at her. Laughs. How the hell did he know what she was capable of? Just because he was some hairstylist in leather pants and flouncy shirt thing with the proper manicure, didn’t mean he should pass judgment on her. Truth be told, that had been the story of her life as of late. Tonight was supposed to change all that. Tonight was when she released her inner superhero and saved the day, leaping from tall buildings and flinging some golden lasso to catch the bad guys so that Ms. Skittle would write about what a fantastic, smart, one-of-a-kind, superhuman woman she was. Crap. Did she just start choking on the damn Skittles?

No time to check. Movement caught her eye. “Wait, get down,” Jessie said, as she pushed Dana’s head below the dashboard. The night wasn’t going to be a loss after all. She could still redeem herself, even if her nails and toes looked like sh*t. There was still hope. Maybe the bright red T-shirt she was wearing with the caricature of some guy she didn’t know, but had looked cute, so she bought the shirt, would be enough to garner her fashion points when all was said and done. Her career choice wasn’t going to make her mother ‘die an early death,’ like she’d been promising. She was going to make mom proud with a newspaper spread to end all stories. There would be a picture of her on the front page of the W section, and if anybody cared to read that far, they’d see her. That is, if the conk she’d just inflicted on Dana’s forehead didn’t lodge the Skittle in her throat for good.

By the way, I think that pic was taken in Texas while we were there for a tea! When you think Gena and Jill, you always think elegance! Good think I never get caught in pics like that, right Gena?

Dana’s job was getting her down. Her arch-rival, Joe Gibbs, had gotten assigned that plum of a story on money-laundering in the Happy Kiddies Nursery School chain. After she’d laid all the groundwork, too. It just wasn’t fair. It seemed like all the stories she got these days were dull, never going to get a Pulitzer-type stories. Where had all the glamour of being a reporter on a big city newspaper gone? Now she had to ride along and be interviewed by this society princess who wanted to be a feature writer. Pain in the ass.

“Ever think maybe you’re in the wrong line of work, honey?” she asked the woman. Dana flipped a Skittle into her mouth while she waited for an answer to her rhetorical question.

Jessica Huell eyed her newest interviewee with disgust. The woman looked bored. And annoyed. Just great. She’d been hoping this feature would swing a little more work her way. Atlanta’s Most Interesting Professionals were turning out to be a bunch of burnouts and losers. She really needed the gig, too. After her husband dumped her for another man, she’d been left with their ultra high rent condo to pay for. She couldn’t afford to give it up, either, because it was that posh address that had gotten her the chance to write this feature in the first place.

Movement caught her eye. What was it? Was that…”Wait, get down,” Jessie told Dana. “I think I see something.” Dana was slow to act, so Jessie reached over and shoved her head down below the dashboard. That’ll teach her. If it wasn’t one thing it was another.

See what happens when you ask for bad writing??? ;+)))