Masani opens her eyes and reaches instinctively to shut off her alarm clock, but the alarm isn't on. The noise comes from outside. She pulls the covers up and rolls over in bed, but the noise doesn't go away. She throws the covers back, and sighs. She scoots up to take a look out the window, trying as best as she can not to get out of bed to do so. Fumbling with the shade, she finally resigns herself to feet on the floor, and peeks out. "What the hell?" she says.
She drops the shade, rubs her eyes, and lifts the shade again. Through the fading darkness of early morning, she sees the street below filled with media trucks with satellite dishes on top, reporters with microphones standing in the yards of neighbors, and a platoon of photographers zeroing in on her window. Bright lights flash as she drops the shade. "Some days I just shouldn't get out of bed, mm hmm," she says to herself, as she pulls on a robe and heads out of her room.
Masani knocks on Francine's room. "Francine, you up?" she half-whispers.
"Huh?" Masani hears muffled from behind the door, then footsteps coming near, then the door opening a crack, and Francine's sleepy face complete with hair sticking every which way appears.
"What time is it?" Francine says, yawning, "Am I blocking you in the driveway?"
"Too damn early and no, respectively," Masani says, "Honey, do you have any idea why there's a media circus in our front yard?"
"Huh?"
"Take a look."
A look is taken, and as the bright lights explode again at the sign of any movement in the house, Francine drops the blinds, and says, "I have no idea what's going on, but I doubt it's good. I bet they're not here to tell us we won the lottery."
"You think Donald did something? He's been acting a little crazy lately. Maybe somebody was rude and he beat them up," Masani says.
"That wouldn't even make the police blotter," Francine says, "Let's go downstairs and turn on the tv."
Downstairs, Donald's watching television with the sound low. "Donald! What's going on?" Masani says.
"They are after Francine. They are saying she is having an affair with Senator Poorpeople," Donald says, pointing at the screen.
"What?!" both Francine and Masani say.
"I told you not to volunteer for that idiot!" Masani says.
"Easy! I only met him once for about ten minutes in the campaign office. After that I couldn't stand breathing the same air as him, and went home," Francine says, putting her hands up.
"Is that the time you met him?" Donald says, turning the volume up on the remote control.
Video of Francine nervously shaking hands with Poorpeople plays on the screen. Poorpeople says, "This is great!"
The screen plays the loop of the handshake and Poorpeople saying "This is great!" five times in a row, then continues to play but with a voiceover stating, "We have learned from our anonymous source within the Poorpeople campaign that the reason Apple has been absent from the campaign office in recent weeks is because she is pregnant with Poorpeople's child."
"You're pregnant!" Masani says.
"No! Don't tell me you actually believe what's on the news?" Francine says, waving angrily in the direction of the television.
The screen flashes back to a shot of a male reporter with a helmet of hair and a shield of a smile standing in their front yard, "Once again, if you are just joining us, we are live outside the house where, according to our source, Senator Poorpeople has hidden the stripper who is having his love child."
"A stripper! You're a stripper?" Masani says.
"No!" Francine says, "But so what if I were? It's my body. I can do what I want with it!"
"I just can't believe the stuff they're saying about you on the news. It's unbelievable that they can get away with saying such lies," Masani says.
"Well, I did work as a cocktail waitress in a strip club for a few months during college but I was never a stripper. And that was years ago."
"Heh," Donald says, "Cocktail. Cock and tail. That is appropriate for a strip club. That is funny."
The women look at him.
"Sorry, it is early. I have not even had breakfast yet and I already had to ask somebody to please not dig through the trash outside. I am not used to that kind of behavior."
"Actually, Donald, most of the men ordered beer anyway, so it was a bit of a misnomer," Francine says.
Watching their house on the television, Masani shakes her head and says, "We must be the only people in this country who don't want to be famous. Anybody else would be out there auditioning for a reality show already."
"Well, it looks as if Warhol was right. This is our fifteen minutes," Francine says.
"Well I hope it's more like fifteen seconds of fame, so I can get to work. Attention spans are so short nowadays, maybe they'll move on to another story soon, or maybe they'll get bored if we don't go out for a while," Masani says.
"Hmm . . . before that happens, perhaps I should use this as an opportunity to plead with people to be more polite," Donald says.
"In the middle of those vultures? They'd tear you apart! They'd probably say she's a prostitute now and you're her pimp, and I'm another ho," Masani says, shaking her head, "I don't know how I'm going to get to work today."
A picture of a building with a sign in front saying "Pairadose Pairadese: Live Nude Dancers" appears on the screen.
"Hey!" Francine points, "That's the place I worked."
"Well, I gotta get to work, and where I work we wear clothes so I got to get those on too at some point, and since figuring out what I want to wear is about all I can usually handle on a Monday morning, I'm not quite sure how to deal with this nightmare," Masani says, "What are we going to do?"
"I don't know, but I do know one thing: I'm going to kill Louis Carson Fir the next time I see him," Francine says.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
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