Page 2
Before Jake can decide how he was going to vent on this person who is just a messenger, his phone goes to voice mail. He curses his phone once more before he decides to listen to the message. The voice sounds like an elderly woman, "This is Miriam from Shadow News Service. We are following up on your job application that was submitted a few weeks ago. If you are still available, we are interested in doing a job interview at our office in Muskegon Michigan. Please give us a call at 555-555-5555 between 9 am and 5 pm, Monday through Friday, to set up an appointment. Thank you for your time and have a great day."
"Shadow News, never heard of them," Jake says out loud to himself as if he was still dictating into his phone. In Jake's frenzied job search, he had sent out so many resumes and job applications that unless it was a company he had already been fired from, he never even looked at the name or location of the media company he sent them to. Speaking to himself again he says, "Guess I should look into this one" knowing full well, even as the words leave his lips, that he would take any writing job at this point, even if it was a fashion magazine in California. Knowing that relocation is the only avenue left, he remembers the family cabin in the woods of Michigan. The remaining family co-owned the property, not that Jake ever contributed to its upkeep or paid any of the taxes. He rarely thought of his summers there as a child unless it was when his uncle was there too, relating his fantastic stories.
The cabin is near Winn, just southwest of Mt Pleasant, only about an hour from Muskegon or Lansing and under an hour to Grand Rapids. Considering his options at this point, the family cabin would be a reasonable and rent-free place to try again in another state, far from the bridges he had burned to the ground in Chicago. This time of year, none of the family would be there, and with any luck he could be out and into another place before the summer. He will contact his closest family member, his older brother Jan who preferred the name "John". John is the only one he knew who occasionally used the cabin for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities and Jake is sure it would be no problem to live there for a while. It didn't take too long to decide that he would move to the cabin, so he returns the call to Shadow News Service and sets up an appointment for the following week after he settles in.
Jake began organizing his office in preparation for the move when his hangover began to work its magic. After making a sacrifice to the porcelain god, Jake goes back to bed hoping to wake up refreshed so he could plan his next moves. It is almost 6 pm when he finally wakes up. Feeling the lingering effects of his hangover, he decides to clear the cobwebs by taking a shower and putting on any clean clothes he can find around his apartment. After his shower, he reheats the cabbage dish he made the night before and slices some bread from a home-baked loaf to have with his meal. It is close to 8 pm before he remembers what happened the first time he woke up earlier in the day. A kind of shocked panic floods his body as he realizes what kind of a commitment he had made. He began to consider it might have been a mistake, but he is a man of his word and committed to the task.
Not knowing anything about the Shadow News Service, Jake decides to do some online research. He retrieves his laptop from the pile of papers and other items haphazardly covering the kitchenette dining table. As Jake opens the laptop he thinks to himself, "Let's start with Goggle and see what we get." He opens his browser, types "Shadow News Service" and presses the return key. The browser regretfully returns with the following message, "Hmm. We're having trouble finding that site. We can't connect to the server." After checking his WiFi connection he realizes that the neighbor whose service he was using had changed the password. "Damn it! That's all I need!", he swears aloud. Although he has a hotspot feature on his smartphone, Jake resolves to go to the nearest free hotspot to conserve his phone data. A nearby Irish Pub called Mick's has a free hotspot, it's where Jake was headed eventually, a good plan when you need a hair of the dog that bit you.
