God In The Kitchen by Brooke Williams

the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
                I reached across the table, grabbing one of the window stickers from my perfect array and holding it out to her. “Here,” I said, “Take this too. You’re bound to need a new one by now.”
                Kathy took a window sticker at every event. Sometimes, back at the studio, we would go back and forth as to what she did with them all.
                “Haven’t you seen the Volkswagen bug driving around town completely covered in them?” the afternoon guy joked.
                “No way,” the Midday girl said, “she has them plastered above her bed so she can see them first thing in the morning when she wakes up and last thing at night too.”
                I didn’t care what Kathy did with the stickers. At that point, I just wanted to make her feel like part of something. I could tell by the way she clutched the window sticker to her chest and took a seat at a table halfway across the diner that it was exactly what she was feeling.
                Instead of commiserating with Jim, who was still ignoring me and concentrating on his wires, I glanced around the diner, wondering how fast it would fill up.
                I caught Chloe’s eye from across the room. She looked away quickly when she saw me looking at her, but before she did, I saw a sad smile on her face.
                The rest of the morning went more quickly than I anticipated. We did a number of goofy giveaways and were able to get listeners to appear on roller skates, with feather boas, and even in full clown costumes to get concert tickets. It was all part of the publicity.
                At each remote broadcast, I tried to figure out what the establishment needed most. This time around, it was all about getting the name of Cal’s Diner out to the other part of the city so he could expand successfully. The best way to do that was not only to work up quite a frenzy on the air, but also to give people something to talk about.
                Word of mouth is the best advertisement, after all. And if you went to a diner and won concert tickets on roller skates, you’d talk about it too. That was one story that was bound to be told and retold.
                During the broadcast, I always felt enlivened. I played off of the listeners that came in and truly appreciated them for coming by and saying hi. Cal, in turn, appreciated me and he appeared by my side several times to shake my hand and give me the latest on how many calls they were getting for catering jobs. I could tell by the fact that there were hardly any empty seats in the diner after the first hour that things were going well.
                Jim, on the other hand, just informed listeners that I was all talk and no work as often as he could. I tried to lay it on thick and get him back on my good side. “This is the man behind the scenes who always makes me sound good,” I would say. Most people never even glanced in his direction, but one older lady seemed to only have eyes for him.
                Thankfully, Jim was married or I might have been able to add matchmaker to my resume.
                By the time the broadcast was over, I started to feel the hard work sinking into my bones. Being out in the public was fun, but it was tiring too. I shook hands with dozens of people and plastered a smile on my face for hours on end. I stood by the table and talked on the air as people watched me. It was not something I was sure I would ever get used to doing. I enjoyed it, sure, but I was used to talking in a room by myself with no visible audience.
                I felt Jim stir beside me and grunt as he looked at his watch for the third time in 10 minutes. The broadcast had been over for five minutes and he was itching to pack up and hit the road.
                I was trying to talk