Three days and counting: the off-kilter woman has not gotten sacked. I'm fair. I'm not counting weekend days.

New topic: The slimey lawyer down the hall makes my stomach twist. His head is smaller than his neck. The corners of his mouth are pulled downward and back, tightly. Or maybe that's just me, thinking about it. I'm sure he's rotting from the inside-out. Even other lawyers think he's a foul person. The grayer his scribbly neck hair gets, the ruddier his capillaried skin goes, the more he honestly looks like Jabba the Hutt everyday.

What a surprise, he usually hires little girlies to answer the phones up front. He's hired more than I can count right now. And they never last for more than two months. Some smoke in the restroom, and some don't. Next thing you know, you see him back behind the girlie's desk, administering work over her shoulder, leaning in to look down her shirt. So really, how would I know? It's because they have glass walls and are right across from the ladies' loo.

Now, I guess after going through a few twenty year-old girlies this year, he has finally given up something deep inside and hired a very proud Biblical man who dresses in a three-piece suit with vibrant ties and shiny, matching shoes. And he wears a really loud cologne that smells like my grandmother's jewelry box. I can smell it through the glass walls on my way to the ladies.

He rode up in the elevator with me. Even though I assume the stance, casting my eyes downward, I knew it was him. Was almost positive anyway, by his shiny red patent leather shoes. But in Memphis, he could have been almost anyone heading for a slimey lawyer's office. He asks in a strong solid tone, "...An' how ar' yyyew tew-day?..." Prying my eyes from the red shoes to respond politely, "I'm fine... how are you?" And as always, he pronounces that he is "bless-ed, just bless-ed." Too bless-ed to be stress-ed, I think to myself. That's fine. Then he introduces his name and his right hand to me, as he has twice before, and I've forgotten his name both times. He reaches inside his coat to the pocket pulling out the yellow check for Eternal Life, and he hands it to me. I think that is nice enough. And I sure hope it's good for a bless-ed haircut* because that's where I'm off to right now.

*ps: In God We Trust, but as luck would have it, Tangles would only accept my Visa.





www.kollaboration.org

If I could redo existence, somehow I would have to come back as this kid. Or as the insurmountably creepy girl who sits behind him in calculus, faintly intoxicated by the smell of his freshly washed hair. (See? I could be creepy.) Click the Noodle Boy in the red shirt.