Ceremonies of the Horsemen

"I don't know," I said. "What?"

"My so-called workers are out in the parking lot for some reason. Well, Bullwinkle is out there smoking which figures since he takes more smoke breaks than any man I've ever seen. On the bright side at least he'll probably get cancer that much sooner but, then again, if he gets it while he's working here it'll cost the company money. My insurance rates will go up. Maybe we should have Tim do a memo about the smoke breaks. They're like children, I swear."

"And the toilet."

"That's two memos. That will take him the better part of two days. We have to decide whether we want to have him spend two days on two memos or whether the time would be better spent on some other project."

"We could have someone else do the memos."

"We've tried that but then we still lose the two days and more because he goes in and whines and complains about how he didn't get to do the memos, he's the best one to do the memos, we don't let him do the memos because he's black, we don't like him because he's black and on and on. And he tells all the customers that call in the same thing.

"And how he can't take a lunch."

"Right," the boss said. "The lunch. We not only lose two days from him we lose the time from everybody else having to listen to him. Maybe we need to do a memo about all the talking that goes on around here."

"We could do a memo about all the talking that goes on around here."

"And the boxing."

"Boxing?"

"Yes, I would swear they're all out in the parking lot boxing. Will you go out and see what's going on out there? I'm late to have my nails done. And then I have my golf lesson. Did I tell you I'm paying a fortune for golf lessons with Tiger Woods coach?"

"I don't think you mentioned it, no."

"I could have sworn I did," he said. "I'm so excited about it I feel all gushy all over. Gotta run. Ciao."

CHAPTER FIVE

He snuck out the side door through the secretary's office and moved through the parking lot with his head down, quickly, varying his pace and course in case someone was out there, waiting in ambush. He got in his car, warily, and started it up. I knew he was worried about car bombs. Davey Crockett was some sort of electronics genius. The Other Guy was a revolutionary. Jerry the Pen had been in 'Nam and now had an ax to grind. Bullwinkle had been in 'Nam and had been thrown out for running some sort of black market operation and he was on the outs with the boss, too. They weren't speaking to one another. Every day it was something new. Tom Kettle wasn't speaking to May Duck. May Duck wasn't speaking to the Other Guy. The Other Guy had flat out told her not to speak to him unless he spoke to her first and that pissed her off. The Smutking had threatened to chop off Sweetie's head, put it on a pike and parade around the building. The necrophiliac was going to kill us all and f--- us when we were dead. The terrorist, in his broken English, might have threatened Tom but when he was angry his English deteriorated into dissonant, unintelligible grunts. The whole place seethed with anger. Employees. The boss. The customers. Ex-employees. Ex-customers. If ever there was a candidate for a company to be featured on the evening news (Shootout Leave Seven Dead) this was it. If only this was a real company. Tom Kettle and the Necrophiliac were candidates to go postal on any given day. Corpulenti had flat out said that if he got any sicker and they only gave him six months to live he would wait till five months and 29 days were up, get out of his hospital and come over here and kill that motherf---er (the boss) if it was the last thing he did. Bullwinkle was a gun nut. Davey Crockett used to have the squaw, Two Feathers, stalking him and threatening to kill him and all the women she knew he was f---ing at work. Baba Drug Fiend's husband was going to kill her for trying to leave him and he didn't care who got in his way. And the Other Guy was a revolutionary. It was said that he was hatching plots.

I walked out into the sunshine of an unseasonably warm morning. Tiny birds twittered in the bushes. Sparrows. Some sort of wren. A mourning dove perched on a wire about the parking lot. A dove. The bird of peace.

"Keep your gloves up, May," The Other Guy was saying. "You need to keep your gloves up. I don't think she'll go to the body on you at all. She never has."

"What's going on here?" I asked.

"Watch out everybody," Bullwinkle said. "It's the brown-noser. Or is it the pipeline? Which do you prefer? Watch what you do or say because you know he'll run right in and tell the first lady everything we do and say here."

"I can already see you're all out here boxing when you should be working. What's the meaning of this?"

"Fire me," Bullwinkle said. "Can I be next? C'mon, Charley, fire me. I hear you're the Vice President. Ha! Then you probably know I have a contract through the end of the year and the First Lady has to pay me even if you fire me. I have a no-cut contract. Ha! So why don't you fire me next. I can go sit by the phone if you'd like. I heard you fired that broad that worked here over the phone. You'd never met her and you were talking to her over the phone and firing her and telling her that her work wasn't up to RSN standards? That must have been rich. Surreal. Very 1984-like. Though we're past that stage, aren't we? This is the new millennium we have now. 2002, an RSN odyssey. What's the matter, cat got your tongue? I can go get you a speaker phone if you'd like, maybe you can think of something to say then."

"I'd rather not dignify your comments with a response," I said.

"Use your jab to keep her off you," the Other Guy said. He demonstrated by firing a few quick punches. "The jab sets up everything. Everything works off the jab."

"I don't think this is going to work," May said.

"You need to have her thrown in jail," Jerry the Pen said. "The asshole."

"She's fine when she takes her medication," May said. "It's when she forgets to take her medication that she starts to hallucinate and then gets violent. It all stems back to the time she was hit by a car. She was hit by a hit-and-run driver. We thought we were going to lose her."

"Oh, you'd like to say something I'm sure," Bullwinkle said to me, "All the people I've told that story to just love it. They say, what? He fired her over the telephone? He'd never met her and he fired her over the phone? Imagine putting yourself in her shoes, if you can. How would you like to have that happen to you? Oh, I know, you'd say, look, come meet me in person and I'll be glad to kiss your ass. Isn't that right, Charley?"

"I've had enough of you," I said. "And you all need to get back to work."