“Gentlemen, before we begin, I do have a few words to say about decorum. I was shopping with my daughter for a bathing suit at Target this weekend. I saw a number of you there and more of your person than I’d like. I saw your feet, dried calluses, rising veins – your feet, gentlemen! I understand, as exchequer and exemplar, I may be responsible for this alarming fad. I do remember letting my ankles show once or twice but I will never do it again and, gentlemen, if you value your positions I suggest you fo thr smewq–“Penelope tired fast of typing. She replaced her Dictaphone headphones with radio ear buds. Johnny Late Riser, her favorite DJ, took the morning shift at KWOW and played her everything she needed to get the blood flowing back to her tips. She flipped through a glossy fashion magazine while she listened, timing the turns of the pages to the symbol crashes in the songs. Soon her licked finger just slid off the corner of the page in a puddle of saliva instead of picking it up, and she returned to another five-minute stint of yesterday’s minutes.
“’Bout time for your lunch, pet,” said the boss, pulling his belt up over his gut as he walked out of the office. “I bet lover boy’s waiting for you right now.”
“Oh yes,” Penelope swooned, “He always waits.”
“Well don’t keep him too long, he’s not getting any better looking waiting in my lobby.”
A cutting comment, but Penelope had been going out with Fon for going on a year and any reservations she might have had at first about his height, skin, and limp were long gone.
“If it’s all the same, I think I’ll listen to the radio a little more. It’s so romantic just knowing he’s down there.”
“Suit yourself,” said the boss, walking back into his office. “The Anniversary Parade meeting’s this afternoon. Look sharp.” The door slam hit a particularly jealous note.
Eventually, Penelope rode the elevator down the bottom fifteen floors of the Renaissance Plaza and there was Fon, a flower made of carrot peels held out in his hand. They walked as they did every lunch hour (the hour between ten and eleven when no one else was out), arm in arm down three blocks to the West Wind Café, a two-table Vietnamese restaurant owned and operated by Fon’s father.
“It getting cloudy today, Pen,” said Fon.
“Certainly doesn’t bode well for the parade,” said Penelope.
“Is bad luck for my question.”
Penelope and Fon took the seat by the window. Penelope powdered her cheeks and Fon relished his time away from bussing tables.
“Stupid boy!” said his father, dropping two menus onto the table. “You take my last carrot flower!”
“Good morning, Mr. Hingtzu,” said Penelope. “I’ll just have the usual.”
Fon grinned and handed back the menus. “The usual.”
Mumbling Vietnamese curses, Mr. Hingtzu threw a towel over his shoulder and went back into the kitchen.
“It been almost a year,” Fon said, taking Penelope’s hand. “I have question for you.”
Penelope cocked her head and looked up at the sky. “Those floats get soggy in the rain,” she said.
“I’m ready to ask my question now.”
Penelope brought her head back. “Question?”
Six captains of industry burst through the door for an early lunch. Together they threw their ties over their shoulders and pounded their silverware against the table.
Mr. Hingtzu ran out of the kitchen, all smiles and menus. “Good morning, my sirs!” He pointed to Fon and snapped his fingers. “Water, now!”
“But…” Fon squeezed Penelope’s hand.
“It’s all right,” said Penelope. “There’s plenty more to type.”
Fon rose and set about pouring water for each of the hogs that took him away from his beloved.
Penelope sat and admired him working for a moment then rose as well, put her compact in her purse and walked back to the office.
“General Tso’s for me,” said a hog. “You listening? I said General Tso’s!”
Fon trembled, a pitcher of water in his hand and a tear welling in his eye. “Will you marry me?” he asked.
The next day and Penelope was hard at work transcribing yesterday’s tapes. “Last year’s parade was a mess! I was humiliated and I damn well hope you sockless bastards were humiliated, too! All in the way of saying, gentlemen, that tomorrow morning we will be having a dress rehearsal! No, gentlemen, I don’t want to hear it, the majorettes will be here and thas anirh tjug–“
Penelope took off her headphones and twirled a pencil between her fingers to get the blood back. She switched on the radio.
“Oh, Johnny. Always the right song at the right time.” She closed her eyes and let her heels slip off.
A good fifteen minutes she spent bobbing and swaying in her chair and she would have danced longer if it weren’t for the fifty majorettes that came walking by her desk and into the boss’s office.
“If he wants to make me jealous, he’ll have to try harder than that,” she said. “I’m sure Fon is coming for me right now.” She got out the Dictaphone and rolled a fresh sheet into the typewriter.
“And that’s another thing, gentlemen. Half our audience was asleep last year. We got to shock, provoke! Think, what’s better than a bunch of batons being thrown up in the air? At tomorrow’s dress rehearsal, we will implement my plans…my plans…is someone going to fix this projector? We will implement my plans at ten o’clock a.m. to fling from this very window dozens of twirling batons like so much ticker tape at the–“
Penelope jumped to her feet and looked to the clock on the wall. Ten o’clock. She let out a childish whimper.
Overcast skies meant nothing to Fon as he waited outside, the perfectly worded question in his best American accent running through his mind and a flower made of ginger peels perfuming his hand. He was the only one on the sidewalk, the only one in the world really, and he felt like bursting into song. He even tried. He spread out his legs and reached out his arms, threw his pimpled, doughy head back and opened his mouth. “Happy Anniversary!” cried the plumed majorettes, and fifty spinning batons fell from the fifteenth floor of the Renaissance Plaza, filling the overcast sky and looking to Fon like the most beautiful constellation, for he could even see, behind the stars, the smiling gods who created them. Then he was pummeled, pummeled dearly.
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