"Sir, don't walk through the zone."
Todd turned and allowed himself to retort: "FUCK OFF."
She riposted: "FUCK YOU." (Italics mine.)
Todd stood for a moment, pondered the next move in their chess match, and then decided to continue on to the library.
Inside, after breathlessly clocking in, he noticed the library staff working hard at analyzing Justkidding's Twitter account.
@Target FUCK TARGET. These people are tone policing me and EVEN THREATENED TO CALL THE POLICE when all I was doing was buying groceries and helping an elderly Latina. #tanangel
"Fuck Target," I said, moving my lips as I read and since I was talking aloud. "What does that mean, precisely?"
"Hello?" Todd said.
"It means she precisely wants to have relations with Target," Jonah said. He raised a brow. "In the archery sense."
"Hard to reconstruct the scene that we're being teased with. How does buying groceries and helping an elderly Latina provoke a Target employee into tone enforcement?"
"Hey!" Todd said. "I was just yelled at by the tree-cutting lady."
"Target itself is a symmetrical nonnegative vagina," Jonah said, smoking a pipe. "Sometimes Target is just a target."
"I told her to fuck off. That shut her up."
Justron gently wandered over to our symposium. "What's a battle?" he said softly.
"Go back to rolling your dreidels," Jonah said. "Jew."
"Why are you angry at me?"
"Because that's the theme of this post! Didn't you look at the banner headline?" Jonah pointed at the air. "Come on, do I have to do everything for you?"
"It's a Dylan Thomas riff," I said, warm with my own cleverness. "Pretty great, huh?"
"Fuck you," Todd said. "Doesn't anyone want to listen to how I told the tree lady to go fuck herself?"
"Fuck no," in unison.
Just then there was a sharp, angry rap at the door.
"If it's that serial killer (volunteer), tell him to dismember himself on his own!"
"Uh... sure." I went to answer the door. It was Farley, the security guard there to pick up the money. "Oh, sorry. We don't have a deposit for this week."
"What?"
I'd had scenes with Farley before. She was a marshmallow-shaped lesbian with a buzzcut and a fear of her stapler being taken, psychologically.
"Mmmgghate you so much."
A few months ago I'd been on vacation in Lubbock and there had been no deposit then either and she had been quite miffed. This had happened one other time also, and she had told me through grit teeth that I needed to call dispatch to let them know there was no pick up needed. Apparently I was her own personal shoah.
"Yeah," I said, wary of her night stick (if you know what I mean), "I let Polly know with an email? I guess she didn't get it or something." Dry chuckle.
"Well, she's out. Didn't you see that she didn't reply?"
"Er, yeah. Welp."
"Can I use your restroom, at least?"
"Sure! Ha, ha, sorry about all this."
Growling, Farley punched the door to the staff bathroom. The door locked.
*flush*
*flush*
*flush*
[Jesus Christ, three times?]
*paper towel dispenser*
*flush*
Todd met her just as she was coming out, adjusting her utility belt.
"I wouldn't go in there."
"Oh!" Todd fled.
I sat with my back to all the action, hoping that Farley would simply leave and forget about my criminal infraction.... Her jackboots creaked closer.
"So," she said. "How can we make sure this never happens again?"
"Mm!"
Her clipboard clattered on my desk. She needed me to initial the ZERO MONEY pickup notation, in triplicate.
"Maybe if I sent an all-world email?"
Molars grinding, eyes zeroed out, Farley wrote three email addresses, violently underlining each one.
"Send a message to these three. Okay?"
"Sure. Great. Thanks."
She went to the back door, fisted it open, and flushed herself out. Justron came over, frightened.
"What was that all about?"
"I don't know. People are just angry these days."
"I pity them," Justron said whisperingly, holding his copy of Mary Oliver. He was easy like Sunday morning's bookdrop.
Jonah slapped the book out of his hands. "Stop reading that shit!"
"I'LL KILL YOU!!"
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