Community Pitch

photo credit: Tschäff

As a rule, it never happens that I meet a striking blonde as a result of weaving my way through a room dotted with glass coffee tables, but this was an exceptional time. The sound of small arms fire was still discernible inside the hotel. The shots, random as they were at the moment, indicated that the partisans were still digging out the opposition from the hotel’s double closets and from inside the hotel’s deluxe hot tubs, and it would take some time still before the last round had been fired into the last kneecap. In the interval, I amused myself by watching the numerous women, not some few of which had dyed blonde hair, walking through the huge hotel library reading room. The women, thrown off balance by the weight of the automatic weapons slung across their shoulders, had to be nimble in order to avoid banging their shins on the edges of the coffee tables. Suddenly, the blonde, a striking blonde I must say, hove into view.

photo credit: pokpok313

The club is pretty fancy, I’ll tell you. It is, however, the hottest ticket in a town that is full of hot tickets. The band, swinging like a broken chandelier, is in full rout, and the head waiter is furiously snapping his fingers at underlings wearing short white coats and black slacks to make them hop and set up a round glass dining table for me and my swanky sidekick, a rich grass widow from the right side of the tracks. I yank a double sawski from my money clip and duke the major domo sufficient to repair the inevitable rents in his pride. Once we sit down at the table, the inevitable bottle of bubbly plops into the silver canister filled with cracked and salted ice. It is looking like a long evening, and I better shore up my nerve so I can endure it.

photo credit: AIIDA

When Frank, a 25-year veteran employee of the firm, walked into the meeting room, his department head was sitting on the opposite side of the glass table. Frank shifted his chewing gum from one side of his mouth to the other, and as the gum traveled across his tongue, he counted his remaining teeth. “Frank,” his department head slowly began, “we have to let you go.” Frank slumped into the chair across from the department chair. “Look, I’m too old to do anything else.” The department head stared at Frank with the flat-eyed look of a gunfighter and said, “Sure, Frank, sure. Here’s your last check. Go clean out your desk.” Frank reached out and took the white envelope held out by his department head. “Sure,” Frank said, “sure.” The sun was suddenly covered by a white cloud with dark spots in it.