Timid Times in the Seamy Valley 2
The big burly man, his name was Tolef, judging by the plaque facing The Kid, sat down behind the desk, twirling his odd mustache in a surprisingly graceful manner as he did so. Tolef slapped the kipper down in an inbox on the desktop, and gathered a few papers towards himself with one hand, a pencil with the other, and ticked off the "Hit kid with a kipper" checkbox.
Mr Tolef had been at the fish packing factory as long as anyone The Kid could remember at the factory. To be frank, that wasn't a particularly long time, as it was The Kid's first time in the factory, and indeed his first time meeting anyone he could categorically say worked in the fish packing factory at all. Mr Tolef, it happened, had started only a month before and rose quickly through the ranks as an expert fish packer, and, as happens with all employees who excel at a particular task, he was quickly promoted to a position in which he didn't have the remotest connection to that at which he was so darn good.
So now Tofel, as he was known around the floor, was stuck with a ragtag crew, almost literally, of guys like Bobby "One Hand" Tootles, Jimmy "The Fish" Doolin, and Tim "The Fin" Stern. Bobby was one of the characters on the floor, for sure, but being a character didn't pack the fish. He'd had his hand bitten off by a cockroach during one incredibly long night of the soul, or so he claimed. It hadn't happened on Tofel's watch, but he had a sneaking suspicion Bobby's missing hand, his boss's disappearance, and and Tofel's subsequent promotion had something to do with each other. So, in effect, it probably signaled the beginning of Tofel's watch. And he was more than happy to believe the cockroach story, if only in a superficial, bureaucratic way.
And while he wasn't allowed to say it, Bobby having only one hand sort of limited his capacity to pack fish. So Tofel was told, one day, to start hiring another fish packer. But not to hint to Bobby that he was his "replacement," in effect. Because he wasn't. The company wouldn't replace Bobby so long as he kept coming to work, Tofel was told.
When Bobby started showing up on only alternate Thursdays, Tofel was told that the company wouldn't replace Bobby so long as he kept coming on alternate Thursdays, or saw fit to change his schedule to some other alternating set of days, or even showed up just once in a blue moon, whenever that sort of thing happened, none of them were astronomers, after all. And so, despite his poor attendance record, Bobby was generally the employee that stuck most in your mind, when you went about explaining to someone new, like The Kid, who his new co-workers would be.
"When do I meet this Bobby?" asked The Kid, as Tofel perused the rest of the form he had in front of him.
"Oh, you'll love him. He's a real class act. Good old Bobby." Tofel nodded. He noticed the next, and only, item on the list was labeled "Three twenty-five an hour." He ticked that off with the pencil, as well. The only thing left on the form was space for a signature, which he presumed was The Kid's. He twirled the paper around on his desk and pushed it across to the other side. The twirl of the paper was also graceful, the ends of the paper lifted gently, billowy, and eased into the turn like a hovercraft, slowly parking. It was his fingers, the same fingers that had made him such a good fish packer, that made almost everything he did with them resemble a ballerina twirling laconically on a stage of wherever Tofel happened to be at that moment in time.
"So when do I meet him? You said his nickname was 'Two Hands'?" Tofel brushed a few hairs off his forehead, where his forehead always got too sticky when he spent any length of time in his office. He supposed he had said Bobby's nickname was "Two Hands," though he wasn't entirely sure why. The bosses had told him to just not encourage the "One Hand" nickname, and, if at all possible, avoid the mention of hands altogether to Bobby and any of his co-workers.
Tofel nodded. "Right. Yes. Well. Bobby's not actually here today. He's sort of, well, you know, out on company business. He should be in tomorrow." Tofel pushed a few papers aside and consulted his desktop blotter calendar. Tomorrow was Friday. Well, sure, he might be in then. Tofel couldn't quite remember his current schedule or the last time Bobby had been in, for that matter. "At any rate, I'll take you down to the locker-room to get you your gear, and then we can go meet the other guys."
The Kid scrawled quickly on the line for his signature, and the two of them headed out of the office and downstairs.
The kipper lay on Tofel's desk, stinking a little bit, but no more so than the rest of the factory.
Summary
disclaimer:
Welcome back to the fish packing factory.
We have a new little feature-let in the left hand navigation there, if you hadn't noticed.
For those of you using Firefox (or Mozilla, or Netscape) or Safari you should see a little "quick pick", where you can pick your horoscope, so you don't have to click all around to get the horoscopes each week. Your preference will be saved, as well, so long as you're viewing Sane Magazine in the same browser you always do and no one has been messing with the selection.
Discuss this in the forums
Discuss the horoscopes in the forums
Forum hosting provided by forumthing.