"Morning, Joe!" The greeting interrupted me in the middle of putting down my cup of coffee. Darlene always took an almost sadistic delight in this exchange as she continued with, "How's your morning joe?"
Rather than groan, or grunt, or growl, or grimace in response, I pasted a smile on my face. It was probably a fairly weak and wan attempt, but Darlene never seemed to notice. "As good as it always is, Darlene. Thank you for asking." I keep vainly hoping that if I reply in a mundane fashion, she'll give up the daily pun greeting for a more humane way of starting the morning interaction. It's been two years without any such luck. Sigh.
Darlene plunked her (I must admit shapely) bottom on the edge of my desk - precariously close to the aforementioned cup of coffee, I might add! - before crossing her arms and cocking her head a bit to one side. "Ready for the big day?"
My response was probably less than reassuring as the wan smile gave way to a blank look, "Big day? Do I have a wedding I'm not remembering?"
Darlene rolled her eyes and reached out to give my tie a tug to straighten it. "Get yourself together, Joe. We've got to meet with the comptroller in an hour."
"Uh, right! I remembered that. I was just messing with you." I laughed it off, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't buying it. She pushed off the desk while giving her head a little shake, "Get your shit together, Joe. I'm not going down alone." The look she gave me promised retribution before she turned on her heel and stalked away.
I watched her as she made her exit, admiring the pencil skirt she was wearing. No excuses; I am what I am. And I've always been an ass man. I took to my chair and started putting the last minute finishing touches on the reports I'd written last week for the comptroller meeting, humming softly under my breath while I worked. I had crossed all my T's and dotted all my I's. If Darlene wasn't going down alone, she certainly wasn't taking me with her. Finishing off the last of my coffee, I leaned back in my seat. I could feel a tiny smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
Perhaps today would be the last punny morning I had to endure.
This ficlet is probably several experiments in one. The first is the basic picture/ficlet experiement that is the basis of the blog. Second, it's POV character is male, which I've not done much of and certainly not male first person POV.
ReplyDeleteI don't expect that everything here will be a true 'story', or even most things here. Some will just be snippets of something. I'm not sure I'm looking too hard at having coherent beginning, middle and end, so much as I'm just trying to get myself to write.