St. Pauly

“The chief put me up for EMT of the year … again,” Pauly said, rubbing the brow above his wandering left eye. “Je-sus.” He ran the sleeve of his Sesame Street sweatshirt beneath his nose to catch the rope of snot that had been dangling there, like the rappelling line of some terribly lost spelunker, for close to a minute. “My kids are not thrilled.”
            “That’s terrific,” Jason said with a wan smile. He might have offered something more emotional had Pauly not told him last week that his boy had died in a fiery Formula One crash in Italy and, the week before, that his daughter had fallen to her death just meters from the summit of K2. A month ago, Pauly hadn’t even had kids.

Of course, Jason knew, not a word of what Pauly ever said was true.

“How’re you liking the new facility? What about that new roommate of yours? Kevin, I think?” Jason ventured, striking out for terra firma.

Pauly closed his eyes and waved a meaty paw through the air. “Don’t ask,” he warned dramatically.

“You having a good birthday, at least?”

Pauly shrugged his gargantuan shoulders. “Eh, he said, “I’ve had better.” With the surgical precision of a backhoe, he hacked at his dessert, trying to separate ice cream from ice cream cake.

While it was true he’d had other birthdays, 47 to be exact, it was a lie to say this hadn’t been the best. Jason had pulled out all the stops. He’d driven them from San Diego to Disneyland, where he’d paid a princely sum for their admission and all the food Pauly could eat, throw up, and beg to have purchased all over again. He’d gotten Pauly a big button with his name on it. With this, a signal to all workers that today was the wearer’s birthday, Pauly was treated to well wishes all the day long, from Tomorrowland to Toontown.

Jason had even arranged for his friend to take a photo with Mickey. For Pauly, this was akin to an audience with the Pope. “Thank you, sir, very much,” Pauly had whispered to the giant mouse, face shining like that of Mosses, come down from the mountain.

Now Jason was treating the birthday boy to ice cream cake at a Baskin Robbins in San Clemente before dropping him back home.

Damon Won't Stop Believin'

Damon was whistling the tune to Journey’s “Lights” as he returned to work at 1. He strode onto campus with a confident, easy step. It was most unusual, this self-assured tableau, for Damon normally returned from lunch weeping like a lost little girl.

“Best hour of the day,” he’d blubber to himself, “all done.”

He’d always had an uneasy alliance with the keyboard, monitor and mouse, bordering on all-out war. It was difficult to imagine what the conflict was over; his 9 to 6 as an executive assistant was hardly what one would call the burden of a soldier. Indeed, his bosses, sales directors for a global consumer products firm, were always traveling. One of them had spent a grand total of 30 days in the company’s Burbank headquarters last fiscal year.

So mausoleum quiet was Damon’s end of the floor that the motion-detecting overhead lights always blinked out. It was like the dark side of the moon over there. He’d have to open the printer tray, pull out a piece of 8 ½ by 11, wad it up, and toss it into the great void in order to shed some light on his situation – which involved doing a few expense reports and a lot of surfing the Web.

            Then there was his daily escape for lunch. “Free at last! Free at last!” he’d announce to absolutely no one, feeling for all the world like the Rev. Dr. King himself. Damon’s own promised land, however, bathed in a wondrous, golden-arched light, was a McDonald’s beneath the westbound Glendale freeway. He’d slide into a red-and-yellow plastic booth with his No. 3 meal and, for the first moment that day, feel he could breathe a relaxed sigh of relief.

About an hour later would come the waterworks – until today. Today, he’d done something different, something adult. He’d driven past McDonald’s to Gelson’s market in North Hollywood, where’d he’d fixed himself a healthy salad. What’s more, he’d glimpsed a man he could swear was none other than former Journey front man Steve Perry. The superstar once called rock’s greatest voice was carting a couple of roasted chickens and a 12-pack of Charmin into the parking lot when Damon spotted him.

Finally, Damon had done some adult thinking. He’d decided to tell Ann Tilden Jones he loved her.

The Corporate Jungle

Nothing gets past reader sparrow4captain, especially a guy dressed as a giant purple jaguar. Likely serial killers, half-wits mumbling to their own reflections in the window glass, entertainment executives shouting into space – and the Bluetooth devices at their ears -- he sees it all during his train ride to work in Burbank each day. What concerned him most about the jungle cat sighting wasn’t that a man would find a costume of garishly colored fur a suitable example of business-casual attire. After all, this was Los Angeles. No, what shocked him to no end was that none of the other riders even noticed.

“Next stop, Burbank,” announces the conductor. The words stir into life the air inside the musty rail car and set to shuffling toward the door scores of mindless drones. Like a stream of ants, the day laborers file out, heel to toe in perfect line, following one of several clear-cut paths to their workplaces.

Buses wait to accept the masses. They are massive, these cold caverns of steel. Yet each is quickly made cramped, as one worker after another pushes in.

            In the crowd, however, one stands out. His black ball cap, holding back greasy locks of unkempt hair, is not standard. Neither is his waist-to-floor length purple tail.

            Wait a second -- a tail? This is no ordinary drone. The ranks have been infiltrated. Who or what is this? Is he dangerous? What are his intentions?

            Surprisingly, no one takes notice of the outsider. He takes a spot in a crowded bus, bounces shoulder to shoulder with others for more than a few minutes, then it’s off everyone goes. One after another, the drones exit the vehicle, their routine the same: a mechanical voice announces the cross street, a string is pulled, a bell rings, the doors open.

So begins the last leg of the silent walk to the cubicles -- except for the foreigner. With what appears to be animal instinct, the stranger leaps from the vehicle to the sidewalk and weaves quickly through the line of office workers. Nudged awake, the day laborers grumble.

Then, as quickly as he appeared, the foreigner is gone.