Event in Progress

Chapter Three

McKnight would read her e-mails and sometimes saved them. Especially if she said something that sounded funny, even if it only sounded funny to him. Like the time she wrote an e-mail that said: "Building Services has been notified that the second urinal handle is sticking, so if you flush it please jiggle it." McKnight thought of making a bumper sticker that said "If you flush it please jiggle it" but never got around to doing that, although he supposed that maybe one day it would find its way into a book he wrote. Maybe he could even incorporate it into the new novel he was writing. Perhaps Eric would think about that before he died.

Sean continued past the Mail Table and got to his own cubicle so he could sit at his desk and turn on his computer. He could hear the sounds of the others in the department getting ready for their daily tasks. He tried to tune it out, tried to ignore the fact that he didn't want to be there anyway, tried to make time vaporize. Or if not vaporize, at least be generous enough to get the day over and done with to compensate for the slowness with which it dragged on and on at midnight when he couldn't sleep.

When his computer finally finished initializing, doing whatever the hell it did when it booted up—for all he knew it sent all of McKnight's personal information to Bill Gates' computer—McKnight loaded his e-mail program, clicked on a web browser that defaulted to his personal website, and then he clicked on the FundShare program that supported the Visions and Dreams database.

After he logged on, he clicked back to his website and entered the admin area. He scrolled through and checked the hit counter. Four people had looked at his site during the night. It was a miracle. He was up to almost a thousand people that year. And it was only June.

Even if he had been getting plenty of sleep, Sean thought he'd still want to cry over that. Face it, he told himself. You're just a pathetic loser. No one wants to read any of your crap. It doesn't matter if you put it out on the internet. It's not even worth the time for someone to post a mocking review of it on some forum with the subject THIS SUCKS ASS.

McKnight sighed and switched to his e-mail program. He deleted the spam and read the work-related messages, and even noticed a new one Tiffany Narthrup had sent last night after McKnight had left for the day. It said: "Remember our Veterans!" in the memo line and it talked about Memorial Day, which of course was in May and here it was almost July now. McKnight felt a tinge of embarrassment for her, but decided to just chalk it up to another annoying computer glitch. Who could blame the goddess when technology sucked so bad?

With all the e-mails read, McKnight stood and walked to the Mail Table. They had gotten three and a half trays of mail from the post office. Sean sat down next to Nathaniel Farley and began to sort envelopes with the younger man. Farley was still in college and only worked part time. He claimed to be related to one of the Farley brothers who made such impressive movies as Dumb and Dumber but everyone knew Nathaniel was full of it. No one told him to his face, of course. After all, he could bench press a Buick.

Sean had a feeling Tiffany liked Farley. He even had a feeling that Tiffany even believed Farley and thought he really was related to one of the Farley brothers. Tiffany never asked how it was possible that Nathaniel Farley was only related to one of the Farley brothers when the Farley brothers were, come to think of it, brothers. But she believed Nathaniel nonetheless—McKnight was sure of it.

McKnight sighed. Farley turned cheerily toward him and said in an insanely happy voice, "I feel ya, brother."

Feel this, McKnight thought, but of course didn't say because, as we mentioned before, Farley could bench press a Buick and McKnight roughly weighed the same as a Buick.

"Hey, did you see that show on TV last night? The one on, what was it, Fox? No, CBS. It was about the killer bees from San Antonio."

"No," McKnight said, his author pride swelling. "I don't watch TV."

"Man, it was a sweet show," Farley said without hearing anything McKnight had just said. "And it was about these bees. They'd fly around and like kill stuff. They were like killer bees!"

"Amazing," Sean deadpanned and opened another envelope. Hoo, har, he thought. This person is named Michael Hunt. And suddenly he thought: Anyone seen Mike Hunt? No, what's she look like? Har, har, a real hoot an' a holler, boys.

"They swarm up like a big mass of...swarming stuff, you know—"

"Don't I ever."

"And then they fly right up and can kill a cow and everything. They showed it on that ABC program."

"Like I said, I don't watch TV. I can't stand the blatant commercialization of everything." Oh, look at this. A fifty-thousand dollar donation. That one will go straight to the bank, do not pass Go, do not collect anything but interest.

McKnight set the check in its own distinct pile of Checks That Are Worth More Than Your Pathetic Yearly Wages and continued to open the rest of the mail. Then, like a lightning bolt tickling the side of his head, he wondered what Eric would do if Eric had a job like this. Which was, of course, insane because only an insane author would think of putting a character in a job like this. It was just so real it was brutal, like a Los Angeles Police beating. And with a metaphor like that....

McKnight suddenly felt the urge to just go to the bathroom and throw up. To grip the toilet seat with both hands and call upon Ralph, god of the bowels, to spew forth bile. And at the same time, he realized with a deflating sense of self-interest that he didn't really have the energy to get up, to escape the banality of Farley's conversation, to make the way to the bathroom.

So he just threw up on Farley instead. 

 Farley kind of stopped in mid sentence at that while McKnight burst forth, spewing like a Mr. Coffee that had its wires crossed. Because he hadn't eaten breakfast, the only thing that could possibly come out was just the Raven's Tail Concoction. It was hot and steamy and smelled a bit like the old coffee pot in the break room.

And as it splattered over the fifty thousand dollar check and ran down onto Farley's legs, McKnight suddenly thought of all the caffeine he would miss now and he wondered how he would be able to make it through the rest of the day, and with a sudden deliberate crash the aching pain that had been hunched on his shoulders struck him between his eyes with all the force of a 2x4.

It was the same feeling he had gotten back when Aaron and Matt had....

No, it was best not to think of that. It was best to not think of anything, not to think of why Farley was jumping up and slapping at his crotch like a killer bee had just flown in through his fly (har har, a bee through the fly) instead of just half-digested coffee. It was best to not try to get his pride all worked up and make him wonder how he'd ever get home with vomit all over his dress shirt. And did he even have a clean one to change into?

McKnight wondered what Eric would do in this circumstance. And it was all he could do to keep from crying.