If Coffee Had Wings
	J. S. Gallow, your attorney-at-law, who’s On Your Side and Just a Ring Away, didn’t want to make his own coffee, so I’m doing it.  Actually people aren’t Just a Ring Away from him but rather from me, and they like to taunt me by pointing it out 24/7, but not really, because I don’t work that long, and the guy on the night shift has to answer half of the calls.  I asked Gallow if we could get an answering machine to use, and he chuckled and said we needed the personal touch, right, which is usually my fingers on the button to divert the call to one of his orderlies, not to say I’d like to be answering all of those more than just “Welcome to the law offices of J. S. Gallow et al.; you will be directed to your attorney presently.” Then I wouldn’t have time to load up this machine for it to spit out coffee later.  Right, it’s advanced, so I just hit some buttons and add some water and hit some more buttons and then go back to my desk and hit some more buttons and say my phrase.  
	Martha’s wandering into the lunch room now.   She has sticks in her gray hair and thinks it’s “unproper” for a young man like me to work as a secretary, except I’m only young compared to her and we’re not supposed to stereotype gender roles, right? I used to work driving an ice-cream (a fine masculine pursuit I’m sure) and would see people like her ordering Nutra-Grain flavored fat-free ice-cream for the little kids.  I really did want to drive the sticks in their hair into their heads, and the greedier the little kids’ too, except children are wonderful little miracles of life and I can’t hate them, right? Oh yes, smiling little boys eating pink cotton candy at the circus, and the balls the clown’s juggling do not look those three warts on Gallow’s face that juggle up and down when he talks about how the Mignon family got Five Hundred Thousand Dollars after their accident with a watermelon cart, all with his help.  Because J. S. Gallow is a good man for standing up for others’ rights.  With only the corrupt insurance companies, how would the poor Mignon family get any money for the loss of their new V.W.  Beetle to the evil watermelons?
	Yesterday my mother called from Iowa and asked if I had found a good, stable, well-paying job to use my college education from the U. of R., and I said yes, because the secretary job is stable, right, if not good and well-paying.  I think.  I set out for Chicago with hopes of finding a job with all three, but I’m pretty sure I knew all along I’d just get stuck taking tolls or driving an ice-cream truck or being a secretary for a guy who dresses like Colonel Sanders.  But as long as I keep a positive attitude, I’m sure to get a good job, right? Just keep smiling.
	I should have been done a while ago.  I have been done a while ago, but I’ve been standing here.  And why not? Let’s see what they have for a snack in here.  God forbid I miss the Teaspoon family’s claim because they got hit by a Greyhound and hurt their poor blinkers.
	An orange, an apple, some Diet Pepsis, some bread.  That’s it? Fine, an orange.
2
	Martha’s gone.  I wonder what she was getting? And dammit, the orange squirted its juice onto my suit.  Right on my nice tie, too.  Why couldn’t it have sprayed on my actual suit? It would hardly be visible on the gray.  Well it would be visible, but it wouldn’t be as noticeable as it is on my nice purple tie.  Maybe if I turn it inside out? But then the tag’ll show.  But what if I twist it…
	I think this tie was a gift from my ex-wife.  She really didn’t have an excuse for complaining.  She married a guy who worked in a toll-booth and then complained about his job? That’s all over now, though, so it doesn’t matter.
	What a mess this orange is.  Now my hands are sticky, and that will interfere with my important button pressing.  I don’t even like oranges.  Muffins are better, but Gallow probably ate them all.  Or Martha.  Or anyone else in this firm.
	It’s time to go back.  I’ll say the machine was broken and I had to fix it myself, calmly diagnosing the problem and knowledgeably dealing with it, but suffering frustrations that were overcome heroically in my quest to please the honorable J. S. Gallow. And he will smile on me, and get me an answering machine. It won’t really work out, though.

3