Training Exercise #27: The Squid’s First Challenge

CHALLENGE THE FIRST FROM THE GIANT SQUID, EDITOR-IN-ABSENTIA OF HIS POOR MOJO’S ALMANAC(K) AND RELATED LITERARY CONCERNS

My Dearest Typistas and Quilleros,

I fear matters have, for me, become substantially more grim since our exhortation earlier this week. Specifically, despite Lida’s insistence that we shall soon sort out my implicit confinement here within the strange towers of the Fiction-Writing Directorate, I seem to have, in the meantime, dug my own grave–or, essentially no different, garnished my own serving platter.

Yesterday I enjoyed a mid-afternoon interview with Ethelie and Gustav, the latter clutching yet a new and even more be-paperéd clip board, quill in hand. Gustav was especially particular in noting, in great and terrifying detail, the increasing debts I incur as they quarter me here.

Gustav further made clear that my vast writing credentials and experience in project management of both supergun and weather-control projects (leaving aside my brief, non-contiguous stints as President of These United States and frontsquid of a glamorous rock-whilst-rolling minstrel’s band) earn me little formal recognition among the upper management and investors of the Directorate, in terms of gainful employment.

Ethelie then indicated that, having analyzed their staffing needs, the Directorate currently has only two open posts: a) a French translator (by which I took her to mean one who could translate from French to English, the lingua non-franca of the Directorate itself, rather than a generic translator who is of French extraction) or b) a source of valuable and tasty protein for the cafeteria buffet.

Having been briefly tutored by one of my several francophonic chimps prior to spending four days and three nights in Quebec City several years earlier, I elected to interview for the former position–yes, I was less qualified for it, but it was nonetheless more desirable, as it started at a higher wage, included a matching 401k fund, and did not result in my immediate death and dismemberment.

Madam Ethelie quickly rattled off a looping, staccato chain of French declarations trailing a single lilting interrogative. In response, I deployed the first French phrase that came to my razorish beak–and, incidentally, the only French phrase I know which is not directly related to procuring food or drink, booking passage by freight train, or complaining about the qualities of bed-and-breakfast accommodations–having been under the impression that it served in something of the same manner as “And a many and fine good day to you, sir or madame”:

“Va pèter dans le trèfle, maudite fausse-couche!”

Had a Victrola jukebox been playing at that moment, its needle would have noisily scrapped free of the record, and in the ensuing silence crickets would have sang but briefly, then stopped. Gustav’s jaw dropped, and Ethelie’s glacial face began to calve, only to halt itself mid-collapse and petrify, her lips a line thin and sharp enough to slice a hard cheese. Even the janitor Boggins briefly paused in his trouser-pocket toils. Lida, sweet and well meaning Lida, giggled, then covered her mouth to stifle the trickle, then guffawed.

Ethelie turned on her hob-nailed heel and, stately as a cloud of mustard gas, left my room. Gustav mad a single, authoritative tick on his papers, then followed. I was soon thereafter informed that I had been hired to serve in the cafeteria.

NOW, DEAR READERS AND WRITERS, I NOTE:

There is truth–often unintended truth–in the speech of our mouths, and although my Quebecois greeting held not the meaning I had intended, its Truth is beyond doubt. Today’s exercise is this:

Quickly, and without undue pre-consideration, settle upon two characters whose goals are at crosscurrent: Perhaps you might imagine a car salesperson who desperately needs to sell an ill-used 1982 Chevrolet Chevette at a slightly exorbitant rate, despite the dismembered corpse concealed in the bay which ought to hold the Chevette’s spare tire. His counterpart is, of course, a purchaser who is anxious to transport a soon-to-reanimate corpse, but whose bejeweled Lana Marks Cleopatra clutch does not contain funds sufficient to the demands of the lusty salesperson–although it does contain a gun, which lacks bullets, and which she would prefer not to reveal.

Write them into a dialogue in which all of the above is revealed, despite the speakers’ best efforts at concealing these facts. Do not use the words “corpse” or “gun.” That the corpses are siblings, and the buyer and seller likewise, may or may not come into play.

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Poor Mojo’s Giant Squid writes his weekly advice columns and ongoing memoir from Detroit, MI, publishing these at www.squid.poormojo.org.  He is aided in this endeavor by the Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k) editorial team: Morgan Johnson, David Erik Nelson, and Fritz Swanson.