Martoons

Cast of characters

Fred

Donna

*

“Amazing” said Fred. 

Donna chuckled. “Here, give it to me.”

He handed the softball-sized fruit off to her and she went over to the staff room sink to slice it.

She filled up a small china plate with the slices and brought it over to Fred.

“May I?” and she took a slice.

“But you know,” Fred said as he nibbled on a slice, “just thinking about that incident.”

“It does take two to tango. I mean Rose could easily have run away.”

“In fact now that I think about it, she did run away at first – but then she came back! I really have no idea what those two were up to.”

“Either they were both crazy or I’ve gone frickin’ batty already.”

“Don’t over-think this,” Donna said between nibbles. “Just forget about the whole thing. But I will say though – whoever that guy is, we’ll probably run into him sooner or later.”

“There aren’t that many foreigners here and we all seem to cross paths sooner or later.”

* Who do you think he is? *

“You know, I’d love to say I’d remember his face if I saw him again but I never got a good look.”

“Wait! One weird thing was that somehow he knew I used to be a security guard!”

* How did he know that? *

“Maybe he’s psychic,” Donna quipped, losing interest in the topic and turning back to her work. Then she chuckled mildly.

“What?” Fred wanted to know.

“Nothing, it’s just that … don’t you have anything better to do but hang out in the Rotary on a Sunday night?”

That got Fred thinking. What had taken him down there anyway? Then he remembered it was to find out about Central.

He wondered now if he should ask Donna if she’d heard any rumours about the closure but held back.

He knew how much this job meant to her and didn’t want to lower her morale.

So he kept quiet. And the whole room went so dead you could hear a metal chopstick drop.

As their hearing adjusted, the sound of the monsoon rain outside potted up. It was pouring down, as it had most of the day.

Pitter.

Patter.

Thunk. Thunk.

Then a clap of thunder.

Pitter patter patter thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk.

Fred finally broke the hypnotic monotony. “You do anything earth-shattering over the weekend?”

“Nothing new,” Donna said, “but yeah, since you asked, I told Mr E we’re over.”

* What happened between them? *

*

Tomorrow: Mr E gets caught in the rain.