I never thought he would wallop me there. I just had no idea. I mean this is a dog eat dog world and lord knows I’ve had my share of hard nocks but that kind of a wallop? That’s got to be outside the bounds. That’s not regular procedure.
I took this to Phil, of course. Phil’s just below him and a couple levels above me, but I helped him move a concrete water feature into the porch he converted into a twelve-month room, so we’re friends. I call his son Bucky. He has big teeth. It’s our inside joke.
“Tell me all about it,” Phil said. “I’m in a war with him and need all the ammunition I can get.”
I wrote it in a memo to Phil with the whole thing. How I was there late at night. (I told you it was late at night right?) I mean no one was around. I didn’t even know that he was around. He showed up at my office door all menacing. (I mean, he was definitely doing something more than smoldering.) He was menacing. He had a definite air of contusion. I just didn’t pick up on it. I just didn’t pick up on it at all. Then it was wallop, wallop, wallop and he was gone.
I sent Phil the memo. I even had Mary read it too to make sure I’d left nothing out and made it perfectly clear that I’d done nothing in no way to invite or even give rise to his walloping of me in that particular way. That I would have to write such an email kindof amazed me in the first place because walloping of this sort should be, it seems to me, beyond the pale. But I’ve said that before. Still. Wow.
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