The Other Shoe Drops

I knew it. Oh, they said I was crazy, but I knew something was up. As long as I've known KD, she's been a multi-tasking daemon - I use that term purposefully -and she operates on the Bond villain level. She'd just explode if she didn't let it slip about how clever she was.

What, you may ask, is she about this time? Isn't destroying my home, my sense of peace and, at least temporarily, my sanity, enough? Oh, no. No, no, no. Not if she can write it off as a business expense.

So what exactly does she do? Well, what any lunatic egomaniac with multiple degrees and a taste for manipulation does. She's a consultant. Or that's what she's calling it. Really, she's a 21st century equivalent of a panderer.

Anyway, I got suspicious when she called up and began purring into my ear. After dancing around the fact that I was indeed going to have to have the plumber in, and that she was having her dealer - her crazy art dealer, that is - come by, she asked whether I wanted to have lunch or dinner this week.

I informed her that I was having lunch and dinner every day this week, and happily, without her. Back and forth, back and forth, until she spills. She wants to meet whoever is the tech expert at work. Seems she's got this new reseaching system, with an interface designed to work on multiple levels and stimulate lateral thinking, whatever that means.

"Look, you ape, all you need to know is it's so cool even you'll want one, and you have no concept of how to work it. It requires lobes you don't have."

Naturally, I objected to this. Twenty minutes later when I got in another word edgewise, I said there was no way she was getting within 200 yards of One Police Plaza unless it was in cuffs.

Again, she showed her charm-school dropout ways. "Oh, quit flirting. Anyway, don't you have a girlfriend or something to play your sick games with? What, tired of this one already? Maybe you should switch to women who can read more advanced stuff than Green Eggs and Ham, you bottom-feeder."

"Out of line, KD, out of line. Plus, you know from sick games and bottom-feeding. Or have you stopped dating people who don't speak the language?" I needed to get off the phone and break into the aspirin. "Look, I do not need this at the job. Staten Island sucks harder than - no, I'm not getting into your good points now. It is not bring-your-lamprey-to-work day. Not happening."

I'll give her this, she knows when to back down. Sometimes she leaks a little mercy from that shrivelled thing she calls a heart. "I didn't even want to come by your office. That creates an ethically sticky situation. I was just hoping you'd bring the tech guy by, maybe for a nice quiet dinner party. I need something like that for the project anyway, showing the whole awkward situation as an essential component of the holiday season. And if, while you're there, he just happens to see the set-up, well, that's purely coincidence, albiet one that I can mention to Mayor Bloomberg when I try to sell him this thing."

Sometimes, you can't deflect, you can only delay. I told her I'd think about it, and grabbed the Excedrin. Stock in Bristol-Myers. That's what I should've asked for for Christmas.