Revenge of the Cube Dweller Read Online Free
Author: Joanne Fox Phillips
opposite; yet another example of the difference between upstream and midstream.
I pour a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker I’d set to brew at eight thirty, grab my portable landline, and open the sliding glass door to my tiny balcony that overlooks Utica Square, an upscale shopping center anchored by the smallest Saks Fifth Avenue in the United States. I didn’t have my cigarette this morning because I left pretty early to get downtown. I light one up, take the first drag, and place it on the crystal ashtray I keep on a small table by my patio chair.
The view from my balcony is charming, with expanses of tulips and pansies bordering the empty parking lots. There is not a single person at the square this morning, only the bronze statues of children and a wooden chainsaw carving of a Victorian woman. All the real people are probably at church. Tulsa is religious, and Bishop is even more so. I have seen mostly white Christians, and devout ones at that, in the corridors of my workplace. During my six-month tenure, I have been invited no fewer than eleven times to join a fellow employee for a church service. Everyone knows I am new to Tulsa, which means I’m fresh meat for any congregation. It never crosses anyone’s mind that I might not go to church.
I don’t. I’m an alumna of the Catholic Church and parochial schools, and I’ve already heard enough Kyrie Eleison for a lifetime. My response to these invitations has always been the same. “That is so nice, but I am attending services with my new neighbor at”—I make something up to say here—“but I will let you know if I feel like venturing out.” This is a pretty easy out because there are more churches in Tulsa than I have ever seen anywhere before.
My thoughts are shaken loose by the telephone ringing, and I pick it up and say, “Hello, Lucy.”
My sister Lucy, while not a card-carrying eco-terrorist, is surely a sympathizer, and at first she was horrified that I was working for Bishop. It is well known that Bennet and Baldwin Bishop fund conservative think tanks determined to undermine the social progress made in the past fifty years. Furthermore, Bishop is infamous among environmentalists for being one of the worst polluters and is the target of many a Sierra Club exposé. But Lucy is a bleeding heart in all respects and understands that a fifty-year-old woman who’s been out of the workforce for twenty years doesn’t have many options and needs health insurance, if nothing else. I believe she was sad that I hadn’t elected to take her up on her offer to move to her farm and live in the vintage airstream trailer she keeps for visitors, but even the biggest extremist can give way to rationalization when her sister is involved.
Lucy is extraordinarily well organized and schedules her calls like appointments. Every Sunday at 9:00 a.m. Tulsa time, I hear “Call from Lucy” announced by the caller ID. I refresh my coffee cup and hunker down for another episode of the latest adventures of Lucy O’Leary, organic farmer and sheep herder, and silently thank God I live in relative comfort, spared from castration duty or hand weeding acres of organic heirloom wheat.
“You bought a gun?” I ask. “You are the last person I would ever think of as owning a gun. Do you even know how to shoot one?”
“Well not a real gun, a paintball gun,” Lucy replies. “I lost three lambs this week to those coyotes.”
“Paintball?”
“I don’t want to kill them, just to discourage them, get them to realize preying on my lambs comes with a blast of purple or yellow paint. I really think that over time this will curb their behavior.”
“And just how long do you think it will take for the coyotes to make that connection? Are there clinical studies on behavior modification of coyotes? What if it backfires, Lucy? What if they actually think it’s fashionable to have purple and yellow fur? Then what?”
“Ha ha ha, smartass! Want to borrow my gun and tag a
I pour a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker I’d set to brew at eight thirty, grab my portable landline, and open the sliding glass door to my tiny balcony that overlooks Utica Square, an upscale shopping center anchored by the smallest Saks Fifth Avenue in the United States. I didn’t have my cigarette this morning because I left pretty early to get downtown. I light one up, take the first drag, and place it on the crystal ashtray I keep on a small table by my patio chair.
The view from my balcony is charming, with expanses of tulips and pansies bordering the empty parking lots. There is not a single person at the square this morning, only the bronze statues of children and a wooden chainsaw carving of a Victorian woman. All the real people are probably at church. Tulsa is religious, and Bishop is even more so. I have seen mostly white Christians, and devout ones at that, in the corridors of my workplace. During my six-month tenure, I have been invited no fewer than eleven times to join a fellow employee for a church service. Everyone knows I am new to Tulsa, which means I’m fresh meat for any congregation. It never crosses anyone’s mind that I might not go to church.
I don’t. I’m an alumna of the Catholic Church and parochial schools, and I’ve already heard enough Kyrie Eleison for a lifetime. My response to these invitations has always been the same. “That is so nice, but I am attending services with my new neighbor at”—I make something up to say here—“but I will let you know if I feel like venturing out.” This is a pretty easy out because there are more churches in Tulsa than I have ever seen anywhere before.
My thoughts are shaken loose by the telephone ringing, and I pick it up and say, “Hello, Lucy.”
My sister Lucy, while not a card-carrying eco-terrorist, is surely a sympathizer, and at first she was horrified that I was working for Bishop. It is well known that Bennet and Baldwin Bishop fund conservative think tanks determined to undermine the social progress made in the past fifty years. Furthermore, Bishop is infamous among environmentalists for being one of the worst polluters and is the target of many a Sierra Club exposé. But Lucy is a bleeding heart in all respects and understands that a fifty-year-old woman who’s been out of the workforce for twenty years doesn’t have many options and needs health insurance, if nothing else. I believe she was sad that I hadn’t elected to take her up on her offer to move to her farm and live in the vintage airstream trailer she keeps for visitors, but even the biggest extremist can give way to rationalization when her sister is involved.
Lucy is extraordinarily well organized and schedules her calls like appointments. Every Sunday at 9:00 a.m. Tulsa time, I hear “Call from Lucy” announced by the caller ID. I refresh my coffee cup and hunker down for another episode of the latest adventures of Lucy O’Leary, organic farmer and sheep herder, and silently thank God I live in relative comfort, spared from castration duty or hand weeding acres of organic heirloom wheat.
“You bought a gun?” I ask. “You are the last person I would ever think of as owning a gun. Do you even know how to shoot one?”
“Well not a real gun, a paintball gun,” Lucy replies. “I lost three lambs this week to those coyotes.”
“Paintball?”
“I don’t want to kill them, just to discourage them, get them to realize preying on my lambs comes with a blast of purple or yellow paint. I really think that over time this will curb their behavior.”
“And just how long do you think it will take for the coyotes to make that connection? Are there clinical studies on behavior modification of coyotes? What if it backfires, Lucy? What if they actually think it’s fashionable to have purple and yellow fur? Then what?”
“Ha ha ha, smartass! Want to borrow my gun and tag a
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