by Lisa Lim
Chapter Twelve
I stared at my blinking monitor. Nothing came to mind. I pushed my chair back and paced agitatedly across the floor, thinking.
It was Henry Paulson’s annual performance review. I was supposed to identify his ‘strengths’ but so far, I could not think of a single solitary thing to say.
Still, I couldn’t just leave it blank.
Or could I?
Nah! It’d be too cruel.
With a weary sigh, I sat down at my desk and began typing.
“What are you working on?” Carter asked, stopping by my cubicle.
“Annual performance reviews,” I replied.
He peered over my shoulder. “Henry Paulson’s review, eh? This should be interesting.”
I stopped typing. “What do you know about Henry Paulson?”
“Oh, I know a lot about Henry. I’ve listened in on plenty of his calls.”
A mild panic began to set in. “Really?”
“May I take a look at his performance review?”
“Go ahead,” I said hesitantly. “I guess you’ll have to see it sooner or later.”
“ ‘Henry Paulson is a keen analyst,’ ” Carter read aloud. “Well, that’s a nice way of saying he’s thoroughly confused half the time.”
I bit my lip to stop myself from grinning.
Carter went on, “ ‘Henry approaches difficult problems with logic.’ Now, do you mean to say that he always finds someone else to do his work?”
“Of course not,” I said weakly.
Carter rubbed his chin absently. “ ‘Henry has a refreshingly relaxed attitude at work and he is very socially active. He stays abreast on company developments and above all else, Henry Paulson is a loyal employee.’ Really, Kars?” He cocked an eyebrow as if to say, “That’s stretching it a little, don’t you think?”
I stared rigidly ahead, trying hard to keep a straight face.
“Let me translate this for you,” Carter said, not trying very hard to disguise the fact that he was laughing. “Refreshingly relaxed attitude at work? Henry sleeps at his desk. Very socially active? He drinks a lot and I have a sneaking suspicion he’s a functioning alcoholic. He stays abreast on company developments? He obviously gossips a lot. And loyal? The only reason Henry is loyal is because he can’t get a job anywhere else.”
“Well … there’s always two ways of looking at things.”
“Anyway,” Carter said, “that’s not the reason I stopped by. I actually have some news for you.”
“Good news?” I queried softly, “Or bad news?”
Carter rewarded me with a smile that made me realize he could really be quite attractive at times. “Good news. I pitched your idea to the powers that be, and they gave it the green light. Which means all the agents on the floor are allotted time off the phones for customer callbacks.”
“Thanks,” I said gratefully. I couldn’t believe he’d actually come through.
A director that actually follows through on his promise?
A rare occurrence. Unheard of, in fact.
“Thank you,” said Carter in all-seriousness. He was looking at me with a degree of approval that was a welcome change from how he usually looked at me. “Thanks to you, our agents will likely close more sales this quarter.”
“We sure need it.” I sighed. “We’ve been in a slump for months.”
“Oh and that’s not all,” he hedged.
“What?”
“I actually have some more good news for you.”
“More good news?”
Could I stand any more good news?
“It’s in regards to your upcoming project. And I think you’ll be quite pleased to hear about it.”
Pleased? I wasn’t just pleased about the news. Are you kidding me? I was over the moon. Aww yeah! Malaysia, here we come! It’s a shame I couldn’t spill the news to Truong and Inge just yet. I had to wait until next week.
Carter’s orders.
With a copious amount of coffee to fortify me, I started tackling more performance reviews until I was interrupted, once again.
“Kars, I got the invite!” Inge bounded into my cubicle, holding up a pink card dusted with silver glitter.
“Let me see. Let me see.” My hands fluttered up and Inge happily surrendered the card to me.
The Bachelorette Party
“The Last Fling Before The Ring”
In Honor of Madison Lee aka. The Future Mrs. Harkett
Hosted by Karsynn and Truong
June 18th at 8 p.m.
The Venetian Hotel
488 S. Capitol Blvd,
Pocatello Idaho 83702
RSVP regrets only
“Nice!” I sat back and smiled. “Truong sent the invites out early.”
“When exactly is Maddy’s wedding day?” Inge asked, taking up residence on my desk.
“Hmm.” I twirled the card in my hand. “I think it’s two months after her Bachelorette party.”
Inge tilted her head thoughtfully. “How come the Bachelorette party is so early?”
“She’ll be visiting Mika’s family in Belgium so it’ll be sort of a farewell slash good luck slash Bachelorette party since they’re gonna have a big wedding reception in Brussels. And when they come back in two months, they’ll celebrate their nuptials here, too.”
“Two weddings?” Inge’s breath caught in a tiny gasp. “Wow.”
“So …” I said coyly. “Are you planning on coming to Maddy’s last fling before the ring?”
“Hell yeah! Wouldn’t miss it for the world! Not when you throw the best parties around here.”
“Actually.” I frowned slightly. “I’ve sort of dropped the ball on this one. I’ve been so busy with work that I just haven’t had the time. Truong’s taken full charge of the party planning.”
Speak of the devil and he doth appear. Truong poked his nose round my cubicle partition. “All you need to know about the party is that it’s something huge.”
Inge started giggling. “Really?”
“Really.” Truong looked at us with dancing eyes. “Not just huge. Fuc—” he stopped and caught himself. “Sorry. Frankfurt-ing huge! FALLUJAH, FIJI, and FINLAND huge. We can’t have Maddy just fizzle out of single life. Just you wait and see, I’m gonna send her out with a BANG!”
“Falkenberg yeah!” Inge cheered, throwing him a fist bump.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed. “I’m quite impressed by your sense of geography. Where’s Falkenberg?”
This seemed to please Inge immensely and she positively beamed at me. “It’s in Sweden.”
“Fjuckby!” said Truong. “That’s a village in Sweden,” he quickly explained.
“So, Truong …” I turned to him and asked, “What exactly do you have planned for the bachelorette party?”
He shrugged in a way that struck me as being distinctly evasive.
I shot him a parental look. “Truong, please don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.”
The whole gang had gathered at a luxury suite at The Venetian Hotel. No, not the Venetian in Las Vegas. The Venetian in Pocatello, Idaho.
At seven on the dot, there was a tentative tap on the door.
“The stripper’s here,” Truong announced with great aplomb. “Now if you have any dollar bills, get them out quickly and stuff them in your pockets!”
There was an unmistakable air of fidgety excitement. I was reaching for my handbag when the door was flung open dramatically. A petite and pasty man strutted into our room, clad in nothing but a scant and bedazzled lederhosen.
All the girls shrieked with stupid laughter.
Um, I thought strippers were supposed to dress as cops, or firemen or pizza guys, or something like that. What in the name of Vegas was this freak of nature?
The dainty stripper stood before us. And then the strangest thing happened. He started yodeling. YODELING!
“Guten tag. Yodeleh-hee-hooooo,” he yodeled. “My name is Gottlieb Glitzjuice and I hail from München, Germany.”
Maddy edged closer and whispered in my ear, “Was he just mountain yodeling?”
“Jah.” I whispered back, “I believe he was.”
Pamela hissed, “Where is his Tyrolean hat?”
“Huh?” Inge looked perplexed. “What is a Tyrolean hat?”
“A silly green Alpine hat,” we said simultaneously.
“The hat I can deal with.” Maddy shook her head. “But that lederhosen is wrong on so many levels.”
“Girls! Girls!” Truong chastised. “Be a little open-minded, will you? Why are you morally opposed to his lederhosen?”
“You’re not?” I challenged. “Do you own a pair, then?”
“Of course I do,” Truong said with dignity. “In fact, I wear my leather lederhosen with pride at Oktoberfest every year. I even pair them with my Wundersocks for some POC.” Then, seeing our slightly puzzled expressions, he explained, “Pop of color. And,” he continued, “as for Herr Gottlieb’s Tyrolean hat, I’m sure he probably just left it up in the Bavarian Alps.” He raised a champagne glass at the stripper. “Am I right, Herr Gottlieb?”
“Achtung!” Gottlieb grunted in response.
And then I saw “it.”
Great balls of fire! Truong wasn’t mincing words when he said it was something huge. ‘It’ was definitely huge, for lack of a better word.
From Gottlieb Glitzjuice’s scrawny stature, I fully expected a shrinky dink. But as my gaze shifted downward, my eyes clapped on the world’s largest salami in a sling. His one-eyed monster resembled a third leg severely infected with elephantiasis.
“Egad!” Pamela’s eyes grew wide and her expression slightly sick. “Look at that giant Bratwurst!”
Maddy was frowning in disgust. “What on God’s green earth is that?”
“What?” I asked. “What?”
“Those yellowish stains all over his lederhosen.”
I smacked my hand over my mouth, fervently praying that those yellow stains weren’t Gottlieb’s actual glitzjuice.
Maddy was thinking, the cogs were turning. “Oh my God!” she shrieked as the cogs were clicking. “It’s his man yoghurt!”
My stomach lurched in horror.
Pamela and Jewel went pale with shock.
“Ggg-gg-got-Gottlieb,” Inge sputtered. “He just wiggled his Wienerschnitzel at me!”
With uncanny timing, Truong dimmed the lights. “Now, now ladies. Relax. Don’t get overly excited just yet. Gottlieb hasn’t even begun. First things first, we need some sexy music.” He started fiddling with his iPod and seconds later, he was gyrating his hips to the Bom Chicka Wah Wah beat.
“Achtung! Achtung!” Gottlieb grunted, thrusting his pelvis as he advanced on us.
All hell broke loose.
The sound of shrieking and general mayhem filled the room.
We fled in every which direction as Gottlieb launched himself into the fray. The closer he got, the more we squealed like scared sheep attacked by a killer albino monkey.
“Girls! Girls! Get a grip!” Truong’s sharp voice cut through the hullabaloo. “We don’t want to be kicked out of this hotel suite before the show has even begun!” Acting like the Stripmeister Shepherd himself, Truong corralled us like the scared sheep that we were and ordered us to take turns lying down on the bed.
Maddy, the bride-to-be, was the first sacrificial lamb.
With a great sigh and even greater trepidation, Maddy edged closer and closer to the bed and arranged herself on the mattress. Taking his cue, Gottlieb crouched over her and swung his giant Bratwurst in her face, spinning his flaccid penis like a helicopter propeller.
Christ! The guy’s fervor made the average Chippendale look positively restrained.
Next, it was my turn. My stomach was in knots. “Um,” I broke off and restrained a shudder. “Why don’t you go first, Inge?” I ventured anxiously and shoved her forward. At this point, I was fairly certain that I would’ve shoved my grandmother forward to delay the inevitable.
“No-no.” Inge jumped and took ten steps backward. “You go first.”
“Methinks the ladies doth protest too much,” proffered Truong, the Shakespearean Stripmeister.
Meanwhile, Gottlieb was looking distinctly put out by our reactions. “Lay down!” he commanded to all and sundry.
Oh hell no! I recoiled as far as I could, but still not far enough to evade Gottlieb’s clammy fingers. He grabbed me by the arm, backed me up against a wall and began grinding on me like a Chihuahua in heat. Paralyzed with fear co-mingled with repulsion, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut to block out the images. The unimaginable horror.
Truong, sensing my mounting distress, stepped in between us and announced gleefully, “My turn! And I’d like a Tea Bag, please.”
“Tea Bag?” Inge frowned, confusion clear on her face. “Isn’t that a Republican movement?”
“No.” I shook my head slowly and explained with patient resignation, “That’s a Tea Party. Two totally different things.”
Pamela nodded gravely. “Totally different.”
“Oh.” Inge looked absolutely dumfounded at this. “So what’s a Tea Bag?”
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. “Just stand back and watch Inge … you’ll find out soon enough.”
With the prowess of a European gigolo, Gottlieb squatted over Truong and dunked his sagging ball sacks onto Truong’s radiantly beatific face.
Inge blinked. “I’m so glad Gottlieb didn’t take off his lederhosen.”
It was my turn to blink. “Thank heavens for small mercies.”
“Ohhhh!” Truong squealed with delight, “Dunk the Darjeeling tea, my darling! DUNK IT!”
Good Lord Ganesha, Krishna, Vishnu and Shiva!
I almost expired in a dramatic fashion. In all fairness, I’m no Naive Nellie and I’m certainly no Debbie Downer, but this was, unequivocally, one of the most disturbing experiences in my life.
At this point, all the women in the room were either gagging with revulsion or shrieking with sheer terror at the top of their lungs.
Thankfully, the Tea Bag ceremony only lasted about a minute. Gottlieb cast us a feral look and snarled, “Ach, which one of you would like me to munch on your sauerkraut?” He began thrusting his meat pole at us. “Achtung! Achtung!”
It was pandemonium. Screaming bloody murder, we darted to a corner and huddled there, clutching one another, far, far away from Herr Gottlieb Glitzjuice.
“Ack!” Inge shrieked. “He’s coming closer! HE’S COMING CLOSER!” She squeezed her eyes shut and began muttering Hail Marys under her breath.
“Get out your dollar bills!” I ordered urgently. “Quickly! NOW!”
In sheer desperation, I started flinging dollar bills at Gottlieb from behind the huddle, hoping he’d leave us alone.
Gottlieb did not get the hint.
Quite the contrary.
The stripper started stripping.
And while mooning the whole room, he tripped over his lederhosen and face planted. Fully nude, he picked himself off the floor and came charging toward the huddle. We took off running with sudden supersonic speed.
Alas, the hotel suite was small and despite our preternatural speed, Gottlieb ultimately caught up to one of us. It was inevitable.
This time, he cornered Pamela and she stood there shrieking while he did the obligatory grind. Eventually, Gottlieb let her go and Pamela bolted for the relative safety of our pack (we tried our best to stay together, you know, safety in numbers and all that). She was relieved, and all of us assumed the nightmare was finally over.
It was not.
Gottlieb was relentless. He hunted down and trapped his next prey. This went on for quite some time. This endless sufferance! I desperately wanted to wake up from this Nightmare On Gottlieb Street.
Next, Gottlieb managed to back Jewel to a wall. “Ohhh,” Gottlieb purred. “You have the body of a gym rat.” Then he began grinding on her, rat on rat.
Jewel kept faking modesty. “Oh my God, I’m soo
o embarrassed.” She giggled hysterically. “I can’t believe he’s doing this!” But then she’d thrash about, grinding on Gottlieb as if he were the last gerbil on the planet.
This is when Truong stepped in and placed a firm hand on Gottlieb’s shoulder. “I think it’s time for you to go now.”
Gottlieb wrangled on his lederhosen, then Truong slipped him a hefty tip and showed him out the door. “Thank you for your services.”
Gottlieb gave a cheery wave and with a resounding “Tschüss. Bis später!” he headed off back to the Bavarian Alps. Well, that was the hope.
Truong sagged against the door and breathed out a sated sigh. “So what did y’all think of Gottlieb Glitzjuice?”
I blinked. “Is he really gone?”
“He’s gone,” said Maddy.
Inge squeaked like an overwrought mouse, “Is he really?”
“He is.” Pamela breathed out a big sigh of relief.
Then we collapsed into a heap on the floor, weeping uncontrollably, giggling together in shared, mild hysteria.
I polished off my drink and signaled to the bartender for a refill. “I’m never drinking tea again,” I announced, pushing the memory of Gottlieb’s tea bagging performance from my mind.
Inge took a deep swig. “And I’m never eating cake again, either.”
I found it impossible not to stare at the giant penis cake as my eyes made the scenic route back to my drink. Oddly enough, the giant penis cake was staring right back at me. The baked phallus loomed large with the words: ‘Cumgratulations Maddy.’
Truong was in charge of the cake, so really, I should have seen this one coming, pun intended.
I winced into my vodka. “I’m not so sure I’m up for eating baked genitalia.”
“I’m up for it!” Truong downed his drink and slammed his glass on the counter. “It just proves that I can have my cake and eat it too!”
Maddy pirouetted over to the bar and draped her arms around our shoulders. “I love my phallus cake, guys. I mean, the two of you have certainly outdone yourselves! Look at this schlong! Blue icing for the knards and chocolate shavings for the pubes! Really. I couldn’t have asked for a better cake.” She was teary-eyed and choking with emotion.
Clearly, she was drunk off her ass too.
“Well, I’m glad you love the cake,” said Truong, ensconced in his smug sense of superiority. “Pssh! All the bakery had was Buttercream Marbles. And I said: No, no, this will not do!”