In the Unlikely Event... Read Online Free PDF Page A

had a calming affect on her. When the Institute got too much for her, Chase would stop by Gloria’s cave of a maintenance office and talk. Gloria ran a tight ship, and Chase was not only amazed by her bazooms but also her organizational skills. Gloria’s maintenance office and workroom was like Badger’s hole in Wind in the Willows.
    Chase often had the inexplicable desire to sit on Gloria’s lap and nestle between her breasts—not in a sexual way, more like a child in need of comfort. She wanted to stick her face in between the “E” and the “N.” Was that really too much to ask to relieve a boatload of stress? And why, she wondered, does that particular metaphor still have a descriptive place in this world when boats are no longer as prevalent in delivering supplies to port cities? Why didn’t we use a fifty-seven-foot semi-tractor trailer as a source of measurement instead—a semi-load of stress?
    Gloria must have sensed Chase’s desire because when it was a particularly bad day, she would give Chase a long hug and then “talk her down from the ledge,” as they called it. Chase tried to imagine how she would explain being found in the nestling position.
    Lacey banged her gavel. Chase had a hard time with this corporate incarnation of Lacey.
    “Okay, listen up everybody—let’s get this party started.”
    If this was a party, Chase thought, she’d rather attend a Southern Baptist revival under a tent with ninety percent humidity, a hundred and five degrees temperature and a seat in a rickety folding chair next to someone who smelled bad.
    Gloria must have been thinking the same thing. “If this is a party, I’d prefer a funeral.”
    Chase snickered.
    “What did you say, Gloria? Is it something you should share with the group?” Lacey widened her eyes, in her what-the-fuck expression that made Chase think of Marty Feldman after corrective surgery.
    “I was telling Chase that the pipes in the lavatory…” Gloria said.
    Lacey interjected, “You mean the Human Relief Room.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Chase muttered under her breath. Why did Lacey have to rename everything?
    Lacey eyed her suspiciously. Chase wondered if she had heard her muttering. “The pipes in the Human Relief Room are…” she prodded Gloria.
    “Working perfectly after I replaced the P-trap.” Gloria smiled at her.
    “P-trap? We trap pee now? Is that a civil liberties issue that we need to address?” Lacey said.
    Chase and Gloria looked at each other in astonishment.
    “You’re kidding, right?” Chase said. Chase wasn’t a plumbing expert, but Lacey had to know something about under-the-sink pipes and even if she didn’t the context would supply clues.
    “No,” Lacey said, adamantly. “The Institute, as we all know, is very concerned with the rights of its citizenry. If we are trapping people’s urine, they should be informed.”
    Chase stared at Lacey. “We have citizenry? When exactly did we become a country?”
    “I am speaking metaphorically. As a weaver of words, you should understand the use of a political metaphor.”
    Chase shot her a dirty look. Was there such a thing as a political metaphor—politics used metaphor but could it be a metaphor in and of itself? It dawned on Chase that she didn’t understand the political term anymore than Lacey understood plumbing.
    Dixon cleared her throat. “Could we get this meeting started? Some of us are on a tight time schedule.”
    What, Chase thought, could be so urgent? Rounding up socially errant lesbians?
    “I want to get this P-trap thing settled first,” Lacey snapped.
    Chase’s stress and annoyance level had reached its beyond-the-tolerable level notch on her psychic meter. First, this school thing and Commies and then getting hauled in here by the thug-girls only to become embroiled in the politics of the Republik of Lesbekistan. Then to top it off, Lacey’s ignorance when it came to plumbing.
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Lacey, a P-trap is the U-shaped pipe