§ 48
‘It’s all a little hazy.’
‘That’s certainly understandable, Sir.’
‘I think I should tell you I’m very upset.’
‘We can certainly appreciate that.’
‘No. No. I mean inside. Upset inside.’
‘I think they’ve anticipated that, Sir, and that every possible—’
‘Down low I mean.’
‘Perhaps if you could just relay it to us as if you were relating data, Sir.’
‘You know: down low? You take my meaning?’
‘That’s just the effects, Sir, lingering. Take your time.’
‘It was the annual picnic. Is that what you want?’
‘That we know already, Sir.’
‘Every year, summer. In Coffield Park, bond-financed. Examinations annual picnic. Mummified fried chicken, potato salad. Deviled eggs I believe with flecked paprika like dots of dried blood — horrid. Great arrayed fans of luncheon meat. All this protein. Examiners eat like wild beasts, I’m sure you know. Audits more sparingly. You must know this. The variance in—’
‘We’ve certainly had reports, Sir.’
‘And grilled things. Those odd bolted park grills, also bond-financed to be sure. Wieners, patties in tiers on shiny white paper. Great swarms and shrouds of insects on the food on the table. Flies rubbing their little legs together. Do you know what that means when a fly does that? Hornets at the waste cans, hovering. Watermelon with ants on it. When it rubs its legs together like that?’
‘…’
‘A raw hamburger patty’s like blood in the water to an insect, men.’
‘You were just inventorying the picnic’s provisions, Sir.’
‘Iced tea, Kool-Aid. There was pop in a chest the GM brought. Some primary-colored Jell-O. Red or green or red-and-green. It’s for morale, the annual picnic, change the interactive context.’
‘Nothing wrong with a picnic, Sir.’
‘See everyone’s families, children. The children. One doesn’t think of GS-9s having children, playing with children, little Line 40s. And yet every year there they are. The mothers arranged games. And bottles of beer in a chest Marge van Hool’s husband brought.’
‘We’ve spoken to Mr. van Hool, Sir.’
‘And mosquitoes everywhere. The terrible kind, that cast a shadow and have hairy legs. You can hear them but you can’t see them. Not until. Blood draws every — and Audits, Audits were playing some type of children’s game with that flying disk from Hasbro. Aerodynamic disk, bright color, Hasbro, where did—?’
‘A Frisbee, perhaps, Sir?’
‘Hasbro now a division of I believe one United Amusements, supposedly based in St. Paul but with substantial offshore accounts.’
‘…’
‘And you know as well as I what that so often means.’
‘And you noticed nothing out of the ordinary regarding the iced tea, the Jell-O.’
‘They think it was the Jell-O then.’
‘That wouldn’t be our department, Sir.’
‘The Jell-O had very small marshmallows in it as I recall. One of those exceedingly bright primary colors, the Jell-O. The flies left it alone, although those bloody mosquitoes my God if you—’