Just Another Day

(ring-ring)

- Yea?

- Good morning starshine...

- Lou?  What time is it?

- 3:35.

- What?  Why?  

- You can tell my wifey tone?

- What happened?

- Did it help at least?

- At little...wha' happen, Lou?

- Need you down at headquarters.

- Now?

- He wrote her a letter.

- So what, was it long?
- Dog barking?
- Yea, you ruined her groove.  Lou, the perp's whole blog's a letter, a masturbating letter.
- I know you guys have been working hard.
- Oh, sleep, oh, yea.
- You know what Shakespeare said about sleep.
- Yea, he's for it.
- Didn't some other guy named Bill or Sam—
- Ok, well, I'll see ya' Lou.

- Special week—It's her birthday, Earl.  He's trying to put on his best front.

- What, in a cheap tuxedo with missing teeth?  How'd it sound?

- Convoluted.  He slips in a few rants at least.

- Ah, the good old days, huh?

- It's got novelty value.

- Wait—so what?  Files don't put that under "Holiday Warnings."  What about Dave?

- Told me to fuck off.  Told him to go fuck himself.

- Well, then I reserve the right to do the same.  I'm working on my own letter.

- Bet you were sleeping comfortably like a masturbating buffoon.  Ah, it's all right, buddy, you can take pointers along the way.  He's a great writer.  Come on, Earl, half the staff is either under the storm, the weather, or researching the weather.  They're fans of his work.

- I don't get it.  What's the big hurry?  He can't give it a few days?  It's the weekend.

- He thinks she's right at the end of it, more so now.

- How many time zones is this schmuck working with?

- We had him seeing her in two different places at once, see if we can't expedite things up, what with the budget cuts.  

- And he don't catch on?

- Oh, he thinks she's on the phone with her mother while making travel plans.  You know those kids that lie because they have a big imagination?

- Fuck him, I have a big headache.  I was drinking tequila with Hanna's dad—we don't live together or nothing.
- Where does it say you can't—
- Yea.  Hanna said to go with him but he pushed me away.  I lost track of time and when she busted in, he was on the ground with his arm in the toilet.  He had accidentally turned the bathroom heater on with the light.

- That's rough.

- Yea I took a picture.

- We need to nip this thing in the butt, Earl.  The tech guys went home early; based on recent activity patterns, I said it was okay.  Seemed harmless.  One of them's barely seen his kid.

- What we wouldn't do without our nerd angels.

- Then it got alarming.  Started checking his stats quicker than I can breathe.

- Like Chuck with the can.

- You bet.  When we left him he was trying to figure out HTML.  We figured it should keep him busy.  The guy's two worlds behind.

- Yea so what?

- Then the posts come in.  He went on a hunger strike, but forgot and posted his morning burrito.

- A breakfast burrito, of course.

- Went on some shpeel about crying her name in his dreams, and then his dog getting run over by a slow moving truck he wouldn't listen to him, he woke up screaming, or something.

- He tried to warn the truck or the dog wasn't listening to him?

- I don't know, the dog probably.

- I hate those when you can't move motion fast enough.  

- You try to scream and it ends up a whimper.

- Did the dog make it?

- Guys like him they never hit the ground. 

- You know sometimes I have dreams where I'm arguing with Hanna about something, but at least she's there when I wake up.

- Earl—

- Yea, I know.  That's a Babeness Protection Emergency.

- See if you can get in there and hit him with the pageview before our nerd angels come in.

- It's like giving the dog his reward.  I'll see what I can do.
- Good boy.