Dixon Elementary was overachieving in the field of underperformance, according to the latest figures, so certain measures were taken to preserve its existence. Some called them drastic; others, total horseshit. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe numbers don\u2019t lie,\u201d said Superintendent Dr. Grace Buttermilk, a notorious fibber, as she dropped her greasy eyewear on The Report. \u201cWe need Guti\u00e9rrez.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rich \u201cThe Snitch\u201d Guti\u00e9rrez would object to the term Fixer<\/em> on the grounds that it does not adequately capture the finesse<\/em> with which he manages Action Items, the lack of clemency he grants Fucking Around. He is rumored to reside in a Safe House outside of Medicine Hat, however, boning up on the basics of curling before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and thus any protest on his part is unanticipated and purely speculative.<\/p>\n It is better for Guti\u00e9rrez this way, kilometers from Los Cabrones Guapos. Rumor has it the men\u2019s group still has a bone to pick after he texted The Feds the coordinates of their lair, and after the O\u2019Hare food court expansion deal went south. <\/p>\n After all, there is the well-being of his testicles to consider.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Cricket customer Grace was trying to reach had been disconnected, so she tried The Other Number. She believed the voice on the other end to be female, a positive sign, but it was difficult to confirm due to the modulation. <\/p>\n \u201cTile Solutions of Texarkana, this is Modesty. How may I deflect your call?\u201d The operator\u2019s words were like Vermont maple syrup rappelling down the side of The Good China, right onto The Not-So-Great Ikea Tablesetting.<\/p>\n \u201cAccounts Payable, please.\u201d<\/p>\n Grace recognized the Call Waiting music, a ditty her daughter Ginny gargled in the shower in the Early Aughts. \u201cShards Of Neptune,\u201d or something within reasonable proximity thereto. She thought about reaching out to Ginny once her business had concluded but remembered Machu Piccu. It was Thursday afternoon and that meant Ginny was still waiting tables, hustling Peruvian Fusion to couples in their mid-to-late thirties, praying they use their Tip Calculator apps properly so she could swing rent. Such is the life of an aspiring sculptor<\/em>, Grace figured. Sweaty and consistently-awful.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo, I don\u2019t even get some Restroom Rhumba this time?\u201d<\/p>\n Guti\u00e9rrez was referencing the duo\u2019s sole embrace, an impetuous session in the differently-abled stall in the Museum Of Contemporary Art\u2019s employee washroom. With the assistance of her behavioral therapist, Grace was two stages away from permanently shelving the episode, a stone\u2019s throw from scrubbing his weeping and insistence that she call his member Master<\/em> from her cerebral cortex. It was ha-ha funny<\/em> that a single line from a miscreant could undo us, she thought.<\/p>\n \u201cI need your help with something.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Grace was early so she ordered her stand-by, a double Old Fashioned with extra bitters. She knew the horror stories by heart, could recite the paint-by-numbers transactional debacles attributed to alcohol abuse standing on one leg. They were weak, she always concluded, those who failed to derive strength from drink. They would have made putrid Hunns.<\/p>\n \u201cThis seat currently unoccupied by ass?\u201d<\/p>\n It was Gooch Standeforde, in the flesh. He had turned the world of education upside-down with a lecture series entitled Now Wait A Cottonpickin\u2019 Minute!<\/em>, wherein he enumerated the ills of public schools throughout the country and urged audience members to join him in his titular catchphrase point after rage-inducing point. The solution, he argued, rested with the infusion of private sector capital, the so-called IV Bag Of American Achievement And Development<\/em>. Money mended a roughed-up and down-and-out Western Civilization after the Second World War and it could heal this owie too. <\/p>\n Grace read enough Marx & Engels at Cornell to spot a good need of a constantly-expanding market<\/em>, could recognize some quality globetrotting on the part of the bourgeoisie<\/em> when she saw it. Wasn\u2019t it inevitable, though, the devouring of the planet by The Haves? Wasn\u2019t she just checking tickets at the door, the real show set to go down in Guangdong Province in a decade or two? <\/p>\n \u201cSounds like you got a real ham hock to brine, Miss-\u201c<\/p>\n \u201cDoctor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA thousand condolences. Doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n Gooch had not even so much as adjusted the turquoise stone of his bolo tie before he was off, the only remnants of his pop-in the business card and c-note stacked on the bar counter. Grace detected what she believed to be the scent of a Junior Whopper as her Benefactor Contractor lifted and lowered his million-gallon hat in deference. <\/p>\n \u201cI hate to blow my wad and skedaddle but my G5\u2019s by the hour. I know you can relate, bein\u2019 a workin\u2019 mom and all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n As Gooch wove through the college-age hooch receptacles engaging in their species\u2019 pre-fornication communication rituals, Grace examined the business card. Superimposed on the hefty, cream-colored stock were the words VENDING SERVICES, along with a presumably-international phone number, given its length and format. <\/p>\n Her drink having collected dust during the meeting, Grace imbibed and imagined a string of digits so long that it wrapped around the neck of the Milky Way, followed by Our Benevolent Creator\u2019s kicking the chair out from under the galaxy.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Parents and selected members of the media milled about the snack tables, double-dipping pita wedges and inspecting plastic-wrapped brownies for nuts on behalf of their hypoallergenic progeny, while the techs readied the P.A. Grace was jumpy in a manner that vacillated between pending public speaking engagement<\/em> and bad coke jitters<\/em> but there was reassurance in her anxiety. That Post-It note from Life persuading you to keep your shit together had not lost its tack.<\/p>\n A thumbs-up from a hoodie\u2019d serf was visible above the piles of electronic equipment at the rear of the congregation and, accordingly, Grace and two of the School Board\u2019s least liver-spotted members approached the podium set up in front of Dixon\u2019s main entrance. Alongside the trio stood a cardboard replica of a vending machine, a dispensary of a beverage called Thrust\u2122, adorned with a blood-red ribbon. <\/p>\n \u201cParents, students, friends, and colleagues, it is my distinct pleasure to announce the Grand Re-Opening of Dixon Elementary, Home Of The Prancers.\u201d A chortle went up among the assembled as Paulie Prancer, Dixon\u2019s half-lynx\/half-surfer mascot, attempted and failed a basic backflip, per his beloved long-running bit. <\/p>\n \u201cI would now like to introduce to you a man who needs an introduction, Thrust\u2122 Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bonk.\u201d<\/p>\n Shaking hands with Bonk, Grace noticed that this new chieftain, to whom she had unequivocally tethered Dixon\u2019s future, wore pleated pants. She immediately envisaged Old Testament scribes engaged in heated debate, their camps divided as to the issue of replacing The Mark Of Cain with this variety of slacks. <\/p>\n \u201cThank you, Superintendent Buttermilk. I\u2019ll be brief, as I think poor Paulie needs immediate medical attention to repair his spinal cord.\u201d Ever the cut-up, Paulie writhed on the concrete, eliciting a Woo!<\/em> and a We love you, Paulie!<\/em> from one particular wisenheimer, outfitted by American Eagle. <\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is, this isn\u2019t about The Bottom Line. While it\u2019s true that Thrust\u2122 Is A Must\u2122, Thrust\u2122 is also about trust. And we at Thrust\u2122 trust Superintendent Buttermilk, your teachers, hell, even Paulie Boy here, because they<\/em> care enough about you and your refreshment needs to partner with The Best. The question is, do you trust Thrust\u2122?\u201d<\/p>\n It was then that Bonk turned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and fell backwards, his arms outstretched. The intact instincts of a woman in a neon-yellow Wisconsin Dells hat in the front row prevented him from sustaining a concussion. Once he was returned to the upright position, Bonk dusted the lapels of his blazer in mock relief. There was a glimmer within him that Grace recognized as the unmistakable luminescence of a firefly, flickering and chemical. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd now, without further ado, and on behalf of Thrust\u2122 and its parent company, The Omicron Group, as well as their North American subsidiaries and yet-to-be-formed LLCs, Limited Partnerships, and Corporations, I hereby declare Dixon Elementary\u2026 open for business!\u201d<\/p>\n Grace had failed to even notice the giant pair of novelty scissors in the hollow of the podium and she watched as the ribbon fell, Bonk beaming as photographers professional and camera phone alike snapped away, the shiny, mutant school supply refracting the mid-day sun. <\/p>\n Thomas Mundt is the author of one short story collection, <\/em>You Have Until Noon To Unlock The Secrets Of The Universe (Lady Lazarus Press, 2011), and the father of two human children, Henry (2011) and Evie Mae (2013). Additional teambuilding exercises and risk management advice can be found at www.jonathantaylor\/thomasnathanmundtdds.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dixon Elementary was overachieving in the field of underperformance, according to the latest figures, so certain measures were taken to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-issue-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/12458988523_dbf1930023_b-e1393611226372.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}