As You Know, Bob 5

She was a force of nature steaming through the mall. I could hear the clack of her heels as she headed my way. Her eyes were cold and angry; her stride was long and crisp; her bubble butt wriggled like two bobcats in a gunny sack.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“As you know, Bob, the stores don’t even open for another twenty minutes. What am I supposed to do, sit here like a game show contestant and pretend to be excited?”

“I told you, the best time to catch Evil Editor at his book signing is early. Once the line forms, he makes Ted Bundy look social, and I’d like him to read the first few chapters of my novel before that happens. I even made two copies just in case something happens to one of them.”

“You mean like this?” She seized one of my copies like a crocodile snatching a gazelle at a drinking hole, ripping it to shreds and dumping a blizzard of paper back in my lap. “That’s for not buying me breakfast.”

“Nobody tears up my story,” I snarled, my face turning as hot as an Arizona tarmac in the noonday sun.

A man’s gravelly voice plowed a path to my brain. “Excuse me, but did I hear you say you wrote a novel?”

Like a deer caught in the headlights, I gawked at the famous mutton-chop sideburns. Before I could say Hoovermatic, Evil Editor had scooped up my manuscript.

Ten seconds later, another storm of shredded paper graced my lap.

“Garbage,” he shrugged, his eyes skiing the slopes of my girlfriend’s bosom. “But you, doll…you have potential. How about grabbing a bite?”

My girlfriend wrapped herself around him like ivy on a Yale dorm.

“This mall has great cinnamon buns,” he purred, guiding her away.

--Mark Mosher