Angie the penguin sighed whenever she remembered how bright and wonderful the ramp at the Guggenheim was – it spiraled around a column of air and light. She enjoyed walking down its comfortable grade every day, looking at the exhibits on the outside wall, occasionally catching a glimpse of Manhattan looking through one of the attached galleries. In Boston there was darkness, punctuated for her only by the occasional black light or 20 foot great white shark hanging from the shadowy ceiling. The shark terrified her. Why not just hang a 20 foot George W. Bush in the Museum of Fine Arts? she thought. Why not just hang a 20 foot Hitler in the Holocaust museum? Angie’s office is large and is furnished minimally. The Breuer chairs and Max Bill clock were those that the Cambridge 7 had spec’d back in the 70s. Angie has personalized her office with one plant and one pinboard that she filled with magazine clippings about the museum, and, in addition, any cartoons she found in newspapers or magazines that had something to do with fish or museums. Her favorite comic depicts a mother pear and a daughter pear standing in front of a painting of a peach. The mother pear finds the asslike peach indecent, so she covers her child’s eyes with her hand. Angie’s office has a glass topped desk with a telephone with a blue LED that flashes when she has voicemail. Angie hates checking her voicemail, because, since she is a penguin, she can’t very well use the telephone handset, which means that she has to use the speakerphone function, which on her phone is so loud that she feels as if visitors can hear her personal business, again, spoiling the undersea fantasy that they came to enjoy. Angie’s office is where Angie found herself, as usual, at 10:30 AM that morning, and it is there that she now presses the voicemail button on her phone. *beep* “Hi, this is Lindsey Mahoney again…uh…I know you said that there’ s no place in your act for a puffin, but I think that you should reconsider…when you auditioned me last Tuesday night I wasn’t in tip top shape, I was getting over a cold…I know talk is cheap and everything but I really feel like I have a lot to offer you and your organization…I have a lot of ideas about how you could maybe bring other types of animals into the penguin tank….I’ll call you back later today.” *beep* “Hi, Pedro here. I was wondering if we could discuss these drafts for the east wing addition over lunch today? I have to catch a flight at four o’clock, I’m meeting with some possible donors in Chicago, and I have to walk all the way to the airport, because, as you know, I can’ t get a cab, being a polar bear and all. Anyway, I’ll come by at noon.⠀ *beep* “This is Jake down here in admissions, uh, the new girl got nervous and puked on the carpet near the penguin installation, and I can’t find anyone in janitorial for some reason…where the fuck do you think you’re going? No…no I will not…no…I know what I said…no, you are…you are.” *beep beep beeeeep* Angie the penguin opens her window, the wind blows against her feathers. Brrrrrrrr. She was in a rush that morning, and had no time to blow dry her coat. It was still damp from the shower. She remembers looking at herself in her bathroom mirror, which she doesn⠀™t do often since she has to climb up on her sink to do so. Angie, you’re a short kind of animal, you know that? Angie pushes the short feathers around her hips up, following the line dividing black from white, exposing their roots. She was used to her height, of course, but for some reason this morning she felt diminutive, less Angela and more Angie, as if the burdens she bore had incrementally compressed her, and that it was only this morning that the change had been dramatic enough to notice. The straw that breaks the camels back, the snowflake that causes the avalanche. Angie stretches her flippers up towards the ceiling, pathetically. Angie is a very beautiful penguin, and she knows it. When, in her mind, she is critical of her appearance, she cannot help but do so with some sense of irony. Angie sits down at her desk and begins the day with some light work, signing paychecks, calling an architectural office about their latest renderings of a proposed new east wing for the Aquarium. “Hello, Charles, yes, this is Angie. Hi. Yes…yes…no…I’m doing quite well thank you…listen, I was just calling to ask you if the grade of these ramps is correct? We’re trying to have the whole complex be sea turtle accessible, as you know, and so these can’t be any steeper than 1 to 5…yes, that’s rise over run…okay well could you check that over?” The architects they had hired for the east wing were incompetent. Sigh, Angie sighed. Architects must live in their own little worlds. Eventually, the morning turned to midday, and Angie found herself in a hurry to prepare for her lunch appointment. She checked herself, using the reflection of herself in her now closed window as a guide. She reapplied her lipstick and put her hair up with a headband she had bought the day before, after work. It was navy blue and had been embroidered on the top in gold thread with what appeared to be the insignia of the Luftwaffe. It had lightning bolts tumbling down her penguin-temples. Angie walked down the ramp and met Pedro in the lobby. He was locking the rolling suitcase that he was taking with him to Chicago. His key ring had a Dominican flag on it. Pedro wasn’t Dominican of course, he was from the North Pole, but when he was a student he had lived in a Dominican neighborhood in Somerville and so he thought it was for this reason okay to have a Dominican keychain. If you confronted him about it, he would probably say something like “It’s just a keychain…Christ⠀. Angie thought Pedro was a complete bastard – self centered, cynical, uninteresting and inconsiderate. She often imagined that after work each day he and his other Polar bear friends got together at their igloo club and beat each other off with oven mitts. “Shall we?” He asked, rising. He wore an Hermés tie. “Yes.” And they did. Where should two employees of the New England Aquarium eat lunch but Legal Seafoods? You’d think they would get tired of looking at fish, but just the opposite was true. Both Pedro and Angie took a perverse pleasure in eating what could very well be a draw for their museum. Eating fish was, in a sense, a good way for them to blow of steam, because sometimes staying late after work at the Aquarium, a flounder would catch an employees eye and the only things that kept her from strangling it then and there (as a warning to other fish) was the fact that there was half an inch of plexiglass between them, and that, more importantly, she could smugly imagine that she had already had her revenge earlier that day for lunch. They were seated in the center of the restaurant. Angie sat in a chair facing out the window, while Pedro faced her, but not using a chair, because polar bears are too big to use chairs. “Excuse me, waiter, we’re in a bit of hurry, so if we could order now please?” Pedro was always in a hurry, but it didn’t matter. Both Angie and Pedro always ordered the same things anyway. Pedro gruffly addressed the waiter once more: “I would like the Mexican Pike with Salsa [..beat..] And I would like it muy picante, please.” Pedro said these words with one hand incisively motioning to the waiter that it was very important the dish possess, or should it be said, embody, a spiciness that was to his rare satisfaction. He squinted his eyes and turned his head to the waiter as he spoke, so that although only one of his eyes was looking at the waiter, it was really looking at the waiter. His body language was like that of every retarded, successful male American who had ever attended a three hundred dollar Peter Drucker management seminar at the Bayside expo center – puketastic. It made you literally want to puke. Pedro turned towards Angie and looked at her. “Y la pinguina?” “I think I’ll have the Greek swordfish kebab. With rice.” The waiter took her menu, and when Angie looked back at Pedro, the left side of his mouth had been stretched a little further to left, and as his head bobbed a little, he asked, “You think you can handle the swordfish?” “…” Angie remarked. “I’ve fished for them. They can get up to fifteen feet you know, including their beak.” “I can’t imagine I’ll have much trouble with it, so long as I don†™t have to kill it myself.” Angie tried to look as bored as possible, which for a penguin is pretty bored. You wouldn’t know that if you only ever saw them at the Aquarium, of course. You have to find someone willing to take you behind the scenes. “Have you ever seen a map of Greece? How the hell do you govern a nation shaped like that anyway?” Pedro continued, indifferent to Angie and common sense. “It can’t have been very hard. Greece has for quite a long time now enjoyed a reputation as being a humanistic paradise, of sorts. Unlike Boston.” This conversation between penguin and polar bear, which could be characterized as being every bit as unbalanced in terms of effort invested as a see-saw with a penguin on one side and a polar bear on the other, continued until food came. Angie always ate in silence. “You know, I always ask them to make it spicy but I’ll be damned if it’s ever spicier than the last time.” Angie’s eyes rise for a moment but then return to her food. She pecks at her rice, making a terrible mess. Minutes continue to pass. In another short story, something interesting happens. Not in this one though. “Listen:” “…” Angie remarked for the second time in as many hours. “I was thinking that rather than me going alone to Chicago we could go together. We could easily get a flight together this time of the week.” “…”, number three. You’d think an obnoxious Hispanic-wannabe polar bear would already have three strikes against him, but Pedro didn†™t feel that way. He continued. “I think that the impression you and I could together give would be magnificent, if we were to simply utilize the gender dynamic we have. These donors, you have to understand them. They want to see something new. I think we could be extending our partnership beyond the norms of business to accomplish exactly that, if you know what I’m saying.” “I suppose I do know what you’re saying, yes.” While not at all ‘caught off guard’, Angie still felt that way. Being an attractive penguin and no fool, Angie knew exactly what Pedro had in mind. Her suspicions about him had turned out to be correct – that all this time he had been treating her with respect and dignity simply so he could get her alone in some hotel suite in Chicago and eat her. Polar bears are all the same. It’s not just nourishment for them, it’ s like a game. Pedro continued chomping on his Pike. He licked his teeth and patted his whiskers with his napkin. “What do you say?” Angie was in no mood for confrontation, and struggled to think of an excuse not to go that hadn’t anything to do with the obvious truth. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have an appointment to have my nails done tomorrow…no I can’t say that, I don’t have any nails…oh bother… “I’m afraid I have a date with a man I met the other day”, Angie lied. “What’s the name of this lucky fellow?” Pedro asked, incredulous. “Mick. He’s a giraffe.” “Oh, well, good luck with that.” Pedro rolled his eyes, and then in a circular motion to his right moved them to look down at his watch. “It’s two and, goddamnit I need to get my ticket. We’d better run back.” Pedro runs back while Angie awkwardly runs-walks a pace behind him. The sound of a jackhammer prevents them from speaking to each other, but a voice is heard through it all the same.