....Lenny sat in front of his computer, studying the final draft of his musical masterpiece. He appended a few essential endnotes and parentheticals – his reasoning being that no musical masterpiece to date had included a section of endnotes and since so few musicals were truly masterpieces, surely the missing element was a comprehensive historical bibliography.
He had finished annotating the Screaming Panda Incident (including the Time Magazine coverage and Edward R. Murrow commentary) and sat back to pour himself a hearty glass of Midori as a treat for a job well done.
As so often happens when one is just about to enjoy a full pint of green melon liquor, Lenny's cell phone rang. Lenny could barely make out Virginia's voice amongst what sounded to be considerable hub and bub.
"I'm sorry, Virginia, you'll have to speak up..." The call was on the verge of being dropped when the Bozeman City Council hurriedly erected another cell phone tower in the vicinity, raising both everybody's connection bars and metastasis rates.
"...cannot believe they don't serve termite lattes here," was how Virginia's statement concluded.
"Termites?" inquired Lenny. "Aren't you kosher?"
Virginia set Sweet Banana Tail II down on top of a high table and pressed her newly free hand to her ear.
"Of course I am, Lenny, but pangolins are notoriously finicky in their dietary needs." The rest of their conversation was lost in a sudden scream from Irwin's direction.
Irwin and the Plumber from Butte had agreed to settle their dispute via a game of Scrabble; the winner of which would receive the right to stage the play wherever they saw fit. Not three minutes into the game, it became apparent that the coffee house's
Scrabble set was lacking three D tiles and no end of vowels. The Plumber stared forlornly at a rack holding F, N, X, P, Z, and L as Irwin placed down letters spelling "perspicacity" for a Triple Word Score of 69 plus a bonus of 50 for using all eight of his tiles. Seeing as how "perspicacity"contains twelve letters and Irwin had not been working off of "city," the Plumber began to suspect that the fix was in. He picked up his rack and flung it square at Irwin's solar plexus, screaming, "I've a moind ta smash yer face into that display of attractive and reasonably-proiced gift oitems fer such fourberie!"
Irwin leapt to his feet, thundering, "I'm sorry you're a sore loser! I'm declaring this a win by default!"
The rage in Irwin's manner lessened somewhat by his rubbing his sore belly as he shouted.
Virginia was caught between the chaos of the abandoned word game and Lenny blathering on about some woman called Stagecoach Mary and some guy named Bishop Filbus N.E. Berwanger.
"They lived in Great Falls," Virginia scolded, "Would you concentrate on the matter at hand, Lenny?"
Lenny would have, of course, but that particular moment was when the acidic tidal wave wiped out Montana's Central Cellular Phone Communications Center in Whitehall. All phones in the state, roaming or non-, went out in a blink. Pizzas were suddenly half-ordered, rendezvous were only partially completed, and untold thousands of public conversations of what should have been of a private nature to begin with were suddenly silenced. Virginia closed her phone, looking around at other customers tapping and shaking their useless communication devices. Sighing, she sat down, wondering how any
creative project can take form without a cell phone. Sweet Banana Tail II waddled over to share her ant latte, which, fortunately, had been on the menu.
