it?"
"Oh, yes," Chris laughed. "Not to worry. That one had a happier ending. It seems our friend Dave, it was Dave, was it not? It seems he was inspired to propose to his long-time best buddy! The two men ran off to New York to get married! Apparently, he didn't like how the HAFS looked along with his outfit, so he just took it off and stuck it in a dresser drawer, which is were our operatives found it, along with a thank you note for his friend, what's his name? Bilge?"
"Bjurnjurd," Fred stammered. "Bilj Bjurnjurd."
"Yes, in fact here's the note," Chris produced a scented envelope from his shirt pocket. "Pass it around. It's really quite nice."
Kandhi took the letter and opened it up. It read, in very fine penmanship:
Dear Bilj,
I can't thank you enough for your kind words of friendship. It's meant more to me than I know how to say. I hope we will talk again soon.
Your Friendular Friend,
Dave Claunney.
"Well, how about that?" Kandhi breathed. Chris went on.
"Wen, I'd especially like to congratulate you on your work for this project. The team has been raving about your metrics, especially your most recent work on discrete tonality mapping. It's really quite fascinating. We'll be talking to you about patents on that."
Wen nodded, and gave Fred a wink.
"And Fred," Chris said, turning to him. "I don't know precisely what your contribution was this time, but I'm sure it was also magnificent. It usually is."
"It was nothing," Fred murmured. "Wen did all the good work. And Kandhi, of course."
"Of course," Chris said, beaming. "Kandhi always comes through. We rely on it, don't we, my dear?"
But this was too much, especially coming from Chris. Kandhi started to cry, at first just a sniff and a sob, but soon she was openly weeping. Chris scootched his chair over and put a long arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. With his other arm he gestured for Fred and Wen to go away, which they happily did.
"I guess this means they won't kill it," Fred groused as they got back upstairs and went off to their cubes.
"Oh, no," Wen said, giggling. "Not at all. In fact, I think it's going to be big."
"I don't even want to know," Fred sighed. "I don't even want to think about what they will do."
"Whatever it is," Wen replied, "One thing's for sure. I'm certain that you're going to hate it!"
Even Fred couldn't argue with that.
In Constant Contact Page 13
