Minktales
Issue 2
"The Salad Ballad"
Adventures start in many ways. Some center on finding hidden treasures, some around defeating ruthless villains. Others are started to save people from danger. Whatever the reason, any time a man or woman is pushed to the breaking point, their reserves destroyed and they themselves nearly conquered, but eventually claiming victory, it can be called nothing else but an adventure.
One such tale is the story of George Leibowitz; the man who was victorious. He didn't save people's lives, or find a hidden treasure, or defeat a terrifying villain. No, he did something much harder; something that caused his coworkers to put a picture of him on the walls of his place of work to honor his accomplishment. He sold a salad.
Now, before you start chuckling over that, listen to this story and maybe, just maybe, you'll be impressed with him too.
You see, George was working at a fast food restaurant named the Golden Ring. It was a fairly well-known sort of place, part of a large and famous chain, but it was the only restaurant of its type that ever had to deal with one customer in particular. Indeed, a special camera had been installed by the entrance, solely to detect the specific size, shape and color of her car; a bright red convertible, and sound the pink alert whenever she came too close to the restaurant.
"Pink alert! Pink alert!" screamed the manager in a frantic tone, "Jim, Louis, George, go to the back! Hurry! Melissa and Pam, you need to man the counter, then signal us when it's safe to come out."
The 'back' that he referred to was a sealed, soundproof room, and all of the men and boys working there were being asked to go there, as many of the male customers present knew what was about to happen, and either ran for the exits, or waited impatiently in their seats with smiles on their faces. That was typical of a pink alert.
The burners and heaters were all shut off at once; something only done during alerts or when closing up shop. It was a precedent set in motion when one burner had torched a quarter of the building due to its minder (usually a very reliable man) becoming distracted and clumsy as he used it during a previous pink alert. That time, there were to be no mistakes. Every man at the Golden Ring would be cloistered in the back until the alert was over.
George, however, frowned, his pride and his anger rising as he watched the others panic.
"Sir," George said to the manager, his freckles close to burning with irritation, "I'd like your permission to brave it just once."
"Permission denied. Get in back with everyone else." His manager snapped.
"Sir, I've been training; practicing for this sort of thing. I know I'm ready." George replied, not giving up.
For a moment, the manager looked George right in the eyes. George had only been with them a couple of months. Many of the others still thought of him as a rookie, but inside those eyes, the manager could see the boy's indomitable spirit and will, and he knew that nothing natural could conquer it.
"Don't be weird." the manager replied, "No one's ready. There is no 'being ready' for this. You have no idea what you're getting yourself int..."
"Sir, I have to do this." George replied, more adamantly than before, "I need to know if the training's been enough."
For a moment more, the manager looked George in the eye, but at last replied, "Against my better judgment, George, I'm letting you man the register during a pink alert, but you don't get to blame me for what you're about to face. It's all on your head, got it?"
George nodded sternly, not daring a smile as he took up his position at the register. His manager, hiding in the back room with the other two boys, muttered as he closed the door, "Heaven help that poor, poor rookie."
George had done as much to prepare for the impending crisis as could be done. He'd seen such a crisis take place before, and he knew what it was like to watch it on video tape. He'd seen pictures of the one he was about to face, and played out the scenario in his mind hundreds... no, thousands of times. He'd meditated in private for the purpose of learning to snuff out all emotions that might get in the way of his one, singular goal, and those many hours of training had brought him pride in himself, to know that he was working towards overcoming something that no man before him had ever overcome.
However, as the front doors of the Golden Ring swung open, and she walked in, each footstep a precise three-quarters of a second in length, hours and hours of George's training seemed to be evaporating from his mind, as if her very presence was draining him dry of his resistances, bit by bit, chipping away at his reserves... at his methods. Minerva Mink had come to town, and she was coming towards him.
"Excuse me." the beautiful, cartoon mink said as she walked right up to the counter, and stood less than three feet from George, her long, gold-colored tail swishing on the floor behind her, as she brushed aside a lock of perfect, golden hair, that had somehow fallen in between her eyes, "I'd like to get a salad with ranch, please."
She did the whole thing so casually, and so methodically, that inside his soul, George screamed for her to hurry and finish, but he dared not even breathe a word of it, lest she sense the weakness in him, and draw things out for her amusement because of that weakness. Already, the male customers had begun to gape, grin, and stare, mouths and eyes wide open. One or two had even begun to shout aloud, their emotions held captive completely by the stunning vision before them. George blocked them out, but he couldn't block out her. He needed to give her the salad.
George heard a clunk as the salad that Minerva had ordered landed in the tray behind him, and he tried to distract himself from the radiant sight before him by making a mental note to thank Melissa for responding so quickly. It only partially worked.
Grabbing the salad quickly, and dropping it on the counter was the easy part. Then, however, he actually had to speak, and how could he, with her wearing down his defenses with every moment she stood there? Already, George could feel that the many role-plays he'd gone through for that kind of situation had vanished as if they'd never even existed. Practicing self-control in the face of a mental image, or a moving picture was one thing, but to actually have her there in front of him was quite another. Her very presence seemed to exude a force that was chipping away at the stiffness he'd built up around his heart.
Tired of waiting for him to speak, however, Minerva had taken the salad from the counter and shot George a warm smile, that wiped several hours worth of meditation from his memories.
"Thanks. What do I owe you?" she asked slowly, looking carefully into his eyes, which had already begun to swell.
George desperately fought down the urge to scream "your hand" and a hundred other such rapid responses, as he carefully picked out one that sounded right.
"A... I can't... A dollar five, I thin... uh..."
Minerva giggled as he stuttered, draining away another several hours of meditation, then handed him the money. As she did so, her fur brushed his skin, and a month's worth of careful planning, and self-control training went down the tubes as he fumbled, trying to find the right drawers to put the money in.
"Thank you." she said slowly in a soft coo, trying to look him directly in the eyes as she did so. In another minute, she was headed for the doorway, muttering "Hmmm... I don't know where the plastic forks are. Would someone please get one for me?"
As George watched, nearly every man in the restaurant dove for the disposable utensil racks, until Minerva had to pick one fork at random from a lineup of over a dozen. The man whose fork she'd picked fainted dead away, and most of the others stuffed the forks in their pockets, continuing to follow Minerva with their eyes and in many cases, their words, which by that point, had degenerated into helpless drivel, or words smushed together too close to make any sense.
However, as soon as Minerva touched the doorway out, something seemed to occur to her, and she turned back to face George, who was flushed and sweating, his eyes the size of dinner plates, his mouth open so wide, that one could see the back of his throat, and the last of his hard-earned reserves gone.
"Are you feeling alright?" the gorgeous mink asked him tentatively, but he was too far gone. He couldn't respond to her. Giving him one last grin, she finally pushed the door open, and strode slowly out to her car, pursued by a few of the men from inside the restaurant, who only stopped their pursuit when she drove away.
The moment that Minerva was out of sight, George fell to the floor of the restaurant, hyperventilating. He couldn't keep it up any longer. His reserves were spent, his training was gone, and it would all need to be regained the hard way, and he couldn't even summon the strength to stand up anymore. With that last grin, his heart had finally melted, for the first time since he'd first learned of the unfairness of the world as a little boy. Even when Melissa turned off the pink alert, and his manager stood over him, he couldn't bring himself to rise.
"You okay, George?" his manager asked, bending down to listen to the weak reply, which was all he could give.
"You... you were... right, Sir. No man can be ready for that."
However, the manager shook his head and replied, "No, you were more ready than any man I've ever seen, and you did a great job. A great job. There's never been any man or boy who could stand up to her like that. If you want to take the rest of the evening off, you can go ahead. You more than earned it. You'll be a local hero from now on. The boy who sold a salad."
In fact, that's just what George became, and if anything, the experience did him some good. Not long after that, he found himself far more able to express and experience feelings of love and kindness than he had been in ages, as if his encounter with the Mink, and the breaking of the barriers around his soul really had loosed some kind of pent-up tender side he'd been afraid to express before.
For the first time since he was a child, George had experienced an emotion stronger than disappointment, bitterness, anger, resentment, sadness, and everything else combined. It was something that ran roughshod over all the other feelings and even conscious thoughts that he had or had ever had, and after that, his reputation for compassion, even to those he didn't know, became the talk of the town. It was the result of his revelation on the experience; the overriding strength of love. He couldn't deny love anymore.
Of course, George's reputation for self-control was far MORE widespread, and people from the farthest corners of town came to the Golden Ring after that, just to meet the man of osmium will who'd withstood Minerva.
Still, a month and a half after that, the dreaded alarm went off again, and George, who by that point, was the manager, shouted to the others working in the Golden Ring; "Pink alert! Pink alert! Gregory, Ralph, Charlie, go to the back! Hurry! Pat and Selina, you need to man the counter, then signal us when it's safe to come out!"
The End
Well, now you see what I meant by dark. Losing control can be a scary thing, but when you're in love, you may start to wonder if control was really all that great. The dream of an overwhelmingly powerful, good emotion sweeping away everything else and radiating from someone or something outside myself has been one I'd thought lost for nineteen years, and to be honest, it's odd that Minerva should be the one to remind me of it, because I don't honestly find her kind of conventional beauty to be terribly attractive. Maybe it's the way she acts, or talks...
