She was so tired of food, she'd begun to berate it.

"You there! Yeah, you! Mr. Croissant Showstopper up front. You with your innovative yet homey filling of peanut butter and strawberry jam. You think you're so special. Well listen to this. I mean listen up and listen good…."

Not only had she begun to silently berate food. But her syntax had taken on the rhythm and vocabulary of a Preston Sturges movie. She had developed verve. She would keep it to herself.

On with the food harangue.

"I prefer that doughnut in the corner. See it? Sure, it's nothing fancy, but it's got heft, substance, a little modesty, a modicum of dignity."

It was an old-fashioned doughnut with buttermilk and specks of vanilla. Heavy, slow, dim-witted.

She would take it home and revive it with a little milk. Dip and dribble. She'd eat quickly, to stave off regret. It was, after all, just a doughnut.

Back in her living room. Mid-century modern furniture in primary colors. Giant fake red poppies bloomed over the fireplace. Elegant unused bronze watering cans flanked the sofa. On the walls, Russian folk art busied itself retelling the same old stories. Labyrinthine forests, moody skies, endless winters, wolves, babushkas, flagons, samovars. She switched on the news. BBC. It was all she could take. She couldn't take any more. Accents soothed while video ran: bloodied bodies, bloated children, clawed toads cannibalizing each other, Brazilian models on postmortem parade. Death survived the jumpcuts, but she wasn't sure what else did. Everything in its displace. She twisted her watchband tight until the skin on her wrist turned indignant.

Finished with the doughnut, finished with the news, she stood and carried the groceries to the kitchen, emptied the bag onto the new pine table. A can of salmon dropped to the floor and rolled. Wild. Alaskan. Red. She let it stay there. Later it would sit on a cabinet shelf, where it would remain for years, untouched, along with the other food-tenants: low-sodium soups, cans of black beans, heaps of grainy groaty things.

She had stayed home because she couldn't take another day at the office with that man, her boss, Frank. Used to work at HBO Frank. Too much lettuce on my sandwich Frank. Tell my wife I'm out Frank. Tell my friend I'll meet her at Harry's at four, or five. Four. Frank.

There was no actual work involved in her job. Just telling. She was a deskbound messenger with feet of lead, only moving to fetch lunch or coffee or to unstick the copy machine. The company was a start-up called Radish. Radish. It involved technology. A breakthrough. Marketing. Nano-micro-macro-ology. It was a temp job that had lasted a month. Oh wait, a week and a half. At this rate, she'd be stuck for years.

There were twelve offices in the plush suite on the 1th floor. Beige carpeting, fluorescent lighting, bare walls, bare desks, bare tables. In Feng Shui, bare walls signaled death. People came charging into the office like baby tigers. They'd peer over the fortress-like front of her desk, looking distracted and cheerful. "Hi there! Here to see Frank! Pretty empty in here, huh? Need some stuff on the walls, I guess … Plants!"

She smiled and nodded. "Yep, it's pretty empty." Nice people, she thought. Everyone is. Nice and alarming. Here energetically to do energetic business that would, after a very long energetic time, amount to nothing. She smiled again, smacked her gum, offered coffee, tea, water?

The phone rang often. Frank's doctor's receptionist called a lot, but never seemed to remember Jane or even where it was she was calling, exactly. Jane wondered if the medical secretary had indulged in free pharmaceuticals once too often.

"Radish! Jane speaking."

"Hello?"

"Yes. Radish! Hello?"

"This is Megan for Frank's doctor, Dr. … "

"Yes! Hello! How are you?"

"I have some instructions."

"Okay."

"Could you hold? I'm sorry, it's just--"

Arguing in the background. A tapping noise. A clicking noise. Silence. Scraping noise. Tap-tap-tap.

Megan came back on the line.

"That's such a weird name," she said.

"Sorry?"

"Radish. It's just so weird. Whatever. Is this Jee-ane?"

"Yes."

"Okay, well, I have instructions."

"Okay."

"Has he told you about the ointment?"

"No."

"Okay, so he needs to put it in the refrigerator first. He can do that or you can. It doesn't matter, as long as it's refrigerated."

"Okay, got it."

"You know, usually I tell this directly to the patient. But he told me to tell his wife, so here goes."

"I'm not his wife."

"So it should be in there, in the refrigerator, for an hour at least before application. At least."

"Okay but … "

"Otherwise it will be too runny. Can you hold?"

"Sure."

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click.

"You there? Okay. So after you take it out of the refrigerator, after about an hour, you can apply it--but just around the scrotum."

"I’m sorry, but I'm not--"

Background noise. "John! John! Hey! Get me the fajita burrito. No … no. No. Just the sauce. Tomatoes. The sauce, the salsa, right. Just the salsa."

"Okay sorry. So just put it on the area around the scrotum, the sac region. Do not put it on the penis. Under no circumstances should it touch the penis."

"I'm sorry, but could you stop? Just stop, please. I'm not Frank's wife. I'm his assistant. I really can't? Hear this."

"Oh … I'm sorry. This isn't Jean?"

"No."

"Jane. This is Jane. Frank's assistant. We talk a lot. You call here every … Anyway. I really don't want to hear about penises right now. In fact not ever, really. Not about Frank's, anyway … Know what? I'll have his wife call you."

"Okay. But would you mind, just to save time, would you mind just telling her what I told you? I've got a lot of calls to make and I told you the whole story already."

"Fine. Okay. Whatever."

"Thank you! Bye!"

"Bye."

I hung up. I looked up Frank's wife's number. I rehearsed various messages, convinced that Jean would not pick up the phone, because God could not possibly hate me that much.

"Jean, it's Jane, Frank's assistant. Please give me a call. It's about Frank's penis."

"Jean? Jane. Have some important instructions regarding your husband's penis ointment."

"Jean? Jane here, calling from the office. I understand Frank has a penis…."

It wasn't the first time an executive penis had made her sick, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

Groceries stacked neatly away, she turned her attention to the papers. Still stuck on the actual, she bought the local daily and the New York Times rather than reading the news online. Though she did like Google's news. Top stories would regularly appear from the Singapore Killfreedom Daily or some paper in Texas called NewsBUZZ. Spelling errors and typos appeared routinely. The page was random and disorderly and strange, like what goes through most people's minds most of the time. Bizarre headlines and juxtapositions, no unifying editorial voice, little context, just the next thing, and the next.

She closed her eyes. Bree the cat stepped on her head. The apartment smelled like car exhaust and lemon oil. Headlines swirled Citizen Kane style through her head.

American Tourists Devour Brazilian Models!

Environmentalists Turn Fanny Fat to Fuel!

Boss's Penis Ointment Runny!

Modest Assistant Gets the Sack!

She stood up, shook off whatever it was, and set a canvas on the easel. She picked up seven different fanned brushes and dipped each into a different shade of red. The canvas was soon covered. Next she filled in with shades of yellow that melted into orange. A woman's face appeared in the upper righthand corner. She painted over it. She dabbed her brush into blue. A phantom hand appeared in the lower lefthand corner. Palm up. The look of it made her eyes itch and water.

The phone rang. An 888 number. What the hell, she had nothing better to do.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is Mike with MyRingtone. I'm just calling to thank you for being a customer."

"I'm not a customer. What's my what?"

"My Ringtone. For just $12.99 a month, MyRingtone gives you exclusive access to ringtones automatically updated according to the musical preferences you choose when you join My Ringtone."

"Sorry but I don't listen to music on my phone, it's distracting, I get emotional. And everyone should get ... everyone gets the same ring. I like the drumbeat one. Or sometimes the electronic hi-hat or whatever. It doesn't matter. My point is I'm not a phone person."

"Then why did you answer this call?"

"Because my phone rang."

"Don't you screen?"

"You're a little irritable for a telemarketer."

"Maybe I should talk to your husband."

"Maybe you should talk to your husband."

"I don't have a husband."

"Yeah well I don't either."

"You're a strange lady."

Yes, she thought, yes I am. Strange.

"Yes."

She considered hanging up, an impulse that flew in the face of her impeccable receptionary training. Then she remembered that telemarketers weren't supposed to hang up ever. They were to keep trying to close the sale until the mark hung up. With this in mind, she put the phone on speaker and went into the kitchen to make tea. When she returned, 10 minutes later, a Sousa march blared tinnily from the phone speaker.

She switched on the television to PBS, muted the sound, and sank into the sofa with a cup of Relax tea. In her hands was a Ruth Rendell mystery she'd read twice. The cover was falling off and the pages were tinged beige and smelled of must. She burned her tongue, set the mug down, fidgeted with resistant throw pillows. They were new, bright red, ridiculous with monkeys and palm trees. After three minutes of Sousa, she hung up.

Hungry again, she shuffled into the kitchen. The Tuesday siren sounded. Fruit flies circled the garbage can. Her hands were covered in paint. She washed them several times, scrubbed with a sponge and citrus scented soap. She peeled a banana, poured some twiggy cereal, dumped in half and half, topped it off with walnuts and a petrified rock of brown sugar. As she started to eat, she walked into the living room and snapped the news back on. As she started to eat, she thought about dessert. Cheese, half a smooth round head of lowfat mozzarella. She bit through milk-chewiness, thought what's next-what's next-what's-next-what's next-what's next. Her right wrist went numb, got hot, throbbed, went numb again. She felt for a pulse. Why? Reflexive. But why?

A loaf of raisin bread would be next, with hard butter smeared on hastily, tearing the bread. Half the loaf was gone. Her throat backed up, rebelled. Something fluttered at the back of her mouth. She swallowed hard and raced, coughing, for the Diet Pepsi.

As she drank, she glanced out the kitchen window. Her eyes lit on a robin sitting amid the weeds and dead grass that constituted her backyard. It pecked tentatively, moved sideways, startled, regained its composure, startled again. She put the plastic bottle down, kicked off her sandals and quietly opened the door to the warm savannah outside her apartment. Before she knew what she was doing she lay down on her stomach, folded her arms, and rested her chin on them. Tiny pink flowers peeked up through patches of dry grass. The bird took off and she rolled onto her back, squinting at the sun.

***Feedback to consider -- I like, very much the humor and the not at all ordinary use of language. What I think, though, is that it is the beginning of something that wants to be longer.