Episode Six: 'A Peculiar Reverie'

In this episode, our antagonist Kim's highly disciplined mind allows itself to roam and settles on a source of extreme irritation- our own Tom. Is Kim's fury directed towards our budding anthropologist well founded, or is he suffering from a dangerous obsession? What grisly trap awaits poor Thomas, who may very well be guilty of nothing other than gross insensitivity?

Kim pushed aside his plate, letting Sing Chow lick the last splashes of soy sauce from the edge. He spun a half-circle in his chair and landed perfectly at his keyboard, typing before his chair had even settled from the shudder of the spin. No time for Tai Chi tonight, not with this masterful final email waiting to be sent. Wriggling his fingers, he giggled to himself and pushed the power button. He felt as if the computer’s rebooting was taking hours, and he let himself go into a reverie, unusual for his practical and efficient mind. That stupid, stupid Tom Ozanski. What a stupid man. His loud loud laughing and his insistence that ketchup slather everything (what a sacrilegious use of tomatoes, which had sustained his people during those difficult early years in the mountainous Wyoming- of all the states to pick, nearly impossible to pronounce!); his ill-fitting, polyester American football jacket, worn daily from early fall until late spring, regardless of whether or not he was indoors or out, and in ignorant defiance of the recently posted (and Tom-induced) sign in the office requesting that employees “Kindly wear an appropriate variety of clothes during the work week”; but worst of all was Tom’s incessant hinting and roundabout conversation: Just yesterday Kim had entered the lounge to find Tom mentioning to Gerald how terribly cold the walk home would be, especially because his mother had washed his only gloves in the warm cycle when he had “repeatedly reminded her to wash them in the cold cycle, inside out, lest they shrink.” The barbarism of Tom’s indirect request for a ride home had made Kim spin his pencil through his fingers with unusual fury, and with feigned naivety he cornered Tom by offering him a hand towel with which to protect his hands for the walk home; he had even offered to wrap Tom’s hands using a “traditional and ancient Asian technique”, but then reneged, citing the potential difficulty of removing the hand towel upon arriving home. Conveniently, Gerald was intrigued by the idea of a hand towel replacing gloves and Tom’s irritating hints were lost in the shuffle of the ensuing conversation.