Doby Dillion

4:45 on a Thursday afternoon. Dobby Dillion picked up a tire and threw it with all his might. He didn't have much might left, since he'd been tossing rubber since 9 in the morning. But it's 15 minutes until closing time, and the official start of his vacation, so he gave it what he had. The tire rebounded off three walls before flying into Ethel's desk, knocking her laptop and shattering a vase holding a single daisy.

"Nice one, Dob," Ethel said as she bends down to retrieve her laptop. She used her sleeve to wipe the wet shards of vase, then retrieved a new vase and a new flower (a sprig of lavender) and put them on desk. "Not leaving anything behind are ya?" Her gentle smile, weathered by as many decades as there are balls left in a game of nine-ball after the one and two ball have been sunk, including the cue-ball, smiled gently at him.

"Well, you know me," Doby said, holding a clipboard close to his face as he scribbled his report. "Work life balance and all that. If I don't take my work with me on vacation, then the boss doesn't have to worry about me taking vacation while at work!" He pulled a well-weathered hankie (not as weathered as Ethel, except measured maybe in hankie-years) from a pocket in his blue overalls, and honked his sizeable schnozz. Then he tossed his mop of jet-black hair, bent his lanky body down, and with large work-smooth hands at the end of long wiry arms picked up another tire.

This tire was a Gordon Fischer Wettrax Steel with a polycarbonide a-line and vibration-resistant "nightwing" tread. Doby heaved it across the room like a bronze-winning discus thrower. The tire hit one wall, flew off-axis and spun sideways, then hit the ceiling, taking out a tile. Doby picked up his clipboard and scribbled.

Ethel tippy-tapped on her laptop "Explain to me again, for the purpose of exposition, where you're going?" She frowned at her screen, then took her glasses off and polished them with a handy kleenex. 

Dolby looked over at her, and the way the light caught his hair, the way he was standing, an odd shadow on his clipboard, for a moment he looked exactly like Thor, except with black hair and no hat. "Acapulco," he said, going for another tire and ruining the image entirely. "I'm going to sit on a balcony, drink beer, and read.." He flung the tire, and, "Proust," he said, with grunt.

An Albany 224, 16 inches of upstate engineering, split the air like a fast attack submarine surfacing just as it leaves the Bering Strait. It took two walls, then crashed through Ethel's desk, annihilating the laptop into pieces, but missing the vase. 

Ethel called over her shoulder "Fondella, I knew a new lappy!" She gathered broken pieces and piled them into a waste bin. "That's it? Why do you need to go to Mexico to do that?" She pronounced it MEH-hee-Koh.  

Doby scribbled. "Aw, you know how it is. If you take vacation at home, pretty soon your home starts to feel like a vacation." He checked the clock. 5 minutes, enough time to throw a few more.

Fondella appeared, pushing a cart stacked with laptops. She was slender, dressed in denim overall-shorts, had large eyes, two long blond braids, and a shy smile. The cart was squarish and about cart-height. "That doesn't sound so bad to me," she said, blinking in a way that was either shy desire or a note-so-shy mote of dust.

Ethel took one of the laptops, retrieved a stack of forms from her desk, and filled one out. "No, I think I get it," she said. She finished the form and handed it to Fondella. "I like sippin' ice tea but sometimes it just tastes better-

"Sittin' on the back porch!" everyone said together, just as Doby hurled an Eagle WeatherMax with Dual Evacuation Channels. The tire smacked the back wall and side wall and then crashed through Fondella's laptop cart, sending laptops flying like a flock of birds taking off together for whatever god damned reason. The tire continued rolling on an edge making a large circle that spiraled in as it slowed down, finally coming to rest next to Fondella like a puppy falling asleep at its owner's feet. 

Fondella knelt down and rested one hand lightly on the tire as she gathered laptop pieces. She glanced at the tire, then did a double-take. "Doby? Is this supposed to be a WeatherMax or a Weathersteel?" 

Doby looked at her, then frantically flipped pages on his clipboard. "Uh, it's supposed to be… oh no!" He looked at Fondella again in panic.

The very pretty blond girl smiled. "Ah, don't worry about it, Dobe. I can just change the report req list and bump this one up. You can do the Weathersteel when you get back from vacation."

Doby paused, clipboard in hand, slack-jawed, one tear threatening to fall down his cheek. "Gosh, thanks Fon, that'd be swell." He smiled his big goofy smile. "Are you sure that's allowed?"

"Of course it is, ya big goof!" Ethel said, pulling bits of shattered laptop out of her blue hair. "I wrote the report req list administration procedures manual, I should know."  "Now give us one more and then beat it, ya balcony-lovin' bum, ya!"

Beaming from ear-to-ear, Doby manhandled a Tennieri K-Drop 950, added an extra spin just for kicks, and sent it screaming at the wall, where it wend side-side-back-side before exploding through Ethel's desk, sending wooden shrapnel and Ethel herself flying through the air. 

Doby glanced at Fondella, who glanced back, and they both blushed. 

"Oh my goodness, Doby," Ethel said as she picked herself up. "This place is going to fall apart while you're not here. Maybe we should all go on vacation."

Doby scribbled a few final words on his reports, then dropped the clipboard on the floor. He walked over to where the remains of the punch clock were, attempted to punch out, and when that failed, simply crumpled up his time card and dropped that too. "Sure, he said. "Y'all can come with me!"

He and Ethel and Fondella all laughed out loud together.