She gingerly slid the soiled shoe back onto her elegant foot. There was a smudge near the toe so she buffed that out with her finger. The shoe was still not as elegant as the foot it caressed, but it was better than before.

She continued to think about Corg. She had to begrudgingly admit that she did like him. And it was even harder to admit - she liked him much more since she started sleeping with him. It was a bizarre relationship to say the least. There was, logically, no reason for it. She was a "hottie" and could catch the eye of almost any man she chose to (not to mention the frothing lesbians in the office). She had to work with this guy but facts are facts -- he was a creep and that's the relevant fact here. The bad hygiene, the detached muttering under his breath that sometimes escalated almost to a scream, the constant preoccupation with repetitive actions and motions (that one, by the way, definitely had some positive aspects in certain situations) - all these things indicated that he was almost certainly schizophrenic. Ed Loftus had laid out the symptoms and characteristics for her, and it was spot on. She, on the other hand, was very precise, meticulous, and linear in her thought patterns. Yes, she was like oil, floating on top of his water. But somehow he made her petroleum parts burst into flames, just at the thought . . .

Abruptly she stood up. I've got to get moving, she thought, and get my mind out of this particular gutter - there are things that must be done. She began pacing back and forth in front of the bus stop. Damn it all, she thought, I wish I was driving myself - I wish I was in control. But her car was in the body shop and would probably be there for some time. Her last "job" had resulted in a huge Slurpee machine falling (actually, it had been pushed) from a 3rd story window and landing on the hood of her SUV. It crumpled the hood, wrecked the fenders and basically the entire front end, and smashed out a few windows. Right behind it came the 400 pound Sumo wrestler, so hopped up on "goof balls" he couldn't even tell his diaper was on backwards. He landed on the roof of her vehicle and polished that off pretty much completely. Son of a bitch didn't even have the good grace to stay alive through all this, so she could have some modicum of revenge (for example, by re-diapering the bastard with some barbed wire).

Finally the bus pulled up. The door opened with a "whoosh" and she looked up into the driver's seat of the bus. The bus driver had no legs, and instead of a human head, the noggin of a hyena sat atop his shoulders. "Hop in, Toots!" the driver cackled, his snout glistening. "Irene," she mumbled bitterly to herself, "you should have never given up your old job as a rock and roll meter maid."

She stepped off the curb and right into the big glob of blueberry gum. The way it stuck to her 3 inch heel reminded her of the experiment that had gone so horribly wrong last night. She and Corg disagreed sharply on how to handle the legal aspect. He thought they should just cover it all up, but she wanted to call in Clancy and his team. Clancy would be fast and thorough, but cut deeply into their profit margin.

After picking up the special cheese danish she'd ordered from the fat lady's bakery, she sat down on a bus stop bench to remove the disgusting germ ball from her Louis Vittones. Her cell phone vibrated, pulsating a little too appealingly in her pocket, and looking down she noticed it was Corg. The hiccups started instantly, and her fingers started to itch. "Damn," she breathed, "why can't the little bastard just wait til I get there?!"

Corg was the original lab-rat-geek that all the girls at Quantico bristled over. His thick spectacles and sweaty upper lip upset even the hardiest lesbian cadets. No one knew how old Corg was, and no one wanted to. He wore draggy-ass tan polyester slacks and armpit stained short-sleeved white shirts every day. He drove an 88 Chevy Citation, snot brown and broken to hell. He smelled like feta cheese and sewing machine oil, and his teeth were the shade of hard-boiled egg yolks.

But she liked him.