Lovely Weather We're Having

 

It was a lovely day out: clear, cloudless sky; sweet sun-soaked breeze; faint hum and click of insect song.  Macmillan longed to find a quiet, unoccupied park bench somewhere and sit in comfortable repose until lunchtime.  However, Macmillan had spent so much time appreciating the beautiful weather that he was now late for his job at the bank.

As he rushed inside the rotating glass doors he ran into a colleague of his, Vogal.  No one much liked Vogal, a sallow, shriveled man with a swath of greasy brownish hair and fat, quivering lips.  But Macmillan, always careful to be polite, smiled briefly and said, “Hello Vogal, nice weather we’re having, eh?”

Vogal sniffed wetly.  “Not really.”

Macmillan paused, glancing back at the innocently sparkling day just visable beyond the glass doors.  It was perfectly wonderful weather by all accounts.  “What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

Vogal glanced outside drowsily.  “Well, I mean what people generally mean when they say such things: it’s not really all that nice a day.”  Vogal was not as apt as Macmillan to be polite.  In fact, he was often quite testy.  He was in the habit of blinking very slowly, which gave him a dumfounded, owlish sort of appearance that only added to his contemptibility.

Macmillan was beginning to remember why everyone so disliked Vogal.  Even management hated him, and kept him tucked away in the bowels of the establishment to avoid interacting with him more than they absolutely had to.  And even that was too much.  In fact, if Vogal were not such a wiz with numbers he would have been fired before he even had a chance to be hired. 

“Well, I know what you meant by that; I meant: how could you think the weather anything but pleasant?” said Macmillan, indicating the bright, glittering day with a finger

“That’s the thing,” replied Vogal, his voice thinning to a whine, “It’s rather too nice, don’t you think?”

Too nice? Too nice? Thought Macmillan, frustration beginning to tint his ears a delicate pink.  “Actually, no, I don’t think it’s really possible to have a too-nice day.  Look at it"— he said, gesturing more emphatically out the doors, “The sun’s shining, the birds are singing, the temperature’s in the mid-seventies, not a blade of grass is out of place!  What could you possibly have to say about it that’s negative?”  His speech left him somewhat red in the face; Macmillan knew he was taking this far too personally, but there was something about the simpering pout on Vogal’s hateful visage that was enraging him to a point he had previously thought unlikely. 

Vogal stuck an emaciated finger into his ear and began to wiggle it furiously.  “It’s all fine and dandy for most people, yes, but to me”—here he extracted his finger and flicked a large waxy something to the floor—“it’s just a reminder that’s today’s Wednesday.”

Macmillan, who had been fighting a rising urge to beat Vogal senseless, was deeply confused by this statement.  “What should its being Wednesday have to do with the weather being too nice?”

Vogal went to work on his other ear.  “Wednesday’s in the middle of the working week, isn’t it?” he said, face wrinkled in deep concentration, “Sort of puts a damper on things.  Nice weather, sure, but what good is it?  No, this weather’s mocking us, Stevens, it’s no good.”

“My name’s not Stevens,” said Macmillan, hurt despite himself.

“No?  Well, good man, Stevens.  Always gives me a candy bar on Wednesdays…”

Macmillan was now over fifteen minutes late for work, and the practical part of him was urging him across the lobby, past the guards and into his comfortable office to get some top-notch number-crunching done.  But the part of him that wanted to destroy Vogal would not let him move.

Vogal was now picking his nose.  He was trying to disguise it as a scratch, but with half his thumb thrust up his nostril he was doing a very poor job of it.

Macmillan punched Vogal square in his spongy red nose—a nice, clean jab—then turned and headed into his office.

Management, catching the altercation on the security cameras, gave Macmillan a dollar seventy-five pay raise and a longer lunch hour.  They really did hate Vogal very much.