Mimi

Mimi by Lucy Ellmann

Book: Mimi by Lucy Ellmann Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lucy Ellmann
kids, Bee and I pretended to be sophisticates smoking cigarettes in weather like this, waving our twigs around as if brandishing cigarette holders. (Who uses cigarette holders anymore? Who even smokes?) I watched the steam rise from my mouth and suddenly had a sensation of utter happiness.
     
    There was an old soldier
    Who had a wooden leg,
    Had no tobacky
    But tobacky he could beg.
     
    There was a little duck
    And he had a wooden leg,
    Cutest little duck
    That ever laid an egg!
     
    The skin on his tummy
    Was as tight as a drum:
    Every time he took a step,
    A rum-a-dum-dum!
     
    Despite the car crash, I was right on time when I got to Kelley & Ping, and bounded up the steps, my bad ankle temporarily cured , perhaps by the cold. I went to the counter and got a big bowl of duck and noodle soup, and sat down at a little wooden table to await M. Z. Fortune, whose book I had obediently bought and attempted to read. It sure wasn’t Dickens, but it wasn’t as turgid as Hobbes either, or an electrical appliance manual. In fact it was pretty snappy, with touches of humor, and covered every kind of oral presentation, from small, difficult business meetings to weddings and after-dinner speeches. It was all laid out for you, clearly and succinctly—the style of delivery the author recommended for a speech . But the more I’d read about manipulating the audience with your tone of voice or timbre (“as lumberjacks would say”), and swaying people with your authority and your credibility, your jokes and your anecdotes, your charm and charisma ( just being a doctor apparently wasn’t going to swing it), the more I quailed. To impress an audience, I had to project a friendly, folksy (but not too folksy), brave, down-to-earth, and expressive demeanor (rather than just my usual nauseous one), and make expert use of “benchmarking”, “hooks”, “nutshell endings”, and “limited-opportunity windows”. What’s more, according to M. Z. Fortune, a speech should break down into chunks, with no more than three ideas per chunk, and no more than three chunks per speech. Nine ideas? I didn’t have one !
    “Every speech, like every dog, has its head, middle, and tail.” Where was the rest of the dog, I wondered—and what do you do if your dog of a speech lifts its back leg in the middle of your peroration? Another piece of M. Z. Fortune wisdom was, “Take fresh breaths whenever opportunity allows.” This was something I felt I’d been doing all my life without being told. After reading his book, I dreamt my speech was a hot dog that I had to eat in three bites: chomp, swallow, breathe, chomp, swallow, breathe, chomp, swallow, breathe—I thought I was going to choke! (When I told Bee this, she said she’d seen me eat a hot dog in two bites.)
    M. Z. Fortune would have his hands full getting a speech out of me . But before I had a chance to look around for him, Mimi appeared again! My shadow, my familiar, my very own New York nut-job, clutching her own bowl of soup on a tray. Who was following whom? And without asking, she sat down at my table and started ripping her clothes off, her coat anyway, which she dumped on the only other available chair. Where was old Fortune going to sit?
    “What’d you get?” was her only remark, as she peered into my soup.
    “Duck and noodle.”
    “Oh, I got duck.”
    “Well, that’s great,” I said. “But, uh, actually, I’m meeting someone. . . ”
    “So’m I,” she answered, unfazed. “A client.”
    What was she, a hooker ? She seemed too sweaty to be a hooker—she kept mopping her brow.
    “So, as I was saying, John—” she began, as if our conversation on Broadway had never been interrupted by separate cabs and a total change of location.
    “What?”
    “The guy who stole my quilt. We were only together a few weeks! And then when we call it quits, he asks for the keys to my apartment, like he just wants to pick up his stuff, and then he makes off with Aunt Phoebe’s quilt.

Similar Books

Temporary Perfections

Gianrico Carofiglio

Show of Force

Charles D. Taylor