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The following Wednesday, the midget was back at Norton’s and hiding in a coffee urn when the staff left and locked up. A few moments later the sign was down and an improved version hung in its place:
    NO SALESPERSON MAY LEAVE THE FLOOR
OR LOOK OUT THE DOOR
WITHOUT THE AUTHORIZATION OF A SUPERIOR .
    THE MGT .
    Markoff Chaney launched what he considered a reign of terror against the oversized idiots of the statistical majority. An electronics whiz since his first junior Edison set, he found it easy to reverse relays in street intersections, so that the WALK sign flashed on red and the DON’TWALK signs on green. This proved to be bereft of amusement, except in small towns; denizens of New York, Chicago, and similar elephantine burgs, accustomed to nothing working properly, ignored the signs anyway. The midget branched out and soon incomprehensible memos signed “THE MGT.” were raining upon employees everywhere.
    His father, crusty old Indole Chaney, had been a stockholder in Blue Sky Inc., a very dubious corporation manufacturing devices for use in low gravity; when John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. would place a man on the moon before 1970, Blue Sky suddenly began to haul in the long green. Markoff inherited a fund that delivered $300 per month. For his purposes, it was enough. Living in Spartan fashion, constantly crisscrossing the country by Greyhound (he soon knew every graffito in every White Tower men’s room by heart), dining often on a tin of sardines and a container of milk, Markoff left a train of anarchy in his wake.
    EMPLOYEES MAY NOT EXCHANGE VACATION DAYS .— THE MGT .
    EMPLOYEES MAY NOT PUNCH OTHER EMPLOYEES’ TIME CARDS . ANY DEVIATION WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION .— THE MGT .
    FILL OUT IN TRIPLICATE . KEEP ONE COPY , MAIL ONE COPY TO THE OFFICE AND SEND THE THIRD TO THE TRANSYLVANIA CONSULATE .— THE MGT .
( THIS WAS USED AT A BLOOD BANK , OF COURSE .)
    On January 18, 1984, the midget was in Chicago, hiding in a coffee urn in the tenth-floor editorial offices of
Pussycat
magazine. He had a Vacation Schedule Form with him, to be run off on Xerox and distributed to each editor’s desk.This form was his masterpiece; it was sure to provoke a nervous breakdown in anyone who tried to decipher and comply with all its directions, yet it was not much different, on the surface, from the hundreds of similar forms handed out in offices daily. Chaney was quite happy and quite impatient for the staff to leave so he could set about his cheerful task for the night.
    Two editors passed the coffee urn, talking.
    “Who’s the
Pussycat
interview for next month?” one asked.
    “Dr. Dashwood. You know, from Orgasm Research.”
    “Oh.”
    The midget had heard of Orgasm Research and it was, of course, on his shit list. More statistics and averages, more of the modern search for the norm that he could never be. And now the bastard who headed it, Dr. Dashwood, would be interviewed by
Pussycat
—and probably would get to fuck all the gorgeous Pussyettes at the local Pussycat Club. Chaney fumed. Orgasm Research moved from the middle of his shit list to the top, replacing his archenemy, Bell Telephone.
    The thought of Dr. Dashwood remained with him all night, as he ground out his surrealist vacation memo on the office Xerox. He was still fuming when he returned to his pantry-sized room at the YMCA and slipped the bolt (to keep out the wandering and prehensile deviates who infest YMCAs everywhere). Dr. Francis Dashwood, supervisor of orgasms, and now ready to dive headfirst into a barrel of Pussyettes: the midget suffered at the thought.
    But it was nearly 4 A.M. and he was tired. Tomorrow morning would be time to do something about Orgasm Research.
    Chaney dreamed of Dashwood measuring orgasms with an n-dimensional ruler in Frankenstein’s laboratory whilemen in trench coats went slinking about in the shadows asking unintelligible questions about 132 missing gorillas.
    In the morning he shuffled through his bogus