Tall Pine Polka

There are four words Fenny Ness wished she had never spoken. These four words were not ones that cause obvious heartbreak like "We must operate immediately" or "I want a divorce," but because they were spoken, they nearly (literally) blew Fenny's chances for a normal life. Four innocent words addressed to a beefy teenager standing behind a counter patterned with smudges: "One Burrito Suprema, please." Of course, nobody knew that Ike and Inga would become one of the top-grossing romantic comedies ever made. A bartender in Boston, after seeing the movie, was inspired to invent the "Ike & Inga Igloo," a blend of gin and shaved ice and peppermint schnapps, and within days the drink was being served in bars and lounges across America. Costumed Ike and Inga parties were held on college campuses and in singles apartment complexes. A production assistant wrote an account of the making of Ike and Inga and was a bestselling author two weeks after the book's publication. Variety called the movie "one of the biggest surprise hits in cinematic history." Harry Freed, the movie's producer, agreed completely with that assessment. His career had been based on pumping out low-budget B movies, and that one should actually become number one at the box office and receive critical praise was a likelihood he'd been too levelheaded to ever consider. Especially considering his nephew had so much to do with it. "Ike and Inga?" Harry had said when his secretary brought him the script. "They did this a couple years ago--it was about that singer who wound up in jail, and his singer wife. The one with the muscles and the good legs." "That was Ike and Tina," said his secretary. "Your nephew wrote this." She pointed to the bottom of the cover page, which read in fancy gold leaf, "Conceived and written by Christian Freed." "That idiot," said Harry as he began kneading his temple with his fingers. Reading one of Christian's scripts was reminiscent of Harry's Golden Glove days in the ring with Hookie Turk: there was no way of escaping without a headache. "It's actually kind of a cute story." Like all good secretaries, she read all of his correspondence before her boss did. "He's really come along since that one about the paid assassin/manicurist." Harry rolled his eyes. "Then I'm presuming it's better than the one about the taxidermist who goes on a stuffing rampage at his high school reunion?" "Much better. Really, Harry, this one's going to surprise you." Harry sighed and sank into the cushions of his cracked leather chair. Drawing his knees to his chest, he wiggled his small feet at his secretary. She smiled at her employer of twenty-eight years, who in this position (one he assumed often) always reminded her of one of her grandchildren. But whereas grandchildren might want to be tickled or have their diapers changed, Harry Freed only wanted to be primed for work. "You can't concentrate if your feet can't breathe," he told his secretary long ago. Other secretaries might rebel against being asked to take off their boss's shoes, but Harry's secretary liked doing things for him. She had, after all, carried a torch for him for years, even though he wasn't interested in lighting it with his own. She gently untied and pulled off her boss's wing tips and placed them in a wildly patterned bread box on top of his desk. Harry firmly believed in "a place for everything and everything in its place"--he simply chose to make use of things that, if used for their original intent, were useless to him. "See," he explained to his secretary on her first day of work, "I get a lot of presents--people want to impress me, be my friend. So I get a god-awful hand-painted bread box from an actress who takes a coupleLandvik, Lorna is the author of 'Tall Pine Polka' with ISBN 9780345433176 and ISBN 0345433173.