“Heavens!” Isabel squeaked. “I detect a note of hyperbole in your hormonally wrought proclamations!”
Bernie dropped a large stack of hardbound South African histories from the balcony. With the dexterity of two people who spent at least a third of every year on varsity sports teams, Isaboltz narrowly dodged the crushing weight of Boer rule.
Bernie grunted and hurled a stack of incomplete FAFSAs down in a hurricane of federally unfunded hopes and dreams. Social Security numbers sliced the foul-smelling ginkgo trees to bits.
When his attacked floundered, the raging, polo-shirted he-man of reference slid backwards on the perpetually leaky rooftop. Something behind him crunched.
Isabel’s ears, attuned to the sounds of plants rustling and gossip, pricked with fear. “WAS THAT AUDREY YOU STEPPED ON?” she shrieked.
StealthBoltz bounded up the four stories to discover that, indeed, the four-foot amaryllis had been toppled by He-Bernie. However, being from the Tierney Broman Empire, he didn’t really get what the big deal was about a large, nonflowering perennial being knocked over. It wasn’t like losing your last guy in Call of Duty, but whatever.
Enraged by this display of masculine indifference, Isabel kicked off her Weejuns and flew a rocket-engined version of her clunky green bike up to the roof to inspect the damage.
“Bernie! My plants are not a leftist Latin American government, you cannot go toppling them like the goddamn CIA!”
“Did someone say Uruguay?” Stuart called up. “Because I just found out that Google Maps doesn’t recognize it! It’s like Ontario! Or Delaware!”
“No, Stuart, go back to making that list of fictional places you learned about in Spanish,” Bernie commanded condescendingly. For no one could ever be as smart as he-Bernie.
Seeing that StealthBoltz was too deep in video-game thoughts to help much, Isabel summoned years of long-dormant, Nancy Drewish courage and glided over to where he-Bernie sat.
“Ahem, Bernie. Can you truly answer ALL of the reference questions?”
“Of course I can. I take my knowledge from my Power Pen.”
“Uh-hmm.” Anal-retentive phallo-centric weirdo, Isabel thought with trademark irrational disdain. Well, years of cognitive behavioral therapy and classic children’s literature had some magic to work on this Freudian fraud. “Bernie, where does Hitchcock cameo in North by Northwest?”
“On the trolley. Incidentally, your comments in that class were highly unoriginal.”
“So are your ad hominem remarks. Two points for team Isaboltz!” interjected Mock Trial Justine from a treetop canopy.
Isabel quizzed him right and left about neorealism and postmodern politics, never once agreeing with his references. There had to be some way to stump him!
The fourth floor, cavernous and intimidating to the liberal-arts majority at Fordham, sprawled before Isabel. Framed folio prints of orchids and stamens caught her eye. Mostly because of the highly sexual, O’Keefe-esque intimations of the diagrams, but also...
“Bernie, what is an epiphyte?”
Like the blond bitch in Dark Shadows, a crack spread across he-Bernie’s shoulder.
“What about an epiphyll? Maybe something easy--what does a milkweed pod look like?”
More cracks.
“My second-graders know this.”
An arm fell off, clattering noisily against Audrey’s dilapidated pot.
“I...do not...understand.”
“You need to come up to the fourth floor more often.” Or at least you should have a week ago, when I still a. cared and b. had a sliver of job security.
With every nagging, feminine criticism she lashed at him, he-Bernie seemed to shatter more.
“Whether you can afford to make documentaries in South Africa means nothing to me. It seems like a white-man’s-burden idea anyways. Something that should have been left in the era of Rudyard Kipling. In addition, your polo shirts make you look like a middle-aged libertarian, which repudiates any claim you have on being “always stylishly dressed.” And while you claim to challenge gender-norms in the workplace in being a he-brarian, admittedly you are clever--yet it is a genuine attitude, not a title, which creates real change. A president is nothing without his New Deal doctrine. Harrumph. Now if you and your vast brainage will excuse me, I have to go fight for my job back.”
In the treetops, Mock Trial Justine applauded young Isabel for finally citing the prosecution’s claims as evidence of their own guilt and rebutting each of their points of attack.
Isabel daintily pushed the shards of broken patriarchy off the balcony and swished back to her flying rocket moped bike. It had been a long day of challenging hetero-patriarchal norms, and she was thrilled to float back to her sweaty apartment, peel off her summer frock, and watch French movies while getting drunk off the “stereotypical French” drinking game with Bboltz.
Yet little did she know the fragments below were reassembling. “I have friends!,” cried the shifting shards. “In circulation! The core of the library! See if you ever find your favorite book on The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn ever again! Knowledge of Windsor Terrace’s demographics will be lost to you forevaaaaaaaar!”
