Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon(2)

“Ta-da!” he said, teetering slightly.

    I sighed and punched a ringing phone line.

“Meg?” Rob said, sounding less triumphant. “Was my kata okay?”

“Much better,” I said as I transferred the call. “I just wish you wouldn’t practice in the reception room.”

“Oh, sorry,” he said, breaking the pose. “Who was that running out, anyway?”

“Today’s temporary switchboard operator,” I said. “She decided not to stay.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I did it again.”

    I shrugged. It was partly my fault, after all. I was the one who’d invented the fictitious Crouching Buzzard kata - named, of course, for our mascot, George - and taught it to Rob in a moment of impatience. Or perhaps frustration at his unique combination of rabid enthusiasm and utter incompetence.

    And to think that when Rob first became obsessed with the martial arts, I’d encouraged him, naively believing it would help build bis character.

“Give him backbone,” one of my uncles had said, and everyone else around the Langslow family dinner table had nodded in agreement.

    Rob had brains enough to graduate from the University of Virginia Law School. Not at the top of his class, of course, which would have required sustained effort. But still, brains enough to graduate and to pass the bar exam on the first try, even though instead of studying he’d spent his preparation classes inventing a role-playing game called Lawyers from Hell.

    He then turned Lawyers from Hell into a computer game, with the help of some computer-savvy friends, and failing to sell it to an existing computer-game maker, he’d decided to start his own company.

    As usual, his family and friends tripped over each other to help. My parents lent him the initial capital. I lent him some money myself when he hit a cash flow problem and was too embarrassed to go back to Mother and Dad. Michael Waterston, my boyfriend, who taught drama at Caerphilly College, introduced him to a computer science professor and a business professor who were restless and looking for real-life projects. The desire to stay close to these useful mentors was the main reason Mutant Wizards ended up in the small, rural college town of Caerphilly, instead of some high-tech Mecca like San Jose or Northern Virginia’s Dulles-Reston corridor.

    And now, less than a year later, Rob was president of a multimillion-dollar company, inventor of the hottest new computer game of the decade, and founder of Caerphilly’s small but thriving high-tech industry.

    Not bad for someone who knew next to nothing about either computers or business, as Rob would readily admit to anyone who asked - including Forbes magazine, Computer Gaming World, and especially the pretty coed who profiled him in the Caerphilly student paper.

    At the moment, the young giant of the interactive multimedia entertainment industry was looking at George and frowning. George ignored him, of course, as he ignored everyone too squeamish to feed him. Although I noticed that when Rob was doing his phony kata, George had paid more attention than he usually did to humans. Maybe I’d accidentally invented something that resembled buzzard mating rituals. At least George wasn’t upset. I’d found out, on moving day, that when George got upset, he lost his lunch. Keeping George calm and happy had become one of my primary goals in life.

“He’s looking a little seedy,” Rob said finally.

“Only a little?” I said. “That’s rather an improvement.”

“Seedier than usual,” Rob clarified. “Sort of… dirty. Do you suppose he needs a bath?”

“Absolutely not,” I said, firmly. “That would destroy the natural oils on his feathers. Upset the chemical balance of his system. Play havoc with his innate defenses against infection.”

“Oh, right,” Rob said.

    Actually, I had no idea what washing would do to a buzzard. All I knew is that if George needed washing, I’d be the one stuck doing it. And I suspected it would upset him. No way.

“Then what about birdbaths?” Rob said.

“For small birds,” I said. “Songbirds. And they only splash gently.”

“That’s right,” Rob said, his face brightening. “They clean themselves with sand.”

“Exactly.”

“We can get him a sandbox, then,” Rob said. “You can rearrange the chairs to make some room for it. What do you think?”

    He was wearing the expression he usually wore these days when he suggested something around the office. The expression that clearly showed he expected his hearers to exclaim, “What an incredible idea!” and then run off to carry it out. At least that was what his staff usually did. I was opening my mouth to speak when - “Rob! There you are!”