Mr. Fastidious
Cantrell Jefferson was squandering his clean clothes. For two weeks running every new shirt put on was within minutes dotted with mustard squirted from between dog and bun or stained with some dripping Korean sauce or soup spilled from a spoon.
Evander Fastidious, known more often than not as Mr. Fastidious by those who admired his always clean and seemingly condiment-impervious attire, was not always true to his name, for although he did demand of himself exacting and sometimes even daunting standards regarding all things within his control, he did not lord over others his obvious superiority, and could not only associate with lesser beings, but be gracious to them.
Oh it doesn’t look that bad, Evander said to Cantrell, who at the time was smearing with a budweiser-soaked napkin the small dark yellow mustard stain into a large light yellow one.
That’s very nice of you to say, Mr. Fastidious, said Cantrell, while searching for just a single speck of anything on Evander’s shirt. Knowing that Mr. Fastidious would soon grow wary of his sloppy company, Cantrell tried changing the subject and began telling his meticulous associate about a recent trip he had been on to visit his relatives in the South.
After the second margarita I apparently lost my mind and began discussing politics with my brother, who still lives in the South and is apparently still deeply entrenched in those conservative southern beliefs that the liberal northern elite find so alien, if not laughable.
I suppose my phrasing was condescending to begin with, for I had asked my brother how he and his fellow party-members felt about the selection of a single-celled organism as a potential vice-president, especially considering that his presidential candidate was so old and with certain health issues that might prevent him from finishing out his term. I mean if, God forbid, your candidate should die in office, we would have an amoeba running this country. Are any of your people concerned about that? I asked him. He countered by reminding me that my candidate was a foreign-born, homosexual-loving, baby-killing, terrorist, who wanted to tax us back to the stone age, and take homes from the rich and turn them into housing projects for the poor.
Mr. Fastidious listened to Cantrell Jefferson without so much as a blink or nod, and when Cantrell paused that first time, Evander remarked, you’ve got a bit something...and pointed to the right side of his own mouth and made a flicking motion, to clean off that bit of errant food that he so often observed on others, but never in his own mirror.
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