Solutions
Most often he was called by the temp agency to work for a catering company, quite often at fundraisers. That’s where the temp was, at a fundraiser, slicing from the bloody side of a prime rib when he saw the bright knife, at first, just a blunt-tipped, silver-plated butter knife placed upon a nearby fold-out table for the sampling of seven cheese wheels. Cheeses From, the sign above the table said, the Continents We Serve. But because the butter knife was an improper utensil — never to be used for slicing but for spreading — not one distinguished guest at the international fundraising event, not one, put his or her mitts on it. Therefore, it touched not one continent of cheese. So the temp — questioning the distant or real or lasting results of fundraising to move the world forward, the how, the who sliced and got slices, and what spread — carefully swaddled the knife in a clean linen napkin and lifted it: not a butter knife, a bright and better knife. Untouched, not one fingerprint on it, the better knife beamed in a way it wouldn’t in a cheesy world. “So then what, exactly, were you doing with the knife in the pawn shop less than an hour after you left the fundraiser, if you didn’t steal it?” the police sergeant later asked the temp, when held for questioning at the precinct station. “What better place to augment such a bright beginning for the world, given the pawnshop’s dim and disarray?” the temp said. And then, a rookie officer chided, ‘Ooh, a smart guy: augment, dim, disarray.” “And then sell it, right?” the sergeant said, and opened a desk drawer, slowly pulled the knife out. “You’re killing me,” the temp said. “Look, selling was the last thing on my mind. I wanted just to demand a ridiculous price, so no pawnbroker could ever touch this world. I was making a statement, I guess, but it got carried away.” “Right,” the sergeant said, “but if that’s all, then why’d you run with it when we showed up?” “You got carried away,” the knife said, “what about me?” “Right there, that’s why I ran with it,” the temp said. “It made me feel bad for involving it. Now, I thought, I need to come up with an even better solution.” “So now we’re back to fundraising?” the rookie asked. “I just thought better knife, better world, you know?” the temp said. “Not always the case,” the sergeant said. “I’ll bet you know a lot about that,” the knife said. “I don’t care who you are,” the rookie barked, “you don’t talk to your superiors that way.” “It’s okay,” the sergeant said, “This isn’t anything I haven’t seen or heard before. Come with me.” The sergeant led them into the station kitchen where he poured a cup of burned coffee into a styrofoam cup, dumped in a load of powdered dairy creamer, mixed with the blade by chopping and pulling the dry creamer down into the liquid as if mixing cement. “What do you think you’re doing?” seemed to bubble up from the slurry, but the mud fixed. The knife stuck, plunged into the very middle of the cup, the sergeant carefully lifted and placed the cup at the back of the counter with the rest of the sink clutter. “So,” the temp said, “the world stands quietly on its own.” “We’ll see,” the sergeant said. “Given what I know about this place, it won’t be anytime soon that someone here tries to clean that up, and by the time they do, the knife, so glad just to be out again, will be speechless.” “Can you really do that?” the temp asked. “Sarge can do anything,” the rookie said.