On the next-to-last day of June, staffers at the The Typing Monkey's Seattle offices arrived to start the work week and were surprised to find publisher S.L. Kreighton in his office already, with the door open and Donovan's "There Is a Mountain" playing on the hi-fi.
Assuming he'd ended up in Seattle on a trans-continental drinking tour, and must be nursing a snarling hangover -- though we all found his musical selection, set on repeat, an odd choice for him sober or drunk -- we let him be.
But his eventual visit to the editorial offices found him in a pleasant mood. It was the kind of cheerfulness that causes suspicion in reasonable people. He smelled of root vegetables, sap and dandelions. Our receptionist insists that the boss had a bit of glitter on his cheeks. Some of the accounting staff saw him in the lobby, engaged in an animated conversation with the janitor, with whom he may or may not have left the building.
We wrote it off as a rarity that we'd all still manage to forget in time. Then the car-rental bill arrived and with a little more investigation, we believe he may have been at the 9th Annual Fairy and Human Relations Congress.
There is such a thing. And now we're a little upset that this wasn't offered as a corporate retreat. Read an account of this year's event.
***
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
-- from "The Stolen Child" by Wm. Butler Yeats
