This is the story of Fred and Wilma and their relationship--and no, it's not the bittersweet tale of two lovers you think it's going to be, either.
After all, how could it be? Fred wasn't exactly your Arnold Schwarzenegger type, if you know what I mean. To tell you the truth, he would have needed a year of intensive workouts to bulk up to your run-of-the-mill Martin Short type. Fred was five feet four inches tall, weighed less than the Flying Nun, wore thick glasses, sported a bald spot he refused to admit to, hardly ever smiled because of his buck teeth and poor gums, and he favored a disquieting habit of biting his fingernails just when everyone else wanted to eat.
Oh, he was bright, all right; the older and mustier the book, the more avidly he sought it out. But he lacked even the simplest social graces. Like, for example, at the office: Very few hairy-chested he-men (or lawyers who believed themselves hairy-chested he-men), when gathered around the water cooler on a Monday morning and engaged in wistful reminiscences about the incomparable Sandy Koufax, really wanted to have a skinny little wimp tell them that Koufax's record in 1956 was an unexceptional two wins and four losses, with a 4.91 Earned Run Average. Especially a wimp who lived alone and dressed like Fred. (How did he dress, I hear you ask? Well, along with polyester jackets and pants that never quite matched and overly-starched shirts, he wore white socks every day of his life. Of course, Fred was color blind, so he figured he was safe with white. But that's the kind of guy Fred was: Safe and white.)
Fred worked as a corporate attorney at a huge firm that had the good sense never to allow him to meet a client or appear in court, and within those limits he performed satisfactorily. He spent most of his lunch hours alone, daydreaming about being Alan Quatermain, or at least the Scarlet Pimpernel, and most of his evenings alone, sitting in his naugahyde Lazy-Boy chair, browsing through book after book, poem after poem. Sometimes he drank a little too much, and he never ate quite enough, and he could certainly have showered a little more often, but what the hell, nobody's perfect.
So there you have him, Frederick Bannister, tripping across the highways and byways of of his life, stubbing a toe here, bruising an elbow there, spilling this, dropping that, and managing to make it to the halfway point without too many major accomplishments or disasters.
And what of Wilma?
Interesting name, Wilma. Not in use much these days. I don't know about you, but to me the name conjures up a picture of a pretty face with blue eyes; red hair; a pert, upturned nose; perky breasts; and a remarkable stone-age figure.
Well, that's my Wilma. Fred's Wilma possesses none of these attributes.
Well, you ask, did she at least have a sharp mind with a quick turn of wit?
That's really kind of difficult to say. She possessed massive storage capacity, and no fourth-level equation, no matter how complex, was beyond her--but whether she was bright or merely well-programmed is a moot point. Or at least it was in the beginning.
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