Fun, Fun, Fun by Nancy Kaminski (c) July 4, 1998 ~~~~~ A little vignette in answer to LeeAnn Pultz's Rock Star! Challenge. Permission is given to archive this on the FKFIC website. ~~~~~ Natalie Lambert was bored. For some reason the recently deceased population of Metro Toronto had declined to die in mysterious, violent ways for the last three days, and the usually overworked medical examiner had no bodies to slice and dice. She had finished all her outstanding paperwork the night before. All her dissecting instruments were shining and in their proper places. Grace was on vacation, the other two techs were sick, and everyone else worked on a different floor, so she had no one to talk to. The only thing left for her to do was to straighten out her desk---and she just didn't want to. A messy desk was a happy desk, that was her motto. God, she was bored. After staring at the calendar picture that had stayed the same since June two years ago (she liked it and she wasn't going to take it down, no matter what anyone said, so there) for a half hour, she decided if she didn't hear something other than her own heartbeat and the whoosh of the air conditioning system soon, she was not only going to be bored, she was going to be crazy. The cassette player! She had a cheap little cassette player stashed in a supply cabinet, and she seemed to remember there was a battered box of tapes with it. She would have turned on a radio, but since the morgue was in the basement, all the steel in the building interfered with reception. Not even FM could punch through that steel barrier. She rummaged through the cabinet and finally found the cassette player behind a jug of disinfectant. "Yes!" she exclaimed, when she found the box of tapes. She took them back to her desk, plugged the cassette player into an outlet, and started sorting through the tapes. She needed something raucus, with a beat---something to revive her rapidly vegetating brain. Her happiness at finding the tapes dimmed as she read the titles. "Reflections: a New Age Sampler," "Birdsong in an English Meadow"... the somnambulant list went on and on. Belated she remembered she had brought in all sorts of soothing tapes to help calm her frazzled nerves when the workload got too heavy. Damn and double damn. She picked the last tape out of the box expecting to see another snoozer of a title. She looked at it and whooped. "Awwright!" Natalie popped the tape in, turned up the volume, and hit Play. After a few seconds, the tiny speaker emitted a cheerful blast of sound. If everybody had an ocean Across the USA Everybody'd be surfin' Like Californi-a You'd see 'em wearing their baggies Huarachi sandals too A bushy bushy blond hairdo Surfin' USA. Natalie joined the Beach Boys in her offkey voice. What she lacked in quality, however, she made up for in volume. Small beakers began vibrating. She pounded her hands on the desk along with the drums. She spun her chair while waving her arms in large, meaningless gestures. Every so often she pushed her chair away from the desk with her foot and shot across the room until she hit the dissecting table, then pushed off from there to another wall, then back to her desk, like a human ricochet. Well she got her daddy's car And she cruised to the hamburger stand now Seems she forgot all about the library Like she told her old man now And with the radio blasting She goes cruisin' just as fast as she can now And she'll have fun, fun, fun Till her daddy takes the T-Bird away. Natalie was dancing around the dissecting table now, her movements uncoordinated but energetic, flinging her arms in the air, bouncing up and down, and gyrating her hips happily. She was honking out the words to the chorus when her dancing brought her around to face the door. And an interested audience. She stopped dead in her tracks, her lab coat askew and her hair disheveled, to face the four people standing in the doorway. The blood drained out of her face and she ran to her desk to hit the Stop button on the cassette player, wishing she could just keep on running and hide in the cold room until the next week at the earliest. But that would be cowardly, so she cleared her throat, ran fingers through her hair, straightened her coat, and turned to face her critics. They were still standing speechless in the doorway---Nick, Schanke, and two paramedics with a stretcher bearing a bodybag. Nick broke the silence. With a sympathetic expression he asked, "Didn't Frankie make the beach party, Annette?" His mouth was trembling with the effort not to laugh. With as much dignity as she could muster Natalie answered, "No, he didn't. But it's my party, and I'll dance if I want to." With a regal gesture, she motioned the stretcher into the room and supervised the transfer of the body to her table. The paramedics left, but she thought she heard them sniggering quietly as they pushed the empty stretcher down the hall. Great. Now she would be the laughingstock of all the paramedics in the city. Just peachy. Somehow Nick and Schanke managed to give her a rundown on the victim without mentioning her dancing and singing skills. But as they turned to leave, Schanke murmured in her ear, "Slow night, huh?" before he sauntered out of the lab. Nick lingered a moment as he usually did. Natalie pointed a finger at him and threatened, "If you say one more word, Nicholas B. Knight, I'll think of something *really* interesting to put in your next protein shake." He gave her a brief hug and kissed her forehead. "Not a word, Nat, not a word. But if you ever want to try moonlight surfing..." She swatted him in the chest with the report folder he had given her. "Get out! Now! Go detect something!" Nick scooted out the door, calling "See ya later---Annette." over his shoulder. An eraser sailed past his shoulder and he grinned. Natalie stood in the middle of her lab, wondering how she would face going into the squadroom next time she had to run reports over there. No doubt Schanke would be regaling everyone in sight about how he found the medical examiner prancing around like an out-of-tune fool in the middle of the night. But as she turned to the body on the table (Yeehah! Something to do!) she was singing softly. " and she'll have fun, fun, fun, till her daddy takes the T-Bird awaaaaaaaay." ~~~~~ Finis Credits: C'mon, you know these are Beach Boy songs! "Surfin' USA" and "Fun, Fun, Fun." Nancy Kaminski nancykam@mediaone.net