Berowne's 268

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "Q" is for "Queenie")

No quiz this week; just a little story...

“What does it say?”

“What does what say?”

“On the cup. The words on the cup.”

“Oh. ‘Winner, First City-Wide Dance Contest’”

“So it definitely says ‘winner’? Then we’ve got a problem.”

“Let’s go over this carefully again. The whole point of this dance contest was that it would be great publicity for Mabel Carswell, who as you know may be our next mayor. Her daughter Stella was to win and the two of them, Mom and daughter, would be writ up in our weekly Tribune and be seen holding the winner’s cup.”

“Right, and everyone understood that.”

“Evidently not everyone. Then, once the election was held, I was assured that I would be appointed City Manager. But now someone has messed up and allowed somebody else to win! You simply can’t depend on people anymore!”

“Well, it wasn’t that they were allowed to win. That girl Queenie Hasenlaufer and her partner were simply the best dancers.”

“What has that got to do with it? My job – and yours, as far as that goes – depends on Mabel’s daughter Stella winning that cup. Now, start thinking; how can we fix this?”

“Okay then, how about this? Those cups only cost thirty-five bucks. We could buy another cup, inscribe on it ‘Special Award’ or some such thing and give that to Queenie and her partner. The winner’s cup would then go to Stella and Mabel would be happy.”

“I don't mean to linger over this, but Stella didn’t win. An unimportant point to us, but it’s of great interest to the residents of our fair city.  There’d be rioting in the streets if they thought we were trying to pull something crooked.”

“Well, who let this happen? Who were the judges? Don’t they know anything about politics? We spent thousands of dollars putting this dance contest together for one reason, as support for Mabel Carswell’s campaign, and we didn’t blow all that dough to give an award to someone named Queenie!”

“Let alone someone named Hasenlaufer.”

“That's Phil; he always has an impulse to say something.  Thanks, Phil. You’ve made your contribution. Now go sit over there.”

“Suppose we let it leak out that someone has stolen the cup, since it is so valuable. So the dance festival authorities, who are you and me by the way, have decided that the only fair thing to do is to acquire another cup and award it to both Queenie and Stella. They’ll be co-winners. Queenie will ultimately get the cup to keep and Stella in the meantime gets her photo op, holding the dam’ thing with her Mom for the local media.”

“You don’t know much about Mabel Carswell, do you? The only thing that would mean anything to her would for her daughter to win – which is what I guaranteed her would happen. Way things are going, someone else is going to wind up as City Manager and I’ll be back to convincing folks that they may be able to save fifteen percent on their car insurance, like that little green rodent on TV.”

“Well, as far as I can see, that ‘co-winner’ solution is all we’ve got. How about it, Phil? Have you got anything else to suggest?”

“Well, in hauntingly tight situations like this it was always encouraging for me when I remembered what my Dad used to say: When the tough get going – or when you go getting tough – something like that, whatever – but it was always encouraging.”