Author's Note: To those of you who have me on Author Alert, I apologize in advance for all the e-mails you're going to get. There are fifty of these total, but I'm going to try to space them out a bit.


The Most Deserving of a Higher Salary
#18 Grapes

-/-

My name is Daniel McPherson. My name is not Wetherbee. And I am certainly not paid enough to justify hand-feeding grapes to a high school dropout.

"You know, Wetherbee, I've always wanted to do this," he says as he reclines in his sun chair, looking almost contemplative as he chews a fresh purple grape. I grunt a little, biting back the urge to tell him that of the many things I have wanted to do with my life, putting small pieces of a fruit in his mouth and waving a palm frond over him has never been one of them.

"Wetherbee. I don't pay you to be bitter," he sighs melodramatically. "What do I pay you seventy-five an hour for?"

"To happily perform the whims of Marco the Magnificent," I sigh in recitation.

"And?"

I grimace. "And to let you call me Wetherbee."

My name is not Wetherbee. The boy calls me Wetherbee. His snickering, idiotic parents call me Wetherbee. The mindless paparazzi that chase him down write me up in the tabloids as Wetherbee. But as soon as I find another job where I can make several hundred a day for suffering fools, I will never, ever be called Wetherbee again.

"That's right," the boy says, pulling his sunglasses down to look at me and faking a terrible British accent, "now run along to the shed and get me my tanning oil."