Henry: Two
Henry couldn't think of anyone who looked more unlike Queen Elizabeth than Ira.
"So what do you think?" The words sprayed out between their speaker's fleshy, permanently parted lips, imparted with an air of excitement and expectancy that made Henry uncomfortable so early in the morning.
The words were whispered through the cracks between their two cubicles. The lips were replaced by a single unwavering eyeball, blinking far more often than Henry thought normal. They both stood up, Ira climbing on his chair to see over the wall; his small stature not granting him the option of naturally obtained altitude.
"I think you're crazy. And your teeth look terrible." Henry thought he might be able to divert the oft-repeated subject.
Ira ignored him and continued, "It shouldn't take more than a couple of days," he was veritably beaming now, the look in his eyes a playful combination between pleading and overwhelming excitement. "If we left tonight we could get there by tomorrow evening. I'm serious this time. I've got the money."
"Where is it this time?"
"England. I want to meet the Queen."
Ira had always been the sporadic one. Willing to drop everything and drive across the country to see Vermont in the fall, because he'd read in a magazine once that the colors were "more vibrant" there; spending all of his money on various remedies to cure the ailments he only imagined he had; purposely making people uncomfortable by looking them in the eye and flashing one of his smile-at-me-you-bastard hundred watt smiles, teeth glaringly white from the dozens of pastes he applied and re-applied daily.
It was particularly difficult to look at him today; the thought passed through Henry's mind that Ira might have finally removed his teeth, opting for capped and highly polished xerox-white gemstones instead.
"Assuming we did go to England, you can't just 'meet' the Queen. She's a very busy woman. Not to mention all of those guards."
"Busy? How hard could it be to smile and wave?" Ira straightened up in mock-royal fashion, donning his best fake smile and waving stiffly while his chair rotated beneath his abnormally miniature feet, inspiring the formation of a smirk on Henry's face. Ira took advantage of his apparent success, raising an eyebrow and belting out, in a proper Queen's English accent, "Why hello darling, we are so pleased you could make it to Buckingham Palace for tea. Do sit down." Henry couldn't help but smile and laugh.
"Sit down, your highness."
"Do you dare tell the Queen such things?" Ira continued sardonically.
Henry couldn't think of anyone who looked more unlike Queen Elizabeth than Ira. His perfectly round face and perpendicular ears gave him a countenance more reminiscent of Alfred E. Newman than a member of the English Royal Family. "Don't you have work to do?"
"Not really. I can't concentrate. My designs always look frightfully wretched if I can't concentrate. The way I see it, I'm doing the company a favor by taking a break every twenty minutes or so. Otherwise all they would have is a bunch of drivel scribbled on expensive paper."
"Paper?"
"You know what I mean." Neither of them worked on actual paper anymore. Large, horribly expensive monitors demanded every inch their elderly desks could provide. The ailing wooden structures were simply not designed with hundred pound objects in mind. And they were certainly not designed to accommodate Ira's chronic clumsiness.
Ira's keyboard lay haphazardly propped between an extended drawer and the edge of his chair. As he hopped down from his cubicle perch his foot caught on the drooping cord of the keyboard and he fell, flailing about, knocking pencils and models into the air, and straining computer cords before lighting face down with a resounding thud. The ordeal had sent the desk into a series of epileptic fits that threatened to relieve itself of its high-tech burden on Ira's balding head; a possibility only realized by Henry that righted itself before any action was necessary to save his friend from certain doom.
After what seemed like less than a moment to Henry, Ira bounded to his feet like a man possessed, smiling with renewed intensity and wiping a fair amount of dirt and crumbs from his chest and face.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"England. Tomorrow. Are you in?"
"What the hell." Henry nursed the profound calling to adventure that was growing by the second, smiled as broadly as he had ever smiled in his life, and loosened his tie. "I'm in."
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