Isabelle Goes Derivative
ISABELLE: Is Senator Rocker going to vote for the financial regulation bill or isn’t he?
TILLIE: Senator Rocker is studying the legislation. He will make a decision after Mother’s Day.
ISABELLE: What is he going to do, ask his mother?
TILLIE: He is not going to be rushed into voting for a piece of bureaucratic, bleeding heart latte-drinking big government intrusion.
ISABELLE: Good one, Tillie. The reason they’re having low-level staffers like us sit down is because they’re not going to waste the chief counsel’s time arguing with Senator Rocker and the greedy ignoramuses he represents.
TILLIE: I am not a low-level staffer.
ISABELLE: Yes, I know. Members of the Young Republican Club only become executives.
TILLIE: This isn’t Mount Holyoke College anymore, Isabelle. This is the United States.
ISABELLE: In the United States, derivatives have to be regulated.
TILLIE: It so happens that I am prepared for this meeting.
ISABELLE: That would be a first.
TILLIE: I have talking points.
ISABELLE: Fine. Go ahead.
TILLIE: Derivatives are good for the environment.
ISABELLE: No they’re not.
TILLIE: I raised my family on derivatives.
ISABELLE: You don’t have any children.
TILLIE: Every thousand derivatives sold creates half a job.
ISABELLE: That’s a lie. That’s a total lie. You made that up.
TILLIE: I did not. Somebody else did.
ISABELLE: There’s a surprise.
TILLIE: Why are you being so mean to me, Isabelle? And it isn’t because I’m a Republican. I was always a Republican. And I really liked you. And we used to tell each other everything. But ever since graduation, you won’t speak to me, you won’t answer my phone calls, and when I sent you a note and told you how cute you looked on television at the inauguration party, you wouldn’t even meet me for milk and S’mores. What did I do wrong?
ISABELLE: You stole my internship at the Treasury Department. That was supposed to be mine.
TILLIE: They never told me it was supposed to be yours.
ISABELLE: You stole my internship. You had your uncle call the Under-Secretary.
TILLIE: Well you could’ve done the same thing.
ISABELLE: Yuh, if I was related to the Mellon family.
TILLIE: I didn’t tell my uncle to call the Under-Secretary. I just mentioned to him that I had seen him on Martha’s Vineyard and he was with some woman who wasn’t my Aunt Beatrice.
ISABELLE: You didn’t know they promised it to me?
TILLIE: No. Of course not. I would never do that to you.
ISABELLE: So you blackmailed your uncle.
TILLIE: No. Well….yes.
ISABELLE: Could you…..show me how to do that?
TILLIE: Oh sure. My family is just a treasure trove of embarrassment. I can show you how to work all of them. Do you still drink?
Share