GOOFBALL

Episode 5:THE MILE-HIGH DISASTER

Fante had packed for Chicago by laying every item he owned on his bed and then scooping them into a large garbage bag with the drawstring tie. “It’s minimalist,” he told Maya, who was watching him attempt to fit a desk lamp into the bag. “I saw it on a travel blog.”

“That’s a lawn and leaf bag, Fante.”

“It’s durable! And it has built-in air holes!” He pointed to the tears he’d accidentally made with his shoes. “Ventilation!”

Maya handed him an actual suitcase—hard-shell, with wheels. “Ms. Pin called. She said if the Golden Stapler gets lost, stolen, or ‘emotionally damaged,’ you’ll be working in the scooter parking lot. As the speed bump.”

Fante gently placed the stapler into his jacket pocket. It hummed against his ribs, warm and alive-like. “We have a bond now. It won’t leave me.”

........

Greg met them at the airport wearing a tracksuit that said “BUSINESS ATHLETE” across the chest. He was doing lunges at Gate 4.

“Travel protocol,” Greg panted, handing Fante a binder three inches thick. “Page one: breathing exercises for altitude. Page forty-seven: what to do if the stapler achieves sentience at thirty thousand feet.”

“It’s already sentient, Greg. It ate my granola bar this morning.”

“It processed your granola bar,” Greg corrected, switching to jumping jacks. “There’s a difference.”

The airport was Fante’s natural enemy. It combined three things he feared most: revolving doors (which he’d been banned from using at LogiCore after “The Incident”), people moving with purpose, and announcements he couldn’t understand. Bing-bong. “Will passenger Fante please report to security for being suspiciously sweaty?”

“I’m not sweaty!” Fante shouted at the ceiling. “It’s the suit! It’s breathable!”

It wasn’t. The suit was 100% polyester and made a sound like swish-swish-swish that caused three TSA agents to turn their heads in unison.

Security was where everything went wrong. Not immediately—at first, it was just normally wrong. Fante put his garbage bag on the conveyor belt. It got stuck. He tried to pull it through and the bag ripped, scattering his belongings: three mismatched socks, a waffle iron, the clown horn whistle, and forty-seven granola bars.

Then came the stapler.

Fante placed the Golden Stapler in the bin. It rolled through the X-ray machine. The machine made a sound like WEEEEE-OOOOP-WEEEEE-OOOOP, a noise usually reserved for nuclear material or emotional baggage.

“Sir,” said a TSA agent who looked like he could bench-press a refrigerator. “Step aside. Is that a… weapon?”

“It’s office supplies!” Fante said.

The agent picked up the stapler. It immediately stapled his tie to his shirt pocket. Chunk.

“Ow,” the agent said, more confused than hurt. “It moved on its own.”

“It’s enthusiastic!” Fante reached for it. The stapler leaped—actually leaped—into his hand like a loyal dog. “See? Good stapler. No drone strikes.”

The agent’s radio crackled. “We have a Code Gold at Checkpoint B. Possible possessed office equipment.”

.........

They made it to the gate, but Fante was now flagged as a “Stapler Guy” and had to wear a special yellow lanyard that said ASSISTED TRAVELER. Greg was furiously highlighting sections of his binder. The Golden Stapler was now zip-tied into a clear plastic bag, which made it look like evidence from a crime scene.

The plane was a new horror. Fante had never flown before. He’d assumed “economy class” meant you got an economy-sized bag of peanuts and room to stretch. Instead, he was wedged between Greg (who immediately put on a sleep mask and noise-canceling headphones the size of dinner plates) and a woman with a emotional support peacock.

“It’s actually a turkey with feathers glued on,” the woman whispered to Fante. “But the paperwork went through.”

The turkey looked at Fante with ancient, judgmental eyes.

“Hi,” Fante said to the turkey.

The turkey gobbled softly. It sounded like judgment.

The plane took off. Fante’s stomach stayed at the gate. He gripped the armrests, accidentally honking his clown horn whistle, which had been in his pocket. HONK.

Half the plane turned around.

“Sorry!” Fante said. “Turbulence!”

“We’re still on the runway,” Greg said from inside his headphones.

As they ascended, the Golden Stapler began to vibrate in the plastic bag under the seat. It didn’t like the altitude. Or maybe it didn’t like the turkey, which was now pecking at Fante’s swishy pant leg.

“Don’t eat the fabric,” Fante told the turkey. “It’s synthetic. You’ll regret it.”

The turkey ate the fabric.

Suddenly, the captain’s voice came on: “Folks, we’re experiencing some… unusual activity in the cabin. Please fasten your seatbelts. Also, if anyone is carrying a 24-karat gold stapler, please press the call button.”

Fante pressed the button.

A flight attendant appeared. She looked at the vibrating bag. She looked at Fante’s yellow lanyard. She looked at the turkey, which now had polyester stuck in its beak.

“Sir,” she said. “Is your stapler… crying?”

It was. The Golden Stapler was making a sound like a tiny violin being played by a very sad ghost. Wee-ooh. Wee-ooh.

“It’s afraid of heights!” Fante realized. He unzipped the bag. “It’s okay, buddy. Look, we’re above the clouds. It’s like a blanket. A sky blanket.”

He held the stapler up to the window. The sunlight hit the gold. It blazed like a laser pointer from heaven, directly into the pilot’s eyes.

“MAYDAY, MAYDAY,” the intercom crackled. “We’re being targeted by a blinding golden object in row 14. Requesting immediate descent into Chicago. Also, coffee. Please, someone bring the pilot coffee.”

The plane dropped sharply. Fante’s garbage bag belongings flew everywhere. The turkey screamed. Greg slept through it all, somehow doing crunches in his seat.

........

Chicago was windy, cold, and had too many deep-dish pizza places that looked exactly like the security checkpoint. Fante clutched the stapler to his chest as they walked into the StapleMax headquarters—a building shaped like, unsurprisingly, a giant stapler.

Ms. Pin waited in the lobby. She looked at Fante’s disheveled appearance: his torn garbage bag luggage, his pants that were now cropped at the knee thanks to the turkey, and the Golden Stapler, which had somehow acquired a small airline blanket wrapped around it like a cape.

“You brought it,” Ms. Pin said.

“I promised,” Fante said, holding it out.

The stapler clicked. It sounded happy to be home.

The meeting was in five minutes. Fante had no presentation—his laptop had been confiscated by TSA for “being too old to be a real computer.” He only had the stapler, his clown horn, and his wits.

The conference room was full of StapleMax executives in sharp suits. They looked like a flock of crows waiting for something to die.

“Present,” Ms. Pin commanded.

Fante stood up. He looked at the Golden Stapler. He looked at the executives. He looked down at his swishy pants, which were making a sound like *shwoosh-shwoosh* in the silent room.

Then he stapled his tie to the table.

Chunk.

“Oops,” Fante said.

But the executives leaned forward. They looked at the stapler. They looked at the perfect, beautiful, golden staple now holding Fante’s polyester tie to the mahogany.

“It’s… it’s not jamming,” whispered one executive. “I’ve never seen it not jam.”

“The Golden Stapler only works for the worthy,” Ms. Pin said, her eyes wide.

Fante tried to pull his tie free. It wouldn’t budge. The staple was perfect. It was art. It was the Sistine Chapel of fasteners.

“LogiCore,” Fante said, improvising wildly, “is like this staple. We hold things together. Even when those things are… uh… moving very fast… and afraid of heights… and possibly possessed.”

The executives applauded. They signed the contract. They gave Fante a bonus—a platinum stapler that hummed in harmony with the golden one.

........

The flight home was quieter. Fante sat in first class—upgraded because the pilot wanted to “keep an eye on the stapler guy.” The Golden Stapler sat in its own seat, buckled in, wearing a tiny sleep mask.

Greg sat across the aisle, reading the travel binder backwards. “You did it,” Greg said. “You voltroned the account.”

“I stapled my tie to a table.”

“Exactly.”

Maya picked them up at the airport. She took one look at Fante—covered in turkey feathers, carrying a garbage bag, holding two singing staplers—and sighed.

“You’re a disaster,” she said.

“But I’m your disaster,” Fante replied, getting into the car.

He sat on his clown horn. HONK.

The car alarm in the next row went off. Three more cars followed. A dog started barking. The Golden Stapler clicked happily, keeping time like a metronome.

Maya drove them home, laughing so hard she had to pull over.