Pineapple on Canvas: The Odd Adventures of a Toy in the City

The one where Papple tattles.

Work had only gotten worse. The partner from hell, Richard Shermane, seemed to take a special pleasure in wearing Ella down. Pulling her from all her other deals to work only on his, he berated her constantly to the point it made the senior associate on the file feel uncomfortable.

The senior associate had confided to Ella that he thought that her work was hands down the best he had seen in a while, and apologized profusely for all the times that Rich would yell at her.

"Maybe he's just using some tough love," the associate had once proffered unconvincingly.

Ella had nodded her head in agreement, went to the washroom, cried for exactly five minutes, put on her thickest concealer to make sure her nose wasn't bright red like Rudolph's, and headed back to her desk. She had learned early on not to walk around the office without concealer when on a Richard Shermane deal.

It was during one such occasion that Ella, after leaving the washroom, decided to reach out to the little pineapple. A message from him always cheered her up, especially his "selfies gone wrong." Papple still hadn't quite mastered the art of the selfie and would send obscenely close-up and very out of focus photos of his grinning mug.

Now granted, his arms were stubby, so that could have been the reason for the out of focus photos, but Ella felt it was just Papple being Papple. Part of her thought that he did it on purpose because he knew it made her laugh, and the rotund yellow ball seemed to always have a pulse on when she needed a boost.

After a vigorous debate, Maher had conceded and purchased an iPhone for The Papple. Secretly, Maher was quite pleased to regain full use of his phone again. When Papple didn't have a phone, he had used every instant to "borrow" Maher's work phone, sometimes forgetting to give it back.

Ella sent a text that read, "How is my SWEET little pineapple?"

Papple was generally quite diligent with responding, so she was rather surprised when, twenty minutes later, she still had not received a reply from him. Perturbed, Ella checked her phone every ten minutes, but the screen remained blank. Starting to get anxious, she was just about to message Maher when a flurry of texts reached her screen.

"YOU NO HAVE SWEET PAPPLE."

"SOUR PAPPLE."

"WHY YOU LET HIM DO THIS?"

"BOY MAHR TRY KILL PAPPLE. ME MOVE TO MARLON PLACE."

These texts were followed by a flurry of emojis with "X"s in lieu of eyes. Immediately, Ella began messaging Maher.

"Babe, is everything okay? Papple just sent me some odd texts. What's going on? He seems angry." She waited anxiously for a reply.

She got a reply back almost instantaneously. It read, "Not much. We're at home doing push-ups. Why?"

Ella giggled to herself, it now being made clear the reason for her normally cheerful pineapple's sudden sour disposition. "Why are you making him do them?"

"I just measured his waistline and the little guy has gained at least a centimeter in diameter! That's a lot for someone his size. I'm thinking of starting him on the South Beach diet too. I didn't even know robots could gain weight, but he definitely has!"

"Okay, well he isn't happy. Let me forward you his texts, they're so adorable. He threatened to move to Marlon's place!"

"Ha! Good luck to him there. Marlon's even more of a fitness fanatic than I am. I'll let him know Marlon goes to the gym every single day. He also walks up fifty flights of stairs with a full bag of old finance text books!"

"Oh, our silly toy! Okay, heading back to work. Will forward texts shortly." Ella replied.

After hitting the send button, Ella sat back at her desk and began laughing. At first she did so silently, and then it got to the point where she couldn't hold it in anymore. The thought of the roly-poly plush doing push-ups with his tiny little arms was more than she could bear. Could they even touch the ground or did his stomach get in the way?

After ten minutes of hurt your gut laughter, Ella wiped the happy tears from her eyes and settled back down in front of her screen for the rest of the night. Papple was always the perfect break for her--he was her little hero and he didn't even know it!