So, Bad Penny did turn out to be a real person.

    Yesterday, at about 10:30, she started walking through the various rows of cubes on the 11th floor, shouting out my name. She was unfamiliar with the layout, didn't know where I sit, and wouldn't have recognized me if she saw me, so she decided the best strategy was just roam the floor shouting out my name.
    After she found me, I asked her why she didn't just ask somebody where I sat.
    "Oh. I could have done that too. Guess I'm a little crazy."
    When she did find me, she turned out to be a short, fit woman in her late forties. Her hair was reddish blonde, slightly crinkly, and piled sloppily into something just slightly less ambitious than a beehive. Around her neck, she wore a thin gold chain off which hung a turquoise medallion of some sort. She had on a white blouse that was strangely shapeless, as if it was fitted, but not to a human, and a black and white skirt. When she found my cube, I welcomed her to New York and extended my hand for a shake.
    "Can I hug you?" she asked.
    "I, um."
    "I'm going to hug you, okay."
    And she did.
    We made some small talk and she set up a meeting to basically go over everything I've ever done for the company, all the stuff I'm doing now, and everything I might ever have found myself doing had I stayed with the company. She had left 15 minutes clear on her calendar for the whole thing.

    At the meeting, about a minute into the meeting, she said, "We'll just have to tell Garry that we're c . . . um, con . . . what's the big word I'm thinking of? It starts with C. It means bring together."
    "Consolidate?"
    "Yeah. Consolidate. Thanks."
    "Sure."
    "You're going to have to help me with that."
    "I don't think Garry will have any . . ."
    "I mean with the words. I do that all the time. And after 3:00, forget it. I can barely make a sentence."
    "Okay."
    "I was nearly killed by this tractor trailer. This was seven years ago."
    "And now you forget words?"
    "Yeah. Mostly words that start with R and E. Together. Like 'retail.' See, the trailer hit me, then I hit the guard rail, the truck hit me again and threw me over the guard rail. Then I slid through three lanes of on-coming traffic, slamming into stuff all along the way. They pulled me out of the totaled car when it finally stopped sliding."
    She paused, as if reviewing the details of the story.
    "I stopped in this field next to the highway."
    "And so you forget words."
    "I got brain damage. Sometimes I forget words. Most R and E words, sometimes C words. And after 3:00, I'm a mess. I can hardly get a sentence out."
    "How often does it happen?"
    "Forgetting words? Not that often. Now and again."
    "Did you not forget words before you got, um, damaged in the brain?"
    "Oh, sure. All the time. Everybody does, right?"

    After 3:00 I met with twice. On both occasions she was articulate and didn't stumble over any big words. However, she did mention seven different times that she was completely mute after 3:00. "I'm useless. I can barely speak."

    I've come to the conclusion that Bad Penny was in this truly horrific accident and suffered some brain damage that makes her think she's an inarticulate near-mute, but that actually leaves her speech unimpaired.

Writing

    I submitted my story to Important Magazine X today. Hopefully it will make the cut. May said she think that the story ranks up there with my best – but then she married me, so you have to wonder what sort of standards she has.

    On the off chance they take it, it will be available free online and I'll let you know where to find it. If they reject it, I'll post it in the hole or something.