Writing emails to explain stupidity in gratuitous detail was one of the many mundane wonders of modern life for people like Tony Adison, and he was very happy to get a chance to share this experience with the old showman, Tenna.

After hearing that her head of marketing was taken into a hospital states away by a former TV bigwig, it seemed some alarm bells had gone off in Queen's head and inspired her to come meet the unprepared men face-to-face. To rather mixed results as the two gave the same story with wildly different implications, which wildly displeased the former to say the least...

So much so that despite the salesman's explanation being satisfactory enough no matter how compromising, the old TV star still felt it necessary to head up to New York to go muddy the story in person -- a trip he'd just recently returned from. The specifics and politics of whether any of them had made good decisions in the past month was not as important - they'd both decided - as just setting their story straight on some e-paper and sending it up for Queen's record. After Tony reassured Tenna that they could send a paper copy through the snail mail later, of course.

Antonio sprawled out on a cushy chair pulled up behind his second boss' office desk, watching as the old man sat at the keyboard of his hot, new Queen PC. The younger man's crutches leaning on the armrest and a dull ache in his hip bore witness to their antics. Their discussion of the final ultimatum's details (as well as Tony reminding Tenna of basic computer literacy) had faded away into an awkward silence by now, and that tension had quickly melted into amusement for the techie watching his associate type away. Key. By. Key.

The half-a-century-and-counting old fossil was making slow work of his email. One would think his skills at the typewriter he so proudly preferred would transfer - Tony himself had tried to roughly calculate his typing speed counting up scripts he'd written in a day, and it was something scary - but he here sat typing one careful key at a time, face buried in the glow of the screen, as if he had to check the computer's every input.

The only thing missing from the image were a pair of dusty readers sitting across his nose, add that and he would've made a perfect poster about the accessibility of Queen's computers for all ages and skill-levels. But Tenna was savvy enough to just wear contacts all the time. Not that they seemed to help him when it came to screens.

Despite how intently the old man glowered at the screen, it seemed he still had the mental capacity to strike up conversation with his associate.

"Y'know... It's pretty funny..." he began, still half absorbed in his effortful work. "Despite seeing Ms. Queen on so much of the advertising... I never would have thought your boss was a colored woman..."

Antonio violently fought the urge to howl in laughter, snorting into his palm like he was fighting for his life.

But a moment later his boss spun around, cueing him to fix his face. "W-Wait, sorry, that's not the right term..." he said half to himself. "They like to go by something else these days, right? It's..."

"Ahaehaehae," the younger man chortled. "Black! We call them blacks now, Tenna! Jesus...!"

He flinched and cocked his brow, "Uh... it's 'black people', no?"

Antonio was caught for a second before he flashed a smug grin to save face, "Well, if you want to be really politically correct, it's 'African Americans' now. But I can tell you for sure, no one in my generation calls black people 'colored' anymore. REALLY dates ya!"

"I-It was the proper term back in my day and--" The old showman knowingly cut himself off from continuing his cliches. "Anyways, you know I didn't mean anything by using the wrong term. I just wanted to say it surprised me to see a... a black woman at the top of her own business," he finished awkwardly as he turned back to his screen.

Not that Antonio would let him, these were the kinds of conversations he lived for working with Tenna. He tilted his head and teased again, "Why's that? You thought she was just a pretty face on the side of the box?"

From his angle behind, but slightly beside the desk, he could see Tenna's face pout in annoyance. "In a way yes..." he responded coolly. "But not because I didn't think she was capable of being her own boss. I've just seen my fair share of women and colored--" He had to take his hands off the keyboard to correct himself, "Black folk... alike sidelines like that, and I was just surprised she wasn't the same.

"Pleasantly surprised! It's a nice sign of the times," he continued gently as he returned to his work. "When I was first entering show business something like that was unheard of in the big leagues, we were still arguing over integration and everything, especially here in the south. And even when I was out west in Hollywood..." he groaned.

Tenna turned away from his screen again, really getting into a ranting mood. "You see that cartoon there," he said, pointing to a poster on the far wall Antonio recognized as an old cutesy caricature made of the showman.

"My first season of TV Time wouldn't've been the same at all without those cartoons, and they were done for me by a black woman. She was a great cartoonist, but she told me all about how everywhere she went in Hollywood she could never get into a position she wanted cause they didn't consider cartooning work fit for women, and just barely even wanted to hire blacks.

"Even when she worked with me!" he squawked. "I still worked under CBS then who organized all of the staff for me, and she wasn't originally on the design team, she was doing some other art grunt work. I only happened to see her designs when I was watching the cartoonists work one day, and when I did I told her to throw her hat in the ring with the main designers."

Once again he gestured grandly toward the lightly faded poster, "And lo and behold -- her's was the best one up there!"

Both men took a moment to stare at the image in silence -- Antonio in just mild fascination, but Tenna seemingly in nostalgic reverence as he gave a contented sigh. "I was so happy I got to choose it myself, it was really the perfect fit for me..."

He turned to the younger man with a childish grin that swallowed up his previous frustration, "I wanted a cartoon that looked modern but also like the oldies of my childhood, and I tell you, when I talked to that girl, she definitely understood what I wanted the most! She was such a doll!"

Before he could go on further, Tenna suddenly coughed into his hand, catching himself going off his preach script. "B-But anyways, the point is: she was talented, but she wasn't getting the work or credit she deserved just cause of all that nonsense. We couldn't even credit her for her work for nearly a decade cause the suits considered it too controversial to have a colored-- I mean b-black woman as an art director!" He stuttered on the correct phrase as if it felt especially wrong used in context. "It was ridiculous."

Antonio did not at all miss his chances to stifle a snort every time his boss failed to correct his vocabulary while giving his little sermon. And as he held his tongue, one simple question crossed his mind. "What was her name?"

"Her name was--" Tenna froze. His eyes slowly went wide as his cheeks reddened. "Oh goddamnit -- I remember everything about the woman but her name! I'll get back to you on that once I'm done with this..." he grumbled as he hunched back over his keyboard.

The younger man genuinely had to bury his enter face into his hands to stop from cackling aloud. Oh great -- first he calls blacks "colored", and now his memory's going too!

Antonio sighed and leaned back. "Yeah, things have definitely changed since then I guess... Though uh... not entirely. Queen still gets her fair share of race-obsessed haters."

As much as he was also secretly one of her biggest haters, he was somewhat proud to hate her on way more noble grounds than her race. As her PR manager he'd seen some really weird and baseless accusations thrown at her, but, like King would have wanted, Antonio hated her entirely based on the content of her character...

"But she's still doin' great for herself despite all that!" Tenna chirped optimistically as he clicked his keys one-by-one. "Being your own boss is hard, especially when there are folks who just wanna put you down, but she's dead-set on being her own woman! Gotta respect that."

"Mm... well I wouldn't say she's entirely doing it by herself," Antonio whined, running his hands through his hair. "She relied a lot on her rich brother to bail her out of bad deals before I came around."

"Well, then it's a nice black family-owned business!" The older man didn't even entertain him with glance. "Everyone needs help when they're just starting out."

Antonio nodded and shrugged flaccidly into the air. "Yeah, I guess you could call it that. It's definitely blacker than just her."

Tenna squinted into his screen before turning to his business partner. "What does that mean?"

"You went there! A huge chunk of the staff is black, no to mention all the other..." he gave toothy grimace, "nice, diverse peoples -- I'm one of the few white guys up there in headquarters." A genuine hint of confusion entered the salesman's tone, "It's kinda crazy."

All of a sudden, Tenna took his turn to hide a laugh behind his gloved hand. Causing Antonio to flinch back. "What?" he asked earnestly, only to be met with growing unabashed laughter from his boss.

He stared at the older man in disbelief, heat rushing to his face. "What the hell are you laughing about, asshole?"

When Tenna finally caught his breath between chuckles, he shook his head and smiled, "And here I was thinking Ms. Queen was the pretty face on the box...!" And with a bemused smile, he turned back to his screen.

But before Antonio could yell at him again, Tenna stretched back a hand to stop him. "H-here, Antonio," he said letting go of the last of his laugher. "I finished typing it up, how do I mail it to her?"

The younger man rolled his eyes and leaned forward to pull up his chair, wincing a bit as he put pressure back onto his hip.

Tenna pushed his own seat back to give Antonio the best view of his work, but his eyes only darted around the screen in silent confusion. Why was the UI completely wrong?

"You wrote this in Notepad," Antonio stated dryly. He turned to his boss, "You didn't even open the email client."

Tenna - his beady eyes half-obscured by his shaggy bangs - simply stared at him. He didn't even look embarrassed. "Can I please just use my typewriter and digitize it somehow?

"It's not that serious..." he sighed with an exasperated wave. "We have copy and paste, just move and I'll fix it."

As Tenna far too enthusiastically pulled out his clunky old typewriter, Antonio figured his presence was no longer really necessary. But before he hobbled out of the room, one thing still bothered him too much to do so.

"What the hell was that anyways? Why were you laughin' at me earlier when I was talking about Queen's?"

Now, clacking away an easy mile a minute on his typewriter, the old showman looked up at him with a big, stupid grin. A barely restrained laugh present in his voice he began, "A wonderful, black-owned business is out there making great products, and employing a bunch of other black and colored folks too...

"But then-" he lifted a hand off the keys and kept typing with the other like it was nothing - "they hire one white man as their public relations guy! You... you see the irony in that, right...?"

"Jesus Christ..." Antonio gasped silently. "I'm the goddamn diversity hire..."

Tenna wheezed and burst into raucous laughter -- finally enough to distract him from his typing campaign. "Man, have times really changed!"