There’s a new addition to my department and her name is — are you ready? — Cameo.

Cameo. Just like the funk influenced R&B band that brought us the immortal “Word Up.”

How incredibly awesome is that name?

And as if the name weren’t enough, she’s a Korean dwarf — with some kind of muscle disorder that causes her to tremble damn near continously!  No lie.

(Of course, it took Carly and I only one day to nickname her Tremulous Cameo — we think it sounds like one of those exotically beautiful pole dancers in a bar with beaded curtains who’s done her Kegels until she can expel ping pong balls from her lady bits at upward speeds of 20 miles per hour while she uses her Fort Knox tight sphincter to open your beer at the same time.)

And as delicious as all of that is, it pales in comparison to her real back story which she shared with Carly, Diane, and I over lunch after only two days in the department.

“This job has been a God-send for me. My kids and I were  really struggling after my husband left us,” she announced in her tiny Asian voice between bites of egg roll. (Carly and I wanted to take her out for Korean food so she’d feel at home but Diane had had Kimchi once before and said “fuck that shit, she can eat seaweed and octopus on her own time” so we compromised and went to the Golden Palace Chinese Buffet and Nail Emporium for “Aw-ruh You Can-uh Eee” which as it turned out was as good a place as any since Tremulous Cameo was actually born in Paducah).

Carly, Diane, and I exchanged glances. Great — she was one of them. You know, the types that tell you their hard luck story 20 minutes after they walk  through the front door.

“Well, I guess ‘left us’ isn’t really accurate,” she continued between bites of pork fried rice. “He didn’t have a choice after the judge sentenced him to 15 years.”

The three of us exchanged glances once more, only this time they were accompanied by wily smiles of giddy excitement — accounts and acquisitions not only had a resident leprechaun but a resident leprechaun with a scandalous past!

“15 years. That’s harsh,” Carly said, randomly spearing a deep fried chicken nugget from her sweet and sour chicken. “What’d he do?”

“Oh, it sounds much worse than it really is,” she replied, leaning into the table and using both her tiny T-Rex-like arms to retrieve her soda which she held at an angle and sipped generously from before replacing it. “He was just trying to save our family.”

The whole thing was like one of the more surreal episode of TWIN PEAKS, only instead of that crazy bug eyed dancing midget we had tiny Asian imp with the face of a rhesus monkey and an impeccable manicure.

“My husband was the assitant minister at our church and was in line to take over when the head minister retired. But when he did, the board instead voted to bring in a younger Korean who they hoped would be able to reinvigorate the minds of the younger people in the church and encourage the teenagers to attend. My husband was very angry. That’s when he started seeing the prostitutes.”

Once again, she used her abnormally proportioned arms to grab her soda for another sip. It took everything I had in me not to snatch the plastic glass from her Snausage fingered paws and shake the rest of the story out of her ill-proportioned frame.

“Anyway, we were already having trouble making our mortgage after our daughter’s kidney transplant so he started stealing money from the church treasury to pay for the prostitutes.”

“He stole from the church to pay for whores?” Carly gasped. “Damn!”

Tremulous Cameo nodded, blushing. “One of the prostitutes fell in love with him and he confided everything in her — where we lived, our children’s names, our daughter’s medical history, where he was getting the money to pay for their time together…everything. My husband told her he loved her and she thought that he was going to leave our family for her. When she began talking about quitting prostitution and getting married, my husband realized she had gotten the wrong idea. He told her that he wouldn’t leave me and she became enraged, telling him she would kill me and the children so that he could be with her. My husband told her he wouldn’t allow her to harm us and even if she did, he would never want to be with someone who could take a life. He said that made her even angrier and she threatened to tell the church about the money he’d taken. That’s when he strangled her.”

Shut.

The.

Fuck.

Up.

“Strangled her?” I asked, leaning in to catch every word that fell from her Cover Girl #67 Raisin Hell colored lips.

“Yes,” Tremulous Cameo replied, “to save our family. She was going to destroy us.”

“Didn’t him strangling a hooker destroy your family?” Diane intejected, jabbing the air with her fork for emphasis.

“In the end, yes — but he did try to do the right thing,” our pocket co-worker said with a flip of her bob. “Unfortunately, the police used his DNA they found in her body to connect him to the dump. After he was sentenced, I asked him to grant me a divorce so that the children and I could put the prostitute’s murder behind us and move on.”

“How’d he take that news?” I asked, hoping to hear how he threw himself over the table and had to be restrained by four guards until the elephant tranqs were administered and he was trussed up in Hannibal Lector restraints.

“He just signed the papers. I thought everything was fine until I took the children to the prison to see him one last time before we moved and he said when he gets out he will find me and make me pay for stealing his children and ruining his life. My attorney said not to worry, though — it is very stressful for men when they go into the penal system and they often say things they don’t mean. The children and I haven’t heard from him for nearly a year so I think he has made peace with things. And now I am dating a young man I met on an internet dating site.”

“What’s he like?” Carly asked, looking Tremulous Cameo over as she used her tongue to extract a piece of chicken from between two of her back teeth.

“He’s sweet and attentive and very, very clean, but also very nervous,” my new workplace obsession replied. “He works downstairs in the loan department.”

Sweet?

Very, very clean?

But nervous?

Downstairs?!?!?!

Oh hells to the oh no — it couldn’t be…could it?

I looked at Carly, then put my head in my hands. “What’s his name?”

“Joe.”

Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus.

Needless to say, we are taking Tremulous Cameo’s diminutive ass to lunch again on Monday. A full report will follow.