Chapter Eighteen―Linda in Wonderland

Linda Winkelman opened her eyes the slightest possible and found the light painful. A miasma of cinnamon and yeast that hung in the saturated air made her nauseous. And there could be a little less steam, please. What she saw through a lopsided latticework of lashes was a large, echoing cavern―spotless. A center aisle stretched toward a hearth whence issued the smells of baking. A kitchen. That was interesting. She was experiencing the kaleidoscope vertigo and ringing ears of a mild hangover. Walk it off, that was it. That must have been one hell of a party.

Her last memories were of the 7th Avenue local. That skanky man, the one with the smelly overcoat! Linda gagged and found that her mouth was taped shut. An unpleasant odor of unwashed citizen and a large hand reached from behind to remove the tape. "Ouch!"

"Sorry, my dear―that should help you breathe easier," said someone from out of her sight.

"Who are you? Where am I?" No answer. Oh, Jesus, I'm not dreaming, there was no party. Register terror, please.

Her brain was receiving messages from far away places of her body that now was not the best time to make any sudden moves. "Oh well, it's now or never." She tried to stand and was pulled up short. "What?" Her wrists and ankles were bound with white surgical tape. That brought her eyes wide open. Yes, she was tied up, definitely tied, and seated on a wooden bench at a long polished table. An empty spool and a pair of shears lay on the floor at her feet. Whoever had tied her up had taken a few turns around the bench, leaving a short tether, then apparently run out of tape.

Sweet reasonableness said she should now be in a blind, paralytic panic. Nope―no horripilation, no goosebumps, no trembling, just wobbly was all. She felt in control and was pleased with herself. Here I am cool as a cucumber and mightily pissed-off. She held onto the thought and cherished it. She was tied hand and foot, a prisoner of person or persons unknown, most likely drugged and unconscious minutes before, and she was making plans. Linda started to laugh, the laugh became a sneeze, she reached to scratch her nose and was brought up short by the tape. The unrelieved itch was more demanding than uncertain prospects at the hands of her captors. She stood and the adhesive tape tore. With both hands still tied together she joyously scratched her nose. No longer attached to the bench, she could turn, and if need be, hop about. But first the bandages. She tried unwrapping her hands with her teeth but with minimal results. Good glue on that tape. People did it in the movies all the time. Well then, feet first, hands later. Before bending to undo her ankles, she took a deep breath and looked around the neighborhood. It had to be a kitchen, it steamed. But not the sort of kitchen where you imagined an old granny happily concocting dinners for the hungry threshermen. A smell of fresh burning mixed with the stale cooking odors of many yesterdays. Walls and shelves glittered and bloomed with implements but a forlorn smell of buns gone wrong pervaded the ancient air. Close by were tangy overtones of burnt eggs and cheese, and haphazardly tended bread whose yeast had worked too long. A blocky, bearded, well-muscled man she recognized from the subway was occupied at the stovetop burners of an enamel, iron and nickel-plate range. He wore a high starched chef's hat and an apron knotted on his chest. He was digging at an omelette pan with a spatula.

Linda paused to monitor her heart rate. Good. Regular, not racing with terror, just like in aerobics class. Goes to show you never know how you will react in a crisis until the crisis occurs. "I assume that I have been kidnapped." Her voice did not sound as confident as she felt.

The man looked up at her, still digging at the omelette pan. "You are conscious. Excellent. Sorry about the tape, but We like to observe the forms. Isn't that what kidnappers are supposed to do―the tape, I mean? I’m new to this hands-on stuff. You were becoming restless and I had to inject you. I had feared I got the dosage wrong."

"You chloroformed me, and shot me full of dope? I want you to untie me. NOW."

"Damn!" The burly man started, jumped and dropped the pan. At the expletive, a moth dropped like a rock from where it had been fluttering at the ceiling in a mating frenzy with a light bulb. ""No need to shout," said the man. "Softly, please."

"I am not up on the etiquettes of abduction. Untie me. Now."

The man ignored Linda. He was on his hands and knees under the stove, muttering. The pan retrieved, he set it on the table and started unwinding the bandages. "Sorry about the chloroform, my dear, but My powers are limited these days and I have had to fall back upon chemical agents My wonders to perform. Deity become puny―a sad turn of events. But the she-witch, the succubus, who throttles your mind has been likewise affected. You hear voices?"

Faith. Joy. Warm elbows, said the voice in Linda’s head, a woman’s voice. Bounce and forget, bounce and forget. "Morgana Jean leFay from work," said Linda. "Just something I heard. It'll go away. And if you are saying I am nuts, I should point out I am the kidnapped one. You are the nutcase."

"So, the Orange Virgin is with us, My own lovely adversary, the same. Thank you for the gratuitous tidbit. I would have uncovered your, ah... penetration on My own, of course, but..."

"Your ‘powers’ are limited? You have no powers. You are a sociopath. A rapist even. People are 'conspiring’ against you and I hear voices? Paranoid schizophrenia. You need professional help." Linda pulled back as her abductor leaned close to whisper in her face.

"Do you ever dream about the slaughter of pigs? No need to answer, we are not assigning guilt here. Or uniform tiny curls like the tops of Dairy Queen soft ice cream cones? Low cholesterol, the latest scientific breakthrough? Just wondering."

This guy is certifiable, thought Linda. A slaughter of pigs. Linda harkened back to that morning’s brainstorming with Creative. "Pork-A-Dillos, yes."

"Crackly salty tidbits of fried pork rind? My, but aren’t we just breaking all the rules. Read your Bible, darling―Leviticus Eleven, verses 7 and 11." The man unwrapped another winding of tape and knelt to massage Linda’s ankles. "There, give it a bit till the circulation comes back, eh? Hope We haven't made you too uncomfortable, but We had to get you out of the picture for a while. The Pork-A-Dillos led Us right to you. Funny."

"Funny? I don't think any of this is one bit funny." There was an icy note of calm in her voice. The man babbled on. "We homed in on you like pigeon in a dovecote. We did it, Herself and I. The Fata Morgana, I mean. Much as I, she can make holes in time and start new solar systems spinning, upend the pyramids and unwind the skein of probability in a dozen different realities, but she can't come home till I let her in." He suddenly stopped, as though having said too much. He looked mildly frantic and waved the frying pan. "Just look at that."

"The Fata Morgana. Is that your partner? The voice in my head? You don't have to be anxious about giving anything away; I most likely wouldn’t understand it anyway. Everything you have said so far is gibberish to me."

"Sorry about that. And this, too. I was only trying to be helpful." Her kidnapper batted his eyes at her and flashed a leer of many yellow teeth. He regarded the charred remains that clung to the pan after the scraping and bouncing. "A quiche of welcome. I all forgot about it in the excitement." He extended a hand, "I am a prime mover, if you will. The she-witch in your head calls me El. It was chloral hydrate, Mickey Finn, you know—that was what We injected you with."

Linda rubbed her ankles. "That may be the name of the dope you used, but who are you? All of you. And where are we and why are we here?"

"I have been called The Rider on the Storm. For now you may call me, ahh... call me..." El patted his pockets. There were usually papers if one had the sense to look for them. He consulted an inside breast pocket full of pens and mechanical pencils. There was a nametag. "Gershon Meyrowitz, since you ask. And this is a sub-cellar of the Hotel Taft. They walled it in when the hotel closed. And I do hope that you are asking a simple question of names, backgrounds and map coordinates. There could be a..."

"Problem? I’ll give you problems, buddy. For starters, I would be pleased to hear anything about just what the hell is going on."

"My dear, charming and very, if I may say so, acerbic Linda, you shall have all the answers your heart desires. All in good time. A lot could be read into what you have only just now disingenuously spilled from your enchanting cupid's-bow lips; nonetheless, I am prepared to reveal all to you, viz: what the countryside looks like beyond these walls, for your freedom while you are here will be unrestricted. You are here because a pig has died. A human has shot the Morgana’s prize pig. You already have our names and our histories shall be forthcoming. As to the why-ness, I am prepared to discuss why my colleague and I are about what we are, though if you wish to explore the metaphysical aspects of why-ness, of Linda-ness, or the whatness of if, I shall have to refer to my notes." He opened a loose leaf binder the size of the Chicago Yellow Pages. "Observe." He riffled the pages under Linda's nose. The pages made an appreciable breeze. They were blank. "While I am prepared, my notes are not." He levered a pot-lid open on a huge iron range, exposing glowing coals on the grates. "Metaphysics and the comforts of philosophy I fear, will not be ours today." He dropped the notebook into the firebox and replaced the lid. "So much for instructions. Well now, like a spot of tea?" Without waiting for an answer, he started fussing with a kettle and cups.

"This is bullshit. You're talking like some character out of Alice In Wonderland. I just asked a question; you didn't have to answer. Thanks for the street theater but 'shut up and sit down' would have been more to the point."

The man, Gershon, looked crushed. "Oh dear, and I had so hoped to make a good impression. This is My first time and all..."

"You have certainly made an impression, you and that chum of yours. Forcible detention, abduction, shooting me full of dope and tying me up. And that getup! If I'd had my glasses on I'd have been laughing too hard to move. And now you give me a broken-down routine from the Kiwanis Club revue. All the flourishes of a small-time magician. Oh, I'm impressed all right." Shoulders slumped, gaze averted, her captor continued about his tea business. She had hurt his feelings.

"Chum? Oh, you think I have a little helper. That female voice in your head, then? Delightful." The kidnapper rifled through a bay of cabinets. "I believe we have some Souchong Oolong about somewhere..."

On the other side of a shimmering picture wall, Morgana watched windings of white surgical tape form up into a decorative macramé requiring a level of skill to which the average desperado would not aspire. "It’s El, sure as shit and twice as ugly. White Sow of Naxos, the old letch is putting on a show for her, step one in the manual of seduction. What a lizard! He knows I am watching."

Morgana was fuming―at herself, at El. If he had calculated to put her in a rage, he had succeeded. He had played all the major arcana. "First he works me as a witless roundheels and, failing that, tries to lure me unprepared over the line. So be it. This woman is under my protection. Watch and learn: a Certain Party is about to get some comeuppance."

Biff and the Manticore looked on bewildered.

"This Linda Winkelman is not an extraordinary person. Nothing in her life will have prepared her to be the priestess of the Fata Morgana, Queen of Heaven, Orange Virgin, Lady of The Wild Things, etc., etc. My priestess has selected herself, by exemplary deeds or conduct most likely. All I have got to do is catch up with her. We are going to join her in her past. Hopefully recent."

The Manticore looked on, enthusiastically pulling at a newly given rank, black cigar. "Hopefully? You exhibit the very lack of precision I have come to expect from the goddess of life and joy."

"Could you blow your smoke in another direction, there’s a good fellow. Realize those stogies are a plenary indulgence. Remember where they come from. Your continued supply is contingent on a devotion to my efforts." Morgana unwrapped gold foil from around a sticky chocolate nougat. Biff looked on interestedly. "Sorry, that was the last one. Really, I can’t be spending all my time supplying treats for the enlisted personnel. Such a stew of life. Just look at that."

"Where? I don’t see anyanyanyany....!" Biff clutched at Morgana as the facing wall fell away. No prefatory clearing of the throat brick-and-mortarwise, just gone. The room had become an open-ended box and, for all Biff could tell, they were flying and swooping at gut-wrenching acceleration through wispy swirling cloud cover toward what, at the rate it came charging up at them, could only be solid ground. Biff was going to be sick. They were going to be dead, and no chance to clean up after, crushed against the onrushing whatsis down there materializing through the clouds. He buried his face between Morgana’s breasts.

"Silly boy, how nice of you, but if you’re going to be sick, please do it in a bucket." She grasped Biff firmly by the ears and extracted him. "This is grownup business. Pay attention, there may be questions later. We are going to crash the barrier separating us, our world, from another just like ours but not as nice. We are poaching on the sky-demon’s preserve today. Somewhere among his evangelical leafleteers with their freeze-dried smiles is one we seek." The Queen of Heaven was peering closely into the mists where the wall had been.

"Uh... where are we?" said Biff brightly.

"We are here, where we have always been." Morgana ruffled his hair and gestured at the swirl and swoop before them. "All this is a simulacrum, a picture of our divergent reality, my old home." Biff peered at the speeding maelstrom of colors and shapes. "And where they are is midtown Manhattan." The Queen of Heaven performed a high-velocity inverted U to avoid a thicket of television transmitter antennas masted atop the highest of many, many tall buildings. Biff’s knees buckled as they dodged a tower. He thought about throwing up all over everything. He would be sick a lot, and not in a bucket. Then with a child’s kaleidoscopic mood shift, his resolve weakened as something far below caught his eye.

The ground was covered with little specs hurrying to and fro.

"Oooo... there are people down there. Just like us."

"People, yes. Just like us, no. If they were just like us we wouldn’t have to be at all this jiggery-pokery, we could just walk right in and talk sensibly. Let’s move in and take a closer look."

The people became bigger; Biff could pick out individuals. The image blurred as Morgana swung back and forth looking for one particular individual.

"I don’t understand."

"Of course you don’t. So trust me." Sensing a presence more vital than the surrounding low-energy ambience of people at their daily grind, she slipped into the tackiness of a Broadway denizen. Walking a few feet, he positioned himself under some leftover construction staging and leaned casually against a mock masonry store front with its chicken wire lathing oozing out in places where the neighborhood idlers, moochers and art critics had been picking at the appliqué bricks. He pressed himself into the still wet wall and lit up a joint, careless of the plaster. He speculatively eyed a tangle of boy prostitutes across the street coming on to the tunnel traffic from New Jersey.

"No, not that one. The local color, Biff, my dear. Perhaps when you’re older."

There was more swirling and swooping.

"There. That one will do."

"Uh, do what?" asked Biff. And which one? There were thousands of them. And whatever that one was going to do, would he be expected to participate? It looked cold and wet down there. And dirty. Very inhospitable.

"What I ask her, I trust. Hold on!" The bottom dropped out of everything and Biff was on his knees, clutching frantically. Morgana relented and slowed things down, giving him a reassuring pat. They accelerated down, down, down, between tall buildings and through a blur of lights. As they spun earthward, a knot of beings at an intersection appeared to be their target. The room gave an impossible lurch as they executed an instant right turn and stopped, just stopped still. Biff’s arms shot out to break an expected impact and touched solid, reassuring wall. He decided not to throw up. He spoke to his stomach, telling it words of comfort he did not feel. It had retreated, hiding crumpled somewhere in his viscera. He could feel the old, familiar wall but not see it. When he opened his eyes an immense face filled the open-ended aperture of their flying schoolroom. It was huge, but not threatening.

"Biff Bangtree, meet your long-lost sister, my priestess. She doesn’t know it yet, but I think you’ll get along famously."

"Why do I want a sister?"

"A genuine question, genuinely put, but the truth is too complex for a genuine answer. You want a sister because I say you do, that’s why."

What they saw was the face of a pretty, auburn-haired woman, agitated and becoming more so. She was negotiating a revolving door with two large totes and an umbrella, her face screwed up in a lubricious clown grimace complete with protruding tongue, indicating intense thought on a tricky problem. Her struggles to get herself and her cargo into the rotating cubicle thence to the street had raised her skirt, exposing a quantity of calf and thigh. The show got appreciative looks, but no help from bystanders.

It was Christmas in New York, a time of tinseled windows, slush coming over the tops of the transparent plastic rain boots. Linda Winkelman carried them in her gym bag all year long and when she needed them, even sensible one-inch heels were too much for them. A wide-bodied Checker cab spun into the taxi stand at the corner, trying to use the parking lane for an illegal turn to catch the light at 33rd Street. A spray of brown slush stippled Linda’s panty hose all the way to her knee on that side. "What the fuck!" She flipped a bird at the departing cab and forlornly watched the mixture of oil and ice crystals trickle down her left leg. From the passengers’ compartment, five beefy, red-faced men packing camel’s hair coats and attaché cases registered conflicting emotions.  One on the jump seat facing back gave a sheepish grin and a small shrug of excuse―sorry, the human condition, etc. A five-dollar tip for the driver if they make the 5:03 for Scarsdale from Penn Station. "Plus my stockings," Linda Winkelman addressed no one in particular. People hurried by blank-eyed and self absorbed, wrapped up in their own concerns. The only witnesses to the drama were its participants. Only hip waders would have saved her from a drenching. "Just look at that!―low heels, two inches of slush on the sidewalk and I’m soaked." For Linda, this was an uncharacteristic failure of perception; she was a participant to the immutability of natural law. A real-life demonstration of hydrodynamics at work and here she was thinking of her own comfort, not the wonder of it all. She had wet feet.

The Orange Virgin took a peek inside Linda's mind and liked what she saw. Finding her so soon... this suggested a statistically significant probability that she was rising to a bait. She looked again, deep into the woman’s mind. This was a normal, lusty, querulous, fierce and plaintive human being replete with all the warts. This woman had seen it all, or parts of it all, and had inferred the rest. Life in the city had made her tough but not mean. She was good. Almost too good for a first try.

"Cute cupcake," the Manticore thrust his head between Morgana and Biff, "and she wears an expression of extreme distress. An easy conquest."

"Too easy." Morgana brushed aside a feeling that she was being flummoxed. "Gentlemen, meet, uh..."She had forgotten again. She probed the woman’s mind. "...Linda Winkelman, and El cannot be far behind for he spoke of her. And rightly―out of billions none could be better, though at first inspection the woman is an unlikely candidate for holy orders." The colors on the wall swirled and the woman faded in and out. Biff was interested. He craned forward and caught himself as he went off balance, holding the back of Morgana’s chair lest by leaning too far he fall into the picture.

Morgana stared fixedly into the mists and the woman returned. "I do so hope she likes pigs. I’ve got a lot riding on this."

Biff stared, too. The woman was blank and immobile. Had something gone wrong? Linda was standing stock still with her neck contorted as though she was trying to scratch her shoulder with her chin. Her ankles were crossed and she appeared to be looking backward while walking forward. She was balanced on one foot and her weight must surely drag her in an inexorable spiral to the ground.

"She’s the one, no doubt about it. But we want to enter this transaction a mite earlier. Some adjustments are indicated."

Morgana stopped short; she felt confused emanations: hers was not the only power here. There was an interloper.

"I am the Queen of Heaven. I do not get confused."

"You are not Queen here," a voice spoke in her ear. A syrupy voice, moist and urgent. "Over the millennia you have been relegated to the shadow world of false legend and prophecies unfulfilled. I know, I wrote the Book. Oh, and welcome back."

"And you get your book in all the motels. Smug as ever. A thing of small consequence, so does the telephone company. And without your medieval Machiavellianisms."

"What a pair we were, you and I, Morgana. And, I sometimes dream, again?"

Twinkling star showers dazzled Linda Winkelman’s eyes from the inside. She wished they’d go away; they made it hard to focus. And maintaining her focus was the only grip on reality she had at the moment. Linda doubled over, retching again and again, but bringing nothing up. The Rider on the Storm had returned and was standing solicitously at her side. He smelled of lavender sachet, barnyard and goat. From her posture of abject misery, she could see his feet and the hem of a moth-eaten robe. From under the robe protruded two large and spectacularly untended feet. Cracked black toenails and a nacreous shine on his skin poclaimed this pilgrim had been a long time between water holes. He was wearing sandals! Sandals were strange footgear for winter in New York, but Linda was not prepared to debate fashions in the wholesale district. She hugged herself and rocked gently, trying to keep from passing out. So his feet haven’t been washed for a while and he has scabby black toenails. So what? Was that a velvet robe he was wearing? Linda tried not to look up.

"Yes dear lady, I have slipped into a little something more in keeping with the gravity of the occasion, and if it were not for your discomfort, which will pass, you would have noticed that I have also donned the Horns of Power. Very Mosaic, nu? I got all dressed up for the Visitation. You are the instrument, the vehicle, if you catch my meaning, of a meeting of vast teleological implications. At this very moment, even as we speak, so to speak, the emanations of the demon-queen of Sumer and Babylon are invading your persona."

El's eyes swam and sought the middle distance. "Strange. I sense a small presence. She is as ever inscrutable, though not, heh heh, insurmountable, our darling Rahab, our loving Rachelle, our Tiamat." Leaning forward, he familiarly patted Linda’s cheek and let out a mighty sigh. "Ahh, but you are concerned with your current distress, not to chat about cosmology. Let me assure you that what is happening is non-invasive, in the physical sense―except for memories that you will treasure for years to come and that will make you the envy of every other human creature. But they’ll wash right off if you so elect, leaving you none the worse for wear. You are to be the vessel for the return of the goddess-mother of the world. Care for a mint?" He peeled back the foil from a 2-pack of peppermint patties, took one and offered her the other. Linda groaned and turned away.

"Look!" He waved a magisterial hand down the stained front of his robe, "For this occasion we have rolled out the regalia so as to be in tip-top form―to be any less were to be a failure of magnificence." He took a bite and held his peppermint patty six inches from her nose. His body heat was melting its chocolate coating and the odor of peppermint was powerful and sickening. Another wave of nausea wrenched her forward. Not noticing, Gershon prattled on.

Her abductor flourished what looked like a credit card. No, it was a crescent-shaped gold coin... with tooth marks. It was the peppermint patty somehow turned into a golden coin with a bite taken out of it. He noticed her eyes widen.

"Yes, a bite is out, and it has a picture of a birdie, see?" He held the coin down to where Linda could see it. There was a representation of a loon at rest on a wilderness lake. "We will put it where it is all warm and cozy and the heat from your body will melt the coin like the mint that it was. It will seep in your soul and disappear. No cleaning bills, no chocolate mess―just like M and M’s." He folded the paper around the coin, making a tight triangular package, and reached into Linda’s blouse to tuck it down her cleavage. "See how it is shaped like the gibbous moon. Auspicious. It is not every day we have a Visitation, in fact, this will be the very first―an occasion that should be dressed up to, gans gleich? I am God, how do you do. Oh, and you forgot your receipt. And your change. Allow me."

This hairy, smelly individual was actually intending to lay hands on her! This was the New York you didn’t read about in the guidebooks. He leaned forward, making like a favorite relative pressing coins on a prize niece. She tried to move away, straining to raise an arm to ward off his fumblings.

"There," he said, buttoning her back up, "That should keep it snug and warm." He gave her left breast a pat. "I have marked you for the Orange Virgin. For exactly what, even I do not know. But remember that it was I who marked you. You are mine if I will and I shall derive comfort from knowing I can catch up with you later."

Linda’s vision had the fish-eye distortion of a fever dream and the someone―yes, there definitely was someone else in her head―was playing with her focus; the store, everything, was zooming. The Tevye-type shuttled and pumped in time with her magnified pulse beat. Her head felt stuffed, too full. It took all the will she could marshal to try to fend off the man’s attentions, but her body wouldn’t respond. Change? You don’t get change from a credit card purchase.

Just relax, my dear. He means well and I won’t let him harm you. It was the woman’s voice in her head, which at that moment was more crowded than Linda could recall it having been in the preceding thirty-six years.

Trust me, insisted the woman. In spite of her better judgment, Linda Winkelman trusted. The voice inspired trust and, whatever was happening, she needed a friend, and fast.

"Whoever you are, get me out of this." Linda surrendered. A wave of euphoria rolled through her body and Linda was distracted from the full and undivided attention she felt she owed her impending unconsciousness. Air, she needed air. Ahh... the Storm Rider was opening her coat. That should help. This guy has the balls of a bandit, thought Linda as she passed into unconsciousness. Damn, it’s hot in here! Salmonella poisoning, that was it. It was that takeout sushi they had called in for lunch.

Bunching up a fold of flesh from her cheek, the demiurge who was Gershon Meyrowitz held it between his thumb and forefinger, toggling her head back and forth. "Hotsy-totsy, Morgana. You in there? We’ve been expecting you."

Linda straightened from a curled-up posture of thoracic agony, her muscles stiff and cramped. What had been Linda Winkelman rose and stretched to stand on tiptoe, arms extended. "Whew, what this poor girl has been through!" Golden eyes glowed around green pupils as freckles danced across the bridge of a nose that had not been tilted seconds earlier. Long red-gold braids cascaded to the floor. "There’s got to be a better way. By-the-bye, do you even know who it is that you’re wearing?"

"I am no hedge-wizard. I am in control here. None but the ever-present lunatic fringe question my actions. Besides, as you and I know full well, ‘possession’ of a subject not sufficiently flexible, intelligent or mentally adaptable can kill them or drive them mad and that’s no fun. Besides, does not Gershon look the part?" Heels together, the Gershon body made a wide, florid bow. "And a life-long immersion in the articles of faith makes him a most amenable host. He’s been waiting for me, right? Besides, it has a serendipitous location, this place of his. Convenient to subways, buses, the Pennsylvania Railroad, not to mention the young lady so suddenly and charmingly tenanted by you."

"Thank you, El. Always the cavalier. In ancient days you came to me with perfumed beard and romance on your mind. Look at you now."

"Yes, look at me." The pride of ownership. El flexed Gershon Meyrowitz’ burly shoulders, and like a heavyweight contender warming up, feinted a few jabs and hooks, shadow boxing.

"I’ll bet the poor man hasn’t had a bath since you moved in. Certes, my lord, this model might better have been left in the showroom. For his own good."

"And My good? The greater good, as I sincerely believe?"

"You might at least keep him presentable. Those feet are a disgrace. How long since he’s been home? I’ll bet he hasn’t seen his family in weeks."

"No, months actually." El cracked a grin, "They think he has run away with his bookkeeper." An all-encompassing gesture became a two-handed shrug, index fingers indicating that somewhere within a plump worsted vest or its contents dwelt home, hearth and little ones with a weeping wife languishing in distant New Jersey.

"Such concern for the little people; you’ve mellowed. Integrity never was your strong point, El."

"Get back to your own cellar, Morgana. The lovely Linda and Myself have things to discuss."

 

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