"Almost time for the Big Bash!" Lucy exclaimed gaily as the elevator surged up. "Is everything ready?"
"Not quite." I punched a button. The elevator ground to a halt. "I have to arrange something with Benito. I'll be up in a minute."
"Be careful!" Lucy smirked. "Benito is not a happy puppy right now."
I walked down the corridor towards Benito's room. I hesitated outside the door when I heard his anguished wails, but then shrugged and walked right in. A friend who needs is a friend indeed. Benito lay slumped on the floor in a puddle of beer and tears. I thumped him on the shoulder several times before he raised bleary red eyes towards me. "Leave me alone!" he groaned listlessly.
"What's with you?" I demanded ruthlessly.
"Delilah... left me." Fat tears rolled down Benito's tanned cheeks. "She went off with that bastard, Hachek."
"What are you talking about?"
"When Hachek and I were wrestling on the terrace..." Benito muttered between sobs. It was hard to make sense of what he was saying so I hit him hard on the head. He tried to fight back but I overpowered him easily even though he was much bigger than me. I love fighting with drunks.
"All right," I commanded after I had pinned Benito down and forced him to drink some whisky. "So Hachek knocked you down. Did he beat you up badly?"
"I beat him up," Benito sputtered indignantly. "Delilah jumped on my back and stopped me from killing him. Then she asked him if he was all right and started kissing him all over." Benito shuddered and morosely threw a beer bottle against the wall where it shattered spectacularly. "And then she stuck her tongue out at me and they left..." he concluded brokenly.
"It's okay, Benito. They're both gone now."
Benito convulsed in agony. "He took her back to Poland? Oh, my God! She'll live in some horrible prefabricated socialist apartment building and live on rotten potatoes for the rest of her life!" He buried his head in his hands.
I patted his curly head. "You don't understand. After they left, Hachek tried to kill Delilah but then I persuaded him to commit suicide instead. But Delilah is gone too. Her body has been taken over by this wandering spirit called Lucy." I coughed. "The problem is that Lucy is a little... homicidal. Her bodies tend to have short lives that come to a violent end." I smiled at Benito. "But don't worry. Lots more fish in the sea," I added comfortingly. "Go back home to Surf City. There must be millions of busty blonde babes hanging out on the beach."
Benito let out a tormented bellow. "I don't want any other busty blonde babe. I want Delilah!"
I sighed. "So take a vitamin." Benito sulkily popped a pill. "Now blow your nose and wash your face and come up to Xox's suite with me. Lucy is there right now. See if you can seduce her."
Benito lifted large olive eyes in naive appeal. "What do I have to do?"
I shrugged. "You could try overwhelming her with red roses. Fill her bathtub with vintage champagne and her mouth with liqueur chocolates. It's not original but all's fair in love and decor."
"I'll go shopping right away." Benito jumped up from the floor and wrung my hand enthusiastically. "I owe you one, man."
"Well, actually, I'll take you up on that right away. On your way down, could you just check on the arrangements for the Big Bash?"
"Sure thing. Anything else?"
"You're in charge of vitamins, aren't you? Would you just put some vitamins into the drinking water at the head table? You know, the water that the Big People will be drinking?"
Benito's eyes went wide with wonder. "You want to drug Xox and Lord Hades and Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques and Herr Troll and Monsieur Rameau?"
I nodded. "Into the water jugs. Plop. Just like that."
Benito hesitated. "Should we?"
"Of course we should. You give the students vitamins all the time. They're harmless." I poked Benito in the ribs. "Come on. It'll be fun."
Benito giggled. "Maybe we could mix the vitamins into everything. The fruit punch, the salad bar, the steak tartare..."
I slapped him on the back. "There you go!"
Benito chuckled madly. "I'll do it right away."
"Good man. Make sure to put lots in. I have to make a phone call. I'll see you at the lecture."
Benito skipped off happily. I went to my office and called up Darko Darkovich, my favorite explosives expert. Darkovich had tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, and while I hoped that designer drugs would do the trick, I wanted to make absolutely sure that the Big Bash would pass off without giving me an allergy rash from all the stress. I was worried about my complexion: I hadn't been eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables in the last few days. If you can't be good, be careful.
My heart was in my throat when I finally made my way to the rarified heights of Xox's penthouse apartment. I gulped with trepidation when the door opened. A bald man in a badly cut grey suit stood at the threshold, grinning. Xox himself.
"Welcome." Xox stared intently into my left eye. "I did not get the chance to thank you properly in Budapest. I have been hearing a lot about you since."
"Nothing terrible, I hope," I murmured feebly.
"On the contrary, my dear fellow," Xox replied ambiguously. "I have just had the pleasure of meeting your exquisite friend, Anastasia." Xox winked approvingly. "Charming creature. I am so glad that she is one of us. You know our other friends of course." Putting his arm on my shoulder, Xox wheeled me around.
Lady Rudolphine and Anastasia were sitting together cozily on a couch, absorbed in an animated tete-a-tete. Lucy was curled up at their feet. They looked up and smiled at me. Otto Hell sat comfortably slumped on another long overstuffed sofa, belly placidly protruding, eyes closed as if in sleep. Besides him, long stick limbs contorted like an ungainly insect, waving his wine glass in the air as he vainly tried to engage Hell in conversation, sat Terence Killjoy-Yuck. He looked up at my entrance and went pale. I went over to him and thumped his thin shoulder in hearty greeting.
"Terence! How the hell are you, old chap?"
"You!" Terence's eyebrows were rocketing all over the place. "I thought you were..."
"Dead? Under arrest?" I guffawed.
Terence smiled weakly. "I had indeed heard, ahem..."
"Where's Rasputin, Terry? In hospital or in jail? Did Godfrey get away?"
"I really couldn't say."
"What about your other minions in beige trench coats? Where are they when you really need them, huh?"
"My dear chap." Terence smiled winsomely, exposing rotting front teeth. "Are you still upset about that little scene in Berlin?"
"Not at all." I grinned back. "I don't mind being followed and bugged and kidnapped and chased and shot at. What I do mind, however, is being used as a scapegoat."
"What on earth..."
"Why did you send me to Prague in the first place, Terence?"
Terence wriggled uncomfortably. "Do we really have to discuss this now, dear boy? Perhaps some other time would be more appropriate..."
"I don't think so." I looked up. Otto was still pretending to sleep. Xox was pouring himself a Scotch. He glanced over and smiled benignly. "I was a decoy, wasn't I?"
"Decoy?" Terence had clearly never heard the word before. He rolled it around wonderingly between pursed lips. "Decoy?"
"You wanted to spy on Xox. You knew that his security apparatus was vigilant." Lucy nodded. "You wanted me to be caught because that would draw attention away from the real spy, didn't you?"
"Real spy?" Terence shook his head in bewilderment. "My dear chap, whom are you talking about?"
"Me, obviously." Otto opened one beady eye and frowned at Terence. "Game's over, Killjoy-Yuck. Xox knows everything. I've been working for him all along."
We gaped at Hell in amazement. His move had boldly torn open a veil of secrecy, exposing the shadowy spaces in which spies revel, a murky maze of ambiguous meanings and nebulous identities, a dusky world with its own hazy allure, and those drawn into its obscure orbit soon find their eyes growing accustomed to a deceptive dimness in which values and people lose all distinctness and are soon reduced to mist and shadows... Now we sat blinking suspiciously at each other in the novel clarity produced by Hell's disclosure, like tourists newly arrived from a foggy English winter for a vacation in the tropics, and if even I, the rawest recruit among our ranks, found myself at a loss for words, how should one depict the indescribable distress Terence must have felt, stoop-shouldered spook, born to genteel bitchiness and bred to snobbish contriving, as he sat there stiffly, wincing?
But even the stiffest of upper lips soften under pressure and as he sat there under our concerted stare, Terence was soon blubbering brokenly. "Don't hold it against me," he sniffled. "I was just serving Queen and Country..."
"No, you weren't," Otto replied calmly. "You were doing your very best to sabotage the Queen all along."
Terence sat up straight. "How dare you…"
"You're not trying to deny your involvement in Princess Fi's assassination, are you?" Hell said reprovingly. "That clumsy attempt to implicate the poor Princes in the plot. Tut tut. And who set up the poor trusting young Duke with that gorgeous gold-digger transvestite? The turncoat who sucked the Princess's toes on that Caribbean beach and then sold the pictures to the tabloids wasn't one of your trench-coated flunkies? And who burned down the poor woman's castle?"
"There, there." Xox patted Terence's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't cry. We know all about your plot to discredit the royal family and eliminate the Queen."
"You do?" Terence's eyes went wide with alarm.
"Of course. And to put Lady Snatcher in her place." Terence gulped. Xox nodded reassuringly. "The Snatcher Foundation's finances are hardly a secret to me. Your money is safe in my hands."
Terence groaned. "The Royal Bank of England merger…"
"Yes, I bought the bank. But surely you knew that?"
"You own everything now, don't you?" Terence asked suspiciously. "But whose side are you on anyway?"
"I am on everyone's side." Xox beamed. "Surely you should know that by now?"
"Even the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor?" Terence made a brave attempt at resistance.
Xox chuckled. "But of course. They don't know it yet but they will."
"Your conspiracy of billionaires hasn't won yet," Terence said pugnaciously. "We will fight on the beaches and in the streets…"
"And yet the MIDAS membership keeps growing," Hell said unexpectedly. "Despite all your efforts to assassinate them."
"Funerals are good opportunities for meetings," Xox added graciously. "Were you trying to murder us in order to eliminate MIDAS or because you had lost too much money to us?" Terence let out a low moan and buried his head in his hands. "Oh, yes, we always knew that you were after us. Why else would we play bridge with you? I'm sorry, my dear fellow, but you really must improve your game a little. Here. Take a vitamin. Lemon flavor or cherry?"
"It's time to get down to the Big Bash," Lucy chirped up. "Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques should be arriving any minute."
"Thank you, my dear. We must not keep our guests waiting." Xox offered his arm to Lady Rudolphine. "Shall we go? This event promises to be most entertaining."
"Not quite." I punched a button. The elevator ground to a halt. "I have to arrange something with Benito. I'll be up in a minute."
"Be careful!" Lucy smirked. "Benito is not a happy puppy right now."
I walked down the corridor towards Benito's room. I hesitated outside the door when I heard his anguished wails, but then shrugged and walked right in. A friend who needs is a friend indeed. Benito lay slumped on the floor in a puddle of beer and tears. I thumped him on the shoulder several times before he raised bleary red eyes towards me. "Leave me alone!" he groaned listlessly.
"What's with you?" I demanded ruthlessly.
"Delilah... left me." Fat tears rolled down Benito's tanned cheeks. "She went off with that bastard, Hachek."
"What are you talking about?"
"When Hachek and I were wrestling on the terrace..." Benito muttered between sobs. It was hard to make sense of what he was saying so I hit him hard on the head. He tried to fight back but I overpowered him easily even though he was much bigger than me. I love fighting with drunks.
"All right," I commanded after I had pinned Benito down and forced him to drink some whisky. "So Hachek knocked you down. Did he beat you up badly?"
"I beat him up," Benito sputtered indignantly. "Delilah jumped on my back and stopped me from killing him. Then she asked him if he was all right and started kissing him all over." Benito shuddered and morosely threw a beer bottle against the wall where it shattered spectacularly. "And then she stuck her tongue out at me and they left..." he concluded brokenly.
"It's okay, Benito. They're both gone now."
Benito convulsed in agony. "He took her back to Poland? Oh, my God! She'll live in some horrible prefabricated socialist apartment building and live on rotten potatoes for the rest of her life!" He buried his head in his hands.
I patted his curly head. "You don't understand. After they left, Hachek tried to kill Delilah but then I persuaded him to commit suicide instead. But Delilah is gone too. Her body has been taken over by this wandering spirit called Lucy." I coughed. "The problem is that Lucy is a little... homicidal. Her bodies tend to have short lives that come to a violent end." I smiled at Benito. "But don't worry. Lots more fish in the sea," I added comfortingly. "Go back home to Surf City. There must be millions of busty blonde babes hanging out on the beach."
Benito let out a tormented bellow. "I don't want any other busty blonde babe. I want Delilah!"
I sighed. "So take a vitamin." Benito sulkily popped a pill. "Now blow your nose and wash your face and come up to Xox's suite with me. Lucy is there right now. See if you can seduce her."
Benito lifted large olive eyes in naive appeal. "What do I have to do?"
I shrugged. "You could try overwhelming her with red roses. Fill her bathtub with vintage champagne and her mouth with liqueur chocolates. It's not original but all's fair in love and decor."
"I'll go shopping right away." Benito jumped up from the floor and wrung my hand enthusiastically. "I owe you one, man."
"Well, actually, I'll take you up on that right away. On your way down, could you just check on the arrangements for the Big Bash?"
"Sure thing. Anything else?"
"You're in charge of vitamins, aren't you? Would you just put some vitamins into the drinking water at the head table? You know, the water that the Big People will be drinking?"
Benito's eyes went wide with wonder. "You want to drug Xox and Lord Hades and Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques and Herr Troll and Monsieur Rameau?"
I nodded. "Into the water jugs. Plop. Just like that."
Benito hesitated. "Should we?"
"Of course we should. You give the students vitamins all the time. They're harmless." I poked Benito in the ribs. "Come on. It'll be fun."
Benito giggled. "Maybe we could mix the vitamins into everything. The fruit punch, the salad bar, the steak tartare..."
I slapped him on the back. "There you go!"
Benito chuckled madly. "I'll do it right away."
"Good man. Make sure to put lots in. I have to make a phone call. I'll see you at the lecture."
Benito skipped off happily. I went to my office and called up Darko Darkovich, my favorite explosives expert. Darkovich had tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, and while I hoped that designer drugs would do the trick, I wanted to make absolutely sure that the Big Bash would pass off without giving me an allergy rash from all the stress. I was worried about my complexion: I hadn't been eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables in the last few days. If you can't be good, be careful.
My heart was in my throat when I finally made my way to the rarified heights of Xox's penthouse apartment. I gulped with trepidation when the door opened. A bald man in a badly cut grey suit stood at the threshold, grinning. Xox himself.
"Welcome." Xox stared intently into my left eye. "I did not get the chance to thank you properly in Budapest. I have been hearing a lot about you since."
"Nothing terrible, I hope," I murmured feebly.
"On the contrary, my dear fellow," Xox replied ambiguously. "I have just had the pleasure of meeting your exquisite friend, Anastasia." Xox winked approvingly. "Charming creature. I am so glad that she is one of us. You know our other friends of course." Putting his arm on my shoulder, Xox wheeled me around.
Lady Rudolphine and Anastasia were sitting together cozily on a couch, absorbed in an animated tete-a-tete. Lucy was curled up at their feet. They looked up and smiled at me. Otto Hell sat comfortably slumped on another long overstuffed sofa, belly placidly protruding, eyes closed as if in sleep. Besides him, long stick limbs contorted like an ungainly insect, waving his wine glass in the air as he vainly tried to engage Hell in conversation, sat Terence Killjoy-Yuck. He looked up at my entrance and went pale. I went over to him and thumped his thin shoulder in hearty greeting.
"Terence! How the hell are you, old chap?"
"You!" Terence's eyebrows were rocketing all over the place. "I thought you were..."
"Dead? Under arrest?" I guffawed.
Terence smiled weakly. "I had indeed heard, ahem..."
"Where's Rasputin, Terry? In hospital or in jail? Did Godfrey get away?"
"I really couldn't say."
"What about your other minions in beige trench coats? Where are they when you really need them, huh?"
"My dear chap." Terence smiled winsomely, exposing rotting front teeth. "Are you still upset about that little scene in Berlin?"
"Not at all." I grinned back. "I don't mind being followed and bugged and kidnapped and chased and shot at. What I do mind, however, is being used as a scapegoat."
"What on earth..."
"Why did you send me to Prague in the first place, Terence?"
Terence wriggled uncomfortably. "Do we really have to discuss this now, dear boy? Perhaps some other time would be more appropriate..."
"I don't think so." I looked up. Otto was still pretending to sleep. Xox was pouring himself a Scotch. He glanced over and smiled benignly. "I was a decoy, wasn't I?"
"Decoy?" Terence had clearly never heard the word before. He rolled it around wonderingly between pursed lips. "Decoy?"
"You wanted to spy on Xox. You knew that his security apparatus was vigilant." Lucy nodded. "You wanted me to be caught because that would draw attention away from the real spy, didn't you?"
"Real spy?" Terence shook his head in bewilderment. "My dear chap, whom are you talking about?"
"Me, obviously." Otto opened one beady eye and frowned at Terence. "Game's over, Killjoy-Yuck. Xox knows everything. I've been working for him all along."
We gaped at Hell in amazement. His move had boldly torn open a veil of secrecy, exposing the shadowy spaces in which spies revel, a murky maze of ambiguous meanings and nebulous identities, a dusky world with its own hazy allure, and those drawn into its obscure orbit soon find their eyes growing accustomed to a deceptive dimness in which values and people lose all distinctness and are soon reduced to mist and shadows... Now we sat blinking suspiciously at each other in the novel clarity produced by Hell's disclosure, like tourists newly arrived from a foggy English winter for a vacation in the tropics, and if even I, the rawest recruit among our ranks, found myself at a loss for words, how should one depict the indescribable distress Terence must have felt, stoop-shouldered spook, born to genteel bitchiness and bred to snobbish contriving, as he sat there stiffly, wincing?
But even the stiffest of upper lips soften under pressure and as he sat there under our concerted stare, Terence was soon blubbering brokenly. "Don't hold it against me," he sniffled. "I was just serving Queen and Country..."
"No, you weren't," Otto replied calmly. "You were doing your very best to sabotage the Queen all along."
Terence sat up straight. "How dare you…"
"You're not trying to deny your involvement in Princess Fi's assassination, are you?" Hell said reprovingly. "That clumsy attempt to implicate the poor Princes in the plot. Tut tut. And who set up the poor trusting young Duke with that gorgeous gold-digger transvestite? The turncoat who sucked the Princess's toes on that Caribbean beach and then sold the pictures to the tabloids wasn't one of your trench-coated flunkies? And who burned down the poor woman's castle?"
"There, there." Xox patted Terence's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't cry. We know all about your plot to discredit the royal family and eliminate the Queen."
"You do?" Terence's eyes went wide with alarm.
"Of course. And to put Lady Snatcher in her place." Terence gulped. Xox nodded reassuringly. "The Snatcher Foundation's finances are hardly a secret to me. Your money is safe in my hands."
Terence groaned. "The Royal Bank of England merger…"
"Yes, I bought the bank. But surely you knew that?"
"You own everything now, don't you?" Terence asked suspiciously. "But whose side are you on anyway?"
"I am on everyone's side." Xox beamed. "Surely you should know that by now?"
"Even the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor?" Terence made a brave attempt at resistance.
Xox chuckled. "But of course. They don't know it yet but they will."
"Your conspiracy of billionaires hasn't won yet," Terence said pugnaciously. "We will fight on the beaches and in the streets…"
"And yet the MIDAS membership keeps growing," Hell said unexpectedly. "Despite all your efforts to assassinate them."
"Funerals are good opportunities for meetings," Xox added graciously. "Were you trying to murder us in order to eliminate MIDAS or because you had lost too much money to us?" Terence let out a low moan and buried his head in his hands. "Oh, yes, we always knew that you were after us. Why else would we play bridge with you? I'm sorry, my dear fellow, but you really must improve your game a little. Here. Take a vitamin. Lemon flavor or cherry?"
"It's time to get down to the Big Bash," Lucy chirped up. "Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques should be arriving any minute."
"Thank you, my dear. We must not keep our guests waiting." Xox offered his arm to Lady Rudolphine. "Shall we go? This event promises to be most entertaining."
