Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Needy Greedy Love (Part 20)

"You'll remember me," Gunn said clear as the sky over Neptune even though he had no teeth or a tongue or much of a palate. "Do me a favor."

Thais rolled her eyes. "Okay. What?"

"When you bury us--"

"I'm going to set the place on fire to hide my criminal crime," Thais interrupted, "so the authorities may just decide to have you two cremated."

"Even better," Gunn said clear as the Texas sky after a really cool rain like on those old black and white shows like Death Valley Days. "Leave a typewritten note that says--"

"A note will burn up in the fire," Thais said hotly.

"Oh yeah," Gunn said, propping up his jawless face with the stump of the hand he had used in a vain attempt to stop all the bullets. "I just want my bone shards and fragments to hang out with Cat's guts for eternity. Is that going to be a problem?"

Thais put her foot down hard and gave herself shin splints. "Yes." Thais smiled then felt a piece of nastiness stuck between her teeth. She looked at Emily/Cat's body and frowned. I don't use used and bloody dental floss, she thought. She looked and saw something pointy in Emily/Cat's hand. She pried it loose with a vicious cracking sound and picked the nastiness out of her teeth.

"Ha ha ha," Thais said laughingly. "A thorn for Emily."

After turning on all the gas outlets in the house, and not knowing that the gas company installs all sorts of safety features so that kind of thing can't possibly happen--at least in America--Thais lit the little thorn and tossed it behind her as she left Gunn's mansion forever.


Afterward

Thais Knotts woke up in a barn in Flagstaff, Arizona, thirty-four months later with a baby girl on her chest.

Thais named her Rafe but would later nickname her Sparky.

How Thais got from the potpourri of brains in Podunk, Virginia, how she survived the blast that destroyed Gunn's mansion, and how she crawled 3,000 miles to this decrepit barn are the subjects of the next umpteen books in the thrilling series: Thais Knotts Ties the Not's of Love.


THE END

>Congratulations for making it this far. I hope you enjoyed my satire of romance novels. Please comment!<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 19)

Gunn slapped Emily/Cat repeatedly and then sort of, by accident, mind you, and not meaning to do it at all, kissed her as casually as he could just below the left paw of the pudgy pit bull puppy tattooed on Emily/Cat's forehead.

Naturally, Thais came in at the exact moment of lip contact, scanned Emily/Cat's forehead one more time, heard the glorious beep, saw her man casually kissing the tattoo of a pudgy pit bull puppy, and had a remarkable dream sequence where she was the dog whisperer to Lassie, yes, the Lassie, only Lassie wasn't a girl at all and had issues with her co-stars because they kept calling her "girl" when she was obviously not a girl dog at all, thank you very much, and it conflicted her so much that she contemplated running as a vice presidential candidate from Alaska. Shaken from her nightmare, Thais felt much better when she unloaded three clips of cop-killer bullets into Emily/Cat's suspiciously familiar head.

Hey, Thais thought midway through the second clip, my kid sister used to have a pineapple-shaped scar on her chin where I once kicked her with steel-toed boots because she wouldn't let me pet the goat first at the Al-a-Mode annual family reunion (complete with blank T-shirts) and where I accidentally shot off a mortar that killed Osama bin Something. He needed a new kidney anyway, and where are you going to find a good kidney or a working dialysis machine in the mountains of western Pakistan?

"Stop!" Gunn cried resignedly. "You've just killed your sister ... again!"

"That explains the scar," Thais said scarily. "I just know I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight without knowing that. It would have gnawed and gnawed on me like a beaver trying to eat its way out of Sherwood Forest, like a Republican wondering and wondering what went wrong in the last election, like Paris Hilton trying to figure out why the world gives a crap about her at all. Thank you, Gunn, for once again calming my mind."

Gunn crumpled to the floor like a man who had, indeed, been shot with three clips of cop-killer bullets that had previously shattered the sexy skull of one Cat Mann/Emily Benderdondat. Dark red blood gurgled, sloshed, and babbled crazy blues tunes from every hole in his body, and though the bullets had shredded his lungs like a huge pile of Republican yard signs, he was able to say his final lines without a single rasp, cough, or sputter.

"No matter what you've done," Gunn said clear as a bell and in 5.1 Dolby surround sound, "I will always be a part of your life, Thais Knotts. I will also always be a part of your sister's brains and sinus mucus since I doubt any forensic pathologist could separate all that mess from my body, I mean, they work for the state, right? Why work too hard when they're only going to freeze your salary or make you work without pay anyway? One day, Thais, you'll look back on this moment and smile. One day you'll look back on this moment and either shed a happy tear or tear a happy shed. One day you'll look back on this moment and feel a hot flash, and it won't be an atomic explosion in Iran or North Korea. Whenever you look at dental floss, you'll remember me and your sister in this tangled heap of clotting blood, scalp fragments, and some clear liquid I haven't yet identified. Whenever you look at a Scotsman, you'll remember me and the night we used hydrogen peroxide to bleach your eyebrows so you could make your forehead appear bigger, you'll remember the day we ate all that expired bologna in the fridge and didn't die, you'll remember the morning we--"

Thais emptied a fourth clip into Gunn's face.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 18)

"Gunn, you're in danger!" Emily/Cat purred dangerously.

"What should I do?" Gunn duly asked.

"Act casual," Emily/Cat said casually.

Gunn struck up a casual pose, looking eerily like a mannequin at Old Navy. "Now what?"

"Look more casual," Emily/Cat said more casually.

Gunn struck up another pose, looking exactly like Mel Gibson only not as handsome, hairy, or Australian.

"I hear you're trying to have a baby with Thais," Emily/Cat said in a baby's shrieking voice.

"How did you know?" Gunn asked knowingly.

"You said we were having fifteen kids once, remember?" Emily/Cat reminded him numerically.

"Oh yeah. Fifteen. I'd settle for one right now."

"It takes nine months," Emily/Cat said.

"I didn't mean 'right now' as in 'right now,'" Gunn said rightly. "I meant I'd settle for a baby ... You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

"Do you what?"

"Do I know?"

"Know what?"

"Do I know what you mean?"

"Do you?"

"Do I?"

"Do you what?"

"Do you know?"

"This is pointless."

"Like those little silica packs in your clothes that they tell you not to eat but then they spill out of your pocket and onto the floor for the cat to lick up days before it expands to the size of a bus and eats the neighbor's Rottweiler."

"Like that extra button they give you for a shirt, as if anyone can keep track of it or had a needle and thread handy to put that sucker back on."

"Like the proof of purchase doo-hickey square on Ritz cracker boxes, as if I'd ever need to use it anywhere."

"Like your appendix."

"Or your gall bladder."

"Or your tonsils."

"Or ninety percent of your brain."

"Or politics."

"Or ninety-nine percent of a politician's brain."

"What did you want me to do?"

"I said," Emily/Cat said, "for you to act casual."

"Wait," Gunn said.

Emily/Cat waited. She even hummed to make the wait almost fun and full of frolicking frolic.

"How should I actually act?" Gunn actually asked.

"Casually," Emily/Cat repeated for the umpteenth time.

So, Gunn acted all uninterested and aloof and detached and remote and standoffish, even though Emily/Cat smelled of cinnamon and spearmint, and found himself humming show tunes from Broadway shows that still had some gumption and get-up-and-go like in the Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin days as if he were in the elevator or in a doctor's office full of snot-nosed kids digging for gold.

Emily/Cat fell asleep.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 17)

Gunn instantly recognized Emily's voice. "Cat, is it you?"

Emily was amazed. Her own sister didn't recognize her voice or the pit bull tattoo on her forehead. She was hurt, and she felt angst.

Gunn grabbed Emily's shoulders and shook her until her eyes spun far back into her head. "Cat, is it really, really, really, really you?"

"We need to talk," Emily/Cat said needlessly.

"Not this again!" Gunn howled like a howling animal that howls.

"But we really need to talk, Gunn," Emily/Cat said really, really cattily and Emily-ly. "Your life is in danger."

Gunn stood in a spotlight that appeared miraculously from the ceiling as a disco ball threw shiny disco beams all over the room, the echo of the Bee Gees' "Night Fever" warming up the night. "My life has been in danger from the very millisecond I was born. There has never been a moment in my life where danger wasn't somewhere nearby, taunting me, calling me 'Gunn the Ton' when I was a hefty little fat kid who had to wear husky clothes. Danger was there to laugh at me when I had that unfortunate bicycle accident where I imagined my bike was a horse and leaped only to realize too late that the bicycle seat was missing. Danger is my first name, my middle name, my last name, and even my imaginary friend's name. Yes, danger knows full well that I am more dangerous and loathsome and vicious and cruel than danger is. I am not afraid of danger."

Emily/Cat fell asleep.

Gunn slapped her awake. "So you're not dead?"

"Obviously," Emily/Cat said obviously.

"But I buried you!" Gunn shouted with an obvious dig.

"Yeah, about that," Emily/Cat said. "Being buried alive really, really, really sucks. I mean, there I was, not dead, mind you, and pretty angry because my sister, the wench you've been dragging all over the planet, shot me full of holes while you were at your so-called secret hideout crash pad whatever, which isn't so secret because you have a wooden sign on the door that reads, 'Gunn's Top Secret Crash Pad,' and I was angry they buried me in a lime green dress, I mean, come on, does this body belong in a lime green dress, and anyway while I'm lying there mostly dead, and it's actually kind of peaceful what with no sound like one of those sensory-deprivation chambers though not as creepy or wet--you should really try one of those chambers but make sure you don't drink the water--and like I said, I'm ninety-four percent dead when a single thorn pops through my casket, and I'm like, who invited you here, you stupid thorn, and did they have to pay extra for this or what since this casket cost more than a freaking house which is such a scam, like a dead person is going to care if it's silk-lined or mahogany wood or them there are real brass fittings, Missy, and this thorn hurt my arm, which surprised me because I thought when you were ninety-four percent dead you weren't supposed to feel anything, but I guess you have to live and learn, and like I said, the thorn hurt me, so I cussed like a trucker high on BC Powder and cut off in traffic by a Honda Civic Hybrid doing at least eighty, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a car that gets good gas mileage if you asked me, and instead of crumpling to the leg end of the coffin--where there's scads of legroom, by the way--and like I said instead of crumpling like Whitney Houston's and Bobby Brown's collective careers, those poor, misguided kids, I used that single thorn to cut a hole in the casket--it took about two weeks, give or take, since I kept breaking my nails and had to wait until they grew back--dig six feet up, escape the hole, take a Greyhound and nobody looked twice at my emaciated, nearly-dead body because all they care about at Greyhound is if you pay with American money, and go to Tahiti for a while, you know, because I've never been there and it's really, really hot, and it's like completely on the other side of the earth in the middle of all this salty water, and then I went to Beverly Hills where they cut me every which way--and loose as a goose, as you can see--so I could come back to warn you disguised as the poster redhead for dental flossing, which I can tell you don't do very often so you'll get gingivitis for sure, that Thais Knotts means to kill you dead."

And she said that all in one breath, Gunn thought breathlessly. They must have implanted an extra lung inside her. Isn't medical technology great? I mean, just fifty years ago it would have been a waste of time to put "organ donor" on your driver's license. Oh sure, you could have donated your organs, but who would have taken them? Besides the IRS and maybe Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, I mean--

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 16)

Many days later, Gunn was still full of angst. He was also full of corn and undigested red meat.

He and Thais had been trying without success to have a baby. His seed had found no purchase in Thais's sexy Brazilian uterus. What am I doing wrong? Gunn thought. What? What are we doing wrong? What? Why? I've stopped riding my bicycle, I wear boxers, and I don't hang out in hot tubs. I take vitamins that make my pee bright yellow and smell like cabbage soup. What else can I do to put a bun in Thais's sexy Brazilian oven?

Littlest
did Gunn know, that although Thais had reconciled herself to loving Gunn, she drew the line at making babies with the infidel. I may be a traitor to my family, my religion, my real country, my sister, and women throughout all eternity, she thought, but I will not muddy the purity of my family tree with an enemy's offspring.

As a result, Thais was full of angst. She was also full of corn and tofu, and they made her feel like a veg.

She also felt hemorrhoids. They were the pits. I mean, having to go to the proctologist's to hear him or her say, "Hmm, uh, er, are you having trouble voiding?" And you there on all fours on the ice cold table wondering what "voiding" means. So you ask for an explanation since "voiding" sounds illegal in every state but California and the upper crust parts of Manhattan, and the proctologist pulls out his handy thesaurus and embarrasses you in front of your grandmother, who's staring at your kiester and comparing it to your Uncle Gene's kiester, the same Uncle Gene who had a little "lip" removed from "down there" because his "dirt" was spilling all over the toilet like an "outdoor sprinkler." The good doctor then grunts, "Do you have difficulty defecating, emptying your colon, target shooting Milk Duds, or dropping your kids off the bus?" To which you reply, "No, I poo-poo just fine."

Gunn felt Thais's angst and found it rough, scaly, and in serious need of moisturizers, so he took her on an around-the-world tour that did little to relieve their collective angst. They walked around inside Big Ben in London, and Big Ben didn't blink. They climbed the Eiffel Tower in Paris and didn't enjoy the view since it was freaking France full of freaking French people who had let the Germans waltz to Johann Strauss over and through them like stinky brie. Thais flowed like the Amazon on the Nile River after contracting dysentery from an imported Guatemalan fig that looked suspiciously like a man named Hector, Hector who dreamed of flooding numerous Egyptian hemp farmers and random archaeologists and other grave robbers with his patented pizza sauce. They leaned on The Leaning Tower of Pisa instead of each other, snoozed at 200 miles per hour on the bullet train in Japan, napped during their voyage in the Chunnel, and putted along at 60 kilometers per hour on the Autobahn.

But nothing relieved Thais's angst, Gunn's angst, Thais's hemorrhoids, or Gunn's longing for an heir ...

... until Emily Benderdondat showed up at the back door of Gunn's mansion on Christmas Eve wearing a delightful cinnamon red and spearmint green dental floss necklace, a marvelous cat suit, and flip flops.

Emily claimed to be lost.

"I'm lost," Emily claimed. "Could I use your phone and a preferably new or near-new toothbrush?"

"Oh Gunn, can we keep her?" Thais said possessively. "We could raise her as our as yet unborn daughter, Rafe."

"We don't even know her name," Gunn said evenly.

"That never stopped you before," Thais said haltingly.

"So we should just adopt her without her consent?" Gunn asked, adopting a consensual tone. "In probably one hundred percent of the countries on this planet, that would be considered kidnapping or the beginnings of a really bad movie starring a little redheaded girl and a dog."

Emily then lifted her bright red bangs and showed them a pudgy pit bull puppy and a barcode tattooed on her forehead.

Luckily, there had been a sale on point-of-sale scanners at a going-out-0f-business sale for Fill-In-The-Blank Corporation, a company that had failed because of the fiscally irresponsible banks that needed a bailout from financially angry American citizens who elected fiscally irresponsible politicians to give the fiscally irresponsible banks the money. Thais had picked up the scanner for a song, and she sang "My Country 'Tis in Debt Up to Its Neck" so beautifully that they gave her a twenty percent discount and tickets to see an off-off-Broadway show starring the aging cast of The Love Boat.

Thais scanned Emily's barcode, and "$19.99" flashed on the screen.

As I suspected, Thais thought, Emily is nothing but an "As Seen on TV" product being hyped loudly by an abnormally creepy guy who believes we actually need his ridiculous crap.

Fascinated by the glowing red light and the idea of there being so many barcodes, so little time, Thais left Gunn and Emily alone so she could scan every barcode in the house because she liked to hear the beeps.

"It is about time we were ... a-low-un," Emily said, using some of her dental floss necklace to, well, floss between her molars and incisors.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 15)

Meanwhile, Gunn wept sad and sorrowful tears of sadness and sorrow for his mother, for Cat, for the mess in his living room, for the gradual decline of democracy as a functional government in a world increasingly given to socialism, and for the free market economy stymied by governmental tariffs, treaties, an incompetent Congress, and the slow-footed and chaotic United Nations.

But when Gunn looked up, he saw Thais's lips moving. It was a good thing he was once deaf thanks to a really bad job at a pharmacy with an old man named Gower, because Gunn could read those lips. "I feel so much angst," those lips said. Thais, the cop with heels sculpted by warm Brazilian sands, was reaching out to him. Thais, the contortionist who taught him yoga position number thirty-four, was feeling angst. Thais, who had asked him lovingly to Wet-Vac his mother's big-boned ashes, was crying for his help.

And then a thought hit Gunn like a freight train hitting those stupid semi-trailers that have gotten stuck on the tracks and someone had the sense to film it with his or her cell phone.

I love her, Gunn thought, because Thais Knotts makes me feel safe and secure.

But mostly, Thais Knotts made Gunn Adhamh Glendonwyn feel. He felt. It felt good to feel. It made him feel full of feelings that felt good. His feelings were strong. His feelings were virile. He couldn't ignore the manly feelings coursing through his Scotch (or Irish, or both) veins. Felt feelings must be released, he thought. He needed to feel something. He needed to feel feelings for someone who made him feel.

"I don't know what to say," Thais said, not knowing what to say.

So Gunn kissed Thais. He kissed her so she didn't have to say anything. He kissed her so he wouldn't have to say anything. They kissed each other, not speaking, mind you, in a silence without words of any kind, so neither would have to say anything for a long, long time. It was really quiet except for a whole bunch of lip smacking going on.

Her lips felt good to him, and his lips felt good to her. They kissed each other hard, loosening teeth and even bruising the little spaces under their noses, those spaces that have a name that nobody knows except maybe anatomy students, Jeopardy contestants, and those nerdy kids in the national spelling bee.

Her tongue tasted like dusty Hummel figurines mixed with coffee and doughnut sprinkles. His tongue tasted like Tom Collins, Johnny Walker, Cuban cigar, and ash from his dead mother. But neither cared, because they weren't saying anything, and saying nothing was sometimes a very good thing to say.

They were kissing fools. They swapped spit. They shared old saliva containing, as everyone knows, all known diseases and even some that had threatened to spread into a pandemic and cause the Centers for Disease Control to throw up their collective hands and cry, "We are so not in control of any diseases, but at least we're safe here in Atlanta since we have all the cool antidotes." They played tonsil hockey, Thais using a wicked slap shot to score again and again and again. They tickled each other's uvulas into submission. They stayed in lip-lock while Gunn's mother's dust floated maternally all around them, and afterward, Gunn's little crooked tooth, the one that made him look most like an incorrigible rogue, had straightened out.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 14)

"Oops," Thais said in her silly little girl's voice. "I didn't know. I didn't think gray would be her color. I thought she would have been more of a warm tone woman. Orange. Yes, orange, like the color of the counter at a Quick-E-Mart. Yes, that should have been the color of her urn."

Gunn crumpled to the floor like the New York Knicks basketball franchise since the retirement of Walt Frazier and the Cleveland Browns football franchise since they sneaked off to Baltimore only to reappear later as an expansion team and have really crummy drafts. "We called her the Lady Macduff," Gunn called with a tear in his eye and a whimper in his voice as he sat on his duff. "This is such a Shakespearean tragedy!"

"Um, doesn't Macbeth have Lady Macduff whacked in that Scottish play?" Thais asked in a wacky way. Thais knew about the curse, and she wasn't about to test it.

Gunn looked up. "Yes, Shakespeare whacks, as you say in such a wacky manner, Lady Macduff only to accent Macbeth's cruelty and provide a counterpoint to Lady Macbeth, who, like you, dear Thais, is in all respects a fine example of an archetypal femme fatale."

"Oh."

"And now the Lady Macduff rests on my floor," Gunn whined restlessly on his duff.

Thais wriggled her sexy tan toes in the dust. "She was certainly a big-boned lady," Thais said with certainty. "I can see where you get your big bones," Thais said with calcium in her voice. "Do you have a Wet-Vac?" she asked, sucking at her teeth.

Gunn stood so he could crumple to the floor like an old dollar bill some cheap customer might give to a pizza delivery driver. "Mama! Mama!" he cried like a man who wanted his mama really, really badly.

He is such a tortured soul, Thais thought. He is tormented. He is suffering. He is grief-stricken. He is beleaguered, beset, and besieged.

I am so alliterative,
Thais thought alliteratively.

And we've only just met, Thais thought. He's chock full of angst, and he doesn't even know me yet. How quaint. And he loved his mama very, very much. I have to love a man who loved his mama very, very much. It makes him very, very manly.

Thais felt a jolt go through her like the time she put a fork in an electrical socket one night back at UVA because all the other undergrads there were doing it. Then her thoughts caught like a split toenail on deep shag carpeting.

O-M-G, she thought, one letter at a time. Am I falling love? Am I? Am I really? Am I? Is this love? Is it? Is it really? Is it? Could it be? Could it? Could it really? Could it? Is he the one? Is he? Is he really? Is he? Am I the one for him? Am I? Am I really? Am I? Are Gunn and I a pair of star-crossed lovers in a dusty room covered with shattered Hummel figurines and the cremated remains of his mother, his most recent lover who I killed somewhat warm and rotting in her grave?

Why did I kill her? Why? Why? Why? Why would I kill Cat Mann? Why? Why? What possible motive could I have had? What? What? Why aren't I thinking this all out loud with him in the room as they do on soap operas, which is so cheesy and retarded, I mean, who walks around telling their business to the world out loud? I mean, besides people standing in line on freaking cell phones talking loud enough to implode eardrums, then when they think you're eavesdropping, they say something like, "Mind your own freaking business!" And you're like, okay, wench, stop talking because you're making your business everybody's business, and no one gives a crap about Deron and how he done you wrong and if that skank keep comin' on to him you gonna straighten dat--

"Mama!" Gunn cried again. "Mama!"

So why did I kill Cat?
Thais thought. Why? I could say that I hate cats. That's it. I hate cats, her name was Cat, thus her death. Very, very logical. It's not the truth, of course, but if they ever catch me, I'll plead insanity and they'll send me to a psychiatric hospital to inhale happy pills and allow me to help the FBI solve similar crimes. I'd like that a lot since I need a quiet place to keep all my secrets in one place. I mean, it's a really big secret about how Cat and I were sisters in Slovenia a long time ago and how I sold her to the circus once.

What would Gunn do,
Thais continued to think for a long freaking time, if he knew that I was actually Scorpion's sister coming from Slovenia to America via Brazil to wreak havoc with my sexy heels and my very big police-issue gun? He'd probably kill me. I guess I had better not tell him that. What would Gunn say if he knew he had been hot for both sisters of his mortal enemy? He'd probably think some pretty vile thoughts, and then he'd probably wait until I vacuumed up his mother before he killed me in a senselessly violent manner.

"Mama!" Gunn cried for the fifth freaking time. "Mama!"

I left no physical evidence,
Thais continued to think, evidently, because I am an international terrorist and I watch CSI and Forensic Files all the time. I will never commit crimes in Miami, New York, or Las Vegas. The CSI techs in those cities are good, and they solve every crime in less than an hour if you ignore all the commercials, which I always do except for commercials that have clowns in them. Don't ask me why. Clowns are good sales people. But why does the detective in Miami always stand sideways when he talks to a suspect? That would tick me off. I'd say, "Yo, over here, redheaded detective." But here I am ...

"Mama!" Gunn cried for the umpteenth time. "Mama!"

Yes, here I am,
Thais thought yet again, getting my thoughts interrupted by a manly man yelling "Mama!" like Marlon Brando yelled "Stella!" over and over until I just couldn't stand it anymore. "Answer him, wench!" I wanted to yell, but I knew she couldn't hear me since it was an old movie and I know that movie people can't really hear me. I am, after all, a UVA graduate who only once put a fork into an electrical socket. Yet here I am falling in love with Gunn even though he looks so pitiful covered in his mother's bodily dust. What should I do? What should I say aloud? What can anyone say at a time like this? Do I confess my crimes, say, "I love you," and expect Gunn to forgive me?

I've heard it happens in a whopping
pile of romance novels.

I mean, the heroine catches the hero "bedding down a kitchen wench" yet forgives his cheating heart even when he says, "If you loved me, I wouldn't have had to bed down the kitchen wench" and then he says, "I love you" to make it all better.

I guess I could go ahead, assassinate Gunn, and make it look like he fell in the bathtub. Or, I could smother him with his own chest hair. A simple up-do, and he's done. Do I do right by my creepy brother, who is really a wimp, cries at chick flicks, and is afraid of moths, and make what's left of my family proud of me, or do I turn my sexy Slovenian, Brazilian, naturalized American heel on everyone--except Cat, who's certainly dead as a doornail--whom I hold dear? I feel so much angst.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<