Jordan cut her off, “We came to see the show.  You just happened to be there.”

“Be that as it may.  You observed what happened, am I correct?”

“Yes, I saw,” Jordan said.  “It was quite colorful.”

Petronella ignored the obvious pun.  “Did you see the reviews?” she inquired.

“If you mean those little ezine-online thingies, not really,” Jordan said.

“And the City Pages and the Arts and Entertainment section,” Petronella added.

“Yeah, whatever,” Jordan said.

Petronella pulled out a chair and sat.  “I need your help.”

“First, what could you possibly want from me?” Jordan asked.  “And secondly, why should I do anything for you?”

Petronella ignored the questions.  Which was not unusual.  If she didn’t want to know about something, she ignored its existence.  Just like she was ignoring Amy right at the moment.  Petronella scooted her chair several inches closer to Jordan.  “I need your little inventor friend… what is her name, Einstein?”

“Edison,” Jordan corrected.

“Yes, of course.  I need Edison to build me a machine.”

“What kind of machine?” Jordan asked.  She wondered if it was too much to hope for Petronella wanting a time machine to blast her back into the past.  Or the future. Or anywhere but here.

“A machine like the one that attacked me last night.”

Jordan paled.  “Why?”  She squirmed in her chair.  Did Petronella know she was responsible for the paint-spraying incident?  Was she playing some type of game, hoping to trap Jordan into admitting her culpability?  Jordan looked to Amy for help.  But Amy was nervously stuffing blue-corn tortilla chips in her mouth.

Petronella continued, “I tried to find the machine after the show.  I was going to gather up the parts and see if Einstein could put them back together.  But, unfortunately, the terrorists made off with it before I could.”

“Terrorists?” Amy said through a mouth full of blue goo.

“Yes,” Petronella said.  She had the gleam of a zealot in her eyes.

“Terrorists for what?” Jordan said.

“There are certain people, Jordan, who wish to see me harmed.”

“Really?” Jordan said, trying hard to appear appalled at such a thing.  “Who would want that?”  Besides me, she added inside her own head.

“People who dislike poetry,” Petronella said like it was obvious.  “Republican people, no doubt.  But their little plan backfired.”

“It did?” Amy chirped up.

Petronella did not look at her.  “The audience loved the paint splattering.  They thought it was part of the show.  My reviews were fantastic.  There is talk of short-listing me for the Nobel.”

Amy choked on a chip.  Petronella glared at her.  Amy smiled weakly and thumped herself on the chest.  “Sorry.  Wrong pipe.”

Jordan smirked.

“So,” Petronella continued, “I would like your little friend to build me another paint machine.  I will go on tour with it.  I will call it my Rainbow Tour.”

“What a fantastic idea!” Jordan said.  The thought of Petronella being on tour and out of her life was too good to be true.  Wait, Jordan thought, what if it really is too good to be true? “For realsies?” she asked.

“Yes,” Petronella said.  “For realsies.”

“When would you be leaving on this tour?”

“As soon as I get the paint machine.”

“I’ll call Einstein, I mean, Edison, today.”

Petronella smiled and stood. “Contact me after you have talked to her.  You know my number.”

Jordan and Amy watched Petronella as she left.  No sooner had the door closed behind her than Edison entered through the back door.  She saw Jordan and hurried over to the table.  Skipping hellos entirely, Edison panted, “Was she here?”

“Petronella?” Jordan asked.

Edison nodded, trying to catch her breath.  “Who else?  I’ve been following her, but I lost her about a mile back.  I invented a motorized bicycle, you know, for the lazy cyclist so they wouldn’t have to pedal up hills, but I think I ran out of gas.  Do you know how heavy one of those bikes are when you have to pedal?”  She wheezed a couple of times and sucked in a giant lungful of oxygen before continuing, “I lost her, but figured she was headed here.”

“You just missed her,” Jordan said.

“Motorized bicycles have already been invented,” Amy said.

Edison sat in Petronella’s vacant chair.  “They have?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Amy said.

Edison looked downcast.  “Damn.  All the good inventions are already taken.”

Jordan leaned across the table until her nose was six inches from Edison’s nose.  “Guess what?  Petronella wants you to invent a paint car just like the one that sprayed her.”

Edison looked confused.  “I invented the one that did spray her.”

“She doesn’t know that,” Jordan said.  “She wants to take it on tour.  Build another one and Petronella will be out of my hair forever.  Can you do it?”

“Of course,” Edison said.

“If you build it, she will go,” Amy said.


Congress of Cow

Amy walked into the house and was immediately engulfed by the aroma of curry emanating from the kitchen.  She followed her nose to the source, expecting to find Isabel.  Instead, she found Jeremy stirring something in a saucepan and reading a book - both very unnatural things for him.

“You’re cooking?” Amy said.

“Actually, I’m only babysitting.  I have strict orders to not stop stirring.”

Amy peered into the pot and saw something green and lumpy.  She was no expert, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.  “What is that?”

“It’s Saag Paneer.  Or will be when it’s done,” Jeremy said, not looking up from the book he was holding.  He cocked his head and then turned the book upside down and squinted his eyes.

“It’s what?” Amy said, taking the wooden spoon from him and giving the goop a good poke.  It had the consistency of something found in a touch pool at the aquarium.  She felt the urge to do it again, the way kids like to poke dead things with a stick.

“Saag Paneer is Indian for green slime.  It’s essentially cooked spinach with this Indian cheese stuff.  The sauce is supposed to be thinner than this but he ran out of coconut milk.  He went out to get it.  He’s making you dinner.”

“He?  He who?” Amy asked with a note of panic.

“Chad he, that’s who.  You know a man’s in love when he starts cooking dinner.”

“What!”  Amy said, dropping the spoon and splattering green stuff everywhere.

“Seriously, the dude’s got it bad for you.  He was like so down about what happened at lunch that he took an express cooking class this afternoon to woo you back.  The only class they had available was Indian cooking.  Hence, the green slime.”

“That’s just great.  I thought I could spend an evening alone with you and Isabel.  I had something important to tell you both and…” her voice trailed off when she realized Jeremy was more interested in his book than in what she was saying.  “What’re you reading?”

“The Kama Sutra.  Talk about a real eye-opener.”

Amy looked over his shoulder at the drawing he had been studying.  “That’s not even humanly possible.”

“Apparently, it is.  Those bodies are drawn to scale.  I think you just have to be really limber.”

“Why do you even have this?” Amy made some deductions and she hoped she was wrong about all of them.

“It’s not mine.  It’s Chad’s.  He bought it with the cookbook.  He’s boning up on some new positions to try out on you.”  He laughed.  “Boning up.  Get it?”

“Not funny.  This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start,” Amy said.

“No, I think the dude is right on target.  His plan is to feed you and then fuck you like…” he shows her a picture in the book, “a congress of cow.”

“That is so not going to happen.”

“You prefer him to fuck you like a panda?”

“Jeremy, there is going to be no fucking – panda, cow or any other animal.”

“He’s going to be totally bummed out.  What’re you going to tell him?”

“Good question.”  She could call Jordan and have her call back with some fake emergency.  Amy bit her lip.  In theory that was a good plan but maybe the wrong person.  Jordan was already skittish about Chad.  Amy didn’t want to make it any weirder.  She thought some more.  Her mother!  She’d be perfect.  Who can deny the call of a sick mother?  And it would have the added benefit of not looking like she was rebuffing him because the rebuff strategy was backfiring.  It was making Chad more ardent than ever.

“Do you think that Chad thinks I’m trying to play ‘hard to get’ and that’s why he’s trying so hard to get me?”

Jeremy stared back at her.  “Could you put that in like man-speak?”

Men and women were not of the same species despite the claims of science, Amy had concluded.  She tried again.  “That’s what you told me once.  That he thinks I’m playing hard to get.”

“Yes, and he likes it.”

“So if I acted like I wanted him then would he go away?”

“No, he’d totally marry you.”

“And then cheat on you the day after,” Isabel said, entering the kitchen.  She was carrying a bag of groceries with celery sticking out of the top and something moving in the bottom.

“What’s in the bag?” Amy asked.

“A live lobster which I really need to get into some water,” Isabel said, setting the bag down on the counter.  She peered into the pot on the stove.  She took the wooden spoon from Jeremy and poked the green, lumpy stuff.  “What is this?”

“Saag Paneer,” Jeremy said.

“It needs more coconut milk.”

“Chad went to get it,” Jeremy said.

Isabel ran water into the sink.  She carefully extracted the lobster from the sack and dumped it into the water.

“What are you making for dinner?” Amy asked.  “Lobster bisque?”  Amy didn’t know what lobster bisque was exactly, but it had to better than Chad’s Pig Veneer or whatever it was Jeremy was stirring.

“No, the lobster is for the lobster race that’s being held at the Extreme Cook Off downtown in the Convention Center,” Isabel said.

“Lobster race?” Amy asked.  She did a double take when she saw Jeremy was now studying a diagram on cunnilingus.  She made a mental note of the page number.

“The placement of your lobster in the race determines your place in the cook off.  Obviously being in the top ten is best.  Judges’ palates get jaded and gastric problems start occurring so you want to get in early.”  She gestured at the lobster in the sink, saying, “I thought this guy looked pretty fast and he was hot-to-go getting out of the tank.  Look at him trying to get out of the sink now.”  She grabbed a spatula and parried it at the lobster, like an errant knight defending a damsel.  The lobster evaded Isabel’s thrust, reached out with one deadly claw and snapped the spatula in half.

“Wowzer,” Isabel said, surveying the decapitated spatula.

“Wowzer is right,” Amy said.  “Remind me not to get on his bad side.”

Isabel threw the spatula in the trash.  “I guess that’s why they’re usually sold with rubber-bands around their claws.”

“So, after the race, are you going to eat him?” Amy asked.  Jeremy was totally engrossed in the book and not stirring.  She poked him with her elbow.  “Keep stirring.”

“Depends on if he wins or loses the race,” Isabel said, looking down on him.  “His performance will affect my life.  If he places high I should reward him with life, don’t you think?”

“You could take him to the beach and free him,” Amy said.

The front door slammed, announcing the arrival of Chad with the coconut milk. Amy panicked.  He was the last person she wanted to see.  She was about to sneak out the door when Chad appeared, blocking her only exit.  “Hello, my little love button.”

Amy gritted her teeth and looked at Isabel, sending her telepathic messages.  Isabel caught on and came to her rescue by saying, “You better get that coconut milk in the Saag Paneer because it has the consistency of wallpaper glue.”

Chad quickly began tearing the top of the container.  “How much do you think?”

Isabel shrugged.  “Don’t know.  Never made the stuff.  I have a spastic colon.”

Chad noticed Jeremy reading and snatched the book away from him.  “No one was supposed to see that, you idiot.”

“Hey, I needed entertainment.  Stirring is boring.”

Chad poured in a tiny bit of the coconut milk.  Jeremy had to use both hands to stir the thick gunk.  “Keep stirring,” Chad ordered.

Isabel grabbed the carton of coconut milk out of Chad’s hands, saying, “Let me help.  You men are useless.”  She poured a little at a time into the pot while Jeremy continued stirring.