“Okay,” I agreed finally. “That shouldn’t be hard.”
She peered at me for a moment longer, then shook her head.
“You must be the only one in the known dimensions who doesn’t know that song.” she said. “Are you sure you’re Skeeve? The Great Skeeve?”
“Well . . . yes. Do we know each other?”
Realizing how stupid the question was, I hastened to modify it before she could answer.
“No. I’m sure I would have remembered if we had met before.”
For some reason, my clumsy recovery seemed to please her.
“That’s sweet,” she said, floating forward to run a soft hand along my cheek, light as a butter fly’s touch. “No. I haven’t had the pleasure. We have a mutual acquaintance, though. Do you remember a Djin named Kalvin?”
“Kalvin? Sure. He gave me a hand a while back when I was on Perv.”
“On Perv, eh?” she said, looking lost in thought for a moment, but then she brightened. “Well he mentioned you and said that if I was ever out this way, I should drop in and say ‘Hi’ for him.”
“Really? That’s nice of him . . . I mean, you.”
I was pleasantly surprised by Kalvin’s thoughtfulness. I don’t get many social visitors from off world, mostly just those who are looking for help on one thing or another. It also occurred to me that I had never thought of dropping in to pay social calls to any of the various people I had met on my many adventures, and made a mental note to correct that situation.
“So, how’s Kalvin doing? Is he fitting back into life on Djinger okay after being gone so long?”
“Oh. He’s okay,” the Djeanie said shrugging her shoulders . . . which had an interesting effect on a shapely body in a harem outfit. “You know how it is. It always takes a while to get back in stride after a sabbatical.”