More howls. I was grinning myself. O’Neal loses when he cheats at solitaire. Like the wise man says: “Some’re fast, some’re slow, and some dummies can’t even find the starting gate.”
O’Neal finally blew his stack. “Will somebody explains what’s so all-fired funny?”
Angus stopped laughing long enough to speak. “She wasn’t pinching you, Wetdream, old boy! She was just finding her way through the room. Trying to figure out if you were a chair in the way, or just a big ugly dog. Look at her, dummy—she’s blind as a bat!”
But O’Neal was dense, like always. He tried to make a living as a scalper once. Sold tickets for half the price they were asking at the box office. He couldn’t figure out why he was broke when he had so many customers.
“I say she pinched me,” he announced, trying for some dignity. “And by the Old Geister, that’s an invitation in anybody’s book!”
He glared around the table. “And what’s she doing here anyway, if she’s not looking for a handsome lad like me?” He stood up and sucked in his gut. At least three geometric axioms were refuted.
“She’s here to meet Greyboar,” I announced. “He should come—there he is now.”
Sure enough, Greyboar was already halfway across the room, headed for the Cat’s table. Good thing nobody was in his way, he’d have trampled them. Not on purpose, of course! Greyboar was normally as polite as you could ask. But does a bull moose in heat pay attention to the odd field mouse in his way?
O’Neal was like a statue, white as marble. Slowly, slowly, that certain smile inched across his face. “Coprophagic,” the scholars call it.
“Gee.” A mouse squeaks louder. He cleared his throat.
“No need to mention this to Greyboar, is there, Ignace old buddy? I was just kidding anyway. Ha. Ha. Ha. Buy you a drink?”
“Oh, siddown,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare ten years off your life. Why would I tell Greyboar? And even if I did, so what? He’s the phlegmatic type, he is. Not the kind to get all worked up into a jealous rage, don’t you know?”
“True, true,” opined Angus. “Nice easygoing lad, Greyboar. Still and all, everybody’s got their off days. Fat lot of good it’d do O’Neal here, his neck like a tapeworm, being the exception to the rule.”
Anyway, that was the Cat. Weird, like I said, but did I care? Long as she was around, Greyboar wasn’t wallowing in that damned philosophy.
Yessir. Things were looking up!
Chapter 2.
A Choking Dilemma
Or so I thought. Mind you, I’d always known life wasn’t fair—
first thing I ever learned. My pop used to whup me for no reason, just to drive the lesson home. But the way things were going! Unfair is one thing. Being singled out by Fate for merciless persecution is another.
The next day I landed a simple, straightforward job. Easy money, put us right back in the pink, no complications. Ha!
Naturally, Greyboar started grousing as soon as I explained the job to him.
“I hate these jealous-lover jobs,” he growled. “First of all, they’re boring—never any professional challenge to ’em. Second, they’re stupid. I mean, what is it with people and jealousy, anyway? I figured it out when I was twelve: the only rational philosophy when it comes to this fidelity business is solipsism. If you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. And don’t go looking for it, if you don’t want to see it, because then it won’t have happened. Sensible, right? Logical, right? But no! And finally, it’s always disgusting. I suppose this client of ours wants me to wave his ex-girlfriend’s new lover’s dead tongue in front of her face, like usual?”
I nodded.
“Never fails! Sadistic bunch, ex-lovers.” He glared at me. “And then there’s the fee! Five hundred quid? Our going rate’s been a thousand for the last three years!”
My voice got shrill. Unreasonable lug! “That’s because rumors are flying all over that we might have had something to do with that business in Prygg that brought in the Ozarine troops!”
Greyboar shrugged. “Which we did.”
“I know it! I’m still mad about the whole thing. We wouldn’t have even been in Prygg if it hadn’t been for you and your damned philosophy!”
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