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    An Angel at Satan's Ball: a novel
    An Angel at Satan's Ball: a novel
    An Angel at Satan's Ball: a novel
    Ebook358 pages5 hours

    An Angel at Satan's Ball: a novel

    By Angus Brownfield

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    Angels and demons, good and evil, selfless love and selfish lust tug and grate on the inhabitants of Angus Brownfield’s latest novel, An Angel At Satan’s Ball. Ulysses Everard, Angelic Advisor since Homo sapiens began migrating out of Africa, finds his latest ward, country girl Sarafina Birdseye, more of a challenge than any previous. Assuming the persona of a suave professor at Respected University, he soon falls in love with the innocent and vulnerable incoming freshman. A high-ranking demon, Semyaza, senses that Ulysses can be drawn into the ranks of Fallen Angels if she mounts an attack on his beloved. Aware that she’s attracted to the professor but also to raw sex in quantity, Sarafina finds herself the key not only to an angel’s fate but that of countless souls awaiting permanent berths in heaven. The more she indulges her sexuality, the more Sarafina decides she is unworthy of her idolized mentor. Except for Sequin, a blue collar angel, both angels and demons misjudge the selflessness of Sarafina’s love for Ulysses and where this will lead them both. One will become The Exemplar God has awaited since the Big Bang, the other will find a thoroughly unangelic route to salvation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAngus Brownfield
    Release dateSep 5, 2015
    ISBN9781310050664
    An Angel at Satan's Ball: a novel
    Author

    Angus Brownfield

    Write what you know. I know me and I'm talking to you, reader, in the first person, not the anonymous third person, because when I write I write about me and the world that thrives around me. I wrote decent poetry in college, I couldn’t get the hang of short stories. I finished my first novel so many years ago writers were still sending their works to publishers instead of agents. My first novel was rejected by everyone I sent it to. The most useful rejection, by a Miss Kelly at Little, Brown, said something like this: “You write beautifully, but you don’t know how to tell a story.” Since then I've concentrated on learning to tell a good story. The writing isn’t quite so beautiful but it will do. Life intervened. Like the typical Berkeley graduate, I went through five careers and three marriages. Since the last I've been writing like there’s no tomorrow. I have turned out twelve novels, a smattering of short stories and a little poetry. My latest novel is the third in a series about a man who is not my alter ego, he’s pure fiction, but everyone he interacts with, including the women, are me. My title for this trilogy is The Libertine. Writers who have influenced me include Thomas Mann, Elmore Leonard, Albert Camus, Graham Greene, Kurt Vonnegut and Willa Cather. I don’t write like any of them, but I wish I did. I'm currently gearing up to pay attention to marketing. Archery isn’t complete if there’s no target. I've neglected readers because I've been compulsive about putting words down on paper. Today the balance shifts.

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      Book preview

      An Angel at Satan's Ball - Angus Brownfield

      AN ANGEL AT SATAN’S BALL

      A Novel by

      ANGUS BROWNFIELD

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      ***

      Published By

      Angus Brownfield on Smashwords

      Also by Angus Brownfield

      The Day’s Vanity, The Night’s Remorse

      Río Penitente

      Pool of Tears

      She’s Got Her Own

      Abrupt Edge

      Copyright © 2011 and 2015 by Angus Brownfield

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this eBook.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this Ebook and did not download it, or it was not downloaded for your use only, then you should return to the eBook retailer from whom it was acquired and download your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      Slip slidin’ away

      Slip slidin’ away

      You know the nearer your destination

      The more you’re slip slidin’ away

      Paul Simon

      An Angel at Satan’s Ball

      An intrigue of demons

      (Two figures lean into a gale force wind blowing snow and roaring like a jet’s afterburners. The taller figure, Satan, an ebony silhouette etched into the blinding whiteness, is quickly rimed in frost. The other, the demon Semyaza, might be an Inuit, bundled in a parka of reindeer hide, with trousers and boots to match.)

      SATAN

      Where are we, Semyaza?

      SEMYAZA

      On the sea ice directly above the Earth’s North Pole.

      SATAN

      Why did you call this meeting, and how did we get here?

      SEMYAZA

      I invited you here to fill you in on a scheme Lucifer and I cooked up to bring a powerful Watcher over to our side. And here is here because the Information Technology Branch of the Supreme Izad, the Dirty Birds, as we call them, figured out how to jam the global positioning apparatus on the Demonic Express. Don’t worry, countermeasures are being developed as we speak.

      SATAN

      Why does God always play this as farce? Why can’t She fight fair?

      SEMYAZA

      It’s not Her, boss, She’s delegated—the way you’ve so wisely delegated to me. It’s always Her angels we’re fighting. And She’s given them a free hand.

      SATAN

      Can we aim the Demonic Express for any place on Earth besides here and hope we land where it’s more comfortable than gale force winds and minus fifty degrees?

      (They are now sitting in a Tiki bar, dressed for the tropics. Under an unbuttoned Aloha shirt, he is muscular and, despite an aura of ageless dynamism, the mahogany hue of an ancient mariner. He’s handsome but wears a perpetual scowl. Bikini clad, she is wantonly voluptuous, creamy tan with tons of black hair and a look of enduring rapacity.)

      SATAN

      Any idea where we are this time?

      SEMYAZA

      Your old stronghold, Ouidah, if the worshipful look you just got from our waitress is any indicator. Judging from the amulet she’s wearing, she works after hours as a voodoo priestess. Must be comforting to be recognized and not scare the crap out of folks.

      SATAN

      So, what’s this scheme of yours, O Fairest, Foulest Fiend? And who’s the pigeon?

      SEMYAZA

      The scheme is an old interrogator’s trick: don’t shove the bamboo splinters under the interrogee’s fingernails, shove them under his girlfriend’s.

      SATAN

      The pigeon, please, and who is his girlfriend?

      SEMYAZA

      The Watcher is Angelic Advisor Ulysses Everard. He’s a ripe plum, ready to drop. His inamorata is a yokel, a nothing, but he’s sweet on her.

      SATAN

      Evidence?

      SEMYAZA

      You’ve got my word, boss. Beaucoup human backwash from his humanform into his angelic core. He’s lonely; he wants love.

      SATAN

      When I learned of love, Semyaza, I went right after it. Didn’t make me less lonely, though; it tasted like ashes in my mouth. And I came to be called Incubus and Succubus and triggered exorcisms. I succeeded in producing only one offspring, Merlin.

      SEMYAZA

      May I be frank, Satan?

      SATAN

      I’ve never known you to be subtle, sweetheart.

      SEMYAZA

      (She smiles, a sardonic smile.) You are discontent within yourself, sire. You believe in your heart you could have done creation better than God Almighty. So the pleasures you experience in a borrowed humanform don’t satisfy. The inner demon aches—a Blues in the Night kind of ache.

      SATAN

      (His expression softens for just a moment.) It is the conundrum of all Eternity, Semyaza: God erred, God screwed up. I could have done a better job if I’d been there instead of Her. By which I mean I wouldn’t have touched Matter with a ten foot pole. Let sleeping protons lie, I say. But I wouldn’t be here at all if She hadn’t screwed up, so my criticism is like a dog chasing its tail. She has the upper hand and always will and I’m to be eternally vexed and discontent—though there’s some pleasure in screwing the screwer—not literally of course. That’s why I like your idea of bringing Ulysses Everard over to our side.—Then another angel and another. We could have a run on Watchers.

      SEMYAZA

      I’ll nail him, boss. But I need your help.

      SATAN

      Ask. I’ll make it so.

      SEMYAZA

      I need to get the Supreme Izad out of my hair. Constant harassment. My pitch to those angelic bureaucrats is, How can I test his constancy when you won’t let me tempt him? And they say, Go practice your free will elsewhere, sister.

      SATAN

      It’s time for me to drop in on the Old Girl. I didn’t do too badly the last time.

      SEMYAZA

      Racking the righteous man, Job. I thought you won that bout.

      SATAN

      I did, but on points. When you duke it out in the Champ’s home town, you have to score a knockout to be awarded the victory, which as we both know, isn’t in the cosmic cards.

      SEMYAZA

      Well, get me a free pass, so I can do my job.

      SATAN

      As good as done. And I pick the meeting place next time. Tell the gang to get a move on and unjam the damned GPS.

      SEMYAZA

      Your wish is my command, O Prince of Darkness.

      SATAN

      It better be. Farewell, fair demon.

      I

      Sarafina: Silky smooth

      My early childhood I remember like a shoe box full of undated snapshots. I see Grandma doing my hair in Swedish braids. I don’t know if it’s the first or the tenth time, there’s no time at all attached to those kind of memories. I remember, dressed all in pink, going to church on Easter, closing my eyes as the grown-ups around me sang hymns, imagining who I was going to meet in Heaven. I remember watching my father squirting milk from a cow’s teat at the barn cat, but in my memory the milk doesn’t stream, it’s frozen, as in a photograph, in an arc and on Puss’s muzzle.

      Then there are things from my childhood that move like videos.

      Silky smooth, Uncle Alva says. It’s at a birthday party, not mine. In fact, I can’t remember whose birthday it was, but Alva, my mother’s brother, and my father were the only men around. All the adults had been drinking Grandma’s chokecherry wine, but Father and Uncle Alva had a bottle of aquavit stashed in the freezer and hid their shot glasses behind the milk in the fridge. At first they were sneaky about the shots of aquavit, but as the party got livelier they quit caring who saw them drinking.

      Silky smooth.

      I’m sitting on Uncle Alva’s lap and he has been feeding me sips of sour-sweet chokecherry wine, an arm around my waist. But now he has neither wine nor aquavit in hand. He’s stroking my face and giving me little kisses. In between kisses he says, Sarafina, Sarafina.

      —It had to be my brother, Reuben’s, birthday, deep in summer, because I remember wearing a summery pinafore.

      Silky smooth. He says it as he strokes my thigh, from my knee up under the hem of my pinafore. He would pet me and coo at me when all my father did was yell at me and threaten to beat me.

      That’s the video: Uncle Alva caressing me.

      Snapshot: diving off the mare’s far side as she galloped past the corner of John Duncan’s fence, going into our driveway. I am forever frozen in midair, before the ground starts coming up to meet me. I broke my wrist. I don’t remember getting it splinted but I did, and I was wearing the splint when I started the first grade.

      Snapshot: Going to visit Grandma’s sister, Mariah, in the old folk’s home. The home was in Midtown and we came home after dark, Mother and Grandma in the front seat, talking, but there are no words. The snapshot was Aunt Mariah in a wheelchair, slumped over.

      Another time that year we came back from the State Fair through Midtown, Ma and Father in the front seat, me lying across the back seat, dozing. I woke up in the dark, the old-fashioned lights hanging above the center of Midtown intersections swaying in the wind, making the light dance across my body.

      It all seems a long time ago. Uncle Alva was shot and killed going out the window of a bedroom one night. He’d been with the wife of the shooter; the husband wasn’t supposed to come home till the next day. I was old enough to know what they were talking about, but the adults would stop talking when I came around. It was the great family scandal.

      I wasn’t sorry Alva died. In the beginning of my memories I thought he caressed me out of love, but another time he took me in his truck up a logging road, looking for morels, and when we stopped as the road was about to peter out, he told me not to get out, he had something he wanted me to do. It had to do with what in those days I called my private parts—and his, too—and for a long time I would gag every time I thought of that day. He didn’t rape me in the grossest sense of the word, but in my spirit he raped me. I carry it like a scar, the same as if he’d slashed me with a skinning knife.

      Don’t tell anyone, he said. Your father will kill me—really; he will kill me. Your ma will call the police and I’ll go to jail until I die.

      But of course I couldn’t tell anyone, I was too ashamed.

      After that I wouldn’t go near Uncle Alva when he came around and it grieved me. My father was always full of rage, shouting and stomping around with a look of thunder in his face; he never, that I remember, sat me on his lap, never kissed me. My brothers treated me as if girls were an inferior kind of human, to be bullied or teased or cheated. I had got affection from Uncle Alva and I thought it was a sign he loved me.

      It wasn’t enough that Ma and Grandma loved me and showed it all the time, brushing my hair, making me clothes, baking Mazariner and Pepparkakor. I wanted the other half of mankind to love me, too.

      Through it all—I don’t know how early I decided but—I decided I would turn a peaceful face to the world and treat every human being as if he were trustworthy. I would try to turn frowns into smiles. I would ignore the ragged clothes some kids wore to school and make friends with them. I would excel wherever I could.

      It dawned on me early in high school, after Alva was killed, that he’d done me a sort of favor. I didn’t have the same curiosities as other girls had. I truly believed that, knowing just that much, I could resist the urges of the flesh (though I couldn’t resist the urges of the heart, or the soul, or whatever it is yearns for love to be the center of stillness in the universe).

      I made A’s in all my classes. I was the girl on the softball team who could play every position. I hit like crazy. My grandmother and my mother loved me. They read the bible but weren’t prudish, so I wasn’t shocked when I had my first period, and I wasn’t shocked that man and beast did the same things, but I would wait. I wasn’t sure who I was waiting for, but I’d wait.

      In high school there were boys who told me they were dying for me, would follow me around and say the darnedest things, and I would just frown for a moment and then smile and say things like, Don’t you wish, or Does your mother know you say things like that, naughty boy?

      I got one of my brother George’s friends, Billy Bucknell, to take me to the senior prom, because I didn’t want it said that the class valedictorian was a total wallflower. I didn’t know how to dance, so Grandma taught me the waltz and the foxtrot, and all the modern stuff got hidden by a floor-length prom dress Ma made, aqua taffeta and cap sleeves and a lot of freckles showing, but no one saw what my feet were doing as I imitated Billy from the waist up, or other kids I watched while we sat out a dance. They played one waltz and Billy didn’t know how—none of the boys did—and I went over and asked Angel Raymond, who was the school’s best dancer, if she would waltz with me.

      She said, Only if I get to lead.

      We laughed at all the swishing material swirling and our hems bumping into each other. It was the best dance of the evening, and no one thought we were gay or anything.

      After finals the seniors had a class picnic out by the lake and I wore white shorts and a white blouse and I was tan all over and Frank Kromnitz said, You have the most beautiful legs I’ve ever seen. They’re—you know, outstanding.

      And they run, too, I said, running away from him as fast as I could but grinning as I ran.

      Sequin: A new day, a new post

      My name is Sequentia Furbinder. I’m a scout angel, the lowest rank of Watcher. A scout angel’s existence can be a merry chase. Yesterday, so to speak, I had brown skin and black eyes, spoke Nivarura, and mainly went naked. I was called Hadaní which is the polite word for stupid in their language. I wasn’t judged a good candidate for marriage because the Eighth Heaven Armorer had cleverly supplied me with a birth mark on my tushie that looked like a tapir. What could be more obvious? That was my totem. There being no tapir clan among the Nivarura, I was either up for grabs—any man could have me—or I was taboo for everyone. The elders hadn’t made up their collective minds when word came down from the Supreme Izad that I was to be temporarily brevetted a scribe—like a buck sergeant of Watchers— and assigned as secretary to Ichabod Powers, Chief Angelic Advisor, Western Sector, Earth.

      I say yesterday ‘so to speak’ for two reasons: first, the Nivarura’s vague sense of time is catching. Second, to visit the Eighth Heaven Armorer, I crossed the border between Time and Eternity, and Up There there is no Time. All I know is, I left a place where men carried spears to war and blow guns to hunt, menstruating women were secluded to prevent game animals and birds from disappearing, and everyone in the world who wasn’t a Nivarura was a "bachdi, meaning enemy. I arrived in Collegeton, a place where cell phones were beginning to be used, secretaries were beginning to be called assistants," and women wore pants as often as skirts.

      Miss Furbinder? The boss was calling.

      I went into his office with a steno pad and ballpoint. "Sit down, sit down. It’s time we got acquainted. —So, considering your last assignment was scouting an isolado tribe up the Río Caquetá, how are your secretarial skills?"

      I scored plus four on the typing test before I came down. And almost plus four on the shorthand test.

      I like it that you favor skirts and high heels—I guess I’m old fashioned that way—but you should know, women these days don’t favor stockings with seams.

      I know, sir; I just happen to like them. Considering that in my last posting it was fashionable to wear a headband of colorful bird feathers and that was about it, I’m relishing clothes. And I consider stockings with seams very feminine.

      Feminine is fine by me. I have only one hard and fast rule around here, Miss Furbinder: don’t ever call me Ichabod. I hate the name.

      Understood.

      I don’t favor Miss Furbinder either—and Sequentia sounds a bit formal.

      Frankly, anything’s better than Hadaní.

      I think Squiggy would be clever—that suit you?

      I blushed. Even when a boss is a high ranking angel—in this case a Dominion—they can act like jerks. The name, Squiggy, definitely didn’t suit me, but I couldn’t think of a decent alternative quickly enough.

      I guess it will do until something better occurs to one of us, I said.

      "Good. Now to the order of the day. Please take a memo to the Supreme Izad Leader.

      He cleared his throat. "Your Excellency full colon paragraph

      "This is in response to yours of the tenth comma concerning the reassignment of Angelic Advisor Ulysses Everard period It sounds as if you are setting up Ulysses with a creampuff assignment on the one hand comma while on the other you say that he’s part of a study of veteran advisors dash those with over ten thousand years’ experience dash and will pay particular attention to how he fairs with a young, attractive female ward period

      "Paragraph I should point out that his previous ward comma Millicent Chen comma was likewise young and attractive comma one of the most perfectly conformed humans on campus comma due largely to her rigid figure skating regimen period Your memo didn’t explain in sufficient detail why the sex of the ward is pertinent period Would you kindly send me an abstract of the study design question mark If I’m to competently supervise this advisor while he is a subject of a study comma I need to know what are considered pertinent indicators of conformance to your study objectives period

      Glory and praise to God, etc., etc.

      Just one thing, sir.

      Yes, Squiggy?

      I was briefed on the latest protocol before I came down, and we’re now to address executives by name in addition to title.

      Oh bother. By all means address his Highness however he wishes. By the way, what is he calling himself these days?

      I said, Octavius Lanceman, sir.

      Powers shook his head. His white hair was wispy enough it flowed as he shook it, ending up with the electrocuted look of Albert Einstein. I think all this protocol business is getting out of hand. I’m glad you’re the secretary and I’m the boss.

      May I ask when I get to meet Advisor Everard?

      I expect him back before two. He has a meeting of the Committee on Committees. Another bureaucratic boondoggle.

      If I may say so, sir, I think you’re right in questioning this study. It sounds bogus to me.

      Squiggy, I appreciate your openness, just keep it to yourself when visiting firemen are around—okay?

      Of course, sir.

      Ulysses, it seems, had gone to Langdoc, where his soon-to-be ward, Sarafina Birdseye, was winding up her senior year at Appleberry Senior High School. He went up there simply to eyeball his new ward, no in-depth study.

      Before he returned a message showed up on the Angelic Bulletin Board that Ulysses had created a kerfuffle out there in the boonies, involving a school employee, the varsity football team and another advisor’s ward. Details from the scene were sketchy, but a bulletin from the Fifth Heaven Meteorological Maintenance Station reported that Intelligences and Virtues working in the vicinity had backed Ulysses in breaking up a gang rape.

      I printed out a copy of the message and took it in to Powers.

      He glanced up from the message and said, Not a word to anyone. For the love of Pete, how could he do this?

      Compassion? I suggested.

      Advisors are supposed to be steely-eyed, dispassionate and aloof. Humans commit sins every day, every minute of every day, and advisors are not supposed to interfere. They advise, that is their function. You do not, if you’re an advisor, go around rescuing damsels in distress.

      Having escaped mating with a single Nivarura man, I had a hard time grasping getting it from eight members of the football team’s first string before Ulysses stopped them. It boggled my mind; imagine what it did to hers, poor thing.

      A third dispatch, originating with the victim’s Angelic Advisor, Luke Wattling, stated that Ulysses had borrowed a human’s body to do his surveillance of the Birdseye girl, and had involved this human in what might prove to be a delicate situation with the varsity football coach, who was nicknamed Hardcase.

      Choleric is the word fits Powers’ condition at the fourth dispatch. The veins in his neck swelled. My centuries as a scout had taught me to read signs of stress. I judged Powers’ blood pressure to be in the neighborhood of one-eighty over a hundred. Yet he spoke calmly—perhaps too calmly—when he stuck his head out of his office and said, The minute he returns, Squiggy, I want Mr. Everard in my office—if you please!

      *****

      When Ulysses came through the door I was startled—in a good way. What a handsome humanform they’d fashioned him—almost too handsome. If I were a suggestible young female mortal, like a college age ward, I might have randy thoughts about him. Even as an angel I found myself arrested in mid thought by such a refined, masculine presence.

      You must be Sequentia Furbinder. I hear you’ve just come back from Amazonas. Welcome to Twentieth Century civilization, that is to say, welcome to Collegeton and Respected University.

      Happy to be here. I signaled with a nod of the head that his nibs wanted an immediate audience.

      Right. Well, we’ll get to know each other sometime when he’s in Belgrade or Oslo, smoothing ruffled feathers.

      Glad to meet you, sir.

      You can dispense with the sir. It’s Ulysses, except when visiting firemen are in the house.

      What might it be then? It was an effort not to bat my eyelashes at him.

      It’s Bond. James Bond.

      I said, Would that make me Miss Moneypenny?

      I think, he said, with such an elegant name as Sequentia, you should have a playful nickname, like ‘Sequin.’ Although, when I’m Bond I guess you would have to be Miss Moneypenny, wouldn’t you.

      Which would make Powers ‘M.’ I couldn’t help smiling. After years of Hadaní, Sequin suited me to a tee. And fitting into Ulysses’ spy fantasy was delicious after the jungle.

      Is that you, Everard? came a roar from the inner office.

      Coming, boss.

      He winked at me as he turned to go.

      Powers: The answer

      This Langdoc brouhaha raised issues. Freewill, Imminent Danger, Angelic Possession. When I confronted Ulysses (What in the pluperfect hell were you doing out there in the back country?) he calmly invoked the Emergency Enablement rule of the Watchers’ Administrative Manual.

      Not when the subject has her own advisor, I said.

      I was in a human’s body. Any responsible adult human would have intervened. Besides, just where was the victim’s advisor, may I ask? His calmness was almost maddening.

      Never mind, you broke the rules. But more importantly, you exhibited unbridled wrath, which was seconded by your brethren up in the ether, for which they’ll be reprimanded. But this is all over Angeldom and you’ll have to answer to the Special Committee for it.

      The Emergency Enablement rule gives advisors—and members of other angelic guilds—wide latitude in acting outside their narrowly defined roles. That rule is the only basis for borrowing a human’s body to interact with Matter. Enforcement of the rule had grown lax since the Black Death, when so many angels shielded humans totally ignorant of the origin of the disease.

      The wrath, sir, was in some part play-acting. The human body I found myself in is not particularly robust, and I was confronting a number of testosterone-infused oafs half again his size. If he hadn’t—if I hadn’t, acting through him—shouted them down, I’d likely have been pushed aside, while more of them piled on the girl.

      You can’t have it both ways, Ulysses. You invoke the Emergency Enablement rule, which allows you to invest a human’s body, but the emergency didn’t happen until after you entered—what was his name?

      Felix Blockburger. It was egregious, what they were doing to her. My angelic intuition told me if this were allowed to continue she would be physically harmed in a most painful way, but more importantly, harmed in the spirit: humiliated, defeated, made to feel worse than worthless.

      You job is to advise, plain and simple. Even archangels, in their capacity as Guardian Angels, do not intervene except where demons are in the mix. The last message I received on this matter was from the Supreme Izad. You’re to go in front of the Special Committee on Advisor Conduct.

      Still calm, he shrugged. I’ll state my case and hope that the wisdom of that body exonerates me.

      Don’t pull a stunt like this again—understood?

      He grinned. I’ve been pretty good since Twelve-Eighty-Five.

      Don’t try to charm me, buster. I’m old enough to know all the tricks.

      He was referring to the tragic death of Francesca da Rimini at the hands of her husband, whose advisor Ulysses had been. While Dante had rather romanticized the event in the Divine Comedy, neither Francesca nor her paramour were kids. Still, Ulysses took it very hard and came close to skewering Giovanni Malatesta, the lady’s husband and murderer. He was hauled on the carpet for that outburst of anger as well, and afterwards spent generations in Lapland literally cooling his heels.

      Check with Squiggy on the way out and find out when the next Grand Conclave convenes. The Special Committee will be meeting immediately before that.

      Squiggy? I should think Sequin would be a better fit.

      I said, Sequin sounds like a pole dancer.

      He smiled himself through the door, letting the nickname lie.

      *****

      He hadn’t been gone ten minutes when Squiggy knocked. You won’t believe it.

      What?

      We’ve got an answer to the memo that went out this morning. That has to be a record.

      I said, A record indeed. And since you used the plural pronoun, I can assume you’ve read the memo?

      As if surprised I’d even asked she said, Of course.

      And what does it say?

      She said, In a nutshell: mind your own business.

      I beg your pardon.

      "It

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