Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  Roxy pushed herself up on the couch and raised her palm to Billings. He gave her a high five with a resounding clap.

  “Sorry I missed it,” she said, and I think part of her really was sorry. I, on the other hand, couldn’t enjoy the victory. I was remembering happier times with Butte. Sitting with him in our living room back in Chicago, watching Billings toddle around the room with his pacifier half in his mouth. Every once in a while, the past came rushing back at me. The past, and the stunning knowledge that it was over. It didn’t seem fair. The toddler was almost 21. And the whole world had changed. I let the past play in my head for a few minutes, nostalgic for the American dream family that we had had.

  The anchor came back on after the weather and my nostalgia vanished in a cloud of mental smoke. I mused, “413 kilos, and 39 hours is 13 times 3. If Ferruz had only known, he might have waited another hour…”

  “Or shot himself an hour earlier,” suggested Roxy, clearly stifling a yawn.

  “We shouldn’t joke,” said Sylvia somberly. “A man died.” She had amazing sympathy, even though she hadn’t been there on the scene. I was ashamed of myself for making light of it in comparison.

  “You’re right, Sylvia.” I would have said more, but I seriously had to yawn big time and I didn’t dare. They would see it was a real yawn and not part of the game. The muscles along my jawline tensed.

  Sir Haughty came down the stairs. He was dressed in light blue pajamas and a long brown robe, with black slippers on his bare feet. Showered and shaved, he sat in the big overstuffed chair to the left of the couch. He was carrying the letter from Sticky in his hands. Sticky was Sir Haughty’s home town friend in Chigwell, England, about 20 miles outside of London. I’d met him once, about three years ago. Tall and thin, so I assumed that was why they called him Sticky, but both Sticky and Sir Haughty assured me that wasn’t it. And even when pressed, neither one would tell me the true source of the nickname. For some reason they are very close-mouthed about it. I may never find out. “Good Evening, Sir Haughty. How are things with Sticky?” I asked.

  “Very good, Helena. Very good, indeed. He has invited us to dinner the next time we’re in his neighborhood.”

  “Gee. I hope Butler stays in England then,” I said. “I really enjoyed the Sticky visit the last time.” We’d only had bangers and mash, but I found it quite tasty. The conversation was also fun, as Sticky turned out to be quite the comedian. “You’ll have to warn him about Nitro’s nutritional requirements, though,” I added. That visit had been shortly before Nitro joined the team. Before that, all the cheese we confiscated was tested at the DC facility instead of on site, and it came back clean often enough that I got tired of wasting our time and put in for a chemist. In short order, three chemists were recruited, trained and assigned. In the meantime, we’d gotten better at spotting Uber as well, so the ratio of time to Uber was even better. “And a reminder about Billings’ lactose intolerance would probably be a good idea. There’s a lot of dairy in the English diet.”

  “Oh, I shall do that, Helena. It’s fortunate for Tyrone that salad exists in virtually every country. I’m sure Sticky will be happy to meet the new members of the team. He says in the letter,” and he waved the papers a bit as if I hadn’t seen them, “that he so enjoyed our last visit that he would be happy to host us anytime. In fact, he is quite insistent that we stay with him. I’ll admit it has me somewhat worried. I suppose business is slow.” Sticky runs a bed and breakfast in a lovely three story Tudor building, but when we were there last we stayed at a hotel. He didn’t have enough empty rooms to house us all, and we’d been two members smaller.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” said Roxy. Sylvia sat next to Roxy, but facing sideways so her left side was mostly hidden. “You’d like Sticky,” she told Sylvia.

  “He sounds delightful,” Sylvia quipped. “How can anyone named ‘Sticky’ be anything but fun?” Then she answered her own question. “He’s not a medical examiner or something like that, is he?”

  I snorted. “No. He operates a B&B in Chigwell.”

  “Why do you call him Sticky?” Sylvia wanted to know.

  We all looked at Sir Haughty. He sat through a long silence, looking increasingly uncomfortable. Then he looked at the watch he wasn’t even wearing and blurted, “My dear, look at the time! I really must turn in! Have a pleasant evening!” Then he hurried back upstairs, taking his letter with him.

  “It could be years before we get to take him up on that invitation,” I said. “Butler’s on the run. It’s highly unlikely he’s going to stay in England, let alone in London. By the time the twins are ready for duty, he could be almost anywhere.”

  “And just what are the rest of us supposed to do for the next two weeks?” asked Roxy. “I don’t have anything to dress for.”

  I considered that a lie. I was pretty sure she’d been dressing for Billings all this time, but I didn’t say so. I knew for a fact that Billings wasn’t interested in her. He didn’t seem to have a steady girl at all at the moment, but I knew his type and Roxy was not it. Oh, she was sexy and all that, but I hadn’t raised Billings to be that shallow. He’d want someone he could talk to, someone he could relate to, and Roxy’s dry legal world just wasn’t it. “The rest of us will relax,” I said, “enjoy some leisure time for a few days, then start training.”

  They both groaned. “We finished training!”

  “You never finish training. You know that.” The training equipment was in the back yard. It looked like a schoolyard, with a large jungle gym, a horizontal ladder (and a rather long one at that), a balance beam (it was only a foot off the ground, but the point was strong ankles not broken ankles), and room for stretching and calisthenics, all surrounded by a dirt running track. Way in the back was a climbing wall, half with hand and foot holds and half smooth for rappelling, each side with its own harness and pulley system for safety. Downtime was dangerous in this line of work. You had to stay fit and the temptation to sit around and gel was very strong. Roxy was the hardest to stay on top of in this regard. But it was her choice to stay in heels and dresses all the time. If she was going to wear inappropriate clothing, she had to know how to do the job in those outfits. And she pretty much did. She just complained about it more than the others. And there had been times when it had been to our advantage, too. A spike heel on a flat hand can be very intimidating.

  I picked up the remote and clicked off the TV. “Time for us to turn in, too.” I said. “This isn’t a slumber party. Good night, girls.” The yawning contest had been working. It was a safe bet that they would be retiring shortly after me, though Roxy had not yawned once the entire time except the big fake designated yawner kind. Of course, I couldn’t stop them from turning the TV back on, but I don’t think they did.

  I went up for bed, stopping only to peek in on the twins, who were sound asleep. In about fifteen minutes, I was sound asleep, too. I chased Butler in my dreams, but kept losing him around corners, down staircases, and through closing doors. I’d see him out of the corner of my eye only to find he’d vanished when I turned to look. I came up behind someone I felt certain was Butler only to discover it was someone else. I woke up three or four times during that first night, and went back to the same dream sequence every time I rolled over and went back to sleep. The last night that had felt that long was when I was hovering over my Dad’s bedside in the hospital. I woke exhausted and vowed to do as little as possible.

  For three days, I luxuriated in the free time, and started to feel the tension leave my system. I read some Mark Twain and some Jules Verne, took a bubble bath, and napped on demand. But then the twins began walking around, and I found myself becoming the mother hen. I’d get updates from Nitro, but there was no more bad news about fevers or infections. They were healing perfectly, and he gave them the freedom to train on the fifth day for a limited time. The Nicelys, for two, loved the training ground. I let them have the run of it for a couple of days before I insisted the others join in. We’d begun ou
r second week when I found them one mid-morning warming up with stretches in the open area. I was overdue, so I joined them as soon as I’d finished my coffee.

  When I first met the Nicelys, I’ll admit, I was naturally uncomfortable with their condition. Who wouldn’t be? And I felt guilty on top of that. The twins were used to it. They knew exactly what I was feeling, and didn’t push. Instead, they demonstrated. All the misgivings I had were dispelled the first time they hit the yard. If you’ve never seen conjoined twins get seriously active, it’s kind of hard to describe. They made it look easy, though. You would think they’d keep bumping into each other, or get wrapped around the bars of the jungle gym, but they slid through the openings like cats, like Olympic gymnasts climbing to the top and all around the structure, one following the other with no apparent communication, never even bumping an elbow that I noticed. They took the vertical ladder three rungs at a time, and went sideways along the balance beam without a wobble side by side, then one twin would get down and they would do simultaneous flips, one on the beam and one on the ground, down the whole length of the beam, then back flips all the way back. It was like watching ballet.

  They’d been at it an hour when the others began to trickle out, watching for a few moments before moving in to show their own stuff. They would get competitive, and I didn’t have a problem with that. After the Nicelys had done the ladder three rungs at a time, they all had to try it. Billings succeeded, although he had to pause in the middle and hang for a moment. Nitro couldn’t reach and had to settle for two rungs. Sylvia, whose face, aside from the patch, was now nearly fully healed, would take two rungs, then three by actually leaping and spending a split second in mid-air holding onto nothing. She did get a little more adventurous on the balance beam as well, adding in quick turns and jumping spins. I was surprised, actually. The loss of the eye had to give her truncated vision, but it seems practicing with the patch on during Miss Chiff’s experiment allowed her to compensate faster than others might have. The exercise did us all good, and by lunch time we had all exhausted ourselves.

  We went in for lunch, each of us helping ourselves to a bottled water immediately. We almost never ate a group meal per se, where we all sat down to the same food. It was almost impossible, what with Billings being lactose intolerant, and Nitro being, well, meat intolerant. The kitchen was stocked with a large variety and we each fed ourselves whatever and whenever we liked. After that first day of exercise, I heated up a couple of hot dogs in the microwave, slapped them on buns, and added relish. Nitro, using the counter to chop vegetables and lettuce into his largest salad bowl, gasped. “Helena, I beg you. Don’t eat that! Are you insane?”

  “No, but I’m hungry. It’s just hot dogs, Nitro.”

  “Do you know what that’s made of?” He was seriously horrified.

  I looked down at my plate. I’d been very generous with the relish. “Um…pickles, right?”

  “Not the relish! The hot dogs!”

  Still looking at my plate, I answered, “Meat.”

  “The worst possible meat!” To Nitro, all meat was the worst possible meat, but I understood what he was getting at. Hot dogs were not exactly the highest quality, but they were quick and easy.

  “It’s inspected, right?”

  “Yes, but . . .” he didn’t really have an argument for that, “the inspection standards are . . .” his voice trailed off. There was a time when that argument would have stuck, but since the OOPS, inspection standards in all foodstuffs had skyrocketed. It would probably be decades before we went back to allowing a certain amount of rat turds in bologna. He turned away from me and started tossing his salad, in the literal sense, not the figurative. “Keep it away from me,” he grumped. “I hate meal times…” And he took his bowl of salad and disappeared.

  He didn’t say a word to Sir Haughty, who was frying up a burger, or to Billings, who had rescued some cold no-cheese pizza from the specialty pizzeria three blocks away. Maybe he did comment to the others and I didn’t hear it, but he always seemed to say something about my food choices. It was somewhat annoying, but also endearing. Maybe one of these days I’d join him in a salad. When I wasn’t starving for protein.

  The call from Miss Chiff came two days later. Sir Haughty answered and came to retrieve me from the yard, where I was practicing my balance beam technique. I dismounted and went into the house, using a small hand towel to wipe my neck. “Hello, Miss Chiff. Any word on Butler?” No, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him.

  “Unfortunately, no. Team B has been unable to find him anywhere in England. But he has to be there. We do have him coming in through Heathrow under the name Cucumber Winthrop, and we haven’t seen any sign that he left, under that name or any other known alias.”

  “So are you sending us in?”

  “May I speak with Mr. Thackery, please?”

  I knew what she wanted. She wanted Nitro’s opinion on if the team was medically ready. We’d been training for three days without incident, but of course she had to hear it from him. I told her to hold on and went to the back door to call for Nitro. He was hanging a third of the way through the horizontal ladder, still trying to reach for the third rung and coming up short. He dropped to the ground when I called and came in. “I can guess what she wants,” he said.

  “Be honest, Nitro. I know we’ve all got cabin fever, but if you don’t think we’re ready, say so.”

  “Always,” he said, without hesitation. “Hello, Miss Chiff.”

  “Report, please, Mr. Thackery. What’s the medical status of the team?”

  “The twins are fully healed, but, in all honesty, would benefit from another day or two of strengthening.” He saw my expression. “You said be honest! They wobbled on the balance beam. I think it’s more confidence building than strength, but I’d like to give them a couple more days.”

  While he talked, I tensed up, suddenly afraid that Miss Chiff would let it slip about Sylvia’s eye injury. Especially when Nitro casually suggested he use the next couple of days to complete our physicals ahead of schedule. Hearing his assessment didn’t relax me, either. I’d thought we were ready. Perhaps it was just my wishful thinking, and my persistent urge to go get Butler whenever he was wandering free. It helped somewhat when Miss Chiff turned down Nitro. “I appreciate your suggestion, Mr. Thackery, but I’d prefer the physicals be done on schedule in three weeks’ time.”

  “Understood,” Nitro responded with a shrug. I’m sure he wanted to ask her why, but it was not for us to ask Miss Chiff to justify any of her decisions. In this case, it was a good thing. I think the only reason she didn’t allow him to move forward was because of my deal with Sylvia, and that would not have been sufficient justification. If Nitro had been even a bit more argumentative, she may have had no choice but to allow it.

  “Helena, I’m recalling Team B, but you can expect to be going to England when Mr. Thackery gives the twins medical clearance. Butler knows your team best. Perhaps they will be able to flush him out into the open.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. If I had to approach every single person in all of England, I’d find him.

  Gone With the Windy

  Chapter One

  That night, or more accurately, early the following morning, I was awakened by a phone ringing. I grabbed my bedside handset, but that hadn’t been the one. I heard a dial tone. Then I heard it ring again, muffled by the wall between my room and Sir Haughty’s. A glance at the clock radio told me it was 3:11 AM. No call at this hour could be good. I turned on my table lamp and sat up, knowing he would be coming in soon. I picked up the copy of CURDS MONTHLY I kept there and pretended to read it.

  Ten minutes later there was a light knock on my door. “Come in,” I said.

  The door opened and Sir Haughty came in, closing the door again behind him. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “I was awake,” I said, partly lying. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “We need to go to England, Helena. Right now.”

  “What is
it?” I got out of bed, feeling awkward lying there while he was standing.

  “The call was from Sticky. He…he told me he’s dying, Helena.”

  “Oh my God, Francis! I’m so sorry.” I slipped into his first name for the first time in the seven years I’d known him. It just felt right. “I’ll arrange things right away. We can leave first thing in the morning.”

  Sir Haughty stood there, not knowing what to do. “It’s prostate cancer, he said. Six months. A year on the outside. He wants me there as soon as possible. He wants all of us there.”

  “All of us?”

  “He’s had to close the B&B. The house is so empty he can’t stand it. He wants as many people as possible there, I think. He must be devastated.” Sir Haughty was nearly as devastated. He seemed numb. “I have to pack,” he said, although he didn’t make a move to do so.

  “Yes,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder to turn him around. “Pack. Don’t worry. I’ll get the others, I’ll get the clearance from Miss Chiff, I’ll take care of everything. We’ll be in Chigwell before you know it.”

  “Yes,” he muttered, beginning to move, “Chigwell.” He wandered out the door and I went back to the phone.

  Wheels went up at 7:04 AM. The plane was quiet. When we reached cruising altitude, there was some screeching, and a black blur and a white blur rushed through the plane, up the stairs around in a circle, then down the stairs again and around the seats, their soft paws somehow sounding like thunder even on the padded carpeting. Dinny came running after them. “I’m so sorry, Helena. I shouldn’t have let them out. Not this time. And T.B just hasn’t gotten used to Harelip.”

  “Harelip?” I asked.

  She stopped chasing the flying furballs and stood up straight. “If you ever get a good look at her, you’ll know why. Hold on. T.B.!” she shouted firmly. She was ignored, of course. While she was shouting and they were running, Backwash, much calmer, came slinking into the cabin. He ignored both of his cousins and went directly for Sir Haughty, who sat staring out the window. Backwash hopped up into the empty seat beside him and curled up into a ball against the armrest. Sir Haughty didn’t move.