The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [97]
Maxwell Polito’s wife was treacherous territory and an alarming risk for the role which Bari had red-carpeted for her, to be a mate for her Andrew. But in that also, was she perfect for him, for she would have no trouble in dealing with all those nasty repercussions her Andrew was guaranteed to eventually give. Almost no trouble.
Matching Andrew with Melony was poetically ironic. They had learned to like each other on their own, but since this was Max’s marital spouse Bari was dealing with, the whole romantic interlude had to be approached with extreme caution...Chinese feast, the inevitable interview, and all the brow-raising possibilities afterwards.
All in all, it was all meant to be. Anyway.
By the way, while on the subject of things meant to be....
Up to this present time and for a while now, Ban had been acutely sensing an odd distortion from within her being, something instinctive, as tremendous instinct was after all one of her more exuberant qualities.
Time had been somehow unfolding and lately overlapping itself. Time was being manipulated, this present time and over the last day or so...in fact, ever since Andrew had awakened before his typewriter to that curiously disturbing finished manuscript he had labored in a marathon to complete on time for good buddy Ralston. Bari hadn’t exactly forseen this happening, but she was beginning to understand. She’d become increasingly convinced that whatever it was that was happening, that manuscript was the tootsie roll center in the sucker of a grander scale.
Bari was also certain that if indeed it was time being screwed with here, there was a Watcher behind it all. If she could bet, she would bet her copper-toned transparent butt cheeks on it. She was relatively young in this business of being a Watchmaid, possessing less experience than the larger lot of Watchmaids scattered abroad, and her enhanced awareness of the time continuum was nothing more than knowledge at best. Here on Earth, the Watchers were the ones who did the Time Warp again and again with controlled access to its password.
Time was being manipulated from a point in the future, in a benevolent effort it seemed, to obstruct the efforts of a sinister nature from imposing potentially climactic introductions between the secrets of the ‘born and billions of unsuspecting Homo Sapien folk.
Clearly her Andrew was an instrumental pawn in this, which was all the more reason for Bari to deprive Melony the courtesy of the truth, at least through Andrew’s lips. It was also all the more reason to jettison Andrew from this mayhem, and quickly, into the next chapter of existence, into the next life. Before the creature of the Magdalene and her dreg Simon BoLeve could get to him.
Before the evening began, Bari had decided to leave things concerning the interview up to Andrew, with Bari on her guard to regulate things if they got too hairy. She’d hoped that Andrew would give Melony the pre-rehearsed verbal view-master view of the answers Melony sought, developed for just such an occasion.
Bari's good old-fashioned bathroom chat with Andrew didn’t seem to go over well. He failed contemptibly to understand her insistence to waste Mel’s time with bullshit; he thought Mel was worth more than that, and it made no sense that Bari should pair him and Mel together and expect him to lie to her after all.
And after Mel had been so honest with him about herself.
When Andrew reseated himself at the kitchen table, he was reserved, yet refreshingly guarded, obviously testing the waters for the absolute surety that his own climactic introductions to the tales of his young-man life wouldn’t explode in his face.
Just as introductions to tales this climactic, could oh so easily do.
He was succumbing more to his own honesty. Melony was drawing him in.
She began with the long ago climactic incident at the school playground, when Andrew first met Ralston.
And then she rose, stepped into the living room, only to return with a microcassette recorder which she set down