Lexi and Eddie were both happy to see Ian when he arrived that evening.  I wasn't.  I felt a touch of relief that Taiisha hadn't already killed him, but I still knew he was there to take more of Lexi's furniture and I wasn't right with that at all.  I doubted that Lexi knew what he was doing.  There was too much trust in her eyes when she looked at him.  I didn't like that Eddie was letting it happen, either.  It wasn't like he was some paragon of honor, but it bothered me that he didn't care.

Eddie had introduced Martin and Taiisha-as-Gray, and we were all in the kitchen talking while Lexi made chili.  Eddie was in and out of the room, talking on his phone while he poured coffee for himself and Martin.  Every time the conversation started to veer toward something that sounded more like a troubleshoot than a friendly conversation, he conveniently wandered out.  I stayed close to the stove; I liked the way the browning meat smelled.  It made me want to pluck some right out of the pan.  When I saw that Lexi was doing just that while she cooked, I went over and got some for myself. 

"I always have to brown extra," Lexi said.  "Or I'll eat it all...sometimes I blend butter and sugar and egg and eat that too.  Yummy."

Taiisha sat at the kitchen table showing fake, airheaded interest in Ian's explanation of what he did at Ford.  She shot a couple of angry glances at me, presumably because Ian had arrived and he was one more 'loose end' that would have to be tied up after Eddie.   I paid as little attention to her as I could; a way had to be found to get out of this.  Taiisha would kill everyone in the house, including Lexi, and I didn't want that to happen.  I wasn't going to kill Eddie for her, either.  The awareness of this lose-lose situation I was speeding into scared me.  As I watched her, she glanced suddenly at the doorway, apparently saw nothing, then glared at me again.  She didn't seem to care whether I acknowledged her or not, but I felt better standing with Lexi between myself and her, so I stayed there.

Eddie was pacing the hall that ran the back of the house, from the kitchen to the turret room.  Lexi and I could hear him when he came near the kitchen door.  "They're going to need a delivery van," Eddie said.  "A cargo van.  I got a '93 Dodge waiting in a garage for you already.  It's got to be painted silver and black.  I'm going to get an Airborne Express decal made for it, and I'll have them send that to you too."

"Won't work," Lexi said suddenly.  She didn't look up from her chili preparations.

Eddie heard her.  "Just a sec." He put his hand over the receiver.  "Excuse me?"

"I said, it won't work.  Whatever screwball meeting you're trying to set up won't work if you do that."

I saw the realization in Eddie's eyes: Lexi was not a fruitcake.  It was a very satisfying moment for me.  Eddie's expression was guarded.  "And why won't it work?"

"Because you haven't done your homework on the van, Mister Doctor Edward Sharp."

"Got a proper Airborne vehicle ID number," he said.  "Got a correct manifest and all the right paperwork.  Even got the uniform and some shipping labels for some false packages to put inside it." He smiled at Lexi.

She smiled right back.  "Airborne almost never uses Dodges, silly.  You could get away with a GMC, but they usually run Fords.  And Ford vans look nothing like Dodge vans.  It won't work.  Nerd." Lexi dumped a can of beans into the chili.  "You bought the Dodge because it was the cheapest you could find, didn't you?"

Eddie nodded slowly, and started speaking into the phone again.  "Say, Dell?  You need to swap that Dodge van for a Ford.  Same size, same paint job.  Naw, just trust me."

I laughed out loud.  Eddie's ears flushed a little bit but he probably thought it was funny too.  He never seemed to feel stupid about being wrong.  He just corrected his mistakes and didn't waste time kicking himself for them.  I liked that about him.  He was also a perfectionist; I doubted anyone but Lexi would have noticed that the van was wrong even if he hadn't changed it.

"So how do you know so much about cars?" Eddie asked Lexi when he got off the phone.  "Is it just from running the car company?"

"Oh, I didn't run it," she said.  "I just helped.  And no, it's not just from that, it's a lifelong thing.  I have been a car nut all my life.  It gets worse with age."

"You're not that old."

"I'm not old at all.  That's the scary part.  What am I going to be like in twenty years?  I already have a hundred ninety-eight cars and a whole barn full of spare parts."

I looked at Ian, who hadn't heard.  I knew through Eddie that the cars were gone; Ian had auctioned them off before we had even arrived.  Lexi apparently didn't know.  I suddenly wanted to corner Ian and demand an excuse, to know why he was doing this to her, but Eddie likely wouldn't approve at all.  Of course, if I could disobey Taiisha of all people, I could certainly defy Eddie.

Trouble was, I wasn't sure yet if I could disobey Taiisha.

I realized she was looking back at me and retreated a step, unconsciously.  She smiled a cold little smile and glanced at Eddie.  I actually felt a twitch between my legs, remembering her punishment in San Francisco, and turned my attention back to Lexi and Eddie.

"Oh, no, no, no," Lexi was saying, "cars are for driving.  It's not fair to leave them sitting in a garage or a museum.  They don't like that."

"So if you had a Ferrari worth fifteen million dollars--"

"I'd drive it," Lexi said with a wicked grin.  "I'd drive the pee out of it.  And I'd hardly ever wash it.  There'd be road rash and bugs smashed all over the nose and windshield and McDonald's cups and empty oil bottles scattered all over the floor and sweat stains on the steering wheel.  And it would be a happy car."

"Those are some sensibilities you've got there," Eddie said.

"Bork sensible," she said abruptly.  "I'd rather have fun.  And you know, the chili's ready," she announced to the kitchen at large.  "Unless you're one of those people--most of them Texan--who insists that their chili simmer through six reruns of Night Court and an inauguration speech, of course.  And if you are, we'll eat our share while you wait, because I'm hungry.  Does anyone want rice?"

"Rice with chili?" Martin asked.  He and Taiisha were completely awash in Lexi's wake.  I was glad to see her confused.

"No, dahling, rice in chili.  That way you don't have to crunk up crackers.  Of course you can if you want to.  Are there crackers to be crunked?" she asked me.  I ducked into the pantry to get them.

When I turned to come out, Taiisha was in the doorway.  I managed not to gasp in surprise.  Her eyes were locked onto mine, and she was pissed.  I backed up a step.

"Don't like the game," she hissed.

"What?"

"You heard me."

I noticed a red mark on Taiisha's cheek.  "Who hit you?" I heard myself ask.  It was probably the worst thing I could have said, but I'd rarely seen anyone even come close to striking Taiisha, especially not in the face.  Even I had only managed to hit her in the face once.

She thrust her hand into my face and jabbed my forehead with her finger.  "Shut up.  No more night games." The finger traced a line from my brow to the tip of my nose.  I could see the desire to hurt me in her eyes, and she was very, very sick of holding it back.  She didn't have a choice yet though.  Taiisha pushed hard on my nose, then took the crackers from my hand.  "Thanks," she said in her airy Italianate Gray-voice.

I took three seconds to compose myself and went back out.  No one had noticed.  I hadn't expected anyone to.  Taiisha was good at finding little dead spots in reality, and taking advantage of them.  She didn't even glance at me during dinner.

At dinner, Eddie took charge of the conversation. Lexi's contribution was to put on some music, quietly enough that everyone could still talk, then bring a pen and a piece of paper to the table, scribble a note, and hand it to me.  It said, "Potato chips taste like snowboarding."  I laughed a little, and drew her a little picture of a cat, the first thing that popped to mind.  Lexi named it Alsatia Q. Thunderpussy, and I drew another picture of the same cat with a cape and a giant shotgun shaped like a penis.  That made Lexi snort laughter.  I drew more pictures for her.  They made the reality of the situation seem farther away.  I don't like social dinners as a rule, but with Taiisha, Eddie, Ian, Lexi and Martin all comfortably cheerful at the same table I could pretend for a while that everything was okay, that there wasn't a storm coming.

It wasn't long before Eddie commented on my drawing, of course.  "Passing notes, are we?" he said.

"We're having two conversations at once," Lexi said.  "You'll be able to buy the transcripts by calling our 800 number after the show is over."

Eddie grinned.  "So what are we listening to, anyway?  Monks on acid?"

"No, silly, it's Dead Can Dance.  And before that it was Cocteau Twins.  And before that, if you were paying attention, it was Cibo Matto.  It all makes good background noise."

"You know, I've never heard of a single one of these bands," Eddie said.

"That's your loss," I said.  "This is what music recorded after you were born sounds like."

"You wound me.  Deeply."

"I kind of doubt it."   

Eddie laughed.  "Did I ever tell you that I used to ride a pig?"

The abrupt change in direction took me and Martin completely by surprise.  "What?" we said in unison.  Lexi giggled.

Eddie grinned, almost proudly.  "When I was about ten, my uncle had a farm, just across the border in Ohio.  We used to go down there every couple of months and do the city slicker thing; hang around, comment about the smell, maybe milk a cow.  You know.  Pops thought it would be a good education for me and Cathy, I guess.  Show us a bit more of the world."

"Who's Cathy?" I asked.

"My sister."

"I figured he had one," Lexi said.

"Excuse me?"

Lexi had already turned back to me, and looked innocently at Eddie.  "Hm?  Did I say that out loud?"

"Anyway, Uncle Mort had this tame sow that he let me ride.  I was a fat kid, but the pig was fatter.  She had no problem carrying me.  So I would ride up and down the streets on this pig, playing a bugle I found in the barn.  How's that for a image?"

Lexi let out a gleeful "yee-hee-hee" bray.  "That's terrible.  I'm going to have nightmares for weeks, and you'll have to suss out why in my therapy sessions."  It took me sixty seconds to draw a picture of Eddie riding a pig (with his laptop in his hand) and hand it to her, and Lexi almost fell out of her chair laughing.  Ian got hold of the paper next; he smiled cautiously, and handed the paper to Eddie.

It made Eddie laugh, too.  "You got it about pegged, Poppet.  I had no idea it looked like that.  And actually, I was wearing one of those fat-kid sailor suits, not a Bermuda shirt.  Anyway, at least one other person thought it was terrible, too.  One day a big kid from a couple of farms over dragged me off of that pig, stomped on the bugle, beat my ass, and threw me into a barbed wire fence.  I still have scars on my legs from it."

"That's horrible!" Martin said, but he was laughing at the same time.

"I asked for it.  I was riding back and forth in front of their house taunting him with the bugle." He shook his head.  "I can't even remember why I was doing that in the first place."

Eddie and Ian started talking about the farm Eddie had been on.  I wrote a note to Lexi.  It said, What am I?

She took my pen and wrote back:  my friend + whatever you choose to be dot dot dot talk biz later.

"You're not eating," Lexi said to Taiisha.

"I am sorry," she replied.  "I am not used to dinner so late.  My stomach, it is..." she trailed off, seesawing a hand in the air.

"Tch!  That explains why you didn't eat last night, either."

"It does," Taiisha replied apologetically.  I knew she didn't eat in front of people, but I didn't know why.  She did eat, but I'd never seen her do it, only noticed food missing from the refrigerator when she had me prisoner.

Lexi turned on Ian.  "Ian, I don't think it's quite fair that I'm the only one who gets yelled at for not eating."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, don't pretend you didn't hear me.  There's a clear imbalance of respect here."

Upstairs, something crashed to the floor.  It sounded like a piece of furniture had been dropped.

"Jesus," Martin said.  "Your cats are hard at work."

"No, they aren't," Lexi said.  She heaped chili onto a cracker and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth with a look of satisfaction.  After a deliberate chew and swallow, she said, "The house is haunted.  Get used to it."  She turned to Martin.  "By the way, I don't think my ghost likes your girlfriend."

He raised an eyebrow and grinned.  "If anything, Gray should be jealous of a pretty little thing like you," he said.  If he had been close enough, I would have kicked him under the table.

His sudden sliminess didn't seem to bother Lexi.  She stuffed another chili-laden cracker into her mouth.  "S'not polite to hit on the recently widowed," she said with her mouth full.