Jim Stood and Started Handing Me Babies
had gone… less swimmingly.- ate normally
- precisely between her narrow shoulder blades
- one day melted into the next
- in the city of Volgograd
Tune in next time part 383 Click Here for Earlier Installments
Jim stood and started handing me babies, though he kept the harnesses, and I only had so many arms. Few things in Contrarian history, besides the Battle of Brouhaha, had gone… less swimmingly. With three babes balanced along each arm like a waiter in a restaurant where no one ate normally, I bent forward at the waist and kissed Fleur precisely between her narrow shoulder blades. That’s the ritual Contrarian farewell between spouses when one is leaving the other in the presence of only in-laws of the opposite gender.
I tottered down the stairs with my six infant children and found the French circus performer still strapped to his chair. He looked at me and my strange burden and said, “I could teach you how to juggle.”
“Tell me where you met your spy-mistress,” I said, ignoring his kind offer.
He loosed a long, wistfully Gallic sigh. “One day melted into the next when the circus was in the city of Volgograd. I was surrounded by aerialists, and bears on bicycles. And then one day, she appeared.” He met my eye, tears streaming down his cheeks. “She and her sister had a contortionist act that is beyond description. So beautiful. So haunting.”
Russian contortionist sisters! They could only be Svetlana and Lyudmila! But which one had sent this man to collect my “special sauce”? Probably not Svetlana, since she’d misunderstood the objective and had only just given birth to my quadruplet sons. Which meant it was probably Lyudmila, whom I hadn’t seen in months. Unless Svetlana was trying to redeem herself?
The two lithe and extremely flexible ladies went round and round in my head. I couldn’t decide which was the more likely agent behind this bizarre Frenchman’s quest.
bonus points for using them in order