“I Must Make Myself Beautiful for Harry”
- blocked nearly all the sunlight
- very well-defined chin
- annoyed at the tone taken by anthropologists
- “Bingo.”
- stirred his volcanic, untamed heart
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“I must make myself beautiful for Harry,” Isolde announced. “He is waiting at the docking spire.” She fluttered off to the bathroom on her toes like a ballerina.
Jim continued to steer the zeppelin, and I handed the infants to Fleur so that she could feed them before we made fast. Ten minutes later Isolde burst from the loo. With her hair freshly brushed she looked quite lovely, but what made her stunning was the fire in her eyes. She thrust a plastic pregnancy test at me and said, “It’s positive! Harry and I conceived our wedding night baby! The auguries are quite auspicious!”
“How long have we been on this zeppelin?” I asked in astonishment, but was roundly ignored.
“When I told Harry on Facetime just now,” Isolde continued, “it stirred his volcanic, untamed heart so much I thought he was having a coronary. His face got so red! But it was simply unbridled joy.” She unclasped the gold chain about her neck and fed it through a slot in the end of the plastic test strip, then hooked it again so that the thing hung between her breasts like a pendant. “Bingo.” She sighed happily. “Now everyone will know my good news!”
“Congratulations,” Fleur said with a glare at me. “It took my husband several years to get me pregnant. Your Harry must be much more ardent.”
You know how everyone gets annoyed at the tone taken by anthropologists at museums when they tell you to stay out of the caveman dioramas? Well Fleur’s tone was even more annoying than that. And where did she get off complaining? She only had the children because her father insisted it was her duty. And it was her idea to make me Harry’s proxy for Isolde’s wedding. And wedding night. This was all on her. I blew her a kiss.
“Hey big brother,” Jim drawled. “You need to take the controls for the landing. I need to put my Panda suit back on before we dock. Can’t have the general public knowing I’m here.”
The women watched unhappily as my brother hid his bare torso away inside the blue furry costume. They each gave a sad little cry when his very well-defined chin disappeared into the headpiece.
I had to turn off the signal jammer to talk to the control tower, but we docked without incident. Fleur strapped both children to Jim’s panda chest, and then the four of us paraded down the gangway and into the spire’s rotating restaurant.
Waiting there was the toad-like Harry, Isolde’s legal husband, and the legal father of her unborn child. His face was still alarmingly red, and to my eye it looked more like fury than joy. Isolde squealed and ran to slather him with kisses. I turned to walk the other way and ran right into an immense figure who blocked nearly all the sunlight. It was Heinrich Hunter.
Heinrich was larger than I’d ever seen him, and then I remembered that he made a habit of carrying Svetlana around under his clothes. And then I remembered that Svetlana was pregnant. With my child.
“We need to talk,” said Heinrich. “Now. In the bathroom.”
Wanting to avoid the irate Harry, I followed the Heinrich/Svetlana/baby turducken into the men’s room.
“I’m in labor!” Heinrich’s belly said in Svetlana’s voice.
“She think’s it’s twins,” Heinrich’s mouth said in Heinrich’s voice. He began to unbutton his shirt.
bonus points for using them in reverse order