aforementioned vestibule-the better to hear our conversation.
8
“Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” Agnes said, as she mashed her fork tines down on the remaining crumbs of the carrot cake I’d brought. “The very fact that the sheriff came out to your place to warn you off the case is a clear sign that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“Sometimes there’s just a good fire sale. Agnes, dear, you do realize that you just ate an entire cake, don’t you?”
“It’s carrot cake; it’s good for you. Think of it as another way of me getting my vegetables.”
“And the cream cheese icing?”
“Is really none of your business, is it, Magdalena? You brought me the cake as a gift. You said you didn’t want any. So what I did with it was my business.”
I sighed. She was right, of course.
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess it’s hard for me to switch gears from being a mommy.”
“Oh, come off it, Magdalena; you’ve always been bossy. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, when used against others, being bossy can even be an amusing trait. Just don’t pull that stuff on me.”
I stared at my friend. Agnes stared back through round rimless glasses. No, ding dang it, she didn’t even have the courtesy to look me in the eye, but instead appeared to be focused outside, possibly on the hillside behind me.
“Say something erudite, Agnes,” I said. “I’m sure it will go right over my head.”
“You were followed, Magdalena.”
“Oh yeah, the KGB has been hot on my trail all morning.”
“Joke if you want, my friend, but when you pulled into my driveway this morning a car passed exactly five seconds behind you, turned around, and drove by nine seconds later. Then, as I was setting out the plates for our cake, I saw this woman hiking up over the crest of that hill, and there she is right now, staring at you through a pair of binoculars.”
I spun so fast in my seat that I came dangerously close to tipping my chair all the way over. Since Agnes is not the world’s most conscientious housekeeper, I might well have put my exposed body parts in contact with varieties of mold as yet unclassified by science. Still, it was worth the risk; sure enough there was a woman looking right at us.
“Why, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”
“You don’t believe in evolution, Magdalena. And you’re far too curvaceous to be an uncle. What say you we go out and confront this interloper?”
“Let us lope away!” I cried, as I whipped my coat off the back of my chair.
Agnes was more of a huffer and a puffer than a loper, and not wanting to confront the strange woman by myself, I pretended to twist my ankle whilst going down the steps. Now please allow me to make perfectly clear that feigning an injury to one’s own person under such circumstances is a deception of the smallest magnitude-surely, no more serious a transgression than, say, acting out a part in a school play.
“You won’t sue me, Magdalena, will you?” Agnes had stopped moving altogether.
“Of course not, dear; we’re bosom buddies-well, our bosoms aren’t buddies-not that there’s anything wrong with it-but your bosom, by the way, just don’t float my hovercraft.”
“I get it, Magdalena. But you do agree that you should have watched your step, right?”
“How can I argue with that?” I tried peering around my friend, but to no avail.
“So you’ll promise you’ll be good and not sue?”
“Sue, shmoo! How well do you know me? Uh-never mind, dear.”
I tried matching my pace to that of Agnes, but even though I did my darnedest to hobble, I kept getting way ahead. Finally, I had no choice but to resort to desperate measures.
“Yoo-hoo, up there on the hill,” I hollered. “Come on down and show yourself.”
“And just so you know,” Agnes rasped, “we’re harmed.”
“She means ‘armed,’ ” I said, “although personally, being the traditional Mennonite that I am, I am totally committed to a non-violent existence.”
“Except for her tongue,” Agnes panted. “It’s as sharp as a board.”
“She means ‘sword,’ ” I clarified through cupped hands. “It goes along with my rapier-sharp wit.”
“You’re such a faker,” Agnes groaned. She was clutching her side by then.
“What?”
“You’re not even limping now.”
“Oh that-Well, perhaps it’s the adrenaline.” I fell back, taking what for me were baby steps so that Agnes wouldn’t have a heart attack. After all, I had never gotten around to taking a CPR class, and wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do if she did have a heart attack-except to scream and pray. I am, however, pretty good at both of those.
On closer inspection, it was as if the woman on the hill had stepped out of the pages of a storybook. Never had I seen someone so splendiferously attired, nor so regal of bearing. She wasn’t tall, perhaps all of five and a half feet, but she was clad in a full-length white velvet coat, trimmed generously with white fur, and with an enormous white fur collar and matching cuffs. Through the break in her coat front, I could see that she wore white leather boots that laced up to the knees and sported gold eyelets. Her headpiece, which was half gold crown and half fur hat, set off her blue-black hair to perfection.
“It’s the S-S-Snow Queen,” wheezed Agnes. “I knew I shouldn’t have inhaled that time I smoked pot in college.”
“You smoked marijuana?”
I was aghast and agog, but mostly just gaping in wonderment. Who knew that Agnes, a somewhat reclusive maiden lady, had been such a wild woman in her coed days?
“Okay, so it was more than once. Will you get off my case already? It just goes to prove that college campuses these days are nothing more than replicas of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Sure,” I said, “I’ll get off your case-
“What do you mean by that? Do you want me to find you a joint?”
“A what?”
“A marijuana cigarette-at least that’s what they used to call them. It’s been so long, I don’t know what they’re called anymore. But if you’re going to rat me out to the community, then by all means, I’ll drive into Pittsburgh and try to score one for you. Of course I’ll probably end up getting arrested and spend the next thirty years in prison with a ‘boyfriend’ named Betty-but don’t worry, Magdalena. I’m sure Betty will be very kind to me. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even let me write to you.”
My eyes welled with tears. “You’d do that for me?”
“Double space, of course; Betty won’t want me to spend that much time away from her.”
“No, I mean that part about buying me marijuana?”
“If it will shut you up.”
Now that was a friend. Agnes always knew when to coddle me and when to take off the gloves and give me a gentle tap on the noggin. If we had been best buddies in college, I have no doubt neither of us would have gotten much studying done; we’d have partied hardy like there was no tomorrow, and I might have well ended up a Presbyterian like Susannah.
A soft cough ahead got my attention. The stranger was no longer peering at us through her binoculars, as we were but a scant thirty feet away. There was in her face the suggestion of Asiatic forebears-or not-but no matter, she was most definitely not the creation of some writer ’s imagination, but a flesh-and-blood human being.
“She’s definitely not the Snow Queen,” I said.
“Maybe not, but she
“Of pleasing but ambiguous ethnicity,” I said.
As we made our final panting approach, I bobbed slightly. “Greetings, and welcome to Hernia, O strange one,” I said. “From whence didst thou hail?”
“ Cincinnati, Ohio.”
“Well, that certainly explains the accent,” Agnes said.
I punched her fleshy biceps with an elbow even sharper than my tongue. “You can’t get that from just two words,” I said.
The elegant, beautiful stranger appeared to suppress a smile. “Are you the famous Magdalena Yoder?”
“Indeed, I am.” It was only then, after having admitted who I was, that I began to fear for my safety. “I mean, let’s just say that there are those who think I am Magdalena Yoder.”
She cocked her head.
“Don’t worry,” Agnes said. “She’s utterly harmless-although she did bring a giantess to her knees with a bra-cum-slingshot, and although she espouses nonviolence as her official creed, she’s not above whacking the odd villain over the head.”
A wary glance was now cast in Agnes’s direction. “Surely, you’re joking.”
“Oh, but I’m not. Our Magdalena is quite the heroine. Why, once she even
“I am a guest at her inn,” the stranger said.
I stepped forward. “
“My name is Surimanda Baikal. I am coming from Russia. Then New York, then Cincinnati. Then I am drives here. But you are hard woman to find, Magdalena Yoder.”
“But you don’t have a reservation,” I wailed.
She shrugged, almost burying her face in the white fur collar. “So? My plans, she has-how you say?-they change from day to day.”
“Your plans?”
“Oh, come on,” Agnes said, much to my annoyance. “You have enough room. The more the merrier. Right?”
“Stifle it,” I hissed. “She doesn’t fit in with this bunch.”
“Maybe, but from what you’ve described to me, this bunch belongs in a loony bin. At least she’ll add some class.”
“Da, I vill add some class,” the elegant woman said.
Decked out in her fur and velvet, with the crown piece on her head, Miss Surimanda Baikal was my image of an empress. When compared to the Zambezis, the Nyles, and the Timmses-Well, one could hardly compare a swan to six moorhen, could one?
