“Wait, don’t hang up—please. Whatever I did, I’m sorry. But I don’t know what I did. I just went to my office and found out I got fired. They said I did some crazy stuff; stuff that didn’t make sense. I don’t remember any of it.”“What—are you kidding? Are you trying to say you have some kind of amnesia or something, or is this some kind of line?”

“No, it’s not some kind of line. I woke up late this morning; my alarm didn’t go off. I couldn’t find my building pass. When I got to work and asked for a temporary ID, the guard at the desk couldn’t find me in the employee directory. He put me through to Bob Jackson. He said they fired me on the spot at a staff meeting after I called the CEO an idiot and urinated all over the agenda. It’s crazy! Why would I do something like that? I remember summarizing the Gibson contract at the last meeting. It comes up for renewal in July.”

“Sam, this is August.”

“What! No, it can’t be. I—don’t understand,” Sam sucked in air.

“What you did at the staff meeting isn’t any crazier than your Fourth of July stunt. I suppose you don’t remember that either?”

“Hey, a spider’s gotta eat,” the hairy-legged monster said, “no offense.”“None taken,” said Prentice, blowing a hit of neuro-pepper in the spider’s face—a fatal toxin for arachnids of all sizes. The drug’s effects on Prentice must have been wearing off, three hours from the last assault to his seared septum. Otherwise, he would have noticed the spider before the mind-cloud got him. He had paused to rest for only a moment when the memories of Roz flooded over him, thanks to the eight-legged killer. Brilliant blue hues reflecting from steel-hard scales—how could there be a more beautiful lizard anywhere in the galaxy? He had to get her back, even if it meant daring the deadly rain forest. 

Despite the havoc it wreaked on his nasal passages, he took another snort of the stimulant. He hadn’t tracked Roz across the galaxy to be stopped by drug company security. Big pharma imported the genetically engineered predators from low gravity labs orbiting the fertile planet Soleus to protect their investment in medicinal flora and fauna—with deadly force. Which way, which way Mr. Butterfly? Will you show me a safe path?  Prentice wasted no words on the blue morpho, which had no ear for talk. Still, it heard his unspoken plea. With one quick yip and a waggle of its wings flashing brown and blue, it pointed Prentice the way—in hopes perhaps, of some reward for a successful lizard hunt.

“Never seen nothing like this Sheriff. I mean, we’ve had a few drunks; a few punks taking drugs but if we find out, we get ’em outta here real fast. We’re real careful who we rent to.”“I’m sure you are, Fred. Why don’t you go out on the porch and sit down now, you’re still shaking. We can handle this in here. We got any more questions, we’ll come out and talk with you.”

“Ayuh, oh–oh–OK.”

The bodies were still fresh, with the cold nights of early June in central Maine. Fred, the cabin owner discovered them. The renters were two days late checking out, so he went for a look-see. Their car was still there but they didn’t answer his knock. Opening the door, he found them on the floor. Dishes and a few utensils lay near the bodies of the middle-aged man and woman. A red sauce stained the threadbare carpet, matching the remains stuck on plates and forks.

“What do you think happened here, Doc?”

“Well there’s no trauma—no wounds, no bruises other than what you could expect from a fall off the chairs. If there were just one of them, it could be a heart attack or stroke but there are two. I don’t like to guess, Bill. You know that. It could be something they ate, from the dishes on the floor. I’ll have to get the two of them and the dishes back to the morgue. I’ll run some tests.”

# # #

“Henry, where are the dipping bowls? I can’t find them anywhere!”

“How should I know, Margaret—you cleaned up the kitchen last fall when we closed up the place! Where did you put them?”

“Well, I always put them on the third shelf, left hand side. But they’re not there. What are we going to do now? Dinner is almost ready. What will we put the oil in?”

“I don’t know. Does it really matter? Can’t we just put the oil in the little pudding cups?”

“Oh, I suppose; but it’s not the same,” Margaret sighed.

“We’ll survive, Margaret. The oil will be the same and the bread will be the same. After dinner, I’ll have a look around. Maybe Tommy or Ellen used them for something else and forgot to put them back.” Henry had attained that age when the hair on a man’s torso, arms and legs turns brittle and thin before disappearing altogether—while vigorously growing tufts sprout from ears and nose. With that age comes patience, the tolerance of minor irregularities that time has a way of taking care of.

“All right, Henry,” Margaret said, setting the plates on the old pine table, a remnant from one of the other camps at Schoodic Lake. Many in Maine still call a cabin a camp–no matter how well furnished, if it’s open only during summer.

“Quelle heure est-il,” he asked the man selling crepes.“3:20,” the man replied, tugging a watch from his apron pocket. The vendor had no difficulty pegging him as an American, most likely a tourist, by his clothes and lack of finesse at a simple French phrase.

Alex had lost his own watch to a bump and grab pickpocket. Thankfully, the thief missed the wallet, secure in an atypically placed pocket behind two layers of clothing. Alex had ten minutes to get from the Eiffel Tower to the Bassins du Champs de Mars to meet a friend and her daughter. I had best hurry, he thought. Not quite a tourist, he had important business in Paris with his French amie. A hoverboard would have made that a quicker trip, but the airlines prohibited them now. Then again, if he avoided the risk of a burning hoverboard, he might have wound up with a sprain or worse on a bumpy sidewalk. A trip to the ER could be dangerous. The important thing is being discreet. No one must know why I am meeting with Genevieve.