from Jonathan Pearce's Heavier than Air: Riches to Burn in Balona
Chapter Two
Society Thrust is a junior at Big Baloney this year. A youngster, as us mature Balona guys call them, but you'd never believe it from looking at Society, since she looks like she's 21 already, considering her prominent boobs and the twitchy way she moves. She is pretty short, got brown hair and blue eyes, and she is very cute generally. Only thing is, she sounds like she's got a bird stuck in her throat that won't stop. It's very high up and sort of grates on your blackboard like a fingernail.
But the cuteness usually wins out when she stands real close to a guy and every once in a while does her cute hip-bump thing, giving the guy a symptom (which I probably don't need to explain to sophisticated readers). She tells me all sorts of stuff about her family and about the faculty at Big Baloney, since her dad is superintendent of the place.
Her dad is Doctor Thrust who married her mother back in Iowa or Ohio, one or the other. Because her mother is a member of the Vervex family of Balona, Doctor Thrust came out here to California with his family when he got fired back there, Society says. She says not to tell anybody, since if people found out, well, her dad might just be dead meat around here. So my lips are sealed, since I have professional ethics and, besides, hardly anybody is going to read this.
I would consider Society my girlfriend, young as she is and even with the bird in her throat, except she's got quite a few guys always hanging around, some of them pretty big and hairy. But she likes me, especially because of my Yellow Peril, my great car that Uncle Kosh fixed up for me and pays the insurance for, and that my beautiful classmate Millie Wong named because of its dangerous-looking owner, me.
The reason I mention Society is because she was with her dad and mom when Doctor Thrust parked his car outside my office and kept looking into our big front window and pointing and looking like he was arguing with Society and his wife about something. I notice stuff like this mostly out of the corner of my eye because of my training in secret tradecraft.
Pretty soon Doctor Thrust got out of his Mercedes with his wife hanging onto his coat sleeve, trying to keep him in the car. He shook her off and stomped into the office by himself, leaving his wife and cute child in his car. I was looking busy at my desk, messing with my computer. Dad was asleep at his desk at the time, but he woke up pretty quick when Doctor Thrust started hollering. Dad's dog Killer sort of whined a little and hid behind Dad's leg at the volume Doctor Thrust emittered in his high, scratchy voice.
"I heard it was here. Oh, I heard it and wouldn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. Kenworth Kuhl, where'd you get that astrolabe?" he was hollering at Dad, who wouldn't know an astrolube from an astrolounger and hadn't even noticed the beauty glowing in the light from the window yet, him being depressed from when my ma cuffed him on the side of the head last night.
Dad dresses all in brown nowadays, sort of like his mood and his hair, which is also thinner than ever. Even his mustache looks thin and his blue eyes paler lately.
Dad had forgot to bring the Thanksgiving turkeys home from Mr. D. H. Carp's Groceries & Sundries. My ma got mad at him for that crime because she had hired old Mrs Earwick to come over to our house to pluck and gut and stuff the birds and get them ready for the oven day-after-tomorrow.
Because my ma has to host Thanksgiving for the family this year, she hired old Mrs. Earwick to do the cooking, et cetera. Mrs. Earwick is about a hundred years old, but since my ma is no great cook and, besides, says she doesn't want the bother or the mess, Mrs. Earwick will do the job for a fee. (Guys around town joke that everything Bapsie Chaud-Kuhl cooks tastes like she cooked it herself, which although true is still sort of an insult.)
Anyway, after the cuffing took place, accompanied by some hollering, my ma and Mrs. Earwick sat down together and drank toddies and watched TV for the rest of the evening since they had nothing else to do. Me and Dad had to go get our dinner at TacoTime takeout, which we ate standing out in front of the place under their awning, also watching the rain. That was yesterday, of course, but when my ma cuffs you, you know it for quite a while after.
But to get back to the present hollering: I came to Dad's rescue. "That's my astrolube," I went in a fairly respectable tone. And I didn't correct Doctor Thrust's pronunciation since he is a doctor, and you never get ahead by criticizing guys like that who are always stopping by store widows while they are jogging in place and combing their gray hair in the reflection.
"Well, it looks just exactly like my astrolabe, the one sitting in my living room, the one all my friends and neighbors and colleagues admired before some swine sneaked into my house in the dead of night and stole it. The one used to sit in my living room getting admired." Doctor Thrust was pretty mad, you could tell--using swine to describe a Balonan. (Although in fact it is a good word the way he used it, so I wrote it in my notebook to use in one of my English comps or a poem. Lots of good words rhyme with swine.)
"Well, you maybe got an astrolube, too. But this fine one here's mine." I stood up for myself for a change.
"Well, we'll just see about that." So he made a big deal about getting up real close to the instrument and examining it from all angles--taking off his glasses and holding them in front of him like a magnifying glass--and every once in a while shouting something like, "There! That scratch there. That's the scratch I made on it by accident when I dropped the candlestick on it, the stupid candlestick my stupid wife wanted moved while I still had shaving cream on my hands. Her stupid fault. That's the very scratch, I swear."
"Cut'n be your scratch," I went, "on my astrolube."
"Well, we'll just see about that!"
He went on like that for a while, looking for more scratches and evidence, finally giving a big "sheesh!" and taking off, slamming his car door pretty hard.
You could hear him making a big deal inside his car, with his wife hollering and his cute teenage cheerleader child shrieking, even while he was driving off. Actually, Society never got elected cheerleader, but wears the sweater anyway because, she says, it goes with her eyes. "The cheerleaders are all sluts," Society says, but you couldn't swear that by me.
I noticed that Society and Mrs. Thrust didn't come in to look at my weird instrument. Probably saw enough of Doctor Thrust's astrolube before the swine got it.
I would accuse Jess Pleroma, a habitual criminal of Balona, to be the swine in this case, except Jess is right now in the hospital, whacked on the head by a mysterious attacker. Any whack that Jess gets serves him right. Of course, Jess could have swiped it before he went into the hospital. But being Jess, he would have taken it straight to the Delta City fleamarket, not the dump. Jess doesn't take anything to the dump that he can sell or trade. And of course, I know better now.
Anyway, it wasn't much time at all before Constable Cod came waddling down the street. He wasn't in a good mood either, since he doesn't like to have his usual relaxation time--most of every day--interrupted. "Where'd you get that thing, Joey?"
"I found it."
[end of 3d page of Chapter Two]
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