...continued from The Insults
"Unlikely," Spin laughs. "Urfe will run away. He admits to being intimidated by my Ace Dyson persona."
"You people are taking the 'sexy' element right out of this thread. Geeze. Silly string? How am I supposed to swoon over the winner when he's covered in silly string? No wounds to kiss, no sweaty brows to dab?" Alexis is disappointed. "If this is how you're going to settle insults, then count me out. Just forget it. Either duel correctly or don't, but do not tease like this."
Selena agrees. "You and I could duel properly, Alexis. I've read enough accounts to do the right thing: my foot on your chest, my sword-point at your throat, my cold voice saying above you, 'Ask my pardon or you are a dead woman. Ask my pardon, I say, or you are a dead woman, a dead woman.' (That is, always supposing I won. And also supposing you insulted me. Am I getting ahead of myself?)
Alexis has no time to answer. At that moment...
"You son of a bitch."
The doctor freezes. Alexis sniggers. Celia, recognizing the tone, looks down, swallowing. Ray blinks.
Urfe, dripping in the doorway, tosses his hat into the abandoned coat-check room. (They've been hard-pressed to keep anyone since that incident with Father Ignatius and the large, plastic apostrophe he'd stolen from an Albertson's sign.) "You son of a bitch," says Urfe again, sluicing rainwater from his sodden arms.
"Nicholas," says the doctor, draining his brandy at a gulp and showing his teeth. He does not turn around to face the door. "How good of you to join us."
"I'm out there in the back forty all afternoon digging postholes and re-laying your new Dyson adventure in hypertext markup while that goddamn torrential monsoon you dropped into the Fish Tank rages and here you are, yakking it up, talking trash behind my back?"
Denny leans in and murmurs something in Alexis's ear, pressing a twenty into her hand which she covers with one of her own. Gary looks up from his sister (in from the Coast) and hands Alexis a fifty. Jeff, laughing at someone else's joke, looks up suddenly, "What? What?"
"I wasn't the one who started this," says the doctor, slowly, still not turning around. "I wasn't the one spoiling for a fight."
"Whether I'm scared of Dyson or not is beside the point," says Urfe. "In point of fact, I'd merely said I thought the randy bugger was unethical, if nonetheless moral. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is Dyson would never have sat with his back to the door."
Lightning quick, the doctor kicks his chair back and spins around, hands up, right foot forward, head lowered and back. Selena shrieks, though whether from startlement or with laughter it's hard to say. Oosh pats her arm. Jekyll helps Frank clear a large, fan-fold printout from a table near the dispute.
"Are you calling me out, Urfe?" says the doctor.
"I suppose I am," says Urfe. He plucks a cigarillo from an inner pocket and jams it between his teeth. "No one calls me a viridian slime and gets away with it. Much less impugns my ability to stand up to a fictional character." He manages to get it lit with his second match.
Conjugate drains his beer and slaps the cover down on the keyboard of the player piano. Uther tut-tuts the three youngsters who seem eager to leave off their game of bridge. Felix and Sagittaria scoop up the Jimmy Bot and hustle it behind the bar. Desdmona flutters her fan in agitation and clutches the Spline Duck's hand. "Somebody better rustle up the Padre," says Lisala, and Cain and Jacques nod and then bump into each other headed for the back door.
The doctor straightens slightly, lowers his hands. "Well. As the challenged party, I claim choice of weaponry."
Urfe nods. "All right. What'll it be?"
The doctor smiles. It isn't a pretty smile. "Flash fiction, boyoh. Three hundred words or less at ten paces."
"Three hundred words on the goddamn nose," says Urfe, nodding once.
"Dammit," mutters Alexis. "Are we ever going to get any decent bloodshed around here?"
"Hear ye! Hear ye! This honorable court's now in session; and if any galoot wants a snort afore we start, let him step up to the bar and name his pizen."
I'll have what he's having:
/~nickurfe/ift/
http://www.ruthiesclub.com/
DrSpin laughs sardonically. (He never passes an opportunity to do this. He would like to be played in the film of his life by Jeremy Irons.)
"Three hundred words?" He laughs again. "Nicholas can't say 'hello Mother' on the telephone in less than six hundred."
Urfe gestures dismissively but his eyes betray him. He might have been too hasty. He tries to recall even a paragraph he'd written in less than three hundred words.
DrSpin turns to a tiny but bloodthirty redhead close by. "You will be my second, Alexis?"
"Oh, kind Sir, I would be much honored," Alexis burbles.
To one side, Oosh mumbles, "If I were Alexis, I think I'd want to know what happened to the first." She continues, softer still, "Sorry, not wishing to interrupt the blood-feast..."
continued...
