UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The Insults

Selena sat in the Taverna bar and regarded her neighbor.

"Short people," she murmured under her breath. "Always drawing attention to themselves, talking about their wide experience with sex-toy parties, as if they were the Avon Ladies of dildos. Compensating for not being noticed at department-store counters. Short people and redheads, too. Noticed it again and again. Sad, really."

Perhaps Selena didn't say it quite so far under her breath as she thought.

Only slightly surprised - after all, her neighbor is obviously having difficulty balancing such an inflated ego on such a disproportionately long neck; one is suddenly reminded of giraffes - Alexis turns on her barstool to look at the woman beside her.

Goodness me, Alexis thinks, I never realized that age could be so embittering.

"Feeling a bit left out of the party, dear? A bit inexperienced for you age, is it?"

She gently pats her neighbor's only-slightly-wrinkled hand.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about that," she coos soothingly. "I'm sure there's still time for you to enjoy life, even at your age."

Turning back to her drink, she realizes that perhaps it might have come out a bit more brightly than she intended.

"Oh," says Selena, with dangerous courtesy. "I don't think you need to worry about anything you say coming out too brightly, Alexis." She stands up in one lithe, fluid movement, draining her drink.

"You really should avoid cooing," she adds, with a tight-lipped smile. "Someone might take you for a pigeon. If, of course, it weren't for the whole chest thing," she says, eyeing Alexis' offerings with mild pity.

Selena turns away. "At my age? Age, my Aunt Fanny," she murmurs in dulcet tones, setting her glass down on the bar with perhaps a smidgen more force than necessary.

At the raised voices, Souvie looks in the direction of the bar and groans. Her elbow catches Gary in his side. When he gives her a questioning look she nods in the direction of the two "divas."

"Uh oh."

"Yeah, uh oh," Souvie echoed, thinking, ring side seats?

Watching Selena down the remainder of her drink, it quickly becomes obvious to the surrounding bar patrons exactly why Ms. Jardine was moving "fluidly." It is also obvious that a more appropriate description might be "sloshed."

Alexis nods sympathetically and whispers to the gentleman on her other side, "You know, I've read that increased dependence upon artificial means of stimulation-alcohol primarily, although I do wonder what, exactly, is in that cloisonn� vial she's clenching so desperately-increases as a woman reaches a certain "point" in her life. Something about declining hormone levels or some such." She tisks her tongue quietly. "A pity really. She's very 'stately.'

She had obviously struck a chord with her auditor. "If we're talking wimmen, we're talking hormone levels," he said spiritedly, "And, if we're talking wimmen and hormone levels, we're talking trouble. And this, Let Me Tell You, also leads their menfolk to take refuge in increased dependence upon artificial means of stimulation, alcohol primarily." He attracted the barman's attention and made that universal fiinger-wiggling gesture that means "Another single malt, no water, no ice, for me, and a margarita for my friend, here."

"Cheers," he said, and sipped with grim purpose.

I'm sure at one point in her life she was attractive. Although I suspect the description she heard most often was 'striking'."

"That reminds me," he replies, "of that quotation from Noel Coward's 'Private Lives': 'Wimmen should be struck regularly, like gongs.'" Somehow, this does not go over as successfully as he had hoped. Oh, well. There was prolly something wrong with Alexis's hormone levels, too. Bound to be, in fact. He sighed. Wimmen...

on the other side of the planet, celia looks up from the carpet where she'd been pulling apart her betty spaghetties and looks around. then she shrugs and continues her disections.

Turning back to the woman swaying beside her, she notices that Ms. Jardine's hands are gripped tightly around the gin tumbler. Gripped so tightly in fact, that the only remaining color in her fingers is the light brown of the liver spots beginning to dot the thinning skin.

Alexis leans back to continue her conversation with the much more dignified gentleman-a refreshing contrast to the sordid display by Ms. Jardine. "I do hope, for her sake, that she's managed to acquire a more 'marketable' skill in her life. Her social graces are obviously lacking, and with such an apparent weakness for the bottle, I can't imagine that she's been able to hold a job long enough to establish a very satisfying quality of life."

Nat sat. He wondered, once again, if the young should give more respect to the old. As always, the answer depended, of course, on whether you asked a young or an old person. And, either way, the young didn't, never had, and never would, so what was the point? Alexis, of course, was more worried about whether the old should give more respect to the young. Well, [yawn], ditto.

Uther could be heard to utter into a flagon of meade, "The old should give the greatest respect to the young. The young have so little of their own."

"Ah, dear old Selena, bless her," Nat temporised politely, at length. He wondered if Alexis would be prepared to let it go at that.

DrSpin politely but firmly reminds Nat that a woman is known to reach the peak of her sexual prowess at the age of 35. Alexis, child prodigy notwithstanding, thus would require another half-generation to acquire such wisdom, power and potency. Aye, and sex appeal, for that matter.

Nat shakes his head gently, and thinks, Shees, that man shouldn't be let out without an editor. Not for the first time, he points out the obvious (that, far from going together, wisdom and sexual prowess are often mutually exclusive). As for power and potency, when you consider what she has to offer already, half a generation seems cruelly long to wait to see a fully-ripened Alexis.

"While I appreciate that you are trying--in your gauche, antipodean and quite possibly well-meaning way--to offer support to a blossom on the overblown side of full bloom," Nat says to DrSpin, "I think that doing it by drawing attention to the delicious promise of a rose bud is, somehow, to shoot yourself in the foot."

That is unless, of course, the twelve-year-old urchin look appeals to Nat, thinks Spin. It could well be so. Nat's fellow clerics have an infamous track record.

"Urchin look, certainly, and red-heads get automatic bonus points, says Nat, reading the expression on Spin's face like a post on Usenet, all the while thinking, (Why was I never told that Souvie is a red-head?) In fact, any girlfriend who looks as if she might be cheap to run already has something going for her, in My Book. The ability to cook a killer breakfast is a key pre-requisite, however. Quite frankly, twelve-year-olds suck at this. So urchins need to be much older to engage Nat's interest. Around Alexis's age and stage, in fact.

At which point Alexis speaks the fateful words: "However, I do worry about this obsession with her aunt's fanny."

"Well, as long as it turns into a hot, well-written story on ASSM, I'm cool with it," he said broad-mindedly. "Or if it's good enough, maybe Ruthie's Club will take it. I wonder if there is a market for geriatric lesbian stories."

"Oh, that was catty," Souvie commented in a low tone to Gary. She'd quickly darted over to Jimmy and borrowed one of those toy thingies that amplifies sounds from meters away and so she could hear Alexis and Selena as good as if she was standing between them. Which she would have been loco to do.

"Maybe we should send over a bottle of wine for them. If they share a drink, it might lessen the tension," Gary offered.

"Maybe we could send over a jar of hand creame to take care of the liver spots," Souvie countered.

"Ouch!"

"Sorry, I do like the wine idea. But we'd have to make sure the bottle had a pretty label."

"Now who's being catty?"

"It must be contagious."

Conjugate turns to see where the ominous guitar music is coming from. To him, it sounds vaguely reminiscent of a Western flick, right before the big gunfight starts.

Will the ladies choose their weapons, he wonders? Short fiction, perhaps, or will the exchange of posted insults suffice? Conjugate slowly slides down, hiding under the table to avoid stray rounds.

continued...