.. and stopped halfway, her ass held in mid-air. She seemed to have gotten stuck about where her hips flared out. She flailed her legs but couldn’t ...ake any headway. She turned her head back toward me ... I could see her lips moving but no sound came out. I shook my head with a confused look on my face.She spoke some more while moving her hands. “Can you hear me?!” Her voice was coming from... I bent over. Sure enough... “Are you ... talking out of your ass?” I snickered.“Damnit, dummy! Go grab. The incredible truth that she wanted to be with me. The strut this put into my step. Walk on up the road from the university to the traffic lights and you’re opposite another coffee shop, the Silver Slipper, in the old streetcar station at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. We would not linger there, though, even for the background of Beatles music. It was too close to the building across on the other side of the highway where I had a small apartment in the attic, a garret, if you feel. It was very quiet the next morning in the New House of Joy, as a very subdued group of the staff and even fewer especially favoured customers were discussing Martha's death from a heart attack the night before. Although all the nicest things were being said, and everyone was being sympathetic, nevertheless everyone had their own little schemes and thoughts about how they could best profit from Martha's death. As was now almost a tradition on Csadia, the New House of Joy was the neutral ground. But pointing out flaws wasn’t going to make your body go back to before you met your husband, nor was it going to get you that job.Now that was a train of thought. Your husband and the job. You were sneaking behind his back with this whole job hunting business, but better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. Oscar was a traditional man, didn’t like his woman to do jobs outside cooking and cleaning. And while you’d been raised with a similar mentality, necessity called for a change..