From this vantage point I could make out a girl on the right sitting upright. She had short, curly blond hair and was definitely the runt of this litt...r. It sure could be Cassy. Then seated facing me, with his back to the water was a bigger, almost adult sized form. It looked to be about twice the size of Cassy, and definitely looked like a boy. Finally, was what looked like a girl in a bikini laying on her belly, facing away from me toward the Neanderthal.I sat watching for a while, wishing I. Harry stopped at an alley and, with a smile, said, “Come with me.”She followed him down the alley amazed at how filthy it was. The buildings on each side of the alley seemed to reach up to the sky. They made it a dark forbidding place even in the afternoon. When they walked past a restaurant, her stomach threatened to lose the lunch that she had eaten an hour earlier. The odor was overpowering.She screamed when a rat crossed the alley in front of them. In a tone meant to reassure her, Harry. BADstanding can amuse themselves in whatever ways their fancytakes them."We made our way up to the bar where Bethany-Jane washolding court. "What would you like to drink?" Moniqueasked.I smiled grimly. "A Red-Headed Slut!" I said. "What else?"She laughed again. "Good!" she applauded. "You are familiarwith the wine of the country. Make it two," she told thebartender. "Now listen, Sydney," she went on. "I am makingno demands on you other than this meeting. If, aftertonight, you decide to have. Until today. Earlier that week a memo had been circulated confirming the company’s long-rumored merger with SatCorp, a much larger corporation. The memo had gone on to reassure everyone that despite the change in management everything else would continue on as before.Hah, thought Marcia, her fingers flying over the computer keyboard.Her supervisor had taken her aside late that afternoon and asked—practically in a whisper, it now seemed to Marcia—if she would mind working late, just this.