This was good. I wanted to further exert my authority over him. "Hey, how is it going?" I said confidently."Good" he said. "How are you?" "Same old, s...me old" He smiled. We walked into the locker room and changed into our workout clothes (without getting naked). As I was tying my shoes, I said "How are things up on the 5th? You settling OK after the recent changes with Noreen" I was dangling it HIS face this time. "Yeah, its all going great." He paused a little, "To be honest, Noreen kinda had. Won’t let me pay one single penny for his services. And I only carried him on my back for two or three kilometres through the Hindu Kush after he stepped on that UID. With his missing limbs and all that blood loss, he was a whole lot easier to carry than one of the exhausted twins home from the park after playing all day on the swings. Well, I imagine so, I’d not had the stomach to see the twins or even Agnes at that point. Agnes rang Mum when she heard I was home, to try and get in contact. It was only when Madame Fabre introduced her colleague who had helped me, and the artistic directors of both very well known theatres in neighbouring cities that the penny began to drop. I looked at Laurence and she looked at me. They had come to see us!It was perhaps fortuitous that the younger performers took the stage first. We had a chance to savour the anticipation of the performance. What could go wrong. Laurence looked ravishing in her skintight multi-hue dance outfit that matched my. Want a buddy to go see a movie with? Abbie's your girl. Moving across town and want help with some boxes? Someone to walk the dog? To paint the house? To go the park?Abbie never let anything stand in her way of helping her friends. Unless there was some kind of emergency or if the circumstance was inappropriately dangerous, she always said yes.The nicest thing about it was that no one ever asked anything too much of her. She was so agreeable that everyone she knew had the greatest respect for.