Dr Jew

quarantine on her was now removed with her… her changed condition… and the borders no more if she was officially – for petty officials, bah! – officially , ah, terminated. Yes, dead. I add the word to her description."
    "She died?" said Sergio. "What the –"
    " But be not scared, Sergio. The darkest chapter is behind us and I assure you a Hollywood ending. It shall come."
    "I fail to see how," he said.
    "The first and most immediate enterprise to handle – that first battle being lost to the grim robed man with the scythe – but not the war! – the first task was to be cool, to keep cool, and I mean for this to be understood both figuratively and literally. Her molten shell was in an unhealthy place, and it seemed momentarily implausible to save her. I would do the next best thing and bring things to a halt. Freezing. Like Walt Disney she would be put on ice and suspend her rotting nature that I might bring her back with soul intact and do my work where I have always done it best, which is to say here , now , in my laboratory of kinky delights.
    "I did this, securing an icy bier with the aid of the credit card you supplied me—"
    "So that's what that $35,000 charge –"
    "Silence, man, we talk of your wife 's salvation! Yes, the matter was a bit pricey and I daresay worth it for what cost human life, what cost?"
    Yes, there was silence. How could a husband argue with that, when the tale still had its snowy flakes to settle in the glass orb?
    "Yes, I secured the matter, the delivery and labor. There would be no plane this time, but instead a touring bus with all the luxuries afforded to any rock and roll band – except a cadre of underage groupies that fondle and delight those mighty illusioneers of the era, ha ha ha!
    "I, of course, sp ent the many hours on that bus checking the temperature of your fair one and praying to heaven for safe passage and gleaming future, and also in researching on the wide world of web the ornery details I'd need to utilize in the process my mind was conjecturing and toying with, while all around me the road and desert rolled by. I noticed not my surroundings and cared even less. Did I eat or relieve myself on that trip? I know not. I suppose I must have, one of the manservants bringing me a carne asada burrito with a dab of guacamole and some horchata or sangria to give the ol' blood a sugar high. But as I said, I did not notice if that was the case. I simply found myself floating through another hallway of time so that when I found myself on the farther side I could not tell you what had transpired in the meantime.
    "The bus arrived at my domicile right here in the city, this very compartment, at a late hour in the evening. A few of the laboring men I'd secured for the duty carted your wife up those very stairs outside the door there. I admitted them. They deposited her box into my large walk-in freezer specifically crafted for such bodies, and departed back to their barbaric land, or more likely some 'under-the-table' job here in the red, white, and blue to ravage more of our women and become social parasites… but I digress, ha ha ha! Enough of them. They are departed and shall never return to this fable. And thus it was that we came back into our land, one less for her trip south, but returned nevertheless."
    There was silence for a few seconds. Then Sergio said, "And? You still haven't explained anything! I don't think I even believe what I have heard."
    "Don 't… believe? As though I could lie about such matters."
    "Well?" said Sergio. "Go on. Finish your story."
    "I don 't know if I can. I have been called a liar to my face, in my own home. If it's all fabrication then you can tell it yourself. Make a movie of it."
    "For Christ 's sake, just tell it. You're not a liar. Go on. What happened to Lise?"
    "Apology accepted. However, to understand the nature of your Lise, we must follow a different thread, a different body, for a time."
    " What are you talking about?" said Sergio. "Whose body?"
    " Her body," I said, looking at Adam.
    "Eve?" said Adam.
    "Eve?" said Sergio.
    "Eve," said I.
    "What happened?" said Adam. "Where is she?"
    "Oh, my simple Adam. I would not expect you to put two and two together, although I suppose that our amigo Sergio here may be piecing it together with his cinematic mind. Yes, Sergio, but wait for it, wait for it."
    "Wait for what?" said Adam.
    " It ," I said. "That ever-creeping pivot upon which every story rests like a Lazy Susan, and we