…using the numbers Lorna brought music for, about a week ago,” she says. “And I’d like to consider asking Jane Bradley to join us, at least for some of the pieces.” Lorna had in fact shown me some of the sheet music.
“Jane?” asks Eloise. “She plays the steel guitar, the piano, the harp, the acoustic guitar, and the string bass. [Jane herself hasn’t come into the room yet; she, Louise Brown, and Mary Blonda were on the phone long-distance.] I know she has played with such as the Livermore Symphony and the classical groups in Lodi and Hayward.”
“All the better,” says Alice. “The more versatile she is, the more latitude Prester John’s Aunt will have in utilizing her talents.”
Just a moment after that Jane, Mary, and Louise come into the room. Again Louise and Alice are in similar clothes; jeans, cardigan, house slippers; Louise’s hair is just long enough now to fall off her shoulders. Mary wears jeans and an old blouse again; this time with a bra. Jane wears a light blue dress, which has a modest neckline, although Jane’s figure is of course immodestly shapely. They sit with their husbands, who had come into the room only a few minutes before. I can see the men blush.
Jerry Britton, of The Cigar Band, just has to make an impudent comment. “How many times can your audience listen to ‘Stand By Your Man’?” he asks.
Jane glares at him with those big blue eyes. She can say so much without speaking…
“Jane, I’d like to talk to you about performing with Prester John’s Aunt,” says Alice, ignoring Jerry. “I understand you play the piano, the steel guitar, and the harp.” She asks Jane, Lena, Gwen, and Amy to come with her into the next room, where they have the instruments, to discuss the repertoire; Jerry and I carry equipment in and set instruments up. I’m not part of the arrangements so I don’t hang around.
When I return to the first room, the men have left. Eloise says Jack and the four other husbands went to the store to get groceries; Lupe has the day off and Armand doesn’t drive. Besides, since the Sharps’ oldest kids moved out on their own there’s often not much call for large meals… :rolleyes:
Fred, Salbert, and Buster have gone into another room as well. I sit down to catch my breath.
Mary Blonda speaks. “Eloise mentioned a flock of cardinals you saw in Stockton.” I’m glad Eloise didn’t go into more detail, although I trust Mary thoroughly. “I’m suspicious of that, and I’d like to contact Mark about the birds coming this far west. Like eastern blue jays, cardinals rarely appear this side of the Rockies.”
I know about this; I’ve done yard work and seen scrub jays darting around, watching me with implied impudence, and scouring the area for peanuts and such. 
“Well, if you think he can give us clues about the cardinals, and who brought them here [perhaps one of the five people mentioned above as being allied with Sikes-Potter and/or Lemoyne], have him get in touch with Alice or me,” I say. I write down the e-mail addresses for Alice, and for myself—my computer at the dorm.
I notice something I’ve never noticed before that the women—now there are only women with me in the room—have in common. It’s no surprise that Samantha Hoffman, George Galloway’s daughter, and Thalia, Samantha’s own daughter, wear rings that would identify them, at least to Alice and me, as people with the DXM League. In particular, I notice the extremely fancy ring—with could likely have cost over $10,000—that Eloise Sharp wears. Now I also notice rings of lesser value (list price, that is—I don’t think they would confer an inferior status) on the hands of Louise Brown, Loora Oranjeboom, and Mary Blonda. Jeanette Strong is also present, but she is wearing gloves; wise, I conclude, considering the panatelas she smokes, and she apparently wears the gloves to keep tobacco stains off her hands.
“Alice told us what happened when you went to the courthouse for depositions,” says Eloise. “That’s terrible…she almost cried when she told us.”
I feel pretty glum about it myself. “That miserable jock…why did he have to treat Alice like that?” I almost cry.
The six women—Eloise, Mary, Loora, Louise, Samantha, and Thalia—sit close to me to comfort me. They are all sympathetic.
This itself gets a reaction from me. These are women—four happily married women. (Samantha is divorced; Thalia has a relationship with Carl Sharp, Eloise’s second-oldest son.) Those pretty faces; those kind, mellifluous voices; those generous figures; and their expressed sympathy. This is too much for me and I pass out.
When I come to, I see the smiling face of Alice. I smile and shed a single tear. I sit up—I have been on a large couch—and she sits close and gets me in an embrace. Mary Blonda is the only other person present; she sits on a footstool. Then Buster saunters into the room. He jumps up onto the coffee table and walks slowly over to Mary. He touches her blouse hem with the tip of his tail, and puts a paw on her hand, right on the ring.
“Yes, I’m with the DXM League too,” Mary says. “George Galloway got in touch with me after the moth episode. You may not know it, but I was ‘initiated’ at the Terwilligers’ house with that bit with the gnomes.” 
“Oh, you mean that was planned by Mr. Galloway?” I ask.
“Absolutely,” says Alice. “Once Mr. Galloway saw the kind of person Mary is—‘that dear girl,’ as he called her—he decided she could qualify as a DXM person.” (I know, of course, Mr. Galloway used a figure of speech; he would not use a demeaning term to refer to Mary, who after all is grown, with a husband and three kids.) We all get a laugh out of this. I’m glad to see Alice in good humor again.
I’ve known for a while that Mrs. Blonda, like Mmes. Brown, Sharp, Bradley, and Oranjeboom, is a wonderful person, but I never expected this…
“I think I fainted from an overwhelming sense of womanness present,” I say humbly, with my arm around Alice’s waist. It’s just those vibes…”
Now Mary—who seems to have an I.Q. of Googol—goes into some detail about what she believes she and her ornithologist brother Mark can do concerning the cardinals and anything else that may be in the bag-of-tricks of Sikes-Potter’s cronies, even after the probate court voided his will.
Mary spells it out:
I grip her hand snugly. “I have some inkling of this—that damned cousin of mine—Kurt Todd, and his deadly produce bombing missions.” Alice returns the favor, leaning close to me and gently removing her glasses—and mine. She does this sometimes when she sympathizes with me. When I sympathize with her I usually just cup her cheek with a palm, and look straight into those big brown eyes if we’re face to face. Here we aren’t. She puts both sets of glasses in her purse for the moment.