riffles: welcome & welcome & welcome to applestock and forgive please this descent upon you in the moment of your arrival but there is much to impart, dire warnings, it might be said & might also be said forewarned is forearmed is unharmed. In pursuit of such my wife & i extend invitation to drinks & dinner upon yr arrival. casual. no need to change, no need to confirm, simply arrive. we live only 2 blocks from miss basnight's. yellow house at spruce & exeter. you will not regret this early intelligence. ear to ground and a good meal in the belly. awaiting.

very sincerely yrs,
prof. russell parmenter

Ray sounds the Parmenter's cacophonic doorbell. Bradley Peers has warned him about it—it’s the 12-tone "set," whatever the hell that is, from Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto. What is it with these modernists? Atonal doorbells? A simple dinner invitation tortured into a fractured artifact—

The door flies open and Ellen Parmenter is staring at him, out of her milky shapeless face.

"Mrs. Parmenter? . . . Ellen?" He holds out his hand. She reaches to touch it gingerly, as if it's a rare sausage. “Sorry I’m late. I—” Ray tries to make eye contact, which she avoids by tilting her head and crossing her eyes.

Vocal commotion issues from the kitchen. "DOP-da-DAAAAH!!" It's Russell Parmenter singing or shouting while he cracks some ice. "Da-DAAAAH! Pop-pop-POP!" Atonal electronic fright music is playing on the stereo, and he's trying to sing along with it. Ellen shows Ray into the living room, her cheeks quivering oddly, then rushes back into the kitchen for a quick, hissing conference with Russell. Hissing done, the two of them emerge—Hansel and Gretel, Russell spewing pipe smoke this way and that, and swizzling a fat highball. His trademark cadaverish quality seems gone, replaced by a high flush and wobbly swagger.

"Dr. Riffles!" he shouts, all urgency and anticipation. "We'd given you up for this evening. Da-DAAAAH! How about a drink? Whiskey?"

"Wonderful."

Ray doesn’t smell anything cooking. What he does smell is bouquet of doo-doo and catbox, with an overlay of disinfectant.

A dog lopes through the room. . . .



(from pg. 24, "Walk in his Shoes")