"Oh, please, that bunch of idiots?" Peez sighed. "That's not a religion, it's an extended frat party, a bunch of Baby Boomers trying to hold onto their youth with both hands and no holds barred on looking ridiculous. Why follow the Grateful Dead when you can mummify them?"
"Now who's being sarcastic?" Teddy Tumtum asked, folding his chubby arms.
"Doesn't it bother you, Teddy Tumtum?" Peez asked.
"Doesn't what bother me?"
"The fact that the Chicago group is about as spiritual as a sack full of tacos. At least Fiorella seems to believe that what she does is something more than just an excuse to wear funny costumes, get together with her old college pals, and party."
"Right, because she's got an excuse to wear sexy costumes, get together with a bunch of new people, and party."
"Oh, come on!" Peez exclaimed. "You know that's not true. She really does care about raising the power of the old earth magic. I can't vouch for her followers—for some of them, it probably is just an excuse to let it all hang out—but for Fiorella— It's not like that for her. I can tell. For her it's about real power, and she didn't want to have anything to do with me. I'm not worthy."
"And Dov is?" Teddy Tumtum snorted, then melted into more of his stomach- churning baby-talk mode. "Duzzums Peezie-pie need a dweat big warm mooshy dollop of self-esteem, hmmmm? Izzums all droopy-woopy 'cause 'ums t'ink dat nasty ol' baby bruvver got the chops an' 'oo doesn't?"
Just as Peez felt drops of syrup crystallizing on her eyelashes from all the sweet talk, the bear did an instant presto-changeo from goopy guru to boot camp drill sergeant and barked: "So ****ing what if he does, woman? He does not matter! Repeat: Dov Godz does not matter, what he may or may not be doing does not count, as far as you are concerned he does not exist from this second until the glorious moment of triumph when your mama passes full and complete control of E. Godz, Inc. into your hands. Do you copy that, soldier?"
"Soldi—?"
"I said, do you copy that?!"
"Sir, yes sir!" Peez barked back.
"I can't heeeeearrrrr youuu!"
"Sir, yes sir!"
"Now you rise up, you get some coffee into your sorry gut, and you march yourself right out of this hotel room and off to your next battle. And that is a battle which you will win, is that clear?"
"But I—"
"I said, is that clear?"
"Sir, yes sir!"
"Good. Now move 'em out!"
Fully under Teddy Tumtum's control, Peez snapped to attention, slapped the bear to Right Shoulder Arms, and marched out of her hotel room on the double. Just as the door swung closed behind them, she shook off his charismatic spell long enough to say, "Coffee's not a bad idea. Know where I could get some?"
"You want to know where you can get coffee in Seattle?" The sound of a teddy bear plotzing from shock echoed through the hotel corridors.
* * *
Martin Agparak was not having a good workday. Because of the nature of his craft, he labored in a more-or-less open-air situation. The tools of his trade were sheltered from the weather in a series of watertight cupboards that were in turn mounted on the back wall of a large shed. The shed itself looked as if it had encountered a giant with a chainsaw who had sawed it neatly in half, right along the rooftree, leaving it with the same three-wall construction favored by dollhouses everywhere. Martin's actual workspace was outside the halved shed, a suitably huge open area roofed only by a tarp. It was just what he needed.
The problem in general was, when you worked out in the open like that, some people considered it to be a likewise open invitation to no-holds-barred kibitzing. They refused to understand that you could be distracted and that you did not want to listen to their ongoing stream of unwanted conversation.
The problem at the moment was that not all such clueless people were, well, people.
"So then she says to me, she says, 'Do you know where I could get some coffee around here?' and I say to her, I say—"
"Teddy Tumtum, shut up." Peez picked up the garrulous bear and tossed him back over one shoulder. He landed in a big pile of sawdust.
Sawdust, like rain and coffee, was everywhere.
Martin Agparak watched the bear's trajectory and ultimate soft landing dispassionately. "Sounds like one of Edwina's creations," he remarked. "Same kinda pushy."
Peez felt her face color up. "That's not how I would describe it," she said.
"Sure. She's your mother." Martin leaned back against the trunk of what had once been a towering pine tree. When Peez had first come into the glorified lumberyard that served as his studio, he'd been in the process of removing the last of its bark. Her visit had forced him to put off beginning the real work. He wasn't too pleased by the interruption and he didn't mind showing his displeasure by being rude.
"If you find her style to be so abrasive, why have you signed on with E. Godz, Inc. in the first place?" Peez asked somewhat sharply.
Martin shrugged. He was a young man in top physical condition, and the Mariners singlet he wore to work in showed off his muscular arms to advantage. A simple shrug from him should have been poetry in motion, but his attitude reduced the poetry to a men's room wall limerick.
"Because I can use the contacts that membership gives me," he said. "You know the old saying about us Eskimos: We got thirty-seven words for snow but not one for networking."
Peez's brow creased. "I thought you called yourselves Inuit. I thought that Eskimo wasn't—"
"Was, wasn't, was again, who cares?" A pair of safety goggles was perched atop his head. Now he pulled them back down over his eyes and turned his back on Peez, the better to study the log before him. "That's the sort of thing that bothers the folks whose ancestors were actually native to this place; not me. As an Eskimo, I'm a real out-of- towner. I'd call myself Tinkerbell if it gave me a bigger market share."
He pulled a piece of chalk from the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans and made a few preliminary markings at one end of the log. Peez recognized the stylized face of Raven. Moving down the log, Martin Agparak sketched in quick succession the images of Bear, Wolf and Salmon, then paused for a moment at the bottom of the severed trunk, thought long and hard, then added the final face.
"What—?" Peez peered at the chalked lines, trying to recognize which spirit the young Inuit artist had chosen to invoke for his totem pole in the making. Try as she might, she couldn't figure the last one out at all. "What is that supposed to be?"
"Huh?" Having finished the drawing, Martin was now over at his workbench, selecting a chainsaw of the proper size with which to begin the actual carving. "Oh. I guess you don't have kids." He popped on a pair of soundproof earphones. "If you did, you wouldn't just recognize that one, you'd probably be trying to kick the crap out of it." He found the saw he wanted and revved it up. "Don't worry; it'll look much more familiar once I paint it purple."
Peez stood there dumbstruck, staring at the now-recognizable face that would be the base of Martin's totem pole. "Purple ..." she repeated, locking eyes with that vapid, grinning, irrationally irritating icon of toddler TV. Martin ignored her and began to carve.
"Yow!" said a voice by her ankle. It was Teddy Tumtum who had managed to pull himself out of the sawdust pile and across the floor to rejoin his mistress. "Am I seeing things? Do my glassy eyes behold that heinous purple blobosaurus on a totem pole? Naaahh, can't be. I must be hallucinating. I blame myself for chug-a-lugging that quadruple espresso before we came in here. Those lemon twists will get me every time."