Murmurs of mirth rose up from the audience.
“We’re all part of a big, very big beehive, and we’re the busy bees working and slaving away every day, producing…”
“Honey,” a voice suggested from the crowd, to much laughter.
“Something a lot more valuable than honey. Anyone? Entertainment!” said Fido, really getting going now, as he jotted down the word entertainment on the flip chart. “The beekeepers who are masters of the universe have created this gigantic beehive for their entertainment. And they like to watch us—in fact they’re watching us right now! And they’re laughing, and crying, and generally looking at us the way we watch television. And that’s it, folks. That’s the big secret nobody’s telling you. We’re all actors in a big reality show—only for us it’s real!”
“Oh, dear,” I said quietly.
“It’s worse than I thought, Max,” said Dooley.
“Yeah, the guy is clearly delusional.”
“Poor Fido,” Buster breathed.
“Poor you,” said Harriet.
“Yeah,” Brutus chimed in. “Once Fido has been admitted to a mental institution, who’s going to take care of you, Buster?”
“We can always ask Odelia to adopt you,” Dooley suggested. “I’m sure she would do it in a heartbeat.”
“Hold your horses, you guys,” I said. “The patient might be sick, but there’s still hope.”
“And if you want to know what the beekeeper looks like—the master of our universe?” Fido was saying. “The monster that’s created us and is watching us?” On the next page a crudely drawn hairy monster was featured. Oddly enough it looked a lot like… the Cookie Monster. “This is the ruler of our universe! The monster who rules us all! And his name is Roger! That’s right. Roger!”
“On second thought,” I said. “Maybe we should ask Odelia if she’ll consider adopting you, Buster.”
“That might be a good idea,” Buster whispered, looking dejected as the room erupted into loud and confused chatter.
15
That night, after they’d returned from Fido’s presentation, Marge had just washed her face and brushed her teeth when she came upon her husband, seated on the bed bench and staring at his favorite painting of a gnome. Gnome #16, the artist had christened it, and even though Marge wasn’t exactly a big fan of the painting, she’d allowed her husband to hang it in the bedroom, but only on the condition that it be used to hide the wall safe they’d had installed. Her reasoning was that thieves would see the gnome and be so unnerved they’d immediately totter back out the window and run off screaming. Though of course she hadn’t mentioned her thought process to Tex, since he’d have been devastated to know that his wife didn’t share his passion for gnome art.
“Everything all right, honey?” she asked as she took a seat next to her husband and rubbed his back. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she had a feeling not all was well with the man she married twenty-five years ago.
“What? Oh, sure,” said Tex, as if emerging from a dream. “Absolutely. Say, do you think that diamond is safe in there?”
“Nobody knows that we have it, honey,” she said. “So it’s absolutely safe.”
“Uh-huh,” he said and continued to stare at his precious gnome. It was a fat gnome, as gnomes go, and as far as Marge could tell it was also a jolly gnome, or at least his cherubic red cheeks gave the impression that he was jolly, as did the smile on his bearded little face. Still there was something sinister about him. Somehow Gnome #16 reminded her of an evil clown, only in the form of a gnome. An evil gnome, if you will. If Stephen King hadn’t yet written a book about the species, she felt that he should, and would probably pack a great punch when he did.
“Let’s go to bed, honey,” she said as she slipped under the duvet. “I’m beat, and tomorrow is another day.”
“Sure,” said Tex, still continuing to not be fully present.
“So what did you think about Fido’s presentation?”
“Mh?”
“Fido’s presentation? If he’s to be believed we’re all living in the matrix, and ruled by a Cookie Monster named Roger.” She laughed. “Poor guy. He’s really lost it, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right,” said Tex, then he finally got up and joined her under the covers. “But I’ll say this for him, though,” he continued as he put his ice-cold feet against hers—a habit she hadn’t been able to cure him from even after all those years.
“What’s that?” she asked, checking if her alarm clock was set at seven.
“Well, there are things in this world that we don’t know about, aren’t there? I mean, the government doesn’t always tell us everything, and that makes people suspicious, and wonder what else they might be keeping from us.”
“Like what?”
“Like… I don’t know. UFOs for instance, or aliens. Stuff like that.”
She glanced over to her husband with a frown.“Aliens, Tex? Really?”
“Well, it’s certainly possible that they’re out there. Theoretically speaking, at least.”
A tinge of worry niggled at her.“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? You never used to believe in aliens. You always said that was just a bunch of nonsense.”
“I never believed in that kind of stuff before, but now I’m thinking… maybe I should.” And with these words, he switched off the light on his nightstand, turned over and muttered, “Night, hon.”
She blinked and her frown deepened. Usually Tex liked to cuddle before going to sleep. But then she shrugged. At least it gave her the opportunity to read some more of The Sheikh’s Passion. She picked up the book, flicked off the light in the room, turned on the small reading light attached to the headboard, and was soon engrossed once again in the story of Sheikh Bab El Ehr and the love of his life: Laura.
Laura wasn’t like the other women the Sheikh had met and married. For one thing, Laura wasn’t a woman from his own country but hailed from the West. Her parents had moved to Khemed when she was a little girl, and had settled there, her dad an expat for a big oil company, and Laura had grown up surroundedby a culture that wasn’t her own, but which she’d adopted with a passion. By the time she met the Sheikh, at a palace party her parents had been invited to, she was a beautiful young woman of nineteen, with the face of an angel and the body of a goddess, or at least that’s the way the Sheikh had described her to his right-hand man Sharif the next day. Sharif had seen that the Sheikh’s eyes were shining, and that the lovelight was strong in this one, and had immediately raised the alarm: the Sheikh of Khemed couldn’t possibly take a western woman as his wife. That kind of break with tradition was simply out of the question.
But love listened to no reason, and the Sheikh had invited Laura to the palace under the pretext of wanting to ask her opinion about a pagoda he’d received as a present from the Chinese, and soon the two of them had been wandering around the gardens, without a chaperone, and their love had blossomed—a very unorthodox but powerful love, that had taken them both by surprise.