Olivia took up the slender goblet that resembled the one in Durer's painting which on close scrutiny would have exposed a sexual embrace to eyes still encompassed by the mentality of the Dark Ages when religions reached their crest.

Byrom Lighthouse Bush rushed to her side for he was not going to allow her to get sick again as he often did as a six-year-old hiding inside the mashed potatoes limply erected while the dark blood pudding covered it and finally him.  Sounding like his father he ejaculated: "(Whistle) you'll (whistle) go (whistle) to (whistle) hell Olivia -- if (whistle) you (whistle) don't (whistle) stop (whistle) your (whistle) damn (whistle) drinking!"

Their grips supported both bottle and goblet dangling in mid-air and as if struggling to reach a climax in the vehement movements; instead, ending in a shattering of glass to the floor.

Looking at the shards, Byrom recalled how when he was a young child the glass of water he was holding before his eyes made the heads of his father and grandfather even larger.  He tried to make himself become the color of water but seeing their stern looks directed at him made him put the glass down to begin again an attempt at rotating his food with a stuttering fork: he was deep inside the glob of spinach that resembled Medusa's hair.  Just as suddenly he was swimming in the pudding making his way to the bottom of a heap of mashed potatoes that now looked like a half crushed mountain with a partial sun melting down its sides.  Under this he hid with his fork until his father spoke in his most dismissive tone: "Damn it the boy does it on purpose!" ....

Without letting on he had to convey the importance of keeping in her son's "good grace," for the twenty-five year old with a capitalist's genius for making a buck on the backs of others did indeed hold the keys to Byrom's salvation. Byrom said, not using his whistle, that he would clean the mess he made as diligently he did when managing one of her son's custard stands.

God if "Moneybags" (that's what he called Ron behind his back and always to himself) ever found out he and his mother were having an affair that fell into all kinds of different positions and shapes of pain causing multiple irritations, he most certainly would have had his authority stripped and shipped back to Cleveland where once again he would have been forced to live in a marginal neighborhood attempting to allude definition so he would not be discovered and be forced to send support payments to his wife and four children, of whom the last two he knew without a doubt were not his, living four hundred miles to the east in Burywater.

It was paramount he had to keep Each from the Other in the full knowing of the web he was weaving.  He would not allow her drinking to destroy his golden opportunity that had waited through countless failures that had become a draining ritual.

Olivia, in an exaggerated way, affected a stifling of a yawn - making sure his eyes beheld all the pseudo movements involved - and told him she was going to bed since she had enough of his constantly telling of his dead father's passion for a one world order that had had such heros as a car maker, a solo flyer, a deaf inventor, a would-be king who married for copulation instead of sitting on a scone stone while waiting with the others for their leader to unify a Europe under one master race.

She staggered to her bedroom.  Her door locking sounded like a gun shot. Byrom threw himself vehemently onto the couch and cried himself softly to sleep.