-=O=-***-=O=-

Halfway through batch two, Eve lay on the floor staring up at the beads raining from the silver ceiling. "If men are pigs, why do so many of us have one?"

"Because women work on an emotional level." Mavis hiccupped delicately. "Even you."

Eve rolled over, eyed Mavis narrowly. "Do not." "Do, too. First he got you by the hormones. I mean, Jesus, look at him. The man's a sexual... Gimme a minute. A sexual... banquet. Yeah, that's a good one. Then he clicked into your head, because he's smart and interesting and mysterious and all that stuff you'd really go for. But then, the whammer was when he jammed right into your heart. Whatcha gonna do then? A guy's got his hooks in your heart, he just reels you right in."

"I'm not a goddamn fish."

"We are all fish," Mavis said in rounded tones, "in the great sea of life."

Eve had swallowed enough screamers to find that hysterically funny. "You moron," she managed when she got her breath back.

"Hey, I'm not the one in emotional crisis here." On her hands and knees, Mavis crawled over and kissed Eve, smackingly, on the cheek. "Poor baby. Mommy's gonna tell you just what to do to make it all better."

She crawled off for the screamers, crawled back, and poured them out into the glasses, somehow managing not to spill a single potent drop.

"Well, what?"

"Fuck his brains out."

"That's it? That's Mommy's best advice?"

"It's the only advice. Men, being pigs and having the dick factor, will usually forget what they were pissed about if you lay them right."

"So I'm supposed to use sex to fix this?" Somewhere in her alcohol-dulled brain there was a glimmer of a thought that this approach was seriously marred. But she couldn't quite grab onto it. "It could work," she decided.

"Guaranteed. But..."

"I knew there was a but. I could almost feel it."

"It's only a ... what do you call it, a temporary measure. Dallas, you've got like, you know, issues. So you gotta figure out why you went behind his back. Not that there's anything really wrong with that, 'cause sometimes you just gotta do what you do. But what you got here are two really rock heads that are rapping up against each other." She demonstrated by banging her hands together, and spilled some screamer after all. "Oops."

"You're saying I'm a rock head?"

"Sure you are. That's why I love you. And when you got those rock heads smacking together like that, you're gonna have something crack now and again."

"He's hardly speaking to me."

"He's so mean." Mavis polished off the screamer, then gave Eve a hard hug. "Want some ice cream?"

"I'll be sick. What kind?"