• The Hawkline Orchestra •

Greer and Cameron and the Hawkline women, who were still mystified by their behavior, returned clothes to their bodies and all joined together in a music room on the same floor as the bedrooms that they had just finished making love in.

Greer and Cameron put their guns down on the top of a piano. Miss Hawkline went downstairs and made some tea and brought it back up on a silver platter and they all sat in the music room surrounded by harpsichords, violins, cellos, pianos, drums, organs, etc. It was a very large music room.

To make tea Miss Hawkline had to step around the body of the giant butler in the hall downstairs.

Greer and Cameron had never had tea before but they decided to try it because what-the-hell with all the things that were going on in this huge yellow house that was so weird that it almost breathed, straddling some ice caves that penetrated like frozen teeth deep into the earth.

Greer and Cameron had wanted to do something with the dead body of the giant butler as soon as they were finished with the living bodies of the Hawkline women, but the women insisted that they all have tea first before getting onto the disposal of the butler who was still sprawled out like an island in the hall.

A freshly-started fire was burning in the music room fireplace.

“Do you like your tea?” Miss Hawkline said. She was sitting beside Greer on a couch next to a harp.

“It’s different,” Greer said.

“What do you think, Cameron?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“It doesn’t taste like coffee,” Cameron said. He counted all the musical instruments in the room: 18. Then he said to the closest Miss Hawkline, “You have enough musical stuff here to start a band.”

“We’ve never thought about it in that way,” the Miss Hawkline said.