"Sometimes there's just a good fire sale. Agnes, dear, you do realize that you just ate an entire cake, don't you?"
"It's carrot cake; it's good for you. Think of it as another way of me getting my vegetables."
"And the cream cheese icing?"
"Is really none of your business, is it, Magdalena? You brought me the cake as a gift. You said you didn't want any. So what I did with it was my business."
I sighed. She was right, of course.
"Sorry," I said. "I guess it's hard for me to switch gears from being a mommy."
"Oh, come off it, Magdalena; you've always been bossy. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, when used against others, being bossy can even be an amusing trait. Just don't pull that stuff on me."
I stared at my friend. Agnes stared back through round rimless glasses. No, ding dang it, she didn't even have the courtesy to look me in the eye, but instead appeared to be focused outside, possibly on the hillside behind me.
"Say something erudite, Agnes," I said. "I'm sure it will go right over my head."
"You were followed, Magdalena."
"Oh yeah, the KGB has been hot on my trail all morning."
"Joke if you want, my friend, but when you pulled into my driveway this morning a car passed exactly five seconds behind you, turned around, and drove by nine seconds later. Then, as I was setting out the plates for our cake, I saw this woman hiking up over the crest of that hill, and there she is right now, staring at you through a pair of binoculars."
I spun so fast in my seat that I came dangerously close to tipping my chair all the way over. Since Agnes is not the world's most conscientious housekeeper, I might well have put my exposed body parts in contact with varieties of mold as yet unclassified by science. Still, it was worth the risk; sure enough there was a woman looking right at us.
"Why, I'll be a monkey's uncle!"
"You don't believe in evolution, Magdalena. And you're far too curvaceous to be an uncle. What say you we go out and confront this interloper?"
"Let us lope away!" I cried, as I whipped my coat off the back of my chair.
Agnes was more of a huffer and a puffer than a loper, and not wanting to confront the strange woman by myself, I pretended to twist my ankle whilst going down the steps. Now please allow me to make perfectly clear that feigning an injury to one's own person under such circumstances is a deception of the smallest magnitude--surely, no more serious a transgression than, say, acting out a part in a school play.
"You won't sue me, Magdalena, will you?" Agnes had stopped moving altogether.
"Of course not, dear; we're bosom buddies--well, our bosoms aren't buddies--not that there's anything wrong with it--but your bosom, by the way, just don't float my hovercraft."
"I get it, Magdalena. But you do agree that you should have watched your step, right?"
"How can I argue with that?" I tried peering around my friend, but to no avail.
"So you'll promise you'll be good and not sue?"
"Sue,
shmoo
! How well do you know me? Uh--never mind, dear."
I tried matching my pace to that of Agnes, but even though I did my darnedest to hobble, I kept getting way ahead. Finally, I had no choice but to resort to desperate measures.
"Yoo-hoo, up there on the hill," I hollered. "Come on down and show yourself."
"And just so you know," Agnes rasped, "we're harmed."
"She means 'armed,' " I said, "although personally, being the traditional Mennonite that I am, I am totally committed to a non-violent existence."
"Except for her tongue," Agnes panted. "It's as sharp as a board."
"She means 'sword,' " I clarified through cupped hands. "It goes along with my rapier-sharp wit."
"You're such a faker," Agnes groaned. She was clutching her side by then.
"What?"
"You're not even limping now."
"Oh that--Well, perhaps it's the adrenaline." I fell back, taking what for me were baby steps so that Agnes wouldn't have a heart attack. After all, I had never gotten around to taking a CPR class, and wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what to do if she did have a heart attack--except to scream and pray. I
am
, however, pretty good at both of those.
On closer inspection, it was as if the woman on the hill had stepped out of the pages of a storybook. Never had I seen someone so splendiferously attired, nor so regal of bearing. She wasn't tall, perhaps all of five and a half feet, but she was clad in a full-length white velvet coat, trimmed generously with white fur, and with an enormous white fur collar and matching cuffs. Through the break in her coat front, I could see that she wore white leather boots that laced up to the knees and sported gold eyelets. Her headpiece, which was half gold crown and half fur hat, set off her blue-black hair to perfection.
"It's the S-S-Snow Queen," wheezed Agnes. "I knew I shouldn't have inhaled that time I smoked pot in college."
"
You
smoked marijuana?"
I was aghast and agog, but mostly just gaping in wonderment. Who knew that Agnes, a somewhat reclusive maiden lady, had been such a wild woman in her coed days?
"Okay, so it was more than once. Will you get off my case already? It just goes to prove that college campuses these days are nothing more than replicas of Sodom and Gomorrah.
"Sure," I said, "I'll get off your case--
and
not tell anyone else--if you share with me what it was like."
"What do you mean by that? Do you want me to find you a joint?"
"A
what
?"
"A marijuana cigarette--at least that's what they used to call them. It's been so long, I don't know what they're called anymore. But if you're going to rat me out to the community, then by all means, I'll drive into Pittsburgh and try to score one for you. Of course I'll probably end up getting arrested and spend the next thirty years in prison with a 'boyfriend' named Betty--but don't worry, Magdalena. I'm sure Betty will be very kind to me. Who knows? Maybe she'll even let me write to you."
My eyes welled with tears. "You'd do that for me?"
"Double space, of course; Betty won't want me to spend that much time away from her."
"No, I mean that part about buying me marijuana?"
"If it will shut you up."
Now
that
was a friend. Agnes always knew when to coddle me and when to take off the gloves and give me a gentle tap on the noggin. If we had been best buddies in college, I have no doubt neither of us would have gotten much studying done; we'd have partied hardy like there was no tomorrow, and I might have well ended up a Presbyterian like Susannah.
A soft cough ahead got my attention. The stranger was no longer peering at us through her binoculars, as we were but a scant thirty feet away. There was in her face the suggestion of Asiatic forebears--or not--but no matter, she was most definitely not the creation of some writer 's imagination, but a flesh-and-blood human being.
"She's definitely not the Snow Queen," I said.
"Maybe not, but she
is
a foreigner," Agnes said.
"Of pleasing but ambiguous ethnicity," I said.
As we made our final panting approach, I bobbed slightly. "Greetings, and welcome to Hernia, O strange one," I said. "From whence didst thou hail?"
"Cincinnati, Ohio."
"Well, that certainly explains the accent," Agnes said.
I punched her fleshy biceps with an elbow even sharper than my tongue. "You can't get that from just two words," I said.
The elegant, beautiful stranger appeared to suppress a smile. "Are you the famous Magdalena Yoder?"
"Indeed, I am." It was only then, after having admitted who I was, that I began to fear for my safety. "I mean, let's just say that there are those who
think
I am Magdalena Yoder."
She cocked her head.
"Don't worry," Agnes said. "She's utterly harmless--although she did bring a giantess to her knees with a bra-cum-slingshot, and although she espouses nonviolence as her official creed, she's not above whacking the odd villain over the head."
A wary glance was now cast in Agnes's direction. "Surely, you're joking."
"Oh, but I'm not. Our Magdalena is quite the heroine. Why, once she even
rescued
a villainess by dangling her nemesis by her hair into a sinkhole. Of course yours truly was pressed into service on that one. I am, you see, her unofficial sidekick: the Tonto to her Lone Ranger, the Robin to her Batman. My point is--were I to be making one--that if you have come to request the famous Magdalena Yoder's services, be apprised of the fact that sooner or later I will be assisting her." Agnes crossed her arms over her breathless, heaving bosom.
"I am a guest at her inn," the stranger said.
I stepped forward. "
Excuse
me?"
"My name is Surimanda Baikal. I am coming from Russia. Then New York, then Cincinnati. Then I am drives here. But you are hard woman to find, Magdalena Yoder."
"But you don't have a reservation," I wailed.
She shrugged, almost burying her face in the white fur collar. "So? My plans, she has--how you say?--they change from day to day."
"
Your
plans?"
"Oh, come on," Agnes said, much to my annoyance. "You have enough room. The more the merrier. Right?"
"Stifle it," I hissed. "She doesn't fit in with this bunch."
"Maybe, but from what you've described to me, this bunch belongs in a loony bin. At least she'll add some class."
"Da, I vill add some class," the elegant woman said.
Decked out in her fur and velvet, with the crown piece on her head, Miss Surimanda Baikal
was
my image of an empress. When compared to the Zambezis, the Nyles, and the Timmses--Well, one could hardly compare a swan to six moorhen, could one?
"Velcommen to zee PennDutch Inn," I cried, my arms extended in an only slightly overly exuberant greeting (after all, someone as handsomely dressed as this woman would be able to afford a lot of ALPO). "Who cares if your untimely arrival is, at the very least, extremely inconsiderate? Of course you'll just have to make do with PUS tonight--that's previously used sheets--because laundry day is not until tomorrow. But look on the bright side: for the distinct pleasure of going beddy-bye whilst wrapped in the scent of a previous guest, I shall levy a surcharge of only fifty percent."
"That's ridiculous," Agnes muttered.
I gave my friend the Mennonite version of the Evil Eye, which amounts to a twitch followed by a glassy stare. "I couldn't agree more," I said. "There are those who would kill to get their hands on that most exclusive, that most prized, of all DNA, which must surely be lurking in those sheets; I should be charging one hundred percent over the nightly rate, not fifty."
The foreigner's green almond-shaped eyes grew as round and large as gingersnaps. "
Borat
slept at your inn? I take!"
"Why, Magdalena, you dirty dog, you," Agnes said, but I could hear the admiration in my friend's voice.
As the old saw goes, those who assume, make a donkey out of everyone--or something like that. Believe me, I have long since made peace with being an equid, or some part thereof.
"Do we have a deal?" I said.
"Dah!"
"Then let's get this show on the road; time's a-wasting."
The regal stranger seemed to withdraw, not unlike a turtle, into the safety of her velvet and furs. "What
show
?"
"It's just an expression, dear, an Americanism."
"And if you stay very long," Agnes said. "I'm afraid you'll be treated to a great many original Magdalenaisms."
"Thanks a lot, friend."
Miss Surimanda Baikal emerged, smiling. "Ah, you are the Golden Girls, no?"
"Excuse me?"
"Like the TV show. Only this one"--she pointed to Agnes--"is more healthy, like a good Russian babushka, and you are like the crabby one, Dorothy."
Agnes twittered behind a plump, healthy hand.
"I don't watch television," I said archly. "And be forewarned, my dear, although I have the patience of Job, I have the memory of Methuselah--well, at least I hope he kept his wits about him all those years. My point is that although I am a good Christian woman, and was born and bred amongst the gentle folk known as Mennonites, hereabouts it is said that I possess a tongue that can slice through a stick of butter left outside on a tree stump overnight in the dead of winter. Alas, this is no mere metaphor." I paused to catch my breath and lean forward for emphasis. "Furthermore, there is room for only one of me at the PennDutch Inn--perhaps even in all of Hernia--if you get my drift."