In the taxi on their way to her mother's house, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni turned to Darren Clincker-Belli and said, "Okay. We're not a couple, so I don't really care if you crash and burn tonight. BUT, it would reflect badly on me as your boss, so I'm going to give you some - is that a clipboard you're holding?"
"M...maybe," Clincker-Belli shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"Why?"
"It...it makes me feel safe," Clincker-Belli stuck out his chin defiantly.
Oh my god, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni thought, he's got a security clipboard. Letting out a sigh like a well-oiled garburator, she plunged on. "I'm gonna give you some advice. When my mother looks at you, try to look her in the eye. The record for maintaining eye contact with her is three point seven four eight seconds - she can seem intense to some people. But, my mother can smell fear in disinfectant, so at least you have to try. Understand?"
"Make eye contact," Clincker-Belli said, looking down at his well scuffed shoes. "Got it."
"Now, there are some subjects that you would be better off not bringing up," Brenda Brundtland-Govanni continued. "For your own safety, you understand. This would include, but is not limited to: counterinsurgency policy in Latin America; mosquitoes; whether Kirk could beat Picard in a fair fight; down clues in crossword puzzles; piano playing cats; Stockhausen Syndrome; the larch, the...larch; the size of Brian Mulroney's ego; the size of Pierre Trudeau's penis; the first Shebuctuck uprising on Earth Prime 4-8-3-2-2-6 dash omicron; whether or not Klaatu was really the Beatles; fat thumbs; Stockholm Syndrome; snub noses; onomatopoeia; the heat death of the universe; Garfield cartoons; polydimethylsiloxane; sand castles; extract of rose petals; chopsticks; the second, third and seventh Shebuctuck uprisings on Earth Prime 4-8-3-2-2-6 dash omicron; heels over three inches high; vacations; morning DJs and the minion of Satan that spawned them; childbirth; the writings of P. G. Wodehouse..."
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni was still listing taboo subjects for dinner conversation when they arrived 15 minutes later.
The Brundtland-Govannis lived in a house on the Bridle Path. And, when I say house, of course I mean mansion. "It...it's huge," Clincker-Belli marveled.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni shrugged noncommittally. "It's home," she replied, leading him through the ornate double doors. "We're here!" she shouted. Clincker-Belli could swear he heard the shout echo two or three times, but he assumed it was just a trick of the light.
"I'm in the kitchen, sweetie," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni shouted back.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni hesitated. Something was wrong, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. Clincker-Belli looked expectantly at her, and, with a resigned shrug, she led him through a den large enough for a game of touch football (although the rumours that John F. Kennedy had played there were, for the most part, untrue), past a library, down a flight of stairs and into the huge kitchen, where the pair found something that made them stare open-mouthed.
[What Brenda Brundtland-Govanni hadn't noticed in the vestibule was an eight by four foot frame on the wall that had held a crocheted image her mother had created called "Persephone Rules." The role of Persephone in the crochet had, of course, been played by Barbara Brundtland-Govanni. Visitors to the house had often remarked that the detail in the stitching was so fine that they could swear the faces of the damned were watching them as they removed their galoshes. Had held was the operative term here. The frame was now empty, with a few wisps of fabric clinging to the wood. Had Brenda Brundtland-Govanni noticed the missing crochet, she may not have been quite so surprised by what she saw in the kitchen. But, she probably would have anyway because, well, see for yourself...]
"Oh, do close your mouths," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni, stirring noodles in a steaming wok, good-naturedly bade the pair. "You look like a couple of hatchlings waiting for their mother to drop predigested worms into them!"
Barbara Brundtland-Govanni gave the noodles one last look and poured them into a bowl. She did not acknowledge the fact that she was clad in nothing more than an adult diaper and a diaphanous plastic apron that blurred, but did not entirely conceal, what lay underneath. Brenda Brundtland-Govanni did, however, acknowledge it. She acknowledged it in spades. "Moooooom!" she shouted.
"Yes, dear?" Barbara Brundtland-Govanni innocently responded.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni, too irate to articulate, gestured in the general direction of her mother's clothes. Barbara Brundtland-Govanni looked down and mouthed, "Oh." Then, looking up, she explained, "Yes, I am sorry about this. I had a gown on when somebody released nanobots into the house. I gather the nanobots were supposed to kill every living thing here. I shrug, inured to the strange ways people use technology. However, when they encountered the house's defense system, they stopped eating flesh and started eating fabric. All of my clothes, all my knitting and various knickknacks and curios were gone in the blink of an eye. I haven't had time to replace anything. Sorry about that. Under the circumstances, I won't judge your friend too harshly for not being able to make eye contact with me."
Clincker-Belli blushed. Brenda Brundtland-Govanni too harshly asked, "You've got plastic raincoats - why didn't you wear one of them?"
"Wear a raincoat to dinner?" Barbara Brundtland-Govanni incredulously answered. "That would have been gauche!"
Barbara Brundtland-Govanni ordered her apparently still able to be dumbfounded daughter to carry a plate of barbecued ribs and Darren Clincker-Belli to carry a bowl of salad and they made their way into the dining hall. On the way, Clincker-Belli could not, much as he wanted to, shake the impression that Barbara Brundtland-Govanni was astonishingly fit for her age. Astonishingly fit. Then, as if that wasn't internally embarrassing enough, he wondered how somebody so small could have given birth to somebody so big. Although he assumed Brenda Brundtland-Govanni must have been smaller when she was a baby, imagining her that way only compounded the bad images in his head.
Thus, it was a very flustered Clincker-Belli who sat on a metal fold-up chair at his place at the dinner table.
"Sorry about the chairs," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni charmingly told them, "the nanobots really did a number on them. Stripped of their fabric, they looked like torture devices. Needless to say, the CIA carted them off for further study."
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni noticed that several of her mother's crochets had disappeared, leaving empty frames in their place. Since they generally depicted such horrors as death, destruction and the tooth fairy, she should have been glad that they were gone, but, as it happened, she felt that a piece of her childhood had been taken from her. A disturbing piece, perhaps, but who gets to choose what their childhood is made of?
Barbara Brundtland-Govanni sat at the head of the long table, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni and Clincker-Belli on either side. She rang a bell, and an elderly man in a thong brought out a bottle of wine. He uncorked the bottle with as much dignity as he could muster and offered it to Barbara Brundtland-Govanni. She smelled the cork, nodded curtly and offered him her glass; he poured the wine for her, then for the others. Then, he left the room with a surprising amount of dignity, all things considered.
"Dig in," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni advised.
They ate in silence for a while, everybody enjoying the food. Eventually, Barbara Brundtland-Govanni casually asked, "So, Darren, how is your father, Ishie?"
"Please," Clincker-Belli responded, "call him Ishmael."
"Ishmael, then. And, how is he doing?" Barbara Brundtland-Govanni insisted.
"Oh, you know," Clincker-Belli vagued at her, "he's...getting by, just like all -"
"So," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni cut him off, "he's stopped thinking of killing himself because he lost the family savings when he invested in a scheme proposed to him by Madoffbot3000?"
"HE WHAT?" Clincker-Belli blurted.
"I only started researching your family two days ago, but I always knew your father was a lot stronger than your mother's side of the family gave him credit for," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni added.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni felt 17 all over again. This was just like dinner at her home with Bobbo Brunnerman. Or, Indigo Shapstead. Or, Frankie Munoz. When you had dinner with Barbara Brundtland-Govanni, you tended not to ever want the experience a second time. "Mom, really!" Brenda Brundtland-Govanni loudly exclaimed.
"I'm sure when your mother realizes this," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni, ignoring her daughter, continued, "she'll end her affair with the MaxiMultiMegaMart delivery bot."
"I...you...penguin - that's not possible!" Clincker-Belli unhappily blustered.
"Oh, if my mother says it, it's true," Brenda Brundtland-Govanni assured him. "She has...sources. You don't want to know." Then, she turned on her mother. "Why do you always do this?" she accused. "He doesn't want to know this stuff!"
"Just making polite dinner conversation, dear," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni told her.
"That's what you said about Frankie Munoz," Brenda Brundtland-Govanni shouted. "And, dinner with you just about ended his acting career!"
"Oh, don't blame me," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni shouted back. "You know that the transition from child to adult movie star is a difficult one that few children manage successfully!"
"YOU MADE IT WORSE!" Brenda Brundtland-Govanni loudly insisted.
Then, just as it seemed hostilities between the two women would escalate to nuclear proportions, Clincker-Belli surprised everybody. Clutching his clipboard tightly in one hand under the table, he blurted: "So, Ms. Brundtland-Govanni, I understand you were involved in the Shebuctuck uprising on Earth Prime 4-8-3-2-2-6 dash...umm..."
"Omicron," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni, her eyes narrowing to laser-like intensity, informed him.
"Exactly," Clincker-Belli continued. "That must have been tough."
Barbara Brundtland-Govanni snorted. "Tough? Kids today got it easy. You have no idea how tough exploring the multiverse used to be."
And, for the rest of the meal, Barbara Brundtland-Govanni regaled them with tales of early multiverse exploration.
All good things come to an end. Fortunately, all bad things come to an end, too. So it was with dinner. As Brenda Brundtland-Govanni and Clincker-Belli reached the door to their freedom, Barbara Brundtland-Govanni casually stated, "Oh, Brennie?"
Gritting her teeth, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni replied, "Yes?"
"I've been thinking about your little problem at work," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni stated. "I asked the boys at the NSA to do a little correlative regression analysis and, you know what they found? They found that every time you lost a scoop to your rival news organization, it was sunny the day before."
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni frowned. "What could that mean?"
"It could mean that you need this," her mother advised, handing Brenda Brundtland-Govanni a pair of binoculars that had been casually resting strategically on a table. But, of course, it wasn't just an ordinary pair of binoculars: the housing was bulky and an antenna stuck out of the top of it.
"How -" Brenda Brundtland-Govanni started, but Barbara Brundtland-Govanni had already turned to Clincker-Belli. "Thank you for coming, young man," she said. "It was a most stimulating evening." This was her standard line to all of the men Brenda Brundtland-Govanni brought home for dinner, but she detected something in her mother's voice that she had never heard before. Could it be...sincerity?
Hustling Clincker-Belli to the waiting taxi, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni convinced herself that she couldn't have heard what she thought she had heard in her mother's voice, because what she thought she had heard was one of the signs of the End Times as revealed in the book of Revelations. And, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni wasn't ready to be judged.
And, if you thought the drive to the house had been tense...