From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Subject: Broken Piston-Rods
Reply-To: aaron@space.ualberta.ca
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1992 04:16:59 GMT


<John F. Woods gave me the problem(translated from German)of

Furniture
Peace-loving
Piston-rod
Buttocks

One of the above objects must be destroyed.

Is two all right?  (I did the easy two.)>


Even though Eliza had warned me on the phone, I still wasn't prepared for the
extent of the damage.  Eliza is normally one of the most peace-loving people I
know, and when she said she'd trashed Tzvetan's apartment, I assumed she was
exaggerating.

I buzzed her apartment.  No response.  I tried several more times, and was on
the verge of leaving--had she changed her mind?  Had Tzvetan come back and made
up with her?  Were they both dead from a murder/suicide?--when I saw her
rushing down the stairs.  "Hi, Libby," she said as she let me in.  "Sorry for
the wait, but the intercom's a little damaged too.  I can hear it, but I can't
buzz you in from upstairs."

Ah, so she trashed the intercom, I thought as we walked up to the fourth floor.
That was probably the extent of it.

But even from down the hall I could see how the door was barely hanging by one
hinge.  When we got closer I saw the chunk of wood and metal that the deadbolt
had ripped out of the doorframe.

Inside, the apartment looked like a war zone.  I remembered Eliza bubbling over
the phone about her new furniture.  Now it was shreds and spinters on the
floor.  The kitchen was full of shards of glass and china, and the mess of food
on the floor was starting to smell.  I was glad she hadn't decided to rip open
the freon tubes in the back of the fridge.

I looked around in vain for something large enough to sit on, and when that
search failed, someplace on the floor not too dangerous to plump my buttocks
onto.  Finally I said, "Why don't we go out to Crescendos, and you can tell me
what happened?"

She nodded, somewhat jerkily.  "Probably a good idea.  This place doesn't hold
a lot of good memories right now."

We went back downstairs and a block north to Crescendos.  We arrived between
sets, so it was actually quite enough to talk.

I waited for Eliza to talk.  Normally she was willing enough, and now was no
exception.  "He came home late again a few nights ago.  The car had broken
down, he said--it'd been towed to a garage, and they said he had a broken
piston-rod.  He claimed that he got a ride with someone from the office who had
to work late and had errands to run, etc.  Okay, fine.  I believe him, because
I'm gullible.

"The next day I get a call from some parkade or other.  Apparently our car had
been parked there overnight, but there was no ticket on the dash or anything,
so they had had it towed, and wanted to know if I could come and pick it up.
I called the garage he'd claimed to have taken it to, and they hadn't seen any
sign of it.  So I took a cab and went to pick the car up.

"There were earrings in the back, and an unmistakeable smell of perfume.  And
then I knew how Tzvetan had been leading me on.  How many times he'd been
working late, or going on business trips.  Probably not as many as his boss
paid him for, eh?"  She laughed mirthlessly.  "So I took everything of mine out
of the apartment, and then something just snapped.  When I came back to myself,
my hands were covered with splinters and everything was like you saw it."

I finished off my cup of coffee.  "I warned you about Tzvetan, if you'll
remember.  But that was just because I knew him in high school.  I was willing
to believe that he'd learned the error of his ways.  I guess I was wrong."  A
thought struck me.  "What did you do with the car?"

She grinned evilly.  "I drove it back to the parkade, and left it there.  No
ticket on the dash.  And all the piston-rods cracked as well as I could get
them with a sledgehammer."

--
---Alfvaen(Canadian SF Quasi-Activist)
"Does it ever seem like the brain disorders you have just aren't enough to keep
 you amused anymore?"  --Dr. Strychnine
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