"Can I help you?"

He redirected his stare from the yellow-red waves in the motionless surf squeezed with the geometrical rigidity of the frame keeping at bay the verism of surrounding wall – onto the two strands of hyper-large pearl beads dangling the apex of their quadratic function parabola graph over the wrinkles in the cream vicuna below the waste, rubbing the hem of the flared blouse extended below by a narrower skirt of trapezoid cut, down to the mid-calves, in the blissful style of early Tutankhamen-and-all-that-jazz… Ah! The free of cares belle epoch of Charlestons and Foxtrots – the Great War's left behind already, the Great Depression's not there yet…

"Eh?. W-well…"

"Oh, yes! And I do understand you! Righter than anything I've heard, ever! Impeccable taste and errorless choice! It's one of the finest paintings by La Jue, from his late period. “Playful jerk La Jue” as he was lovingly named in Mont-Mart. At times, I also just stand and watch, and watch, and… As if under some magic spell. The picture is called «The concierge outside her dishabille."

"S-so, it's not the sea then?"

"O? You mean his «Sails near the Fort Bayard», of course? Painted on the back. The artist not always had means to purchase canvas and, when under some unrestrainable afflatus, you know, too uptight with the surge of inspiration, he pulled them backside front. We'll gladly turn it about for you. I felt it at first sight, you are a connoisseur and true aesthete."

"I ain't into pics, you know…"

"Unbelievable! You also read books live? No iPhones, no applications?

Sure enough, we keep quite a few copies for adept gourmets of bibliophily. “The Golden Key”, for instance, “The Golden Rooster” certainly we have. “The Gold Bug”, “The Gold of Kolyma”. "The Empress of Gold", "Golden Gulag for Goldsmiths"…

"Ahem!. Ho… hum… looking for the girl that works here. Name’s Maya…"

"O fuc… ficus' facsimile!". The bob-cut strands of straightened platinum-dyed hair run in ripples over the thick layer of pink plaster in her cheeks. "You should have told at once. A boy-friend, huh?"

"Well, a kinda sort of."

"Okay, cool it. Having a day-off, your Maya. Check her diggings."

"I went there. Locked."

"Use yours, lover boy."

"Well, I'm back from a kinda business trip. Urgent suddenness and stuff. No time to grab the key when departing."

"Save your whoppers, sudden tripper! Wanna take me for a ride? My old man's also havin' the like trips and first thing out of thee can he visits a barber shop to learn his map, where they sprayed it with as shitty cologne as you're wearing now. What's your goes whole, love?"

"Two."

"A greenhorn yet. No holding a candle to my old man. Nabbed again. Okay, I'll lend you his wonder-skeleton-key that'll take less than two secs to open the President's Button box. Then you're bringing it back with a big-big "thank you", eh? The hungered stallions are my best-loved".

. . . . .

Seeing off the client in a blue frock coat, officer's fatigue in British Navy end XVIII century, she took off the wall by the entrance the elegant miniature by António de Hollanda "View of Lisbon in 1530" painted collaboratively with Simon Bening for the "Genealogy of Don Fernando" and clapped it over the tablet “Open” hanging against the glass in the door, face to face.

The size matched perfectly and thru the door now was seen the miniature's backside promising in the manner of apian pointillism, "Gone after goods, soon to be back".

Bypassing an eclectically retrograde collection of paintings in the degenerate cubomorphism style distributed wantonly on nickel-plated openwork stands interspersed with figurines of late ozone anomalistic nudes, the owner of “Salon-Exhibition The Easter Eggs" strolled over to a chrome-synthane leather armchair with kirza inserts, in the corner of the hall and slammed open the black square in the wall.

Inside the shallow niche behind the hinged square, she removed the ebony, dildo-shaped powder microphone of the Lorenz system from the mahogany box and flipped the call-speaker switch (two-in-one). Under the melodically elongated beeps, she sank into the gleaming seat.

The vermilion ovals of manicured nails kept playfully filliping the pearls in that rosary of a necklace about the level of her gallbladder concealed under the layers of her blouse and the black silk corset of Secretly Screwed Victoria.

"Yeah", sounded a male voice from inside the well-polished mahogany.

"Hi, Don… How's your priceless vigor and stuff?"

"What's up?"

"Wanna play Fish and Fisherman? Standin' up in the raft, thrusting you pole thru the mossy water weed at the river bed, eh?"

"Having nothing to busy yourself with?"

"O-okay, don't tick off at Ann-Granny. Better tell me, DonKEY, who's popped up in my dream right now?"

"Get to the point, Anna Serafimovna."

"Wow! Our Donkey has turned so businesslike! So seasoned and mature, and even dry behind his long ears…

Hark, bustler! A visitor I had, that same quickie customer who whipped two of your slobs in one go. One's turned a cross-eyed lobotomy victim, the other gives daily interviews to the head doctor at the funny farm about greenish men and how softly them those aliens enter the landing mode, thanks to Vaseline.

However, the verbal description matches not – freshly shaved and wearing The Triple Cologne."

"Then, maybe, it's not him?"

"Maybe not him, then, was looking for Maya".

"And you?"

"Presented him with the golden key to any hindrance in life".

"Now, it's you who's a bustler. Better leave him in the street. Check his connections."

"Don't you ever lecture me, mudak! Even Dented Denny, my old man, is most wary to teach me. Have you forgotten who in the can took Donkey under his wing? Who promoted that go-getter, you, to a business-doer? Who watered your rose with solicitous regularity, huh?! We kinda wives from the same harem, you and I, if you got it, asshole!"

"Whoa! Slow down, lady. I didn't mean nothing."

"Okay, fine. By seven tonight, you'll send a couple of slobs from your fresh recruits here. Some drive test will I give them. A complete feng shui at rug rolling-respreading all over the bedroom, the best activity for scaling up your positivity."

"Would two do?"

"No indecent innuendos in presence of your superiors! Dismissed!"

Don slam-rang off and growled thru his clamped teeth:

"Fucking matriarchy!"

* * *