Chapter 13: An Unexpected Death

Dawson pulled his car up to the curb near the cemetery entrance and turned out the lights. They sat there quietly for a few minutes, then Eli nodded and they quietly walked across the street and moved quickly into the darkness. Soon they were standing once again in front of the Rose Door.

Dawson had hardly raised his hand to knock, when it opened quickly. Elaine smiled at him, looked down at his medical bag, then, without a word, turned abruptly and headed back towards the banquet table. Eli scurried to catch up, and took her hand in hers. Elaine paused a moment. “Hello, Butterfly.” She squeezed her hand, and walked with her slowly towards the table. Eli was almost skipping as they went, swinging their arms between them as though they were two little girls.

When Dawson got to the table, Eli and Oskar were already seated on either side of Elaine. He sat down across from them, and caught his breath as he saw the marble sculpture on the table. “Is this something new? It’s beautiful! It’s…Oskar? and Eli? My God! You’ve captured their expressions perfectly! Their faces are exactly right!”

Elaine turned to Eli, “See? I told you!” she said smugly. “No ‘artistic license’ whatsoever.”

“Oskar, this one’s for you. You can take it home with you tonight if you wish. It’s to celebrate your trust and faith in Eli, and her love for you. What she overcame to warn you matched your determination to find her, even though your life was in danger.”

“Wow! Thanks a lot Elaine. I love it, especially Eli. She looks exactly like I remembered her that night.”

Papa looked directly at Elaine, “What danger? When?” He looked at Oskar. “Is someone going to explain this to me?” he sounded worried.

“Dad, when Eli was hibernating and I slept with her, I spent a lot of time trying to talk to her before I went to sleep. One night, I found her, or I though I had. But it was really the … parasite, I think, pretending to be Eli, so it could get me close enough to…you know.”

“Oskar! Why didn’t you tell me?! I never would have let you sleep with her if I’d known!”

“I know, Dad. That’s why I never told you.”

“You need to have more faith in them, Doctor. After all, you are largely responsible for the solid foundation on which their new strength is built.”

“But I’d like them both to live long enough to reap the long-term benefits of their new life!” he said, heatedly. “If something were to happen to either of them, I could never forgive myself.” He realized that he was trembling, and quickly sat down.

“I’m genuinely sorry, Doctor. I didn’t mean to interfere in any way with your family dynamic.”

“Really? Do you mean to tell me that when you read Oskar’s thoughts on this event, that you didn’t see that he had kept it from me?” he asked angrily.

Her face turned red, “Doctor, are you accusing me of deliberately trying to sabotage your family’s trust?”

“Stop, stop, stop!! Please don’t do this!” Eli shouted, as she put her hands over her ears. “Stop fighting!” She put her head on Oskar’s shoulder and pressed her cheek against his.

“Oskar? I need your help.” Elaine said softly. “Doctor, I told you why you wouldn’t want me around your family. I warned you. But THIS isn’t the reason. You must believe that I had no idea Oskar hadn’t told you. I underestimated his determination to be with Eli, no matter what the danger to his own life. When I read his thoughts – and remember, I read only what he made available to me; this is his talent, not mine – there was nothing indicating that he had kept it from you. I never would have exposed him to you in this way. My art is too important to me to use in such a base, destructive manner; and I care for your children too much to hurt them. We have the same…origins.”

Oskar sat down with Eli for a minute, then reached for Elaine’s hand. Dawson put up his hand, “That’s OK, Oskar; she won’t be needing you.” He looked at Elaine for a moment. “I believe you, and I’m sorry I misjudged you. I guess I’m just an overprotective father. It’s hard to get the balance just right.” He was right about one thing; her art was what had kept her sane during those horrible years; he was certain of it.

“I know, and I’m sorry. Oskar told me about your wife and child.” She said, solemnly.

He smiled at her, “With Oskar around, there can be no secrets, I see. I apologize for allowing my personal issues to cloud the important job of keeping my children safe and happy.”

“Accepted! Now that we have that worked out, let’s get down to business.” she rolled up her sleeve and laid her arm on the table.

Papa smiled at her, winked at Eli, and put his bag on the table beside him.

“She forgot to make Papa ask her for the blood.” Eli whispered to Oskar. Elaine flashed her a quick, knowing smile, then turned her attention back to Papa, and his syringes.

=======

Dawson looked up from the test results, looking quite pleased with himself. “Eli, I think this does it. I’m almost certain now that we have the DNA sequence responsible for your vampirism. Other than the changes made by the parasite, your sample has virtually nothing in common with Elaine’s. You’re Swedish and she’s ‘Anglo-Saxon’ whatever than really means. You have common ancestors in the Vikings certainly, but long enough ago that the differences are clear. The bottom line is that the two of you are far enough apart on your respective human family trees that the superfluous segments of the strand stand out like a sore thumb. The parasite-modified parts of the sequence are completely identical, as we would expect because of the close common ancestor you both have on your ‘vampire’ family tree. Good work, both of you!”

“Does that mean we have a cure for Eli?!” Oskar asked, excitedly.

“No, Oskar. There’s a lot of hard work to do, but at least we know exactly what part of the sequence we have to deactivate. And, thanks to your own partial infection compared against Eli’s, we were able to make an educated guess as to which portion of the strand on which to begin this testing process. All in all, we have been quite lucky. This could have taken us years, even decades, with a bit of normal bad luck.”

“We have to tell Elaine! Maybe she’ll change her mind about your research now, Papa!”

“I don’t think it’ll have much of an effect on her position, other than the fact that it makes you happy. She’s old and set in her ways, just like I am,” he joked. “Actually, she’s about 16 years older than me – five years older, and she could have been my mother.”

“Papa! Don’t be silly!” Eli giggled. “She’s not old at all! And you’re not old either! Old people are stuffy and boring.”

“Well then, I’m quite happy that I’m not old yet. I couldn’t stand myself if I was stuffy and boring.” He hugged her tightly. “Let’s go home and celebrate!”

====

“Seizures!” Oskar said, as he laid down his tiles, clearing his rack. “That, plus triple word score, and using all my tiles for a single word, gives me the game!” he hollered triumphantly.

Eli looked across the board at him intensely as her eyes took on a familiar golden hue. Oskar’s eyes got big as he suddenly realized what was coming.

“Now, Eli, take your loss like a good sport!” Papa said, smiling, “It’s his first win, after all.”

“One…Two…Three…” Eli’s voice was dark and menacing.

Oskar threw back his chair and ran for the stairs, slipped, scrambled on his hands and knees to the first landing and disappeared around the corner.

“Four…Five!” Eli leaped over the table and was after him in a flash. Papa heard Oskar’s door slam as Eli bounded up the stairs. Silence. Then, a blood-curdling scream, several loud thumps, and peals of laughter.

Papa hurried up the stairs, and tried Oskar’s door, but it was still locked. He heard another scream. “Eli, please! Don’t!” then muffled giggling.

He knocked hard, then pulled out his key and unlocked the door. Oskar’s window was wide open, and he didn’t see Eli or Oskar anywhere. He rushed to the window and leaned out. Eli’s window was also open and he realized immediately that Eli must have gotten into Oskar’s locked room by coming in the window. He imagined how surprised Oskar must have been when he saw her, eyes blazing, leaping into his room from the darkness. That must have been the first scream he heard. He smiled at the thought. He turned and immediately bumped into Eli, who was standing right behind him with a big smile on her face, and Oskar’s belt in her hand. “The Butterfly has been avenged” she said solemnly.

“Where’s Oskar?”

Oskar’s bed moved slightly and Papa heard a muffled “Umph” coming from the darkness beneath it.

“Pay no attention to that…thing under Oskar’s bed.” Eli waved her arm slowly in front of him.

Papa leaned down and reached under the bed, felt a bare foot and gently pulled a bound and gagged Oskar out into the room. He did a double-take as he realized that Oskar was upside down in his own clothes. His legs were sticking out the sleeves of his sweater, and his pants were over his head. His hands were sticking out of the rolled-up pants legs, and his head was scrunched up in the crotch of his pants. His hands and feet were tied together with his shoelaces and his socks were in his mouth. Papa laughed in spite of himself. “How did you do that so fast? He was still pleading for his life when I put the key in the door!”

“You continually underestimate my powers!” she said darkly.

Oskar spit out the socks. “Is someone going to untie me?” Papa and Eli sat down on the floor together and slowly restored Oskar to a semblance of normalcy.

“Oskar, I’m proud of you! That was the best game of scrabble you’ve ever played. You earned that win! No luck involved!”

Eli grabbed him and gave him a big, wet kiss, “I’m proud of you too! Ptooey! Oskar, your breath smells like dirty socks. You need to work on your oral hygiene.”

“You seem to have forgotten who smelled like a dead fish the second time I met you.” He smiled at her and took her hands in his.

She stood up and effortlessly pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go help Papa clean up! I’m tired. Besides I need to read a dictionary or two before we go to bed to get ready for next time.” They headed down the stairs together, with Papa right behind them.

====
Oskar was happy as he recounted the evening. They had celebrated with cake and ice cream, and had played 10 games of English scrabble. He had actually beaten Eli for the first time, and in spite of having been chased up the stairs and attacked by a vampire, felt pretty good about it, all in all. He gazed fondly at his sleeping Eli, and kissed her on the forehead. He slipped out of bed and headed for the bathroom, when he heard the bell ring. He looked at his clock: 4:30AM. Who could that be? It rang again. He heard Dad hurrying down the stairs and quietly slipped out the door and crept down the stairs after him.

“May I come in?” Oskar heard Elaine’s soft voice as he peeked around the corner on the first landing. She was standing in the open door in front of Dad in his robe and slippers, a backpack in her hands and spatters of blood on her shirt. He quickly leaned back and sat on the stairs, listening.

“Of course! Come in!” Dawson closed the door behind her and ushered her into the kitchen, where they sat down at the table. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’ve…killed someone – an innocent.” She put her head in her hands. “He shouldn’t have died, but he did. I can’t do this any more. I can’t risk it any longer. I have only two options and you are one of them, the other, a brief walk in the sun. If this had happened before I met you and your family, it would already be done.” Her voice was hollow; emotionless. Her hands were trembling. “In fact, I’m really not sure why I came here; you certainly owe me nothing. Perhaps it was so Eli wouldn’t think I left without saying goodbye. I couldn’t bear that.”

Oskar scurried up the stairs and rushed into his room. “Eli! Wake up!”

Her eyes opened immediately and she sat straight up in bed. “Oskar, what…”

“Elaine’s here, talking to Dad. She killed someone and she’s going to kill herself,” he whispered intensely.

Eli jumped out of bed and they both slipped back down the stairs and crouched down beside the kitchen door.

“You can’t do this, Elaine. As short a time as you’ve been in her life, it would hurt her terribly. Like it or not, you are now part of her life. You should have seen how happy she was after your flight the other night. She picks her friends carefully and keeps them close to her with an intensity I’ve not seen before – understandable for someone who has led such a long, barren life at such a young age.” He took her hand. “I was right about you, despite your denials. Someone who can create the beautiful things you do is incapable of killing without doing irreparable harm to herself; even if it’s necessary for your survival. So please, let us do this for you. Your kindness to Oskar and Eli more than makes up for anything I can do for you.”

“What I’ve done to a complete stranger more than negates any brief pleasure your children derived from seeing me on my best behavior.”

“Tell me, Elaine. How did you pick your meals? The same way the Other One did? All easy marks? Did you pick them randomly? Did you look for Drunks? Men who beat their wives? Drug pushers? Convicted murderers? Let me guess. You picked healthy, 20-to-40-year-old men or women, to minimize the chance that you would inadvertently kill someone, even though attacking men in the prime of their lives puts even a vampire at some risk; the risk of exposure at the least, if he could somehow fend you off. Am I close?”

She looked up at him, a half smile on her face. “You seem to have all the answers.”

“The point is, even though you are, on a daily basis, guilty of theft of the worst kind, by no stretch of the imagination are you a cold-blooded murderer. In a court of law you might be convicted of manslaughter, or in the United States you might even be convicted of murder, because a death occurred during the commission of a crime. But fortunately, in the U.K. we don’t have the death penalty. Your own self-selected penalty exceeds the maximum allowed under British law.” He paused to take a breath. “Now, will you please let us help you?”

She stood up slowly, “I’m not sure you know what I’m really like, Doctor, or you might not be so generous. But I do thank you for the offer. Perhaps…”

“And I would miss you, too. You have an intensity and directness about you that is matched only by Eli’s own. A Vampiric trait, perhaps? At any rate it certainly rates further…study.” He smiled at her.

She suddenly cocked her head and turned toward the kitchen door, an amused smile on her face. “Well, since you put it that way, I humbly accept your offer. Anything for Science.” She sat down and leaned back in her chair. “Why don’t you two come in and join us?”

Eli, with Oskar right behind her, quickly ran over and sat down next to Elaine. “Does this mean you’re going to stay with us? Papa, she could sleep in my room, and I could stay with Oskar. Elaine, are you hungry? Let me get something for you!” she jumped up and disappeared up the stairs. A loud bang was followed almost immediately by another, and Eli reappeared with two bags in her hand. She handed one to Elaine, who held it gingerly between two fingers.

Papa admonished her. “Eli, how many times have I told you not to abuse your poor bedroom door?”

“Sorry, Papa. Elaine? You open it like this.” Eli demonstrated the ‘right way’ to unclamp the tube, then watched intently as Elaine hesitated a moment, then put it to her mouth. “What do you think? Is it ok?”

Elaine put the clamp back on the bag, and handed it back to Eli. “I’m really sorry, Eli, I just…can’t do this right now, not like this. Don’t be upset.”

“It’s ok, Elaine, I had to do it alone the first time myself, right Papa?”

“Right, Eli.” He smiled at her. Her enthusiasm was contagious, as usual. “Elaine, you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like, but certainly today at least.” He looked out the window. “Even you wouldn’t be able to get home on time now.” The sun was just hitting the top of Jack and Henry’s house across the street. “You can stay in my daughter’s room, if you like. There are some shirts in her closet that I’m sure will fit you just fine. There’s no sense in you continuing to wear that one.”

“But Papa, Mary’s room doesn’t have our windows yet. She needs to stay in my room, so she can see the sun and the daylight.”

“You’re right Eli, I should have thought of that. Elaine, you can stay in Eli’s room if you like. I’m sure Eli will be more than happy to get you settled in. This evening, we’ll all talk about how to keep you supplied with food, and where you want to stay in the future. Of course we all know how Eli will vote.” He smiled at her.

Eli and Oskar took her by the hands and headed up the stairs, “We have windows all over the house that Papa made himself that keep the sun from hurting me. He experimented until he found the light frequencies that causes us harm and filtered them out. You can hardly tell them from regular windows! You can sleep in my bed, and Oskar and I will pull it over next to the window so you can see everything.”

“Eli, I’m really not likely to sleep. Why don’t we all just talk and you can show me everything you want me to see.” She turned toward Dawson, “Professor? Would you join us?”

He smiled at her, “I have a bit of work to do, but I’d love to in an hour or so. I’ll see you upstairs later. Eli, get her a shirt from Mary’s room.” Eli ran ahead of Papa into Mary’s room, grabbed a shirt and was back before Papa made it to his study. She handed the shirt to Elaine, who changed quickly and put her bloody shirt in her backpack.

Eli ran ahead of them and was waiting in her room when Oskar and Elaine got to the top of the stairs. “What do you think? Isn’t it beautiful? She stood in the center of a beam of sunlight pouring in through her round window. Elaine gasped reflexively. “Eli! Its…stunning!” she stepped over next to her and hesitantly put her arm in the sunlight. “Your Papa is an amazing man to have done this for you. I don’t know the exact process, but I do know it took a lot of money, determination, and hard work to do this. He didn’t need to do this you know.”

“That’s not all! Look at this!” Eli stripped off her pajamas, opened her wardrobe and put on her sunsuit complete with helmet and visor. “I can go outside and go with Oskar and Papa anywhere I want in broad daylight. I’ll bet he’d make one for you too if you wanted it.”

“Eli, do you have any idea what one of those must cost? I wouldn’t think of it!”

“He would do it Elaine. Dad would do it for you; I know he would,” Oskar said.

“But I’m not going to ask him, and I want your word that you won’t either.” She said solemnly.

They nodded, as Eli carefully removed her suit and hung it back up in the wardrobe. She took Elaine by the hand and the three of them sat on the window seat overlooking the back yard. Elaine put her arms around them both. “You two children don’t realize how lucky you are. Somehow you were able to find the one man in a million who could, and would help you, love you and stand by you. Frankly, I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t seen it for myself. Eli, his kind is even rarer than our kind. I’m not the least bit surprised it took you 220 years to find him.

“But I was only looking for a few months. It was Oskar’s idea.”

Elaine said nothing for a moment, then turned to Oskar. “You two are causing me a great deal of difficulty in trying to resolve discrepancies in my world view.” She smiled at the confused looks on their faces. “But I enjoy it all immensely. You keep me on my toes!”

Oskar yawned, “I think I’m going to go back to bed for a while. Eli? Are you coming?”

“I’ll be there in a little while Oskar, I want to talk to Elaine for a bit.”

Oskar stumbled into his room and flopped down on the bed. He fell asleep to the murmur of soft voices in the next room.

Elaine and Eli talked as though they’d know each other all their lives. Finally she had found someone, an adult, who not only understood her agony and inner turmoil, but was actually going through it herself. She felt a kind of closeness to Elaine that she hadn’t felt in a very very long time. Finally, Elaine’s soft voice made her feel drowsy and relaxed, so they lay down on her bed together. “Elaine, what happened to your family? Are any of them still alive?”

“No, Eli, my father died soon after I met the one you call the Other, when your Papa was only ten years old. He was not happy with my choice, and I never resolved our differences before he died. My mother died when I was about your age, and I was an only child. My father was all I had and my mistake cost me dearly. But I made many, many costly mistakes in my previous life.”

“I’m sorry Elaine. You must have been lonely for a long time then.” Eli touched her face softly.

“Not nearly as long as you, Butterfly. And you came out of your dark life in far better shape than I.” she kissed her gently on the forehead.

Eli fell asleep with her arms around her as Elaine held her close, listening to her soft purr and her quiet heartbeat. She hadn’t realized how lonely she had been for so many years until she had this small beautiful child asleep next to her holding her lovingly. Reluctantly, she slipped out of bed and carried her tenderly into Oskar’s room and tucked them in together. Even in their deep sleep, they found each other and snuggled up together. Elaine smiled at them and slipped back into Eli’s room, marveling at the sunlight as it wrapped itself softly around Eli’s sculpture. She sat in front of it for a moment thinking, then stepped up and with her impossibly fine claws, made some infinitesimally small changes in the faces of the two figures at the top. I knew they were missing something, She thought to herself, that final spark of life longing for itself. I see it now.

She was completely lost in thought when Dawson walked into the room. “I see you outlasted them. I expected as much. They had a drama-filled day, in which your unexpected arrival was the climax. Your blood sample has reduced my research timetable by probably ten years; I can’t thank you enough! And Eli had the honor of presenting me with the final test results today at the Lab. We had a wild celebration at home, followed by a short sprint and a violent attack by a disgruntled vampire, topped off by a visit from one of our favorite people in the world, albeit, not under the best of circumstances.” He proceeded to give her all the details of the evening, as well as the intrigue swirling around her sculpture and the effect it had on the neighborhood children. Elaine laughed in all the right places. Dawson was enjoying himself more than he had in years, outside of his life with the children. It was a refreshing change; a real adult to talk to, to whom he didn’t have to lie about the real problems in their lives.

Finally, after a quiet moment, Elaine looked up at him with a determined look on her face, “I need to fix this. I mean…I know it can’t be fixed, but I need to fix it somehow.” She put her head in her hands.

“How did you leave him?” Dawson asked quietly.

“Under a tree in a park about a mile from the cemetery. I broke a large dead branch off the tree and pierced his wound with it, hoping that it would appear to be an accident. I had hardly begun to draw blood, so I’m not sure why he died. It was quick. But I went through his wallet. He has a wife.”

Dawson thought for a moment, “Elaine, do you have any money? Cash, preferably.”

“Plenty, but Doctor, I can’t buy my way out of this one.”

“That’s not the point. He probably supported or at least partially supported her. We know nothing about their lives or their relationship. What would you do? Give her a visit and comfort her by telling her he was accidentally killed by a vampire rather than an act of God? Frankly, money is all you have that could possibly help in any way. Remember, you’re prime purpose here is not to salve your conscience, but to mitigate the damage you’ve caused by killing someone close to her. Your penance is something you’re going to have to deal with on your own. Let’s not mix up the two. Consider it a settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit; a verdict that, from what you’ve told me so far, would be pretty close to the truth.”

“Doctor, has anyone ever told you you’re a cold logician?”

“Elaine, you have to do the best you can. Recognizing that this, at least at the moment, is the best you can do, is difficult but necessary. Now, what do you think would be a reasonable amount to leave for her?”

“All of it!” she said. “I’ll give her everything. After all, I took everything from her. . I’ll handle the delivery myself. I want to include a short note.”

He smiled grimly, “Everything sounds appropriate to me also.” He searched her eyes. “You also need to promise yourself that this is the last of them. You’ll never get past this otherwise.”

“I told you before, Doctor. You and the sun were my only two acceptable options. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life” she looked down for a moment. “We have something else to discuss also. You know I can’t stay here with you, Doctor. I’ve told you why, and I’ve not seen any reasons to change my mind that aren’t selfish and self-serving. I’ll start looking for another place immediately, but it could take a while. I might have to move a fair distance away to find a suitable place; hopefully, large enough to hold some of my art materials. I simply can’t stay in the vault any longer. For some reason it has become unbearable for me. But I don’t want to let Eli down. She wants this so much. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can handle her?”

“Other than that you should stay with us? I’m afraid not. The only reason I can think of that you shouldn’t stay with us, is that the neighbors would talk. Especially after I’ve fitted you out with the new sunsuit I plan on making as soon as I get your sizes.”

“Forgive me Doctor, but doesn’t this all sound a little – Bobbsey Twins-like? Poor downtrodden, depressed, but talented vampire gets saved by handsome, benevolent benefactor and led into the sun, hand-in-hand with his two beautiful children, and they all live happily ever after in their halfway house for wayward vampires.”

“What’s the matter with a happy ending? Does it really scare you that much?”

“No, Doctor, but happy endings exist only in fantasies and children’s books. And I refuse to be a part of anything that could even slightly threaten to bring what you have here crashing down around your heads.”

“Ah! So you are willing to concede that there may be a happy ending in their future?”

“In theirs, possibly; in mine, very unlikely – which is my whole point, Doctor. I was hours from destroying myself, when I stopped by for – I’m not even sure what, now. Do you really want someone that unstable around your children for very long? Let’s be realistic here. I’m a nice person to have visit, but believe me, my living here would get old really fast. It strains me to the limit to be ‘nice’ for any length of time.”

“Handsome, benevolent benefactor?” he rubbed his chin, “You think I’m handsome? What a nice compliment, coming from a mature older woman such as yourself. But I’m afraid you may be a total fraud, so I certainly can’t take this compliment seriously.”

“What do you mean?” she said darkly.

“You constantly warn me that your dark side would (1) intrude on our happiness; (2) cause serious divides in our family dynamic; and (3) endanger our very existence somehow. Where IS this ‘dark side’? You haven’t shown it to us yet. On the contrary, it becomes more a figment of your imagination the more we look for it. What we’ve all seen is (1) you hesitated to kill us all when we first met, even though the element of surprise would have made it simple for you. That shows compassion and respect for life: (2) You gave us a beautiful work of art, a part of yourself, even before you knew us well enough to be sure we wouldn’t ‘rat you out’ some day. That shows a clear ability to trust your instincts and an honest desire to share your inner self with others; and (3) you have totally won over the heart of the person closest to my own, merely by exposing this imaginary ‘dark side’ of yourself to her over a very significant ‘length of time.’ This shows the depth of your ability to love, understand, and empathize. Every time she sees you she is happier, more grounded, more self-confident. If that is a result of your dark side, by all means, give us more of it. Your constant pessimism is quite annoying, however, but I’m sure with a little effort we could all learn to ignore you when you’re in one of those moods. The bottom line is, you’re either a fraud, or you don’t know yourself nearly as well as you think you do. I opt for the second choice, because the first would indicate that you really don’t think I’m handsome.” He sat back with a smile on his face and his hands clasped behind his head.

“Well, you certainly don’t give me much wiggle-room do you? I feel that I’ve been logically bested by the best.”

“Captain of the Debate Team for two years.”

“Ok, you win for now, but I swear to you; at the first sign of anything I think will develop into a problem for you, and more importantly, Oskar and Eli, I’m gone! And I am extremely intolerant of my faults. Are we agreed?”

“Of course! By the way, how are you at scrabble?”