Music hath Charms

By

Dawnwind

Everyone's heard of the old saying by William Congrove, "Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast…" although most people misquote Congrove and say 'savage beast', and personally I'm not sure which I like better. Both have an element of truth….

I once knew a guy who stole a guitar.

Not just any guitar, he stole Jimmy Buffett's ax from the San Diego branch of the Hard Rock Café. I'd always had him pegged as a mediocre thief, but he pulled that one off with panache. It was in all the papers--even Variety--and featured on Entertainment Tonight's whodunit segment. He was never caught and eventually the fickle attention of the public moved on to some other celebrity's disaster. One year after the robbery, Jimmy Buffett was quoted as saying he was still broken up about it, but how upset could the man be? He lives in paradise on a Caribbean island and has millions.

The point I'm making is that Miles wasn't much of a thief, but, man, he could play. He even made the battered old Gibson in cellblock D at Soledad sing like B.B. King's Lucille.

So, I wasn't surprised when I ran into him a few years after our joint incarceration playing at a grunge club in La Jolla. He wasn't the headliner that night, but he was the crowd pleaser and after his set we shared a couple of beers. That was when he told me about the Hard Rock Café heist. Apparently the guitar just caught his eye while he was downing a burger and he just had to have it. Personally, if I had to choose between all the rock and roll paraphernalia hanging on the walls there, I'd have gone for something with some history, like the Big Bopper's mike, but that's just me. I was impressed that he'd robbed such a famous place, but we haven't kept in touch and I haven't seen ol' Miles since.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, spring of 2002, and I was avoiding the latest in the neverending series of blood tests Claire likes to inflict on me by parking it at Starbucks for a double mocha espresso and a bagel. Nothing like a good breakfast to get you going in the morning. I could pretend I forgot that Claire had stressed it was supposed to be a FASTING blood level to check for things like insulin and cholesterol levels.

Why does she need to know that stuff anyway? The only levels I was worried about were the levels of Quicksilver in my blood and ever since Arnaud's nifty suicide gene took away the madness, I haven't even thought much about QS levels, to be honest.

Back to the subject of Miles. I was munching my bagel and schmear when the clique of high school seniors to my left dashed off with much squealing about being late for Mr. Seymour's class, abandoning their cups with the dregs of low fat double lattes. I sent Mr. Seymour some sympathetic vibes cuz those girls looked like jailbait with their hiphugger silver tab Levis and belly button rings. Once the dust had settled I spotted a crumpled copy of Entertainment magazine amongst the girls' pile of napkins and nibbled plain bagels. Guess the hunk of their week wasn't Grandpa Sean Connery who was featured on the cover looking really happy because he won some lifetime achievement award thing.

One of the red highlighted headlines plastered over Sean's silver pate proclaimed Miles Verbage the newest threat to Ricky Martin.

How many Miles Verbages could there be? And was he really living La Vida Loca?

More than a little intrigued, I opened the magazine to page 69 and found myself staring into the wide blue eyes of Miles Verbage, my former prison mate. Success had been good to Miles. He was flashing capped teeth, which covered the gap I knew was there from when he was popped in the jaw in 1990 by another inmate, and a decent haircut to tame his wild mane of surfer blond hair.

I'd never thought much about it before but Miles was a good looking guy, if you ignored his broken-too-many-times nose, and in a silver lame Tee and black leather sprayed-on pants, he sure looked like a rocker. It wasn't Jimmy Buffett's guitar he was strumming in the photo, but a handmade one-of-a-kind deal like all the big rock stars used. Obviously while I was doing my invisible man schick, Miles had been making the scene in a major way.

"There you are." Hobbes was standing so close behind me his breath tickled my ear and ruffled my hair. I immediately put a hand up to reassure myself he hadn't blown any strands into disarray. "Claire sent me to find you," he said, snitching the last quarter of my bagel and stuffing it into his mouth.

"And you did," I replied, shoving the magazine into the pocket of my black leather jacket.

"She wants you in the keep, pronto, and I wouldn't mess with her this morning if I were you. She's PMSing."

"PMSing?"

"You know, the way women get when it's their time."

"You make it sound like she has a terminal disease. You know for sure she's on the rag?"

"Bobby Hobbes does not ask questions of a personal nature, pal." He made a sweeping negative slash with his arm.

"Since when?"

"All I'm sayin' is she's cranky in a major way and I for one am stayin' out of her way."

"Good. If that's the case, does it mean that I can stay out of your way when you forget to take your Lithium? Cause cranky doesn't begin to describe that…"

"Hey, just cause you got your sanity intact now, don't diss other people who still have to work at it."

"I'm not dissing you, Hobbesy," I said affectionately, following him down the street to the Harding building.

"There you are," Claire stated, echoing Bobby's words, when I sauntered into her lair. She did seem a trifle cranky and more than a little annoyed at me. Did she really expect me to wake up all bright and perky and rush on in to get poked and depleted of even more blood?

"We're late as it is. I've got more than enough to do this today without waiting around all bloody morning for you to show up," Claire snarled at me with her arms crossed sternly over her chest. She was cranky.

"He ate breakfast," Hobbes tattled with a straight face.

"Darien! Bloody hell." Claire slammed her fist down on a tray, sending rubber tourniquets and collection vials flying. "Can't you ever take my work seriously? Really, I'm not sure why I even bother to try and keep you healthy."

Okay, now she was making me feel a little guilty. After all, she did keep me relatively healthy and she'd synthesized the suicide gene from Arnaud's notes. She also made counteragent for two years, which, even though I hadn't liked getting weekly, sometimes daily injections, had succeeded in mostly maintaining my sanity. So, I felt a lot guilty, at that.

"Sorry, Claire, I forgot, okay?" I lied, "I won't eat another thing all day and you can stick me this afternoon, or tomorrow morning or whenev…"

"What if I don't want to?" Claire bit off each word with sharp snaps of her teeth, a growl low in her throat. "Did you ever think I might not enjoy sticking you?"

No, I hadn't. She always seemed to take such joy in gruesome tasks like drawing blood, scraping skin cells for bacteria and analyzing Quicksilver data. I figured it was her life's work.

"For your information, Mr. Invisible Fawkes," Claire flipped her hair over one shoulder and gathered up her purse, leaving the tray of needles and specimen vials scattered like leftovers from a hospital scene on ER. "I have other things planned for my afternoon, thank you very much, and since you've bollixed up my morning, I'll just take my leave now."

"Honey," Hobbes asked in a very small voice, "Where are you going?"

"You know very well I've got tickets to Miles Verbage's concert tonight, Bobby." Claire answered haughtily, her English accent thick as marmalade on a crumpet in her anger, "Since you declared him loud and infantile…"

"I never said that!" Bobby insisted.

Claire ignored him in her tirade, "I called my old chum from Cal Tech, who lives in Del Mar, and she's mad for Miles, so we're going alone!" With a glare at the both of us, she started towards the door.

"I said he was loud and idiotic," Bobby clarified to no one in particular.

"If you're going to Miles' concert." I whipped the Entertainment magazine out of my pocket, still opened to the article entitled 'Mighty Miles makes Millions!' and held if out like a white flag, "You might like to get this signed?"

"Oh, lovely!" Claire's whole demeanor morphed from avenging biker chick to giggly schoolgirl. "My newsstand was out of that issue."

"Keep it," I urged, since I hadn't paid for it anyway, "I…know him."

"You don't," Hobbes scoffed, glancing at the full page picture of Miles rocking out.

"Do so, and you'll never guess from where."

"Prison?" Claire piped up, pouring over the text of the article.

"How'd you know?"

"He makes no secret that he's had a colorful past," she informed me, "I have both his CD's and watched him on Jay Leno just this past week."

"You really know him?" Hobbes still sounded skeptical

"Yes. Why is that so hard for you to believe?" I glowered at him.

"I have an idea." Claire looked coquettishly at Hobbes. They'd been a couple for some time now, but she rarely demonstrated that fact in the work place. "Maybe you and Darien could get tickets to the concert, too, and I could sit with you and Darien could sit with Melissa, then afterwards…"

"You want to meet Miles." I grinned. "I'll bet I can arrange something."

"What about you wanting to go just chicks?" Hobbes questioned like a Neanderthal.

"This will be more fun." She winked at him, silently promising stuff I probably shouldn't know about. I wasn't really sure I wanted to be paired up on a blind date, however. It had been eons since that had happened, and they never turned out well.

The concert was nearly sold out, but there was still some seats left in the nosebleed section, which Bobby grumpily paid for. We met the ladies at a nice little Moroccan place for an early dinner beforehand. Lots of lamb and couscous to stuff in my face so all I had to do was smile at Melissa, without engaging in any embarrassing conversation.

I'd been dreading meeting her the whole day, envisioning some old maid chick with stringy hair and a distracted air. She had to be smart to have been at school with Claire, and I don't know why I imagined her plain, since I know quite well that smart girls don't have to look like Miss Jane. Look at Claire. Stereotypes raising their ugly heads again. They were about the only thing at the table that were ugly, cause Melissa Beatten sure wasn't.

She had light brown hair cut in a slightly too severe bob for her heart shaped face and sweet brown eyes. Her figure was certainly decent and I probably would have looked twice if she'd been walking down the street, but it was her language that stopped me cold. No, she didn't swear all the time. That, I could have handled. She was the kind of person who assumed the world was either hopelessly stupid or able to keep up with her Einsteinian brain. She prattled on about Quantum physics and some guy named Feynman like we all knew who he was and he'd show up at the table for some thick Moroccan coffee and after dinner almonds in just a minute. Claire finally put in that the guy had died and Cal Tech was naming a physics lab in his honor. Melissa didn't have a clue that the rest of us weren't keeping up--well, that is except Claire, who's the smartest and most down to earth person I've ever met. Claire kept up her end of the conversation. Bobby and I just ate.

Just as Claire's whole attitude had changed that morning when I'd given her the magazine, Melissa transformed into a simpering teenager with a crush on her favorite rock star. Now instead of Feynman, it was Miles this and Miles that. She hung on my arm like I was going to disappear, which I seriously considered doing, like she was afraid that if she let me out of her sight, she'd lose her one big chance to meet Miles Verbage. Even the fact that Bobby and Claire got the nicer seats, and we had to sit up with about a thousand screaming teenyboppers in the nose bleed section didn't stifle Melissa's ardor. She was going to meet Miles.

The opening act was some 'N Sync clones with annoyingly sappy lyrics and dance steps they'd obviously practiced in a really small garage, because they kept bumping into one another instead of using up the entire stage. The teenyboppers around us just mooned over the blond haired one, named Dale, and argued about who was smarter, Vern or Chapel--pronounced Cha-pelle, which sounded like a girl's name to me. There was no doubt that Chapel was a guy, even at this distance, his manly bulges were showing through the tiny jogging shorts he had on.

After an interminable set, Miles Verbage was announced, his name reverberating around the arena the way the announcer's voices do at a wrestling match.

Miles erupted onto the stage with over-the-top pyrotechnics and strobing light effects. The girls let out ear piercing shrieks, and Melissa clutched my forearm with enough strength to leave finger sized bruises.

The guy could still sing. I'm no judge, and I was on the way to a moderately severe hearing loss with the teenyboppers screaming in my ear, but what I did hear sounded major league to me. Miles played his own guitar, and didn't rely heavily on synthetic sound effects to enhance his voice. He had the audience in the palm of his beringed hands by the end of the first song, and kept them there for the rest of the set. Between songs he joked with the band, teased the lucky chicks in the front row and made self-depreciating remarks about the flashy clothes rock stars have to wear. Even if I hadn't already known he was an okay guy, I woulda liked him. He was just nice, in a real, honest way. And I say that with a completely straight face, since when I knew Mighty Miles, there had been nothing remotely honest about him.

When Verbage was singing his last number, a weeper about some poor schmuck whose fiancée dies on their wedding night, I gestured to Melissa that I was leaving. We'd already agreed that she would rendezvous with Hobbes and Claire at the backstage door after the concert, by which time I should have gotten them all passes to the star's dressing room.

This was one of the few fun 'assignments' I'd ever had as the invisible man, sneaking my friends in backstage. I went see-through in the stairwell outside the main floor of the auditorium and just strolled down the aisle to the stage, climbed up and stood off to one side of the drummer, watching the show. The audience wouldn't stop clapping after the last song, demanding encores, most shouting "'Sandstorm'!" I wasn't real knowledgeable about his repertoire but even I recognized the number one hit on the top forty. Funny that I'd never connected it with my old prison buddy before. 'Sandstorm' was a hard song to ignore lately. It musta gone double platinum, cause I'd heard it on the radio half a dozen times this week alone.

Just as Miles launched into the lyrical first verse, I made my way off stage, hunting for his dressing room. It was around a corner and up a short staircase, but it had to be his--a little plaque reading 'M.Verbage' was stuck up on the door. Roadies and backstage techs were all roaming around doing whatever their jobs entailed so I had to wait for a moment when the hall was empty to take a peak inside the door. Just as I was about to turn the doorknob, it turned by itself. Someone was inside!

I jumped back, concealing myself behind a pile of equipment, letting the Quicksilver flake off.

A girl came out, cocking one ear to listen for the end of the music. Miles' last words had been completely drowned out by the cheers and clapping of his fans, but the song was over and he was thanking them, saying goodnight. The girl smiled to herself, obviously waiting for Miles to return.

She was everything I'd ever wanted waiting for me. Dark and exotic, she evoked visions of black eyes flashing over the edge of a transparent veil. Even dressed in the modern uniform of youth, a teeshirt and jeans, I could still see her in a burka, standing under a palm tree in an oasis, hot dry sand blowing off the Sahara behind her. The scene would be scored with that haunting song by Sting, 'Desert Rose', with the Arabic chorus behind his distinctive voice. She looked like the desert, brown and pure, a rare blooming flower amongst the rest of us weeds. Stunning without a bit of artifice, she smiled in delight when Miles came pelting backstage, dripping with sweat, and I felt like the interloper that I was when they kissed.

Waiting just long enough for them to reconnect, I made like I'd just been coming down the hall and spotted them, calling out, "Miles?"

He looked up, startled, staring at me for several seconds before his blue eyes widened. "Darien Fawkes? I don't believe it, man! Come over here!" We shook hands, patting each other on the back with hearty slaps. "You see the concert?"

"Sounds even better than you did with that old six string back in Soledad," I complimented.

"How long has it been?" He shook his head, giving the girl a squeeze. "Farzimah, this is an old buddy, Darien Fawkes. Fawkes, my fiancée, Farzimah Abdullah."

"You're a lucky man." I shook her hand, her jet black eyes regarding me shyly, but she barely spoke more than a tiny hi.

"You alone?" Miles asked, waving away his roadies, who looked surprised to see an unauthorized person backstage. I didn't even have one of those nifty lanyard badges everybody wore these days. All the roadies had ones emblazoned with 'Sandstorm tour '02' and a picture of Miles clutching his guitar like it was the last oar on the Titanic's lifeboat.

"No, man, in fact I was wondering if you could say hi to a couple of friends of mine? Sign a magazine for Claire?"

"Claire, huh? No problem." Miles grinned. What can I say, he's nice. "Bring 'em on back, but I gotta get outta these clothes and take a quick shower. Give me five, Farzimah will show you where you can all wait." He gave instructions to a beer bellied stage manager with a long skinny braid down his back like Willie Nelson and suddenly I was the man of the hour. He took me around the maze of a backstage to the door guarded by an ex-basketball player that topped me by about four inches and several shoe sizes. Not very often that I feel short.

"Mustafa." Willie Nelson's twin darted a stubby forefinger at me; "Give Fawkes here and any of his friends passes, on the wonder kid's say so."

The wonder kid, huh? Sounded like Miles doesn't get much more respect around his workplace than I do. But from the looks of things, at least he's pulling in some big bucks.

"Sure, thing, Randy." Mustafa's voice came from about ten feet below his size fifteen basketball shoes, as deep as a canyon. He stamped a big red date over Miles' face on a temporary pass, looking up silently to ask me how many more I wanted. I just held up four fingers and he supplied three more. Mustafa and I connected, man.

Just as planned, Hobbes, Claire and Melissa were waiting at the back door, along with about every other member of San Diego's female population. When Mustafa opened the door, the sound of one hundred throats sucking in air to scream Miles' name was like a solid wall hitting me in the solar plexus. We dragged in my companions before the assault on our eardrums got any worse. Unfortunately, after checking his clipboard a second time, Mustafa had to crack the door again to emit a harried looking PR person, a short, mustached guy with the overly modulated voice of a radio DJ and a blissed out fifteen year old girl with so much jewelry pierced through her earlobes and nostrils she must have set off metal detectors from here to the smoggy LA basin. She sure made the wand Mustafa waved over us sing, but then, so did Hobbes' Colt .45.

Randy looked very displeased to find that Hobbes was packing a piece, but nobody separates Bobby Hobbes from his firearm. After he'd presented his Agency ID and I'd wearily brought mine out for show and tell, as well, the stage manager begrudgingly let us back into the dressing room, but he looked very unhappy about it. I didn't point out that if Hobbes had really wanted to blow away the latest pop sensation, he was a good enough shot to have done it from his seat in the auditorium. No sense in increasing Randy's stress level.

The dressing room was more than just some little closet for The Star to change his clothes in, it was actually two or more rooms. Miles was presumably showering and changing in the back with the help of Farzimah.

Randy left us in a nicely appointed living area with a couch, chairs and coffee table. The latter was entirely covered with bowls of snack foods of every sort. Mighty Miles must give his roadies a hard time on the candy front. One of the bowls housed only purple and turquoise M and M's. I scooped up a handful of the controversial candies, tossing them into my mouth. I don't even think the votes were all tabulated in the International color debate the Mars company was conducting for the newest M and M color. How did Miles get a whole bowl full? Not that I voted, but purple was a good color. They all taste the same to me, anyway.

Ashley Breeana, the girl who'd won a chance to meet Miles and have dinner with him from KTIT, 115 fm on your radio dial, was completely nonplussed by the gun discussion, her blue eyes tracking Bobby's movements like he was Saddam Hussein coming in to assassinate the King of Rock and Roll. Luckily, we all know that Miles ain't the king, all though he certainly seemed like he was trying to topple the kingdom. Never gonna happen in my lifetime.

The PR woman who had the tongue twisting name of Victoria Viceroy-Wong kept a tight grip on Ashley Breeana's arm, but her silver blond hair was already losing it's puffy style. She and the DJ, Dr. Div, kept Ashley Breeana as far away from us as possible in the small room. They all huddled together underneath an enormous flower arrangement, sampling the blue tortilla chips.

"Bobby, I think you made the poor thing nervous." Claire laughed, her eyes merry. God, if Hobbes hadn't already staked his claim, I'd go after her in a heartbeat. Melissa was pretty, but she had nothing on Claire. Besides, her eyes were riveted on the door to Miles' private room with the faith of a supplicant at Lourdes waiting for the Virgin to make a reappearance.

"Looks too young to be out this late at night--what were her parents thinking?" Hobbes griped.

"If she's anything like I was, her parents may not know a thing," I observed with a sly grin.

"Not everybody is as devious as you were, Fawkes." Hobbes elbowed me in the side, but I was saved from any further ribbing by the fortuitous arrival of Miles and his consort.

Her knees knocking together, Ashley Breeana had to be shoved forward to shake her idol's hand. She hardly seemed to be breathing and didn't say much more than a shaky, "I love you, Miles, 'Sandstorm' is my favorite song."

He bussed her chastely on the cheek, handing her autographed CDs and posed patiently for photos with her. Afterwards, Ashley Breeana just floated in his wake like a buoy in the harbor of love. Melissa wasn't much better, sounding so amazingly idiotic when she shook his hand I had to stare to make sure it was the same woman whose explanation of Hiesenberg's uncertainty principle of Quantum Physics had sailed over my head during the couscous course at dinner.

"And these are my two colleagues," I introduced last. "Dr. Claire Keeply and Bobby Hobbes."

"A doctor, Claire." Miles flirted, "I've got this pain in my…whachamacallit."

"I usually don't take on new patients," Claire grinned with delight to be holding the hand of a real rock star. "I could make an exception in your case."

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at Bobby's sour expression. He kept a firm hand on the good doctor during the entire conversation.

"Then, I'm cured." He laughed, "Completely. Bobby Hobbes? You know ol' Fawkes long?" I could tell he was fishing, trying to find out if I was still in the less than legal profession, and did Hobbes know anything about that.

"Fawkes and I work very closely together, in textiles," Hobbes lied flawlessly, since he is a trained secret agent, unlike myself. "He's been with us for a couple of years and we've nearly gotten rid of all his old larcenous habits."

"Nearly all." Miles shrugged, "I know how that is."

"Heard any good Jimmy Buffet lately, Miles?" I teased.

"Guess what, I'm taking Farzimah to the Caribbean in a few weeks," He smirked, putting an arm around her shoulder. Farzimah was a girl of very few words, but she was obviously in love. And they made a good looking couple. His blond surfer looks contrasted perfectly with her dark exotic appeal. I wouldn't be surprised if People magazine included them in the next best looking couple issue, especially since the break up of Tom and Nicole must have left a big hole in the list. "We're going out for a late supper with Ashley Breeana," Miles explained, "You guys want to come with? The more the merrier. We've got the whole restaurant to ourselves, anyway."

"I'd love to, thank you, Miles." Claire smiled sweetly, linking arms with Bobby. "Melissa?"

I don't know why she even bothered to ask. Melissa was so far gone by that time she would have agreed to go to a Rave and dance to Curt Cobain music. Victoria Viceroy-Wong towed Ashley Breeana along, so I took charge of Melissa. Dr. Div followed, trying to chat up Miles' PR woman, Sherida Jefferson. She was a knock out with legs that wouldn't quit, but had a bossy, irritating personality and kept stage directing every single movement Miles made.

Since he was a Rock Star, Miles can't go anywhere without an entourage, which included Mike Kim, a short Asian guy who's job seemed to be mostly of the hand wringing and worrying persuasion and Sherida, who sported a camera like it was permanently attached to her arm. She'd chirp, "photo op!" and film us, or importantly, Miles, every few seconds, until I had to ask why anyone would want a picture of him walking down the hall.

She explained that some teenaged girl magazine was doing a day in the life story of Miles, which included of photos every aspect of his life: his house, hotel room and dressing room. Hobbes' paranoia went on hyperalert at the information and he kept questioning Miles on the safety issues inherent in such a project until Verbage obviously could tell that we were in more than just the textile biz.

A series of limos pulled up just then, interrupting whatever Miles was going to say, since he had to pose for more candid shots of him getting in the car with Farzimah. We rated the third limo, after the one which picked up Ashley Breeana and crew.

"He shouldn't let that nozzle take all those pictures." Hobbes groused once we were all seated in the long car. It gave me squeamish reminders of being in a police car, since there was a partition between us and the unseen driver. We didn't rate the amenities like a TV or a mini bar, either. It was just a big black car with those weird little jump seats. My legs are way too long to sit on one of those, so both women took them.

"What are you going on about, Hobbes?" I rolled my eyes in his direction,

"Security, Fawksey. He's lettin' way too many people know where he lives…"

"Half of San Diego knew where he was tonight." I reasoned, "And I'm sure that the radio station probably announced what restaurant he was taking Ashley Breeana to."

"Can't be too cautious. There are lots of crazies out there." Hobbes shook his head, running a hand over his thinning crown to smooth down the little hairs on top.

"He's just a rock star. Who'd want to come after him?"

"Does the name Mark David Chapman ring a bell?" Hobbes said with that annoying superior tone he gets. "He offed John Lennon right in front of his apartment building."

"Oh, that was such a sad day." Claire sighed.

"I'd hardly put Miles in the running with John Lennon." I scoffed.

"Verbage ain't even in the race, my friend." Bobby declared which caused Melissa to come out of her fog and defend her idol.

"He's already gone platinum twice," She said loyally. "One for 'Wedding Belle', and the other for 'Sandstorm'. An amazing feat for one so recently in the business."

"Oh, the kid can carry a tune, and I won't even go into the deceptive practices in the music industry…" Hobbes started, obviously ready to launch into a diatribe about payola and whatever other schemes he'd heard about CD sales.

"Bobby, you said you wouldn't," Claire reminded, patting his hand.

"But only time will tell whether he has the staying power of a true legend," Hobbes finished.

"I loved the Beatles growing up." Claire smiled, humming a snatch of 'Strawberry Fields', "My mother attended one of their concerts. She said it was like being in the presence of royalty."

"Nobody's better than the King of Rock and Roll himself," Hobbes said stoutly.

"Jimi Hendrix." I suggested, just to mess with him.

"Elvis Presley," Bobby bristled. "But Lennon and the rest of the Beatles--sure, they could be the Crown Princes."

"I used to be enamoured of Ricky Martin, before Miles," Melissa put in. "But 'Sandstorm' has eclipsed 'La Vida Loca'."

She really needs to get out of the lab more often and buy some different CD's. Maybe some Matchbox Twenty or Santana.

"I must confess a childhood fancy for Davy Jones," Claire grinned at Bobby. "I don't know what it is about short statured men…"

"I couldn't say," He murmured, forgetting about the rest of us, talking to her with just his eyes.

"Robert? Do you really think Miles is in danger?" Melissa asked as the limo pulled behind the other two. We could see Sherida snapping off pictures with every step poor Miles took. I hoped he had a policy like Princess Diana had had, no photographs while he was chewing his food.