They hadn’t met since college or perhaps high school. Perhaps both (variable realities). No, let’s go with college. Amos was 2 grades up from Edward, but they stayed in the same suite in the same dorm at New Hampshireville State Institute of Klubs. Actually let’s go with Crabwoo — Crabwoo University, commonly abbreviated Woo U. Woo Woo U. some say, because that particular institute specializes in the study of the weird and kooky, like the Loch Ness Mobster or the New Jerseyvania Devilburg Man. But it wasn’t all fantastical criminals. There were the saints as well, and Edward knew several, growing by the moment. All females of course. Amos knew one. His future wife. The late great Edith Pickey, always picking at her food after the others had long finished and thus her nickname for a name. Shelley would remind Sandman greatly of his former partner.
She spied him from the pool while Edward kept carousing with Penny and Sandy, drawing them closer and closer to the blows that would come later, with one black eye and one blue arm the result. “That up there on the balcony is the man who left the party,” she said to herself, staring up, almost meeting his eyes but not quite. “The one Edward called The Great Antagonist. Why?” She had to find out.
(to be continued)