Lexi enters her rented Gaston room once more, notices things are a bit different, a bit off. Not as much character now. That wall over there, she then spots it. Untextured, and with no secret door. And that… window?
—–
He moved the secret door formerly beneath this flapper girls painting back behind the spiral staircase going upwards if not downwards. Just in time, because dizzy Philip needed a place to lie down after his episode, guest bedroom formed behind it in the process. “You stay here as long as you need, Philip, to recover. I’ll make sure Lexi and Nada know where you are.”
“Rest,” is all he could manage from his prostrate position, then shut his eyes again.
Soon Lexi and Nada were also by his side in this tiny, crowded new room. “Is he dying?” Nada asked Frank and Lexi, a small portion of her only 1/2 hoping he wasn’t. “Um,” says Lexi. “Er,” says Frank. “He’s had these episodes before,” stated a new person coming through the secret door and entering. Or simply standing at the “door” because there wasn’t any more room in the room. Marion Star Harding, named for yet another Ohio president that was never a president. Like R. “Booger” Hayes before him, the president/non-president that started all that. Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinkley, Taft, Harding. Yeah: that’s the end of it, at least for the good people of Ohio. And Harding knew fellow Ohioan Sherwood Anderson, penner of “Winesburg”, or at least Anderson’s father. In the small village of Caledonia of that state. More synchy stuff. Played in a school band with him most likely, although the records aren’t definitive. No recording of their music either of course, that being back in the late 1800s. Might as well be from the Dark Ages. Back to the action…
“Who *are* you?” exclaimed Frank, wondering how this stranger found out about his castle in the skies… in *disguise*. He looks at both Nada and Lexi on either side. “Friend of yours perhaps?” producing headshakes instead of the expected nods. “They can’t remember,” says Marion to this surprise, because, as we’ve seen, they all know each other in Gaston. *Knew* each other. “Not with *you* around.”
“Me?” utters Frank innocently. Then it begins to dawn on him. He *wrote* about this. As he recalled the character, Marion Star Harding fades from the scene. Philip has a new original partner in crime.
Sunklands 