“Where’s the rabbit?”
“He’ll be up shortly,” Toothpick answers Supper Man. Both are getting married in 1-3 weeks. They have to decide what is first and who is marrying who. The latter should be easy.
“Dinner Girl wanted us to meet again, have tea. She thinks we can help each other. She doesn’t want a double marriage. She thinks we should go first. I say we should go second, see how it goes for you guys.”
“And Dinner Girl isn’t (also) your sister?” asked Toothpick, following up from earlier speculation.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Listen, we’re not the same person.” He leans forward, but dares not touch any part of Toothpick’s body for fear of passing through. Invisible. Nonexistence, even. He’s worked too hard on his abs to fritter all this away. And now that his favorite restaurant has closed up shop it should be even easier to keep the lbs away.
Toothpick/Filbert looks left as a distraction. “The rabbit over there is indicating our old friend Certain Death, Supper Man. No running away from all that. But then there’s the 561 steps now leading from End back to Beginning and the 561 again. Through 24687531 we can be saved.”
“Bahh.” Supper Man even spits toward Toothpick a bit here while exclaiming his exasperation over the supposedly sacred (heart) number. The spittle indeed passes through Toothpick’s skin, muscle and bone, some reaching the back of the chair behind him.
“Why do you disbelieve the power of the even in a row and then the odd in a backwards row?” Toothpick then considered the 9th is involved. He’d seen it once or twice before. The counter to the Zero, perhaps the Zero Hero. “We are getting married in the Temple of TILE after all with the sacred book now open at the front for everyone to see. We have the story of the CITY. The CITY is TILE.”
Supper Man scratched his head. “You and *me* are getting married in the Temple of TILE?”
Back to square one.
Sunklands 