Annie CXIV: We Dress for Dinner

(Chronological index: A few months after Raymond reveals Annie)

Raymond stood in the parking lot, going over his list with his father.

"You have two weeks of underwear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Both pair," Annie muttered.

"Shutup!" Raymond hissed.

"Alright, alright." She tried to find a comfortable spot next to the folded paper in the pocket. Dad and Raymond finished reviewing his packing for the scouting trip.

Then Raymond pulled out his list. "No more than one hour of TV per day."

"Alright," Dad said.

"She gets one piece of chocolate OR one sip of cola after every meal."

"RC cola?" Annie asked, trying to sound polite and submissive.

"No, human cola," Raymond snarled.

"There may be a sixpack of RC in the fridge," Dad said airily.

"Daaaaaaaaaaad! I'm trying to condition her to be obedient!"

"And she is!" he said. "Look, she hasn't run away, she doesn't widdle on the carpet, she hardly ever bites. I doubt she's going to go feral because you let her pick her rewards."

"Yeah!" Annie shouted.

"Shut UP!" Raymond repeated. She subsided, grinning. Maybe two weeks alone with the parents wouldn't be as bad as she thought.

"She gets a bath every night, and her face washed every meal."

"That's your mom's rule, sport," Dad pointed out. "I think we can remember to enforce it."

The list went on for a bit. Raymond spent more time on his rules than they had on the packing requirements. Finally, he handed list and sylph over and went to schlep his duffel bag to the scout leader's pickup.

Dad held Annie and leaned against his car until the scouts were loaded and out of sight. He moved inside the car and set her on the dashboard. "Give 'em a couple minutes to shout 'I forgot my...' and come back," he said. Annie shrugged. They spent a companionable moment of silence.

Dad read through The Rules. "They're kind of like dieting," he said. "If it tastes good, it's bad for you. If it's fun, you need Raymond's permission."

"Pretty much," she said. "Um.... There's no way I could drink a whole can of RC in two weeks, much less a sixpack." A thought struck her. "That is, if you were serious?"

"I was serious," he said. "I like RC well enough. The rest of the house just teases me horribly if they catch me drinking it." He smiled at the sylph. "So, you drink all you want. And it would be cruel to make you drink it flat, so it will be my duty, a burden, even, to finish it off, rather than waste it."

"Thanks, sir," she said softly. He waved away the concern.

She watched him check his watch, then turn and lean over the back of his seat. He explained the strange sounds she heard. "I'm stuffing them between the back and the seat. So we can find them if we need them." He turned back around and winked at her. "I just don't think we need them."

"Yay," she said softly. She didn't want to look like she was too happy about ignoring her owner. Mom and Dad were sticklers about her being Raymond's responsibility.

Dad started the car and left the lot. Annie sat patiently as he drove to a five and dime. He offered his hand and she stepped aboard.

Inside, he let her pick from a rack of sylph suits. "Sir?"

"Gwen and I both feel strongly that a boy benefits from having a pet. From having the responsibility for a pet. And when we said he could... I dunno, raise? For lack of a better word? When he could raise you however he wanted, we were thinking about what to call you.

"We weren't thinking about keeping you naked day in and day out." He tapped a blister pack with a one-size-fits-sylph set of coveralls. "With him gone, though, I figured... Well, we dress for dinner."

"Thank you, sir, I'd love that blue one."

She stood in the passenger seat and dressed. It was actually a form of paper, though it felt like cloth. She had two pockets, one at hip and on her chest. And several slots for tailoring. She experimented all the way home.

Mom was outside tending her rosebushes when Dad lifted the sylph out of the car. She smiled to see them, smiling wider to note that the sylph was dressed. Then her brow wrinkled.

"What the hell did you do to Annie!" Mom snarled.

"I thought you said some disposable clothes..."

"Disposable, yes. No evidence we treat her different than Raymond does. Not Party Ware!"

"Um...?" Dad looked down at Annie. She shrugged, hands on her clothes.

"This stuff dissolves in wine!" Mom hissed. She glanced around to see if neighbors could see her shame. "It's for THOSE sorts of parties." She moved them inside, practically stiff-arming her husband through the door. "The poor thing has probably been terrified the whole ride home, thinking we're going to play some sort of adult party games with her."

"Um...." Annie raised her hand. "I've never heard of Party Ware before in my life, ma'am. And the only thing I'm afraid of is that Dad is going to remember where he put Raymond's rules."

"Oh, God, let's hope not," Mom said. She wiped her forehead and picked Annie up out of the other's grip. "Well. I guess if YOU haven't heard of them, then Raymond hasn't heard of them. That's good, I guess"

"How would they even work?" Dad asked.

"It involves games and eyedroppers and the first sylph to show an erogenous..." She stopped to see that both of the others were staring at her. "I have NOT researched this, I just read an article in Cosmo."

"Ah," Dad said. His eyes tracked towards the living room and the wicker basket full of magazines. "And what issue was that in?"

"Okay, NOW I'm scared," Annie said.

"Would Royal Crown Battery Acid calm your anxieties?" Mom asked. Annie allowed as to how it just might. ----------- Annie'd actually had two big fears about the two weeks home alone. One was being locked in her cage the whole time, sitting in Raymond's room until meal times.

The other was that two giants would keep her in arm's reach at all times, trying to keep her occupied and active.

After the discussion of the clothing, and promises of chaste behavior, though, she was left pretty much to her own discretion. Mom put the sylph and a bucket of RC on the coffee table with the remote, then went a room away to read.

Dad had a number of weekend chores about the house. He wandered through on a regular basis, within the sound of her voice if she needed anything.

No expectations from her, no one showing off for her, no one making her walk across the desk... She found that what she most wanted to do was sleep. So she curled up in the Kleenex cozy and took a nap.

She woke to Dad's voice softly offering food. "Lunch?" she asked, sitting bolt upright. "I could lunch." She held up her arms and he carried her into the kitchen.

Her usual place was set, next to where Raymond's plate would go. A quarter of a sandwich was laid out for her. She carefully sliced off a portion and ate. There was another bucket of RC and Dad finished off the can.

Mom made noises about some people's complete and total lack of taste. "It's okay, dear," Dad replied. "Annie and I still love you, despite that lack."

"Don't get me in the middle of this," the sylph protested, scooting behind the paper towel dispenser.

Threats of retribution and violence flowed across the table for a bit. Then the voices softened as they started to offer to make up for the recent strife.

Annie was even less interested in getting in the middle of that and covered her ears with her hands.

Dad paused long enough to ask if Annie needed help getting to the TV room, then the two were upstairs with the door closed.

Annie found herself alone, unsupervised, unrestrained. Trusted.

She wasn't sure if she liked that. Her reputation demanded that she do something with the opportunity presented. Knock a plant over or write sizist graffiti on the wainscoting. 'Height is for the birds' or 'kneel down to see the oppression of the masslesses!'

But that would mean the 'rents couldn't trust her alone, so she would spend two weeks in her cage...

Before she could figure out what to do, though, she realized that she couldn't reach a sink or other giant-approved toiletry facility. And she needed to go.

She jogged towards the living room, thinking fast. The sink nearest Raymond's bedroom had a rope ladder strung to the sink. But that was three floors up. She could maybe make four steps before she really, really had to.

Next best thing would be a leaky (no pun intended) pipe. Piddle in the existing puddle, that they would have to clean up anyway, no one would know or care that tiny Annie had enhanced the leakage.

Then she saw the dieffenbachia. The pot it was in was too smooth for little syph hands, but it was next to the sofa. She scaled the wicker like a spider monkey, then jumped through the air to grab a big green leaf.

Down in the mulch, she dug a small pit and took a squat. A leaf of some smaller plant growing with the dieffenbachia provided the necessaries. All was buried in the little pit and she was out with no one the wiser.

Then she strolled calmly over to see what was on TV. The couple upstairs was getting a little rambunctious. They must assume that without a teenager in the house, they had privacy. Annie winced and turned the TV up louder. ------ Dad invited Annie to his bowling night. "No league," he said. "Just a bunch of drunks needing an excuse to hurl insults at each other. And nachos."

"Nachos?" Annie asked, intrigued. "I could maybe help you with any oversurplus of nachos." She looked guiltily over at Mom.

She shrugged. "Go, get out, see the world that's offered. I'm just staying in, tonight, making six dozen cookies for a wedding shower at work."

"EEP!"

"You probably shouldn't tease her as you would Raymond," Dad said.

"Raymond's not here," Mom shrugged. She picked up the sylph, lowered the figure into her husband's hand and closed his fingers over the tiny legs. "Go. By the time you get back, the cookies will be cooled. Some will be packed for the party, but not all."

"God bless you, Mrs. Foster," Annie said.

--------

He introduced Annie to Carl, Damon and Bruiser.

"So this is the famous Annie," Carl said. "Pleased to meet you."

"Thank you, Mr. Carl," Annie said. Dad put her down on the scoring table and started to change his shoes.

"Why is she wearing clothes?" Damon asked. "Sylphs shouldn't wear clothes."

"It's Gwen," Dad said. "I can hang out with naked people or I can hang out with beautiful girls, but I can't hang out with naked, beautiful girls."

"You hang out with us," Bruiser pointed out.

"And if you get naked, Gwen won't care."

"I'll care!" Damon insisted. "Nudity is wrong, Adam and Eve learned that in the Garden." He pointed to the sylph. "But of all God's creatures, only men know they're naked, that's how you know they're chosen by God. She has no soul, so she shouldn't wear clothes."

"It's only for one night, Victor," Carl started to say.

"And Gwen isn't here," Bruiser pointed out.

Dad offered a soft smile. Annie had blushed when he called her beautiful, now she saw the expression she associated with Raymond getting a strip torn off of him. "So, guys, you think I should do something my wife wouldn’t like, in order to avoid annoying Damon?"

"To avoid a bigger fight," Bruiser said.

"Damon, you can get yourself a sylph and you can dress or undress her however you want, and paint verses on her butt to sing the praises of God and his glory all you want. Do NOT tell me how to treat my household.

"Now, I promised her clothes and I promised her nachos. Do I have to go over to the bar to keep my promise?"

"No, no," Carl said.

"Wouldn't hear of it," Bruiser said.

"Well. I think it's wrong, but it is your decision to make, and I'll shut up," Damon said. He even had the class to apologize to Annie. She graciously accepted and they were back to the game.

They got to talking, and learned this would have been her summer between high school and college, all else being normal.

Then she leaned back and listened. She heard about backpacking through Europe. About working a banana boat across the Pacific. About maintaining a pool for a Catskills resort and sleeping with the city girls.

And she learned about standing shore patrol on Okinawa on the way back from Viet Nam. Not all the stories involved egregious amounts of alcohol, just most of them.

And fourteen times, she raised her right hand and swore to secrecy. This ritual started any of Victor's stories and finished any of Bruiser's. And came up in the middle of three of Damon's.... -------- On another night, Mom invited Annie to her cooking class. The sylph paused. Little People's fear of pans of hot oil were widespread, and had a pretty straightforward pathology. One good pop while they were on a kitchen counter could give them nightmares for weeks.

"Oh, don't worry," Mom said, seeing the girl hesitate. "We finished the class ages ago. We just like to get together and talk about stuff."

"You're not going to take little Annie to a Chippendales club, are you?" Dad asked suspiciously.

"Are you?" Annie asked hopefully.

"No, dear, they're not open tonight, darn it all to heck. Besides, those banana hammocks frighten me, when they're swinging around. For you, it' be like ogling wrecking balls. Big, meaty, firm wrecking balls, swaying to and fro-"

"Emergency deep!" Dad shouted, hands over his ears. "Dive, dive, dive." He continued to fill the room with noise as he made an escape.

Mom watched him go with a smile. She looked down at the sylph. "Next month? When Raymond has his scout meeting? Have a tummy ache."

"Well, NOW I'm scared!" Annie protested.

"Well, if you'd rather watch Raymond capture your footprints in plaster..."

"I didn't say I didn't want to go," Annie said quickly.

The women had taken over a corner booth in the lounge when Mom arrived with Annie.

Amy, Madge, Terri, Monica and Rita made room for Annie and her chair in the center of the table. They instantly wanted to know how old she was.

"Um... I would have started college next fall," she replied.

"Old enough for booze," Rita announced, looking through the list of cocktails.

"Are you trying to get my sylph drunk?" Mom asked.

"Not necessarily," Amy said. "But her life was truncated unfairly."

"Truncated?" Annie asked.

"SO it's only fair that she experience what she would have as a Freshman," Rita said. "And I've always wanted to try the Krakatau Mai Tai here."

In an instant, Annie became the designated excuse for the women to order the strangest drinks. She got a sip, of all but the Krakatau (it was delivered to the table flaming), they passed the remainder around the table.

Then they wanted to dish. "What," Terri asked, "are sylph men's dicks like?"

"Pro....portional?" Annie guessed.

"Never mind that," Madge said, "I want to know how real men's packages look."

"While not forgetting," Mom said archly, "that the only two packages she's had the slightest chance to see are my husband's and my 7th grade son's."

"Oh."

"Ah."

"Well."

"Hmmm," Amy said. "You guys have a backyard pool?"

"Why?"

"So she's seen Victor in a swimsuit at least...."

"I am NOT going to sit here while we discuss my husband's package as seen by one of my children," Mom said. She stood. "_I_ will be in the bathroom." She walked off with dignity.

"Children?" Madge asked.

"Mom says that sylphs slot into the family in the same place as their owner. So on the family tree, I'm Raymond's sister."

"And you call Raymond's parents Mom and Dad," Amy nodded. "Well. Then never mind about Victor's package."

"Um...Mom HAS promised to take me to see Chippendales..." she offered.

"We'll expect a full report," Monica said. Annie promised.

After that, she was accepted as a member of the sisterhood. Where Dad's friends had taken a few moments to accept her as a person, the women were including her in rather frank discussions. She wasn't sure this was better.

A lot of the details were over her head. Some of the common conditions the women had faced or experienced had passed the sylph by. Childbirth, sex, bad sex, pity sex, mothers in law, pregnancy scares.... All could be conveyed around the table in a quick, short comment. One that excluded little Annie.

She began to feel more than a little isolated in the middle of the table. And she began to take more than token sips.

---------

Dad was still up when he heard the car pull into the driveway. There were little sudden stops as it crept up to park.

"Ah." He stood and went out into the davenport, reaching in to pick up the sylph while his wife was still trying to remember how to open the car door. "There was some... Annie! What happened to your clothes?"

"They don't only disselve.... Disholve... Dispvoove... It's not just wine that makes 'em go away," she finally said.

"Oh? What else makes you clothing dissolve?"

"Kalhua... Rum... " She paused to count on her fingers. "Kahlooa... Sangreea..."

"Sangria is wine, Annie."

"Oh? Oh. And Kallooola."

"Monica was there?" he asked Mom as she came around the back of the car. Mom belched. He carried the sylph and helped the human into the house.

Once he had Gwen tucked into bed, he returned to the kitchen to see to the sylph. Annie was draped over the faucet of the kitchen sink. There was some spit near the drain, just outside of the flow of water. Victor turned the water off.

"Hey! I was watching that!" Annie protested. Unsure about the sylph's reaction to alcohol, Victor decided to watch over her for a while. He carried her to the table and put her down on a placemat. She curled up and looked to be going to sleep.

"Mister The Dad, Sir?" she called.

"You stopped calling me 'the' dad a while back, Annie."

"Yes, sir, Mister The Dad, Sir. Sorry, Sir Victor. You said I was beaufit-full."

"Um... Yes, I did, Annie. You're very cute, sweet, lovable, smart and beautiful."

"Are you making a pass at me?" she asked. Her eyes were still closed. His eyelids rose.

"Annie, you're my son's pet. You have to know what would happen if we tried to make out."

"You'd make a real woman out of me?" she guessed.

"No, Annie, Gwen would use your guts as thread to sew my every orifice shut."

She laughed at that. "Yeah, she is kinda terror-torial, trutoreal.. Torturall... Possessive about your package."

He nodded. "So, Amy was there tonight, too."

'Yes, sir." She yawned. "No one's going to make a real woman out of me."

"There, there," he said, patting her shoulder."People are still sylphing. Raymond could end up owning Robert Redford."

"Or Marty Feldman," Annie moaned. She curled up and started to snore.

"Or Charlie's Angels," he said softly and rather wistfully.

"I heard that!" Gwen snapped from the hall.

"I knew you were listening," Victor replied. He placed the sylph in her cage and tucked her into the bed.

------

She woke in her cage, as usual. But she was in the living room, which was new. And there were clothes. A paper board in a plastic sleeve had a summery shirt and pair of shorts inside.

Someone had written on it with a Magic Marker. 'Wine AND Sangria proof.' That made her look down. She kind of remembered spilling drinks... All that was left of her first set of post-shrinking clothes was her collar and some scraps around her hips.

She wriggled free then opened the package. These clothes were plastic, and tended to stick, but they were more durable than the paper had been.

Annie policed the debris and put it all back in the sleeve, then looked to see if it would slide out through the bars.

That's when she noticed the door was open. Wide open. She glanced at the hall. The key rings were not on the organizer. Mom and Dad had gone to work.

It was one thing to run free while the folks were somewhere nearby... But alone? Totally unsupervised?

She stepped out onto the table. And saw her shoulder angels. OF course, for a sylph, the imaginary angel and fallen angel both were about shoulder-tall.

"They trust you," Goody Annie was saying.

"But you have a reputation!" Danger Annie said.

"Which they know is a cover," G-Annie said.

D-Annie stood on tip-toe to stage whisper in Annie's ear. "That means they'll forgive you! Take advantage!"

"No! Then you'll be locked up! WE will be locked up."

"Stifle it!" D-Annie said directly to G-Annie. "We haven't had a snit all week!"

"Ray-Ray hasn't pissed us off all week!" G-Annie pointed out.

"Why am I seeing you guys?" Annie asked.

"Shut up," D-Annie said. "You know if Raymond WERE here, he'd have made us scream at least once."

"True," G-Annie allowed. "But it's not like the power company. You can't go on a budget plan for villainy. Of course...that would be efficient..."

"Am I still drunk?" Annie asked.

G-Annie rolled her eyes. "Of course we are."

"And that would make a great excuse," D-Annie said...

"It would, wouldn't it?" G-Annie said.

"Whose side are you on?" Annie asked the angelic sylph.

"Well," D-Annie drawled, "there are no cookies to be had on the obedient side."

"There aren't, are there," Annie and G-Annie said together.

"Follow me," the devil-dressed sylph said.

By the time she was on the floor, she was fully awake and the other two had faded away. She walked towards the kitchen by herself.

It was different, alone in the house. She'd been out, before. Walking around Raymond's room, across to the bathroom, here and there in the living room. But it was always with a human nearby. On the same floor or hovering overhead. Some feet the size of Uncle Marley's fishing rig could come by any second. So sylphs had to keep their eyes and ears open, concentrating on the possibility of being walked in on. Or walked on. Alert to the actions of big galoomping idiots, anyway.

Now she was alone. She kept to the edges of the rooms, that was just natural. But she didn't have the feeling that she had to.

"Oh, what the hell." She turned at a right angle and walked straight out into the room. The walls receded and the furniture, too. And she was out in the big empty space. Nothing to hide behind.

And the farther she got from furniture, the harder it was to see any sign of movement as she traveled. She wondered if that was why she kept to walls, to see things go by, to get a feeling of progress. The carpet wasn't much help, until she reached a worn spot where the big people walked.

There was a visible dip in the carpet and the undercarpeting. At least from down here. She followed it towards the hall that led to the kitchen.

She was a little confused as it curved off from a straight line until she realized humans couldn't get too close to the stereo, their shoulders would bounce off. She picked up the pace.

Her feet slapped slightly on the linoleum but didn't really echo. The sounds were eaten up by the compressor of the fridge, the hum of power supplies here and there.

She shouted, just to see if she could get an echo. Nothing came back to her, the space was much too big, too open.

Annie jogged over to the fridge, moving more quickly on the steadier footing. She jumped as high as she could, reaching for the bottom edge of a menu clipped to a magnet.

Dad hated weak magnets, so her weight wasn't enough to make this one move. She would worry more about tearing the paper. Raymond had explained the 'industrial strength' magnets Dad brought home to make fridge clips out of. He'd even arranged them to make a sort of ladderway for his sylph to climb.

Then left the bottom ten inches clear so she wouldn't be tempted to actually use it. He couldn't jump up to something twice his height off the ground, so he assumed Annie couldn't. Even though he'd watched her jump up to vault over a notebook standing on edge...

She made it to the top of the fridge and crossed to the other side. The cabinet closest to the fridge was for glasses, but that led to the cabinet for cookies, chips and assorted foods considered snackage.

She was kinda surprised at how easy it was to get to the things, once you ignored the distance she had to cover. Then she found the Chip Clip holding the cookie bag closed.

Getting that lose was an engineering feat. She finally had it wedged in the cabinet door, dangling from the handle and swinging her body to shut the door on the clip.. On the fourth swing, it popped free, rattling down to the distant floor. She giggled and jumped to the other door, which was wedged open by a bag of ginger snaps she'd tipped over.

The Tollhouse cookies were barely visible as she stepped into the bag. It shifted from her weight, tipping to the edge of the shelf. She cautiously stepped back onto the shelf itself, looking to drag the bag mouth away from the drop.

That's when the cookies rustled, slid over one another and tumbled... The whole bag followed the clip over the edge. She ducked clear, watching the fruit of her labors scatter to the ground.

"Dammit," she said softly, alone on the shelf with the snaps and the Ruffles and the Fritos. All that work to NOT get a cookie! Even the crumbs had made it all the way down to the floor. Nothing caught on the shelf or the counter below. NOTHING!

She was looking down at the mess when she realized there was a drawer slightly open. Not directly beneath her but off to one side.

The junk drawer. She saw some string, which might make her descent easier. She hopped and swung to get down one shelf, then held her breath and dropped from that shelf to the counter.

Then she was in the drawer. The spool was wedged tightly under a pair of scissors that were heavy enough to fight her weight. She loosened a length and heaved it over the side. Just before climbing out, though, something glinted at her. She peered into the dimly lit interior. And found a box of replacement blades for a modeler's knife.

They were in the kitchen and not the bedroom because Raymond didn't trust Annie with his modeling supplies. And when he moved them into the sewing room, Mom discovered he owned a modeler's knife.

Annie eased one of the blades out. "This might come in handy," she said. She wasn't sure when, or for what, but she did know that Raymond would never just LET her have a knife. Not a big cleaver like this thing.

She threw it to the floor and followed it down. ---------- There was a crunch as Gwen opened the door. She paused, opening it just enough to stick her head through. The cookie bag was crumpled by the door. She called Annie's name, no response. She slid in and picked up the bag. A few cookies remained inside. She put that on the counter.

There were no crumbs on the floor. The broom had been knocked to the floor. She lifted that and found that the dustpan had been knocked loose. She started to reach for that and heard snoring.

A very still little sylph slept on the top of the pan's upper side. There were cookies, cookie pieces and crumbs piled high in the pan itself.

"How did she sweep...?" The sylph's hands had streaks from chocolate. She realized Annie must have hand carried each crumb over to the dustpan and tossed them in.

No wonder she was sleeping, she must be exhausted. Gwen got a towel out of the drawer and folded it on the counter. Then she lifted the dustpan carefully, sliding the sylph onto the towel, then dumping the trash.

That's when she saw the string hanging out of the junk drawer. And the clip on the floor. She continued to clean up, wondering just what all the sylph had been up to.

She decided to wake Annie with a treat and reached for the cookies. But.... Annie had obviously had as much chocolate chip as she'd wanted. Even enough to sleep through Gwen picking up the bag.

Instead, she opened the fridge, taking a small bottle of RC out of the door. As the glass clinked against another one, Annie rose smoothly, coming to her feet and staring around wildly. "It was space aliens threw the cookies on the floor!" she shouted. "Oh. Hi, Mom. It wasn't my fault what's that in your hand, dear, dear lady?"

"Thought you might be thirsty after all the excitement," Gwen said. Annie nodded. Gwen poured the tiny bucket full of cola and held it a few inches over the sylph's head. "You're going to tell me all about the excitement, right?"

"Yes'm," Annie said. "Well. It all started when I heard strange noises from the snacks cupboard."

-------

They apologized for not leaving food out for her, and the next day she had lunch, second lunch, mid morning and afternoon snacks laid out next to the cage. There was a canteen of cola and a juice glass of water.

She thanked them profusely and spent the day decorating her cage.

There was a flat plastic magnet that shared the opportunities available through a local realtor, whose smiling face covered the material. She used that to hold the knife blade down. It went really well under her bed. What was supposed to be a chiffon canopy was stamped metal.

But she was worried Raymond might find it cleaning the cage. It ended up on the bottom of her bed's canopy.. Raymond hardly ever got low enough or held the cage high enough to look inside and see that.

The only problem was that it looked like she wanted to lie in bed, staring up at the smiling face of Southside Saul. Well, she'd just hope no one ever saw that.

Then she wandered over to the TV guide from yesterday's mail. She tried to flip through the listings but the heavy paper inserts snapped a handful of pages out of her grasp. She groaned and tried to slide the insert out. But the surface area gave too much friction. She had to pry the pages open, then hold it with her hands, scooting the paper free with her bare foot.

By then she'd lost interest in the listings, though. She wasn't really sure what day it was... But the insert was a nice color. She hefted it to the cage.

Slid in between the bars, it would provide a privacy panel! She started pushing and tugging.

Once it was in place, she stepped back. "Oh, that's tacky," she muttered. A TV guide subscription card with lines over it.

On the other hand, it was opaque. She walked in the direction of the magazine basket.

--------

"Tacky," Mom said.

"And probably illegal," Dad said.

"What?" Annie asked. "The postal code or whatever? No stamp needed? Is that a federal crime?"

"No," Dad said. "Raymond probably doesn't want you to be able to completely hide from him." There were overlapping strips of paper covering every square inch of the cage except the door. And if she could get someone to cut an insert down to size, she had something for that.

The colors were eye-catching in the usual manner of advertising, with huge lettering and high contrast. Mom's eyes hurt to look at it.

Actually, Annie's did, too, but from inside it was dark. Gloriously, privately dark.

And, yeah, Raymond probably wouldn't allow it. "Well, phooey," Annie said.

"But if we gave you ribbons..." Mom said thoughtfully. "If _I_ gave you ribbons. That'd be decoration. Not hiding."

"Oooooh," Dad said.

"Please?" Annie begged. The night before Raymond's return, they went out to dinner. Annie watched the adults dressing up and doing hair and discussing their reservation time. She sighed at the activity. But at least they left her with the remote.

Suddenly she was swept up into the air and dropped into Mom's purse. "What? Wait! What's going...?

There was nothing in the purse except for a little black dress. "Ooooh."

They made sure to give her her own menu and even a glass out of their wine.

"Am I old enough?" she asked.

"Who's going to ask for your ID?" Dad asked. "Just... don't overdo it. You're driving home." He winked, she winked back and relaxed a little bit.

They asked for what she would order. She paced along the menu, looking for the cheapest meal. She didn't want to waste too much of their money, they were being so nice.

"Oh, stop that," Mom said. "Order what you want! If neither of us can stand to share it with you, we'll share something between us." Her fingers shooed Annie away from the prices column and over to the pictures.

"I, um, I... Well. I guess.... The, uh... If it's okay, I guess..."

"You know," Dad said, "they close in six hours."

"Relax dear," Mom said.

"I am relaxed," Dad said.

"I was talking to Annie, schmuck."

"I'm a schmuck, now?"

"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and makes fun of someone who's trying to be polite, yea, verily, thou art the grand poobah of schmuckness."

"You'd better go for a grand slam, Annie," Dad whispered to the sylph. "It's my only chance to restore myself in my woman's eyes."

"Ahem?"

"Wife. My wife's eyes. Not my woman, no, not in this age of feminism. Look, I even let a sylph vote for dinner."

"Prime...rib?" Annie said softly.

"Booyah!" Dad said. "I'll share with the sylph!"

"Didn't your doctor...?" Mom started to ask.

"Doesn't count on a holiday, right, Annie?"

"Um....right?" she guessed. "I, uh..." The adults stared down at her. "Well. I'm getting wine. So I suppose... Since he's not getting the whole steak... It's... Good?"

"Eloquent," Dad said.

"You're only saying that because you know she takes her steak rare."

"OOH! That's right! I have to share with her since you won't eat anything that still shows up on carbon 14 dating." He lowered his face to Annie. "That only works if there's organic material. When it burns to-"

"I got it, thanks," she said.

"Cocky," Mom said.

"We're sharing dead cow," Dad said. "We're bonding. Does wonderful things for her self esteem, being bonded with me."

"No, I just figured out where my Master gets it from," she said, then calmly sipped her wine while the humans stared. She winked at Mom, then, and they all broke out laughing.

The waiter took their order, smirking as Dad deferred to the pet for which veggie and how to take the potato. Well, let him smirk, Annie thought. She was having a wonderful time.

Dad sliced the entrée carefully down the center and pushed it to the edge of his plate. She indicated the part she wanted and he cut it. She even scooped her own corn kernel and a spoonful of baked potato.

Mom offered to share desert with her, as Dad was too full. Annie blinked back tears for a moment. "Okay. Okay, now I know where Raymond gets that, too."

Mom smiled and pinched Annie's hand between two fingers. "He has his moments," she said.

"More since you showed up," Dad added.

"We, uh, we really think you're going to be a good thing for Raymond," Mom finished.

"And he's better for me than Meat would have been," Annie said. They blinked at her. As far as the Fosters knew, Annie had shrunk on The Day and then woken up next to Raymond.

The kid knew about the seniors. But not about the sheering quickly away from that thought, "So how often can we send Raymond off to Camp?"

"Um..." Dad shrugged.

"I'm thinking two weeks in the woods, a week to do laundry, two weeks in the swamp? Who's with me?" She looked from face to face.

"Annie," Mom said. "You can't be good for Raymond if you don't spend time with Raymond."

"A hole in my clever plan," she snarked. There was a slight catch in her throat. Everyone at the table ignored it.

She sipped her wine and waited for dessert.

---------

She had a hangover as Dad drove to the church parking lot. "No, really," she begged. "Just crush my little head. I promise not to bleed on the upholstery."

"Can't," Dad said. "This street isn't zoned for sylphicide."

"Bastard," she snapped. "Or in the French, Bahstahrd."

"I love a bilingual insult," he said as he pulled into a parking space.

The scout van had made good time and Raymond was already waiting. He tossed his duffel into the back seat and threw himself into the front.

Annie flew into the air for a quick hug against his cheek... She opened her mouth to scream about the pain.... But it was gone.

"How did you survive without me?" he asked his pet.

"Oh, it was great. Your parents bought me clothing and wine and RC cola and left me alone in the house all day and I stole a knife and dug an escape tunnel and-"

"Missed me horribly, I guess," he said. He held her in his fist and stroked her hair. She wondered where her hangover had gone.

"Yes, it was so boring without you," she said. She looked curiously at his eyes. "How are you doing?"

"Eh," he shrugged. "I had a great time at camp, but now I've got a headache..."

"Oh!" she said, surprised. "I, uh, could kiss it and make it all better, I suppose." She hoped he wouldn't ask for that. She might take the pain back.

"Annie," he said, drawling the name out to about twenty syllables. "I'm not a child." He lowered her to his lap and relaxed his grip a little bit. She relaxed as he started to tell her and his father all about camping.



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