2   ANGUISH

While still in Hungary Leo grew, his affection for the two house cats, Miko and Bushi, was uncanny. He grew very fast and by the age of almost two he appeared to be at least four. He was too big to romp around with them, but the two cats gathered around him, followed him, and curled up to him on the bed, the floor, or any place he happened to be and slept with him. Leo's father did not know what to make of it. He was a cat lover like Helena, but Leo was supposed to be a human, not a cat, and it created ambivalent emotions in him.

Leo, like all cats, loved meat and Helena had her hands full to keep him away from Ajax's dish, their dog, a mix of Labrador and German shepherd. Ajax was not very happy with the child initially and growled whenever he came close. Leo contested the dog's chow and contributed more to his mother's confusion about his being. Leo's sharp, pronounced eyeteeth made him look definitely like a carnivore. Defending his food, Ajax bared his teeth and growled, but Leo swatted him and the beaten dog slinked away with his tail between his legs.

With time and Helena's coaching, Leo and the dog became accustomed to each other, and the two unlikely friends spent a lot of time together and shared a dish, very much in secret because Helena still wanted to see a human child in him, and his cat's look and eating Ajax' food was not helping to settle her mind. Leo seemed to know and with time desisted from eating the dog's food.

When Ajax and Leo played, they bolted around the house and the yard like two animals. Leo running on all fours like a dog seemed to be most comfortable for him. Not so for his parents. They wanted him to walk like a human. Leo's parents observed with mixed feelings when the two played, the dog barking and snapping at Leo and Leo's lightning fast evasions, then Leo jumping on the dog's back, pulling him down and sinking his teeth into the fur on his neck. Though Leo wanted to play, he didn't know his strength, and the dog would often be on the losing end. Yelping and whimpering, he cowed to Leo. His parents didn't think that was funny, especially when either got hurt. Helena resigned to accept her son's strangeness but Gábor couldn't. He resented Leo's ‘un-human’ like behaviour. Leo never drew blood, but they had to intervene sometimes when it got too rough Helena took Leo's side and Gábor mostly defended Ajax and tensions escalated. It was a nightmare.

When the winter was mild, the patio door was open to let fresh air circulate through the house and leaves blew in from the trees. Leo chased them as any cat would, but Helena was only half-amused. After all, he was supposed to be a human child and not a kitten at play.

Her concerns grew in accordance with Leo's remarkable growth; the bigger Leo got, the bigger her concern. Leo looked and acted as if he knew how she felt and stopped chasing leaves or items like toilet paper, newspaper, children's toys, or other loose things inside the house. That Gábor's large property was well hidden was very fortunate. He went outside to play when Helena worked in the house. Bushi and Miko were a bit too small to tumble around with, but Ajax could take it, although he lost every contest and Helena was okay with that.

Leo's facial features changed as well. After the age of two, his mother had to cut his hair or fur as it was, once a week. It grew fast, faster than normal. The reddish chestnut color fur had faint markings like a tabby cat. Markings around his eyes and forehead formed a letter "M" and a line of darker fur ran from his eyes toward the base of his large, smooth rounded ears. Helena shaved his face the best she could when they expected someone to drop by, just in case they saw him or when it was necessary to be in public with him. On those occasions, they claimed he had a severe case of Down's syndrome and hoped people would swallow the story.

He had a broad nose with a cleft-line down to his lips; his chin and jowls became cat-like and fine whiskers began to show. It was a beautiful face… for a lion. As a matter of fact, he was much better looking with the fur on his face as when they tried to make him appear human. Leo's hands and fingers resembled that of the cats he played with, complete with retractable, sharp claws. Unusually furry over his entire body by now, the protruding tailbone he had as a baby, had become a long, furry tail and they concealed it in his pants. When people saw Leo's face on occasional events, they turned away to hide their shock at his disfigurement. Usually, they first assumed that he was an animal. Poor parents, they thought when they found out it was their child; they are a good looking couple; too bad about their… their thing.

Other parents hushed their children away from him or hid them behind themselves as to protect them from harm. Leo's parents tried to hide his deformity with clothing, but his face was becoming more catlike from month to month. It became necessary to have him wear a cape when he was outside. Very much to his parents' dismay, Leo still preferred to walk on all four limbs and made strange, throaty sounds, but didn't speak. They hid him away when visitors came, and if someone asked where the child was, they said he was either at some neighbour’s place or playing with other kids.

When visitors came unannounced, Leo was ushered hastily to bed, covers pulled over his body, pillows piled around his face, and his mother claimed he was sick. They hated this charade and retreated more and more from human contact and turned secretive. She talked with him about this situation almost daily, pondering what to do or whom to speak with to find out what the cause of Leo's condition was and how to reverse it. Surfing the Internet didn't yield results, and so Leo's condition remained a singularity.

Gábor's apparent resignation upset Helena. She could not give up believing Leo was intelligent and just misshapen. Their arguments often ended with both of them in tears. They could not find anyone they could trust and settled on the fact that Leo was a freak of nature, and their worries grew. The child eventually would have to attend school, and they wondered what would happen. On top of all this, they began to doubt whether or not Leo was human. Helena loved Leo, except she wondered if she had given birth to a child or a pet. Gábor's ambivalent feelings towards Leo were a problem for both. In his mind, Leo was an animal. Foreseeing problems if they ever wanted to travel abroad, he had suggested shaving Leo's face for ID-card photos and putting him on Helena's passport to avoid the hassle. In addition, if Leo kept changing at the rate he was now, they would have to come up with something else.

Since Leo turned one year old and the changes began, Helena lived in a controlled, but steady panic and doubt about her future. What if her husband lost interest in her? She was a woman who gave birth to a deformed child...no…not a deformed child, but apparently an animal instead in his view. There had to be something wrong with her. Gábor was attractive and could easily find another woman and have a human child with her. That wouldn't have bothered her. She was very autonomous and didn't need anyone's support, and she loved him almost obsessively. As long as he would love and stay with her, he could have as many women as he wanted. Gábor was a good and virile man and her best friend and she valued trust and friendship much higher than fidelity.

Helena had no idea that similar thoughts were also on Gábor's mind about himself. What if it was his ‘faulty' genes that were responsible for Leo's deformity? Would Helena leave him and find a man who could give her normal children? He loved Helena more than life, and if it meant not having a family, or if there was some kind of guarantee another man could produce a normal child with her, then so be it, but he wanted her in his life forever. There was nothing he wouldn't do for her.

They'd looked for ways to deal with the situation without exposing Leo and a personal growth seminar they attended brought some relief. At least Gábor and she remained together. She hoped by making love with him as often as possible would keep him interested in her, but she was afraid of getting old without a family. She wanted to be a mother to many of his children. They shared that dream. He had hoped for little girls to see her in them, while she thought of boys, but never expected them to be animals, at least not in the literally meaning of the word. Neither one of them had thought previously about the possibility of having other than normal, healthy children.

Their medical record was perfect and Helena scored extremely high in all tests. She was the perfect picture of health, therefore, the setback was that much more devastating and left them destitute without knowing what to do.

Once in the darkest moments, they had even talked about just leaving Leo out in the woods somewhere to meet his fate. But how could they do that? Both loved him; they were his parents regardless of his appearance. Seeing human characteristics in him, they would do everything to protect him in spite of his strangeness and un-human looks. There was no way they would do any harm to him or leave him, but they also knew society would never tolerate a being like him. He would grow up to be a freak, a circus attraction, an abomination. Society would not let him live a normal life if it let him live at all. How could they keep Leo from the harm that others would do to him? Society had not learned to accept strangeness in their own kind, whether it was just the wrong color of eyes or a different point of view. Since Leo's transformation they had experienced discrimination as well; in the form of excuses of all kinds, nobody invited them to parties anymore, gatherings or meetings on social or professional levels and friends and relatives shunned them persistently and talked behind their back, calling them the werewolf pack. The decision of immigrating to Canada solidified.

When they arrived in Canada with all their pets, they realized more and more that they were misfits. Even though Canada appeared to be a more accepting and broad-minded society, it was the same as it had been in Hungary for them. Remarks were made about Leo's face, that it resembled a predator, a cat perhaps, and the gossip began to circulate of a genetic abnormality in his parents. He had still resembled a human child when they moved to Canada, but as he got older, his human looks turned into the looks of an animal rapidly, a little human, yet mostly cat and still mute aside from snarling and strange, rumbling sounds. This had upset Gábor and Helena and cemented their decision to move away from populated areas to escape the small-world view of some deep-rooted superstitious intolerance.

Some insights came to them in their self-isolation about their own judgments, and after introspection they made changes in behaviour toward Leo. But still, Gábor had reservations about allowing Leo to share their bed with them while he had no problem to allow the house cats to sleep on the bed, and it wasn't because of Leo's size. He withdrew from Helena to avoid another pregnancy and sex became irregular. Gábor was angry with himself about it, he was irritable and snapped at Helena when she allowed Leo to curl up with her, and then he retreated, contrite and ashamed of his stupid reaction. They had to break down their own judgments and allow themselves to be more open, making mental adjustments in their own minds and learn to accept Leo as he was. It was hardest on Gábor.

The thing ripping them apart was the love they had for each other and the fear of what the future would be for them all. Both had hoped for a big family, but now dreaded the possibility of misshaped children. Leo's morphing had suddenly buried that dream and she felt the rift between her and Gábor getting wider with each passing day. The accusations were never really voiced, but they were there, silently festering like an ugly boil. A child that would have cemented their union threatened to destroy them.

Helena loved Gábor to the end of the earth and back and was sure he loved her just as much too.  She loved Leo as any mother would, even if he was deformed, but the fear of Leo's strangeness and society’s cruelty against him and themselves, eroded their resolve to bear it out. People all over the world had learned to deal with natural enemies like wild animals and calamities. Modern weapons and technology made it possible to lose the fear of these things to a great extent, but now those tools and weapons meant they had to fear their own kind. Leo's looks would bring out the worst in humans; fears and revulsion toward anything not like them would lead them to extremes. Leo would have no chance to go to school, no friends, no places to go, and nowhere to hide. His only companions were the two cats, Bushi, Miko, and Ajax, the old dog. They thought they had to do something with Leo. There was no choice, no way out of this predicament. They would not allow anyone to harm Leo, but secretly hoped and feared at the same time he would just run away into the wild. The contradiction of their emotions, torn between love and confusion about Leo's appearance, themselves, and whether he was human or animal, created an impossible situation and made them both irrational and irritable. Their sizzling sex life slumped and they limited themselves to manual and oral sex practices, but it wasn't very fulfilling for either. Both missed regular sex and so their intimacy dried up, but not their desire.

Helena had suggested once using Ivan as a surrogate father, having a child with him, reasoning and arguing they would know whose genes caused the deformation, secretly yearning to feel that she was still a woman and wanted, but her husband objected. His counter argument that if it were her genes, then that child would be the same as Leo, and Ivan would have the same problem as he had. Her having sex with Ivan he could have tolerated if it would result in a human child, but then challenging her out of insecurity, he had asked whether she really just wanted to know whose genes were defective or perhaps sex with him wasn't sufficient for her. She had countered that sex with him would be enough for her if they just had it. In his anger and frustration, he blew up and told her if she needed more sex than he was willing to risk with her, she should find a Bigfoot to fuck with. At least that would add variety to the zoo.

That argument had nearly ended their marriage and Helena broke down and moved with Leo into the camper for a week and cried every night while he felt sorry for himself in the tent. He was in no better shape than she was, and one day he came to her and apologized. She forgave him, but it was hard to forget. His fear of having another deformed child overpowered his reason and desire to have intercourse the way nature intended, he said. He would love to make love with her like before and even considered a vasectomy. She didn't like that idea at all. Perhaps he could have a baby with another woman. She wanted a family. He replied that it still wouldn't satisfy her desire to have normal and regular sex with him and what if it was his genes that were causing the deformity. He wouldn't want to risk another deformed child. Adopting a child would be an option, Helena suggested and both considered it, but hoped that there would be a possibility to have their own ‘normal' children and dropped the idea of adoption. Medical science was still inadequate to deal with the common flu and Leo's condition was a bit more complicated than that.  Helena saw no way out and contemplated having her tubes tied to prevent pregnancy. She didn't want to give up Gábor even if it meant having no family. But it still wouldn't answer the question whose genes caused the disfigurement.

Their desperation grew daily as Leo changed more and more into a large cat. His chest expanded, his hair had changed into a reddish brown mane, his nose was broad, and he still did not speak and his parents gave up teaching him to talk. His eyes shone with intelligence when Helena spoke to Leo. He seemed to be listening attentively and it even seemed he tried to imitate sounds. Some of them resembled words, but only his mother tried to understand him. Leo's walk was smooth like that of a cat when allowed to move on all four limbs, but upright he lumbered. His toes and fingers had retractable claws, and once when Helena tried to trim them, he let out a roar like a lion in pain and struck her hard enough that she did not try again.

Gábor became more distant to him; he felt ashamed about Leo's disfigurement and guilty about his feelings. Repeatedly, they were mentally strained whether to see him as their son or their pet, they tried to figure out what he was, an animal trying to speak or a human trapped in an animal body. They had a child that was an animal. It seemed, two humans produced a child that looked like an animal, but the same human society would not allow him to exist among them as a human, if he was one. Even his parents had a hard time accepting him the way he was.  They were conditioned to see humans as the only intelligent life form, and if it didn't look human, it wasn't intelligent, and therefore an animal.

Funny how people are; they have heard of Siamese twins, joined at their hips, backs or heads, two heads, or other unusual deformations, and the medical miracles succeeding sometimes to separate them or correct the problem. Often these children lived a normal life aside from the fact that they endured the gawking and finger-pointing and were often circus attractions. But if they looked like an animal, people's attitudes became hostile. It had not come to their awareness yet that intelligence does not require a human body; perhaps that would come later. They loved their pets; even shed tears when they died, but it was still just an animal.

Leo was their product, their flesh, and blood, not a pet they picked up from the SPCA. Helena was his mother, and Leo was the result of their love. Sure, he looked alien, part human, but a mostly animal. But still, it should not matter how different he was, they kept telling themselves; what mattered was that he was their child. Yet it affected them, it affected them strongly. Why else did they choose to move so far away from Secret Cove or Sechelt? The closest settlement, Welcome Beach, was three kilometers to the Northwest from their house with just one little convenience store and a few houses. They felt shame and guilt, wondering how this happened and why.

Leo's change progressed slower now. Some human features remained, but the characteristics of a cat were prominent. They were relieved that they had elected to be far away from prying eyes. They knew, when something they did felt right, coming from the gut, it proved to be a wise choice. But now, faced with only difficult options for their child, they were lost as to what the next right choice was. No silent voice whispered solutions into their ears, and they tried to find an answer in their heads and not their gut. Their despair came like waves. They tried to be reasonable and juggle society's conventions with the cruel games of the Universe. Gábor had no idea how this could have happened and often thought his ancestors must have been Neanderthal and passed down some weird genes. Both had secretly blamed the other for Leo's condition and once they had a huge argument and almost filed for divorce, but could not imagine being apart and tore up the divorce forms and made up. They would rather die together and even talked seriously about it.

Another difficult year passed. Leo turned five and the changes in him had become permanent, eighty percent lion, twenty percent human, but he still grew. Without closer scrutiny, he looked much more like a lion than a human. Walking upright, he plodded and preferred moving about on all four limbs and appeared far more natural that way. His parents gave up insisting that he should walk like a human. Let him behave like an animal if that's what he wanted. Both had given up making him appear to be human when they were alone and that resulted in an uneasy peace. Thanks to a personal growth seminar, Gábor had settled into a state of apathy after that. They stopped trying to make Leo appear to be human but remained strict about letting other people see him. It had become a habit for Leo to slink away or retreat into his room in the basement/dojo when he sensed people coming.

Trying to cover up and cope with his depression, Gábor buried himself in improvement to the house and went for long walks in the bush. On those occasions, Helena urged him to take Leo with him and reluctantly he did. Helena stayed home most of the time, but on occasions, she joined them on their walks in the bush, but Gábor seemed inhibited dealing with Leo and seemed distant. With a heavy heart, Helena accepted Gábor's withdrawal from the nightly intimate activity, but during the day she enjoyed his attention. He was loving and courteous with her, hugged and kissed her, but she felt his desperation as much as her own. He mostly went to sleep in the other bedroom, his reasoning being that he wanted her too much and wouldn't be able to control his urges. Confused and lonely, missing his physical presence at night, she felt deserted by her husband and decided to purchase a vibrator to satisfy her sexual needs. Imagining Gábor, she used it at least twice a week. It kept her from going insane or seeking relief with Ivan or elsewhere. She suspected Gábor found relief through masturbation privately unless he had someone on the side, but she doubted that; he was too straight and it saddened her that they couldn't share pleasures together like before.

On Helena's thirty-fifth birthday in September, she requested as a birthday gift from him taking a tantric course with her and he had agreed. He promised to go with her the following week and did. They hoped it would help them to be more aware and break free from learned responses and prejudices that imprisoned their minds and lives.

Helena taught yoga in Hungary and still practiced it, and Gábor practiced Zen, but this Tantric path was much more difficult than they thought it would be. It challenged all their conditioned beliefs and accepted truths of what life was about. Because established views were all around them, very subtle and seemingly real, making changes was easier said than done. The cage of accepted beliefs and conditioned responses was deeply ingrained and hard to break. Nevertheless, they began to see patterns that governed their attitudes and lives and how they had uncritically accepted established cultural views.

After the tantric seminar, Gábor crawled out of his cave and joined Helena in bed on the condition they have sex only during safe days and use other preventatives. Sex was back on the menu for a total of one week out of a month, By far not what it used to be, or what either of them would have liked. But as Helena once said, having a bird in the bush occasionally is better than an eagle in the sky forever.

This period they called the dark times. Gábor loved Leo in his own way. They had long walks in the woods around the house and into the mountains, but it was a relationship one has with their dog, or as the case was, with a large, exotic cat. Gábor asked himself why he couldn't see him more as his son rather than a pet. A nearly six-year-old child/cat now, Leo was the size of a fourteen to a sixteen-year-old child and as tall standing up as his mother. He seemed to have learned to articulate a few words and Gábor wondered if those sounds were attempts to speak or just sounds. Unknown to Gábor and Helena, Leo had tried to communicate with his parents the way he knew, but gave up when he realized they didn't understand him.

To his father's surprise, Leo had a very deep understanding of natural things. He could follow trails of other animals with ease and move as silently as a shadow. Often he went outside the house and came back with some meat he got somehow and presented it to Helena or Gábor. Most of the time it was a rabbit or a hare and sometimes even a deer. Obviously, he was capable of looking after himself. When they asked how he got it, he just lifted his paws. Were they communicating, or should they just put it down to wishful thinking? Leo's hearing and smell were as keen as the dog's, and he seemed to have night vision. He knew in advance when someone came to the house and usually left before they came in sight or just went to his favourite hiding place, his room in the basement. His other room upstairs, he used only when he was sure no one was coming to visit.

Not that there were many visitors. Gábor and Helena lived a solitary life, and the only occasional visitor was Ivan. He seldom saw Leo, and when he did, it was mostly dark or when Helena ushered the child away. A few times when he dropped in for a visit he had seen a fleeting shadow from afar near Gábor's house and had seen peculiar tracks like those of a cougar, but the toe imprints were much longer and resembled that of a human hand and foot more than a cat, but it never occurred to him it was Leo's tracks he'd seen. Perhaps it was just a cougar with deformed feet prowling around in the area. Thus Leo had remained an enigma.

Ivan had been a martial arts instructor in the Russian Special Forces, and he once asked Gábor if he would be interested in him teaching Leo martial arts. He thought Leo was at the age when he would be most receptive to training in the art and it would be very beneficial for him.

"After all, you have a great set-up, Gábor, and the kid, if it was yours that I saw a year ago, is growing faster than I've ever seen anyone grow and he appears gangly. He looked tall, like ten at least when I saw him the last time, and that was last year. I do not see him all that often; he seems to avoid me, and I've never had a good look at him, and that cape he wears appears permanently attached to his head." Ivan paused for a second. "I believe it would be the right time for him to begin training, and we both could train him," he suggested.

"I'd love to teach him all I know," evaded Gábor, "but he has no interest." He didn't tell him that Leo was fast and he could barely match him in strength, or that Leo was not human. He wanted to teach his son techniques, but how? Leo's body was not like that of a human. His mind probably didn't process what he tried to convey to him and he had given up because Leo didn't get the idea that even though he had the strength and swiftness, he still would be vulnerable to hunters if they spotted him. If at least he would grasp basic techniques of evasion, he would have a better chance to escape.

Gábor wasn't sure whether it was Leo's youth, his animal being, or the simple fact that maybe he balked at the idea of teaching an animal martial arts. Neither did he tell Ivan that in his mind Leo was an animal, more intelligent than the average animal, but still…

They left it at that, but Gábor knew that one day someone would want to find out about Leo, why no one had ever met him and talked with him. Leo was an enigma, like a ghost. Some people knew the Fabien family had a child, but nobody really saw or knew the kid. This would change when school began in September. The school board had sent Leo's registration forms, but his parents had no intention of putting him into a classroom. For his own sake, Leo had to disappear without a trace before school started. He was an animal, and nobody would believe any differently. Not even his parents dared to question that, but they were unwilling to expose Leo to the cruelty of the society that would come as a result of his revelation, even if they'd accept his to attending school. There seemed to be no choice.

Leo had to disappear legally from the eyes of the law and society. But hiding him somewhere where nobody saw him and where he could live in isolation from people wouldn't solve the problem either. What to tell authorities where the child was? Somehow Leo needed to disappear, be dead, legally. Helena and Gábor talked for days about it. They argued, cried, turned every idea upside down, front and back, looked at any possibility, but the situation seemed hopeless. And then after long discussions, a plan emerged. Leo had to become a fatality at sea. There are stories of people falling overboard and never being seen again, aren't there? That might solve the problem of his disappearance. If the authorities would want to know where their child was, the lost at sea scenario was the most believable explanation. Anything else like, "Hey, sorry, our child was an animal so we set it free to fend for itself," or "All that matters is love. Who cares how he looks?" would not go down like a six-pack on a hot summer day, and presenting the child to society would kill him, in spirit if not physically.

The only way out, they thought, was that the child had to disappear, and they had to make it look like an accident to avoid criminal prosecution. Wouldn't that solve the disappearance of their child to the authorities? They would go on a cruise with Leo and leave him on an island with no one, or just a few people, and perhaps someone would take him in and look after him as a pet until the dust over his disappearance had settled and they could come back for him. Missing their only pet/child for months would be punishment enough.

It wasn't a good plan, but it was the only one they could come up with. When they came up with the plot they thought it might solve some of the problems, but not their fear of a possible childless life or another deformed child. As much as they would have loved to stay with Leo on the island, their work, and home required their presence in Canada. Their work was the only source of income. They weren't financially independent and worked for a living. Helena and Gábor would come and look after him at least three times a year for a month and later on join him to live together somewhere.

Helena had a sudden idea. Just the previous day, Ivan had run into Gábor and Helena in Horseshoe Bay at "Troll's", a nice restaurant where they celebrated Gábor's birthday. They had invited him to join in, and the three of them talked and enjoyed each other's company until it was quite late that night. Why not invite him to the house and talk with him?

"What if we could talk with Ivan? Perhaps he could stay with Leo on that island and look after him until we get there. We could ask him to stay with him for three months and then we could do three and when the time is right, we could bring Leo back and no one would think about him any longer. We can have him with us without anyone bothering him or us. What do you think?"

Gábor thought about that and figured it could work. The finances would take a big hit, but if it were only for a year or two, they would recover. His mood lightened up a bit as that nagging emotion he felt about his own ambiguity lifted.

Ivan had glimpses of Leo during the construction of their home, and the occasional odd visits, but not too often and did not know the extent of Leo's disfiguration. He seemed to be more open-minded than any other person they knew, and they figured he would understand. After all, was he not practicing Zen Buddhism also? They would have to set it up so that Leo remained alive, but disappeared, dead or lost at sea without a body to be found.

But to accomplish that, they needed someone to help; it would not be possible to pull this off all by themselves. Helena and Gábor decided to involve him if he was willing. He would be an ideal person to pull off a stunt like that and look after Leo periodically. He was single, retired, and an outdoorsman.

The next day, Helena and Gábor called Ivan over for dinner, which astounded him since the Fabien's never initiated contact with anyone. He figured something had happened otherwise they would not make the first move and issue an invitation for dinner. He accepted.

The setting sun came out from behind the gray cloud blanket on this spring Sunday and illuminated the western sky with yellow and orange light, leaving the house on the northern side in shadows. Ivan pulled up with his Volkswagen Golf, got out and, Gábor greeted him with a firm handshake. Helena smiled and, as always her dimples fascinated Ivan. He smiled back at her and gave her a fatherly hug. "Hello, old Ruskie, long time no see. Yesterday, wasn't it? Feeling better?"

"Yes, it has been an eternity. And any day that goes by without seeing a beautiful woman, is a long time. But I feel much better now."

"I bet you say that to all the female deer in your area."

"None of them has your beauty," Ivan said it with a smile.

"You seem to have recovered well," replied Helena with a wide grin on her face and pleased with his compliment.

"The Vodka-fog has lifted. I'm feeling great, now that I can see again for a change. That was a tough night, and I'm glad Gábor has a birthday only once a year. How are you two after last night?"

"We left it to you to fall into the vat, Ivan. So we're okay." Helena reminded. "You spent a lot of money on booze last night."

"You and Gábor abandoned me to the drink and someone had to support the business."

"I danced half the night with you to keep you from drinking the establishment's entire Vodka supply and leaving nothing to the other patrons. Then you fell asleep under the table. Gábor had to pull you out, and we drove you home. You couldn't stand up. Don't you remember?"

"It was cozy where I was and I was tired after all that dancing on a shifting dance floor."

"You were drunk. And that shifty dance floor was my feet."

Ivan slapped his forehead as if he had an epiphany.

"Ah, of course; that would explain the swaying of the entire local. And who wouldn't be drunk after a bottle of Vodka?"

"Make that two," she laughed.

"You were counting?"

"You couldn't and someone had to," she replied, setting him straight.

It was fun to banter with him after a long time without much contact. She had almost forgotten. It was good to see him again.

"Good to see you are still alive. How is everything around here?”

"Busy with the cleanup after the last winter blast. Come in. Tea?"

"With a bit of rum would be great. It would cure the hangover.  My heater in the car broke down, and I'm freezing my Petunias."

"Can't let that happen. Let's go inside, shall we?"

Leading the way into the house, Helena opened the door and let Ivan pass her. The smell of her cooking made him salivate and he looked forward to a treat. Gábor followed Helena in and closed the door behind him.