Time's Hostage: Betrayal Spirals into Mad Darkness: A Sophia Werniczewski Thriller, #1

By Brenda Kuchinsky

An all-consuming passion and an unforgettable past.
Time's Hostage is a psychologically suspenseful tale of betrayal and revenge, madness and murder, and secrets and sins. Sophia Werniczewski, unable to drive due to her epilepsy, is a psychotherapist living and working in South Beach, a haven for the eccentric, unacceptable, and unruly. She inhabits a circumscribed world, surrounded by her narcissistic husband, an elusive daughter from a disastrous first marriage, and a few close friends.

When betrayal blindsides her, she runs to an electrifying stranger, who is eagerly chasing her. A legacy of silence handed down from her parents, who were Holocaust survivors, has shaped her. She is curious, suspicious, and self-destructive. Her vulnerability draws her into a world of darkness when her husband's erstwhile lover becomes his stalker, her snooping reveals her daughter is not all that she seems, and an inadvertent discovery uncovers her mother's shocking past, driven by primitive urges for survival. A past, Sophia would rather not have unveiled. As she grows closer to her addictive, unscrupulous lover and the passion consumes her, she remains oblivious to red flags.

Will Sophia salvage her sundered serenity or sink under the weight of the chaos that has become her life? Discontent, danger, and the tragic past burden her. Time's Hostage is a sexy, complex nail-biter about how precarious and fragile life can become in a heartbeat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenda Kuchinsky
• Release date: Aug 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386101642

Book preview

1

Sophia, an incessant muffled ringing and knocking burrowing into her consciousness, came to in the Vichyssoise. She raised her head, her mahogany red hair leaking floury potato and leek bits, her aquiline nose dripping, and her startling green eyes registering panic. She gasped raggedly for breath, like a diver surfacing after being submerged in the water too long, drinking in air in greedy gulps.

After ten years, she muttered, exasperated. Seizure free for ten years and they’re back, she continued mumbling to herself, rushing to answer the kitchen door so that the infernal racket would cease. You saved my life, she blurted out to the startled older man, petit and podgy with protuberant eyes, who stood at the door she flung open, nervously fingering a dog’s leash. I was drowning in the soup. My seizures have returned to sabotage me after such a long time. You woke me up with your annoying persistence, she babbled. I’m sorry. Let me pull myself together. What a way to go. Worse than drowning in your own vomit, Sophia declared, shaky and unsettled, her heart still pitter pattering peripatetically.

Are you Peter Lorre? His son? A relative. You look just like him. The spitting image, she said, having reeled onto another tack.

Her head swimming, she was still not fully present. For her, the air was still redolent with the aroma of garlicky charred toast as if her mother were toasting bread Polish shtetl style, holding the bread impaled upon a long fork over the open gas flames and then rubbing it with a clove of garlic before spreading it with butter.

Who is Peter Lorre? the bewildered stranger asked.

This remark snapped her back to the present.

"He was a wonderful character actor. Casablanca? The Maltese Falcon? He had an eccentric voice, mellifluous and abrasive at the same time. Like crunchy honey. You even have the same voice. Weird."

I don’t know what you’re talking about, he said.

At that moment she noticed that he was not addressing her soup bespeckled face but was talking to her breasts. Perhaps his height.

Are you in the habit of answering the door naked? he blurted out, continuing to stare helplessly at her generous breasts, relentlessly toned by countless hours of yoga, which seemed to be saluting him, nipples erect, impossibly firm and full for a fifty-eight-year-old, who hadn’t had surgery.

Hang on, she moaned, running for a robe. Sorry, she said, wrapping the terry robe more tightly as she returned.

Nothing to be sorry about, the puzzled Peter Lorre look alike replied.

"I came to your door because my darling Margarita, my min pin, got loose from her leash. I saw her scrabbling around your house and wanted to ask permission to search for her.

Of course. Of course. Good luck. I would help if I weren’t so discombobulated.

He appeared to be frozen to the spot.

Instead of shooing him off, she asked, What’s a min pin?

A miniature pinscher, he said, finally running off to search for his.

The jangling piano blues riff that was her husband, Bartholomew Royce’s signature tune, sounded on her cell phone, sitting next to the offending soup, as she was closing the door. Sophia dabbed at her face as she darted for the phone.

I need you up here for critical advice darling, Barth said in his rich baritone voice, deepened by years of smoking. And you know how good you are at being critical.

It’s just like you Barth to call rather than walk down the stairs. Indolence, extreme indolence. I think laziness makes you creative. You are constantly thinking up new ways to do less. I’m renaming shortcuts, Barth cuts, she ended on a note of combined petulance and pride.

You’re not being fair. I’ve been working my ass off all morning, painting my latest masterpiece. Anyway, I need your approval.

While she continued to pat her face, she happened to spot her robed body in the full-length mirror opposite her. Unhappy at what she saw, she couldn’t resist one last gibe before shutting down the cell.

You can’t demand approval, she jabbed.

Just come up here and stop criticizing, he said.

Wait, wait. I just had a seizure and I’m drained. I came to in the Vichyssoise. Peter Lorre saved me.

Have you lost your mind? Are you hallucinating? Peter Lorre is dead, Barth said.

Not Peter Lorre. This man, who looked just like him, was hammering away at the kitchen door. I didn’t realize I was naked when I came to and answered the door. He probably saved my life.

Don’t exaggerate, Sophia.

"I’m not. This man never heard of Peter Lorre or The Maltese Falcon."

Not everyone is a film buff like you. Wait. Why were you naked? He saw you naked? he asked incredulously.

I was naked because I was puttering around in the kitchen bathroom after taking a shower. I was so hot from all the preparation for dinner tonight. It popped into my head that the Vichyssoise might be bland and I rushed out to taste it when all hell broke loose in my brain. Shit. I have to cancel dinner. I’ll be up after I call Amanda, Jack, and Lili, she said, feeling her bone weariness. She ended the call abruptly.

Even though she felt contacting her two friends and her daughter to cancel dinner on such short notice required her immediate attention, she stopped to sit down, remembering how she was shunned by friends and classmates when she was diagnosed with epilepsy at age sixteen. Sophia managed to find strength in her new-found isolation. It was both a blessing and a curse. She felt it gave her a sixth sense at times, yet it set her apart. That’s why I became a psychologist, she thought. It bestowed sensitivity on me.

Sophia called Amanda first, thinking she was the most insensitive psychologist she had ever worked with. Dr. Amanda Petersen, clinical psychologist, treating patients with herself always uppermost in her mind. She had been relieved when she ended that psychotherapy partnership. Amanda would give her a hard time about the cancellation. She was pretty insensitive as a friend too. She was hoping Amanda wouldn’t answer and it would go to message. She answered immediately. Now came the walking on egg shells. The Amanda dance.

Amanda dear, it’s Sophia, she said. I have to cancel tonight’s dinner. I had a seizure and I’m not feeling up to socializing. I’m so sorry.

But Sophia I was counting on it. I haven’t been out in ages. I haven’t seen Lili in the longest time. I was planning on surprising you and bringing Keith. Both of them are at loose ends. I know Lili is much older, but they could be friends. I’m here in the wine shop choosing a fabulous bottle for tonight. Can’t you pull yourself together? You’re used to these seizures. You weren’t diagnosed yesterday, she said, sighing to emphasize her distress. She hadn’t taken a breath as the words poured out of her like a rushing stream cascading from a waterfall.

Amanda, I know how difficult it is to change plans at the last minute, but I just have to call it off. She was beginning to scan the room as if she were looking for an escape route from Amanda’s telephonic presence. Besides Amanda don’t forget that we’ll see each other on Sunday at Barth’s gala at the museum. Bring Keith. You know your son is always welcome. Lili has promised to be there. I know you’ll make a stunning presence in your new gown.

That was all the sycophantic chatter she could muster. It worked like a charm. Amanda backed off and she could feel fresh air returning to her nostrils. They ended the call on good terms.

Next, she called Jack Ryan, the most sympathetic person of the three. She and Jack had the easiest, happiest, most satisfying friendship. He was thirteen years her junior. Yet they had a perfect friendship fit.

Jack responded right away. Hi Sophia, he said. Is tonight off? This made her think he was psychic too. Detectives did have finely honed intuition skills. Especially homicide detectives.

Yes Jack. He was the one person she wanted to see without reservation. Since his wife left him they had become even closer. I had a seizure and I’m not up for entertaining.

Take care of yourself, Sophia. I’ll check in with you tomorrow, he said, ending the call.

Now to tackle Lili, who, Sophia thought, would probably be relieved. Maybe she wouldn’t have shown up. Her daughter, her only child, was an independent woman and did not like anything that smacked of a contrived situation. Even though Keith was ten years Lili’s junior, Amanda was jockeying for some sort of friendship. He was a mamma’s boy.

Lili darling, Sophia said the second Lili answered, tonight is off. I had a weird seizure this afternoon when I was trying out the dinner Vichyssoise for lunch and I’m just going to relax and make an appointment with Dr. Clyde on Monday.

Are you all right, Ma? Lili sounded concerned. That Dr. Clyde is such a quack. Why don’t you find another neurologist? He’s no Oliver Sacks. I’m so glad I don’t have to put up with Keith, that pretentious sack of bullshit who takes after his insufferable mother. Where do you find these people? You must search high and low to dig up the biggest egotists to satisfy the psychologist in you. Nice, considerate friends wouldn’t feed the shrink. What a relief, she wound down.

I’m fine now. Just spent, Sophia interjected before Lili could wind herself up again. I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch at Van Dyke’s? Barth is going to try to make it.

"Good. I can go to the Miami Beach Cinematheque to see Blue is the Warmest Color. Then I’ll go to that grungy French place next door. I’m psyched, Ma. I love you. See you tomorrow at Van Dyke’s. All my love to Barth. Hope I see him too.

2

Barth stepped back from his painting, sweeping his overgrown golden hair from his forehead. His lanky frame, angular features, and elongated fingers created an aristocratic presentation which belied his humble roots.

The only offspring of an English father, an RAF pilot wounded during an air raid, and a German mother, who found herself falling for the man she was nursing, Barth grew up in a bubble in Hamburg, where his parents’ marriage had been verboten until 1946. When Barth came along eleven years later, his parents were still nursing wounds.

Barth’s dark chocolate eyes peered at his painting, annoyance vying with anticipation. He felt it had been hours since he had summoned Sophia. He was pacing.

Sophia, freshly showered once again and dressed only in a bright red kimono she had chosen over the toweling robe, flounced into Barth’s study, stumbling over a few books strewn on the floor.

Here I am. Sorry. I had to shower off the soup after my calls, she said, competing with Loudon Wainwright’s velvet tenor wailing about love and loss.

She gazed out the large window, flanked by an articulated skeleton and a mannequin, to rest her eyes from the chaos in Barth’s studio. Art books, paints, canvasses, and several cameras all contended for space on the crowded floor.

The skeleton and mannequin always hooked her. The skeleton evoked death images, etched into her brain by her parents’ death book, left carelessly lying around, depicting Jews dead and dying in the Holocaust, their silent Holocaust. The mannequin reminded her of her unwanted curves, desirable to many but anathema to her. She longed for a cadaverous body. She looked away guiltily.

You’re here now, he said, turning off the music and getting her attention.

Slowly, allowing the suspense to build, Barth inched the concealing cloth down the length of his painting. They stood like two skittish thoroughbreds, haunches quivering, nostrils flaring, unsure as to whether to bolt, escaping the threats in the air or settle and face the danger.

Sophia pulled at her left ear, an involuntary movement when she was perplexed or overwhelmed.

Take your time. Take your time, Barth stuttered as he put a cigarette to his lips, lighting it in one swift movement.

Sophia continued to examine his work. She was flummoxed by the vision he had created. He had changed his style radically. He had used chiaroscuro, contrasting the inky blacks with moon glow whites. It was as if Tim Burton and Rembrandt had met in the twilight zone to form an unholy alliance. The overall effect was like a film noir projecting that world of black and white.

Barth had begun pacing like a caged gibbon. He was smoking his cigarette with quick jerky movements.

Here, sit down, he said, distracted, as he pushed a green suede upright chair up to her so that she plopped into it. All the while he was puffing away.

She continued to scrutinize the painting. The subject was a fleshy nude, her back to the viewer but with her bewildered face twisted forwards, facing a mirror. In the mirror, the woman’s body had metamorphosed into a male’s body, muscles rippling under the taut skin. His head was also twisted away, mirroring the woman’s stance.

Finally, Sophia spoke, causing Barth to stop pacing and puffing as he looked at her.

It’s beautiful, original – although I see the old masters and art deco in there – and uncanny. Here in South Beach this gender bender subject is near and dear to many hearts, she said, pulling her robe tight, worrying her ear. She took a deep breath before continuing. What is going on Barth? I’m thinking the old clichés. Who are you? Do I even know you? Where did this come from?

Hold on, hold on. Stop, he put a hand to her mouth as he pulled her up and led her away from the painting. The main thing is that you love it. Do you love it to bits? He looked at her and rushed on before she could respond. I don’t want your psychologist’s analysis, looking for hidden meanings, interpreting everything to death, leaving no stone unturned. He stopped short.

I told you it’s beautiful, stunning even. But you can’t change your style, your colors, and your subject matter and then not expect me to question it. What happened to your sunny tropical colors, your gorgeous women, the natural backgrounds humming with life? Butterflies, birds, flowers…, she trailed off. She gathered steam and continued like a runaway locomotive, Are you not telling me something? Have you been diagnosed with a terminal illness? Is that causing all that stark coloration, the feelings of helplessness, and the shocking transformation?

The only diagnosis is yours. Terminal anxiety and paranoia. Always thinking the worst – death and destruction. The end is near. The sky is falling. He stubbed out his cigarette, jabbing it into the ashtray. I’m changing direction. I’m bored. I need a new focus. Let’s go out into the garden. To the gazebo. Enjoy the evening. Drink some Champagne, he said.

Great idea. It’s December. It’s marvelous outside. I don’t know if alcohol is such a good idea, though, after my afternoon in the soup.

Nonsense. Barth took charge. Champagne is not alcohol. It’s good for you. Good for whatever ails you. And you can tell me all about the seizure. I’ll meet you at the back door in five minutes. Don’t keep me waiting, darling, he said, already halfway out the door, ready to change the mood.

3

Sophia and Barth walked into the twilit garden. She loved dawn and dusk. The times of transformation. The interstices of time.

They walked hand in hand, in companionable silence, he carrying the two bottles of Moet, she carrying the champagne flutes. He hovered over her by six inches, a tall angular figure contrasting with her voluptuousness.

We should come out here more often. It’s perfect, she said as they reached the gazebo.

Here’s to your beauty, Barth said after he poured the champagne and they were clinking glasses.

Here’s to your genius, was Sophia’s classic rejoinder. The standard toast Barth had taught her. He liked predictability and ritual. The clichéd toast comforted him.

As the dying light gave way to darkness, they sat sipping their bubbly, taking in the perfumed air, the lush greenery, and the downy doves foraging for stray seeds beneath the feeder before tucking themselves into their feathery beds.

Sophia broke their silence by apologizing. I didn’t mean to overreact to your painting. I do think it’s wonderful. You just threw me. The sudden change.

Sophia was thinking about Morton, her first husband, a painter, who had been a habitual cheater. He was always changing things up, running off at the most inconvenient times, screwing his models, doing whatever he pleased. Once, when she caught him with a model, he quoted Diego Rivera, that womanizing painter. Hands on hips, irritated, he tossed off, Why, Sophia. It’s just like shaking hands. It may not have meant a thing to Morton, but it hurt her every time. Change made her paranoid. She expected the worst. To be the victim again. Barth had never given her cause to suspect him of womanizing. He was charming. And women loved his tall grace. He never overstepped his boundaries.

Now that we’re both in synch, Barth began, a warm breeze ruffling his hair as he picked up his glass, tell me about your seizure. I’ve been selfish again thinking only about my painting. He looked out into the darkness and sighed.

You have been a little self-absorbed. But I don’t mind. She shivered, chilled just thinking about the afternoon. She preferred avoiding the subject altogether. Anxiety crept into her eyes, replacing the blurred buzzy look. Let’s talk about your painting, she said, dodging the subject of her seizure.

You love it, don’t you? Now that you’re past the shock? I’m taking myself more seriously. No more birds, bees, and babes. And those fucking flowers everyone drools over. I’m so sick of it. I’m sugar coating everything. I want to express my dark side. One more comparison to Matisse and I’m going to puke my guts out. Seizure forgotten, Barth was warming to the subject of himself.

I had no clue. All this was going on with you, she said. Where have I been?

You’re busy with your work. And you exercise like a fiend. All your spare time. Walking, weights, yoga, Zumba, Pilates. You name it.

Don’t be so dramatic.

I’m not. Where’s the time for your neglected darling Barth, starving for affection, curled up all by his lonesome, in a corner? You’re paid to listen to all those people. By the time you get to me, you’re tired of listening.

Not true, she said, guilt beginning to prick at her.

Too true. We have a great marriage, though. I’m not knocking it, he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek.

So, there’s nothing horrible going on with you? she asked.

I told you everything, he insisted. Don’t psychoanalyze me.

Two things in one day. I have a seizure and you turn into Edvard Munch.

Come on. I didn’t know you were going to have a seizure out of the blue and the painting is not that dark.

You say don’t analyze me, but you complain I don’t pay enough attention to you.

There’s a happy medium between complete ignorance and a Freudian spotlight.

"You’re going to call it Metamorphosis?" she asked.

Of course, he replied. You read my mind. Now let’s talk about your seizure.

I don’t have a handle on my illness any more. I’ve been lulled into a phony sense of security. The Neurontin has worked so well for so long. I’m glad I gave up driving. What if I were driving when this happened? I don’t even want to think about it. I’m glad I work out of a home office. As long as I don’t get a disturbed patient attracted to the whole working at home thing, who starts to stalk me. Right now my patients are the worried well. No personality disorders, no psychoses, no suicidal or homicidal plans.

Okay. Barth’s mellow voice brought her back to the present. Enough meandering down the crooked, twisted alleyways of your mind. You were beginning to tell me about the seizure. What was frightening about it?

Right, right. This wonderful bubbly has made me loose as a goose. See why I can never honor Dr. Clyde’s ban on drinking? Wine and Champagne only. No hard stuff. It is just so therapeutic - vino therapy. Maybe I’m on to something and can recommend it to patients grappling with anxiety and depression, she laughed.

Sophia began pulling on her left ear, bewilderment overcoming her.

I really don’t know where to begin or how to describe it. I’ve said this before. I have another consciousness. I came to in the Vichyssoise. Lucky it was cold soup. Lucky Peter Lorre’s doppelganger was relentless. I must have had a seizure. I don’t remember. How long was I out? No clue. It was just confusing and bizarre. No warning. Just a face full of soup and the smell of garlic in my nostrils.

You could have drowned in the soup, Barth said.

I was thinking I could have. You poo pooed it earlier, Sophia said.

I wonder if there have been cases of people drowning in their soup, Barth said.

Vichyssoise, he thought. A fancy way of saying potato and leek soup. He was back in Hamburg, sitting on his Mutti’s lap, feeling her reliable thighs supporting him while she fed him the starchy comforting soup. He could taste the grainy liquid sliding down his throat as he twirled a thick strand of her blond hair, smelling of apples and caraway seeds.

Invariably, father disrupted their contented closeness, stomping into the dingy flat, the commingled odors of sweat and tobacco wafting in with him as he swatted Barth off, like a pesky fly, to eat his own soup in solitude, while Vater commanded all of Mutti’s attention, shouting after him, "And don’t call her Mutti. Say Mum."

Barth? Where did you go? You look like you’re a million miles away. Sorry, I’m boring you, she said.

He opened his eyes, sighing.

No. I was just remembering the potato and leek soup we used to eat all the time. Hot unfashionable Vichyssoise, I guess, he said, sounding distant.

Barth you are getting stewed. I don’t feel like talking about the seizure. The night is gorgeous. You are gorgeous. The cicadas are symphonic. Let’s go to bed. The Champagne is gone, she finished, getting up gingerly.

Barth stubbed out his cigarette, stood and stretched to his full length, grabbing Sophia’s hand. Do you know what would be the crowning touch to this glorious evening? he asked, coquettish, cocking his head to one side.

Sophia groaned out the words, dragging them out. Oh, no! A massage. Barth, you are shameless. Who had the weird afternoon? I know, I know. I give the best massage in town, in the country, in the world.

She sulked, pretending to be reluctant to grant his wish. They both knew she loved to massage him. It usually ended in relaxing yet vibrant sex.

As they bounded up the stairs to the bedroom, Sophia was anticipating the love making. She was prepared to massage Barth but she really had her eyes on the prize, the bucket of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Barth stripped and flopped down on his stomach. Sophia rubbed lavender oil between her hands until they were well coated. She began using deep kneading strokes on Barth’s compliant back. His vertebrae visible beneath the skin, he moaned and his skin expanded as Sophia worked away.

Occasionally Sophia looked up at the gleaming brass bars at the head of the bed. She became engrossed in what she was doing. Her hands slid over various parts of Barth’s body, applying pressure and easing up. She worked his arms and hands first and then his legs and feet.

She had become so absorbed by her activity that she did not notice that those appreciative sounds keeping time to her rhythmic touch were gone. He was snoring. She had put him to sleep. She spooned his long body and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

4

Sophia was early for her lunch with Lili and Barth. Since she had given up driving, she found herself arriving early for all sorts of things. South Beach was a walking city. Early could be fun.

Sophia entered Van Dyke’s on Lincoln Road, her favorite street, a pedestrian mall, with a riches to rags to riches history, deteriorating from being the Fifth Avenue of the South in the fifties to a crumbling Cemetery Road in the eighties, only to be reincarnated in the nineties into a modern opulent avenue.

It was late December, the height of the season with the best weather in the country and the terrace heaved with idling tourists and locals. The black and white clad waiters waltzed to the clatter of dishes and the clinking of glasses.

Sophia sat in the nearly empty forlorn interior, hearing the muted echoes of the humming humanity outside. Like buzzing bees, she thought. She surveyed the dark wood-paneled walls, hung with cheap framed copies of old paintings. She had opted for solitude rather than people watching. The sidewalk seating offered the joys of viewing the parade of the desperately self-absorbed, so at home in South Beach. A hodge-podge of the terminally narcissistic strutting their stuff.

A waiter intruded on her thoughts. Excuse me. That gentleman over there asked me to bring you this glass of Burgundy with his compliments, he said brusquely while gesturing to a table near the staircase, hastily depositing the glass, and hurrying away to tend to the insatiable terrace hordes.

Caught off guard, Sophia peered into the gloom. She was not good with strangers in her personal life. She was especially not good with strangers who might be making a pass at her. She was on full self-consciousness alert.

Not knowing what else to do, Sophia raised her glass to the man half hidden in the gloom, bowed her head in acknowledgement, and sipped her excellent Burgundy. In an instant, the man was at her table. He seemed to have flown over and rapidly folded up his wings.

The man, dressed in a sleek black leather coat, smelling of money, emitting an alluring piney fragrance, was electrically handsome. He sent a current through Sophia.

Such a beautifully intriguing and intriguingly beautiful woman should not be eating alone, he growled in a deep gravelly voice, marked by a faint Teutonic accent. Say the word and I’ll join you. My name is Dirk Salzburg. And you are? he asked as he bowed slightly, his thick dark mane tumbling forward.

Sophia Werniczewski, she answered, mesmerized by his presence. She wanted to reach out and entwine her fingers in the depths of his dark locks.

Her guard was down and her self-consciousness faded. Sophia was drinking in Dirk’s flattery, like a parched woman lost in the desert, gulping new found water at the oasis. She had to pull herself together and get rid of this imposing man who had appeared like an apparition, stopping time.

Sorry, Dirk. I’m not eating alone. I’m waiting for my husband and daughter. Thank you for the wine, she said, shaking her head to dissipate the spell this man had cast over her.

So sorry to hear that. I thought I had a chance to lunch with such pleasant company. Here’s my card. If you would ever care to dine with me just give me a call. I’m sure it would be a memorable evening. He disappeared as quickly and quietly as he had appeared.

She was watching the departing Dirk heading into the bright Miami light, thinking only a local would wear a leather coat in December. The tourists were half-naked.

Sophia realized she was still holding on to his card. Without reading it, she tucked it into her bag and took a few deep breaths to change the scenery in her head.

Just as Sophia was putting her wine to her lips, Lili swanned in. Lili, striking in red and black with a cape covered in disembodied eyes, swirled around to be admired.

Lithe and long-limbed, Lili sometimes resembled the macabre Morticia Addams of The Addams Family with her jet-black hair hanging tamed below her shoulders as her intense wide set brown eyes peered out of a narrow, fine-boned face.

I love the cape. Channeling Salvador Dali? Surreal. How are you? Sophia was bowled over by Lili’s cool beauty and poise every time.

I’m great, Ma. Just finished this cape before I shot over here. Is Barth coming? she asked.

"Yes. He’s walking over from the museum. I love seeing the two of you together. You seem more like Barth’s daughter than Morton’s. The