DUELING EMBLEMS
First thing Patti's mother said when she heard that her daughter had gotten a job at the Sinorak Smorgasbord was, "Why a buffet? You know the customers don't tip for shit!" No matter where she was hired, Patti knew, her mom would have found something to beef about, so she took the remark in stride. It wasn't as if she was planning on spending her whole life at Sinorak's, after all.
She'd applied for the job to help pay her grad school tuition: another decision her ma hadn't been too keen on. "Keep it up, and you'll be so educated that no man'll want ya," she regularly repeated to her daughter, flicking a lipstick smeared Salem butt into an already overburdened ashtray. Her mother was an expert when it came to inconstant men; Patti had seen a score of ‘em waft in and out of Eloise Bunyan's life over the years. She'd long stopped listening when it came to Mom's romantic advice, too. According to Miz B., not only was too much intelligence dangerous, so was restaurant employment:
"Keep workin' at that buffet; yer gonna get fat - and no decent guy will want ya!"
A slender brunette in her early twenties, Patti didn't worry about her weight. She had a healthy appetite but tended to burn off calories quickly. And if she'd added a slight softness to her frame in the months since she'd started working, it hadn't observably affected her social life. Her current beau managed Sinorak's, while also working on his master's in Communications Theory. Patti'd met him in the campus library - they'd bumped into each other in the stacks - and it'd been lust at first sight. Eric was one of those solidly built youths who looked like he was just as adept lifting bales of hay as he was delving in the biblio-files. Considering the number of flighty males that had wafted in and out of her mother's life, it was understandable that she'd find his brand of handsome stolidness sexy.
It was Eric who'd told her about the vacancy at Sinorak's, of course.
Patti liked her hostess position; unlike many upper level collegians, she enjoyed being sociable, and the job itself wasn't too intellectually taxing. Sinorak's was one of several popular eateries off the interstate, and not one of these restaurants was part of a chain or franchise. Most small cities were indistinguishable near the off-ramps, but somehow this part of town had developed its own unique personality.
Sinorak's customers were largely regulars - hearty eaters, most of ‘em, and generally appreciative of the fare that was served in abundance. Despite her mother's predictions, they often proved to be good tippers, too. They'd stop by the register and slip her a five - considerably more than the standard fifteen per cent - then happily waddle out into the parking lot. Patti never told her mother about the quality of her tips.
In six months of hostessing, she still hadn't met Sinorak's owners. According to Eric, Michelle and Robert Hues lived a few blocks away from the place and oversaw their business from their home. It was the Hues, he told her, who were responsible for the high quality of produce and meats that were supplied for the kitchen - they were somehow capable of even getting out-of-season produce trucked into the restaurant. This quality fare was, he believed, the reason for the smorgasbord's intensely loyal repeat customers.
Eric only knew part of the story, though.
Too damn many Anger reps out in Silicon Valley, he thought, doing their job too fucking well.
Though he didn't like to admit it, some emblems were a pain in the ass. Part of the job, he supposed, but he wished that he had more field reps like Bob and Michelle - it was always a pleasure to be in their endomorphic presence.
But that was part of the point, wasn't it?
He looked up from his monitor to see Lust leaning in the doorway, doing her tempting secretarial pose today: long lush legs carefully poised within her tight pleather skirt to accentuate her calves, tight silk blouse showing more cleavage (and a black lace bra) than most company dress codes would allow, wide eyes winking with her patented combination of feigned innocence and unmistakable invitation. "Reverend Dan's on the phone," she purred, before giving him a chance to respond to that invite.
Double damn, he thought, reaching for the phone.
"Mister Moorcock," he heard, in that stentorian tone, "or are you still calling yourself that these days?"
Oh, it was gonna be one of those conversations. Sitting straight, Jerry adjusted himself for the joust ahead.
"Still keeping it as a business name," he clipped back. "Though it is getting rather old. What can I do you for, Rev?"
"Just thought I'd check in - let you know I'm bringing the Crusades back into yer neck of the woods. I feel a soft spot for yer li'l community. S'where you stole my secretary out from under me, after all."
Same old story, Moorcock thought. "We've gone over this before, Dan. I needed a replacement for Tracy, and your girl fit the bill. We're all working for the same team, after all."
"But I had plans for that young lady," the Reverend shot back. "You know how much phony sense of self can be raised through weight loss? I was on the verge of giving her what she wanted: a slender body and a major boost to her self-esteem!"
Jerry Moorcock sighed. Some days it was a toss-up as to which was the most annoying Behavioral Manifestation - Anger or Pride. Pride reps took every idea that wasn't theirs as if it was a personal assault. If only, he thought, you could reboot your employees as easily as you could your computer.
"Look, Dan, Michelle Hues is one of the best Gluttonies that it's ever been my pleasure to work with. She has an aptitude for it, which tells me that - at best - she'd have made a mediocre Pride. I keep asking you to let it go, Reverend."
"You would say that," Reverend Dan countered, "because it suits your best interests to do so. I know how you management types work: decisions based on expedience even if it has to be at the expense of the rest of us! So Gluttony gets filled, while I'm still looking at a distaff vacancy. I'm telling you, you're on the verge of a serious morale problem, Sire Moorcock."
Jerry rose from his desk chair, stretched and took his time answering. He gazed out the window instead, considering the waves of behavioral influence hovering in the air. Though they hadn't left their home in months, the Hues continued to send out the brightest, strongest waves. Something about the Midwestern atmosphere was extra-conducive to Gluttony.
"You're kidding, right?" he finally snorted into the speaker. "'Morale problems,' indeed. Every one of my people is here because they're meant to be, because their positions jived with the core of their being. We do not have a morale problem at Emblems, Inc."
"We may be emblems, but we're people, too," the Reverend rejoined. "If you don't realize how boundless our capacity for dissatisfaction is, you haven't been spending enough time with Envy."
"I take your point, Dan," Moorcock admitted, "but where are you going with it?"
"What makes you think I'm going anywhere?" the Reverend asked. "Like I said, I'm just reporting in."
"Why, of course, you are," Moorcock said. "So you'll stop by the office when you blow into town?"
"I'll do better than that," Reverend Dan replied, and something in his voice started setting off major alarm bells in Moorcock's managerial synapses. "I'm taking you out to lunch."
Because Patti worked both days of the weekend, she was there to welcome Reverend Dan the Saturday that he showed for lunch. Her mother had gone through a short-term, deeply religious spell back when Patti was in high school (nuthin' a budding teen likes better than an aggressively born again parent - it did wonders for her dating profile!) so she recognized the Reverend immediately. Her mother had dragged her to one of his earlier Crusades, and though they hadn't met him personally at the time, they'd been close enough to get an up-front-and-personal look.
Eloise Bunyan had been about as un-Christian a Christian as you could get - supremely arrogant in her refurbished beliefs, equally intolerant of anyone who even slightly wavered from the One True Path - and it's a testament to Patti that she didn't turn away from religion completely in the face of her mother's tirades. But she kept her own small, private faith, and if it was nothing like the Christianity that Reverend Dan Wilder espoused, she suspected that in some ways it was truer.
Still, seeing the Reverend come striding into Sinorak's over lunch, she couldn't help feeling a twinge of - what? - she wasn't sure, though it sure made her feel uncomfortable.
He arrived behind a family of rural regulars: pin-neat and charismatic, the Reverend entered the restaurant with an entourage of serious-looking men and women. As he asked Patti for a sufficiently large table, a slim figure separated from the troupe and swiftly taped a poster to the front door window.
"I'm not sure you can do that," Patti told the stern-faced young woman as she rejoined the group.
"I'm sure it will be alright," Reverend Dan said soothingly. "I know the owners, and they won't object." Corralling his coterie, he followed Patti into a semi-private dining area with two large tables. The poster woman walked by his side, shooting appraising looks at each customer as if mentally tabulating the caloric contents on their plates. "I'm expecting one more member of our party," he told her, as he directed the pushing of both tables into one. "If someone asks for Reverend Dan - "
"I'll send him back," Patti finished. She returned to her station, not before checking out the poster. It was advertising a prayer meeting at the Armory (with a special guest appearance by "noted Christian weight loss expert," Lane Salisbury). The heading across the top blared, "Smite the Deadliest Sins!" Written in scratchy lettering beneath the upraised fist of a righteously shouting Reverend Dan were the three transgressions that had been singled out: Lust, Sloth and Gluttony.
That's funny, Patti thought, slamming Gluttony in the windows of a smorgasbord. She wondered what Sinorak's owners would think about this not-so-subtle negative advertising. Finally, she looked for Eric's blazer and waved him over to the entrance. He took a look at the poster and arched an eyebrow inquisitively.
"Who put this up?"
She indicated the group that had already made its way to the salad section. Eric took them in, then apparently made an executive decision and stomped over to remove the sign, nearly colliding into a middle-aged gentleman just coming through the door.
"Mr. Moorcock!" Eric said, standing to quickly straighten himself. "We don't usually see you here."
"I know - Eric, right?" the strikingly good-looking figure said, an amused expression on his handsome face. "But I keep hearin' that you've been doing a great job managing the place. I assume that the Reverend's already arrived?"
"If you mean the leader of the crew responsible for this poster, then he has," Eric said.
"I see he's brought a crowd, too," Mr. Moorcock observed, scanning the crowd with a moue of distaste. "We'll try not to be too disruptive." He looked back at the poster then shook his head. "Lane Salisbury," he said, "I knew things'd been too calm lately." He nodded toward Patti then headed for the Reverend's tables.
"Who's that?" she asked, working to keep the open appreciation out of her voice. Why couldn't her mother ever bring home guys like that? she wondered.
"Gerald Moorcock," her boyfriend said. "The Hues' business manager. He interviewed me for this position, in fact."
"I've never met him."
"I've only seen him twice before this," Eric told her, as a largish family appeared in the entryway. "Which is three times more than I've seen the Hues, of course."
Two days after its previous tenants left for the West Coast, Michelle and Robby Hues had transformed their duplex into a single-family dwelling. Like most changes designed to enhance the Behavioral Manifestations' work environment, the shift had been sudden and all encompassing. Their home had every amenity necessary for the comfort of its mega-sized inhabitants: doorways large enough for a VW to drive through; reinforced king-sized couches to stand as single seats for husband and wife; a pool-sized Jacuzzi; a gleaming up-to-date restaurant kitchen; and more.
Every morning, one of Sinorak's chefs arrived to start some meals on the stove. There they'd simmer all day, sending mouth-watering scents throughout the house. As Gluttony reps, neither Michelle nor Robby needed to have their meals cooked for them, but a working kitchen added to the ambience. It was the Hues' form of potpourri.
This month, the two were taking a dining tour of their favorite cookbooks from the last fifty years, devoting a day to each and focusing (of course) on the high-cal items. The day Michelle learned that her old employer was back in town, they were working on a book of farm recipes put out by the ladies' auxiliary of a nearby Baptist church. It was one of Michelle's favorite titles, a fact that never ceased to amuse her husband, Rob.
They were sitting in the living room, working their way through two large platters of chicken fried steak and critiquing each other's efforts, when Michelle saw the Reverend on TV. Nudged into the cable feed for The Food Network was an ad for Reverend Dan's Crusade, which apparently was making its triumphal return to the area. Naturally, Michelle was interested.
"Been ages since I've seen my old boss," she considered, as she speared four large cuts of steak onto her serving fork, dipping them into a full-size crock-pot of white gravy. Her jowls quivered excitedly as she le the extra juice drip off. "Wonder if he'd even recognize me. He left town the day I resigned - didn't even come by to wish me good luck."
Rob looked across his burgeoning forefront to the bottom-heavy behemoth that was his spouse. Since she'd taken on the position of distaff Gluttony, Michelle Hues had added enough weight to put her within reach of the ton marker. There wasn't a part of her that didn't appear overstuffed, a fact that was emphasized by her preference for flesh-hugging, sleeveless dresses. ("If I'm gonna be the part, might as well show it off," she'd once said to Rob, who tended more towards loose colorful shirts and draw-string pants.) Seated on her couch, conjuring a fresh batch of cream-filled mashed potatoes onto a nearby TV tray, she was awe-inspiring and overwhelmingly beautiful. Just looking at her made Rob want to surpass himself daily.
He'd grown to love every part of her voluminous body: those swelling hips that covered all three cushions of her couch and pushed against the armrests; the belly that rested on top of her legs and ballooned within her dress commandingly; her bulging calves which were only visible when she reached to the side and raised enough belly to expose one. Her unrestrained breasts settled atop her abdomen like two small children on a hilltop, watching the world and quivering with excitement for the life that was ahead of them. Her face was lively and attentive to all that was around her; she used her chins and dimples like other women used their eyes and lips: expressively and provocatively. There were moments when he caught her looking at him that Rob wouldn't exchange for any other moment in his life.
He took two deep bites of his steak before saying anything (conversations in the Hues household were long on such pauses) and then said, "You'd think he'd be glad to hear you'd finally found your niche. But, then again, Pride is one of the more self-centered emblems."
"You know the Reverend says the exact same thing about Gluttony, don't you?" Michelle noted, wiping the gravy droppings off her plate with an enormous, but well-manicured forefinger. "We're too obsessed with our own physical needs to reach the greater divine." She gestured to indicate her intensely physical body, causing her upper arms to wave emphatically. Her bare feet, Rob noted, were on the verge of being covered by her lower belly; when she stood and arched her back, they still were lost in the shade of her paunch.
"This chicken fried steak is pretty divine," Rob replied, conjuring up another helping for the two of them. "But what do I know?"
"You know plenty," Michelle thought aloud, and, with that, the two returned to their day shift binge.
The luncheon meeting did not appear to go well; midpoint into the meal, Reverend Dan and his followers rose from their tables and dramatically left the restaurant. "Mister Moorcock'll be taking care of the bill," the Reverend loudly told Patti on his way out. Patti looked over toward the tables and their sole occupant, Gerald Moorcock, who glumly nodded in agreement with the Reverend's statement. The group had eaten so little as to make their presence at a buffet laughable.
"Everything okay?" Eric came over to ask Moorcock. It wasn't usual to have a group leave after just the salads, and you could see the concern on his face.
"It's fine, Eric," the well-dressed gentleman said. He took a sip of coffee, then rose from his chair with a sigh. "Those were Friends of Lane with the Reverend," he explained. "You aren't gonna see them eating much in public."
"'Friends of Lane'?" Patti asked from behind the register.
"Exercise and diet junkies," Eric realized. "Followers of Lane Salisbury; he does a fitness program on one of the Christian cable networks."
"That's the man," Moorcock affirmed.
Ever since Patti'd seen the poster, the name had been niggling at her, and now she realized: she'd seen Lane Salisbury on television. Short but muscularly compact, obnoxiously upbeat, he hosted an a.m. exercise program that her mother sometimes watched. The image of Eloise Bunyan, sitting in her robe over coffee and cigarettes while a crowd of young athletic types did calisthenics on the 23-incher, popped up in her head.
"Your Body, Your Temple," she remembered. "My mother's a fan of the show."
"She an avid viewer?" Moorcock asked, casually skimming the rest of the afternoon lunch bunch as he walked toward the exit. Most of the regulars seemed to have sneaked out while they'd been focusing on the Reverend; the buffet tables were uncharacteristically full, Patti noticed. Standing by their stations, the wait staff was hanging out with bored looks on their faces.
"Pretty slow for a Saturday," Moorcock observed, as he headed for the exit.
"For the moment, at least," Eric told him reassuringly. "But things'll pick up."
For the rest of the day, though, Patti's boyfriend was wrong.
Michelle and Robby Hues were working through the cookbook's dessert section (two full bakery racks packed with pies - pecan predominating - two tables filled with overflowing cake pans, and several full-sized sheets of colored Rice Crispy Treats) and discussing whether alcohol was a legitimate part of the Gluttony lifestyle. It was an ongoing topic of debate among their peers: while early medieval emblematic representations featured the imbibing of alcohol, these days the community was divided on the matter. Both Robby and Michelle were on the side of the nay-sayers - too much booze detracted from the dining experience, they felt - but there were those who just as fervently argued the opposite.
When the call from Moorcock came, it took a few seconds for them to find the phone, which was nestled on an armrest somewhere beneath their contiguous upper arms. Finally resting her nearly empty pie on her shelving forefront, Michelle leaned over enough to the right to allow Rob room to extricate the cordless.
"It's Jerry," he told his spouse and co-worker as she retrieved her pie plate and scooped the remains with a sausagey forefinger into her ever-hungry mouth. "He wants us to check the local cable access channel. He'll call back."
A few more seconds to find the remote (as Michelle liked to joke with Robby, they both had a lot of hiding places), and they were watching the female Gluttony's former boss being interviewed on-camera. He was dressed in a baby blue suit, looking more expensively attired than Michelle had ever remembered seeing him. His expression, however, she recognized from a thousand nights of rallying the Christian Soldiers.
"We've come," Reverend Dan was saying in response to a question they'd apparently missed, "to spread the good word and to wake all slumbering Christians! The forces of moral relativism are striding across the once pristine plains of this God-given land. Lust is wending its way through the loins of the innocent; Gluttony is eating away at the souls of the once righteous!"
"Man's body is God's temple," a voice off-screen interjected. "If you can't respect yourself, you can't respect our Lord!"
The camera swiveled to catch this unfamiliar sounding player: a middle-aged male in a pressed exercise suit. His face was humorless and mapped with tan wrinkles. His eyes pierced so strongly through the screen that for a moment, even Michelle felt her appetite wavering.
"Recognize this guy?" Robby asked, and she had to shake her multiply jowled head. Defensively, Michelle broke off a foot of Crispy Treats and started munching on it. On their big-screen TV, the unknown speaker started to enumerate the ways that improper diet and exercise weakened your resolve and virtue. "So he wasn't with the Rev before you joined Emblems, Inc."
"I think I'd have remembered him," Michelle said. Even when she'd been average-sized, guys like Salisbury had held no appeal to her, in part because she suspected that they were more involved with their own bodies than with hers. Stand before a mirror with one of ‘em by your side, and you were never sure which body they were actually lusting over.
"Lane and I are going to be at the Armory tomorrow afternoon," the Reverend told the camera, and as he did, Michelle once more had the impression that she and she alone was the one really being addressed. "And we want every God-loving Christian to be there! It's never too late to start fighting Sin, and this Sunday we're bringing the battle to this fair city!"
"'Fighting sin,'" Robby snorted, as the interview cut for a shot of the station's call letters. He grabbed a gallon jug of chocolate milk and worked to pry open the top; that he didn't accomplish it in one smooth pull told Michelle he was agitated. "I notice he only mentioned two emblems by name."
"Probably made an alliance with Envy and Anger," she considered, "or at least convinced ‘em to stay out of the way. You know Greed: they'll go wherever there's the most money to be made. And Sloth probably isn't even awake yet."
She shifted her body once more, raising her arm to companionably squeeze Robby's shoulder. Her forefront waved ahead of her sensuously, the cordless phone once more sliding into the space between them. Michelle retrieved it just as Jerry rang back; she cradled the phone and hit "speaker."
"Enjoy the show?" Moorcock asked.
"All things considered, I'd rather be watching The Iron Chef," Robby said, after chugging down a third of his gallon jug. "What's up with the Reverend?"
"He's holding a grudge, isn't he?" Michelle realized. "He's peeved because I left his organization. And hurt his sense of - you know."
"That's part of it," their supervisor admitted. "This part of the country has always been extra good for Gluttony. I think he wants to steal some of that energy for himself."
"Can he do that?" Michelle asked, sending a few mental feelers across the community as she did. Already, she realized, some of their more sensitive receptors were feeling a little less peckish. Keep this up for long, though, and a lot of Sunday dinners were gonna be pretty Spartan. And much less hospitable.
"Emblematic influence is fluid," Moorcock said, "subject to all sorts of outside forces. The simultaneous growth of the fast food and diet industries did much for the cause of Gluttony, for instance.
"Anything that the Reverend takes will be transient, though that doesn't mean that lots of folks won't feel miserable in the process. Good eating is an inextricable part of this community's social life. It'd be a shame to see it pilloried on a cross of Christian Vanity."
"He thinks I'll help him, doesn't he?" Michelle suddenly realized, and the realization infuriated her. (Maybe Anger hadn't fully allied with the Reverend, after all.) "Dan believes I'll let him take from us - that some part of me is still allied with him."
"I think you might be right," Moorcock agreed.
"Well," Michelle decided, and she grabbed the rest of her Crispy Treats sheet decisively. "The Good Reverend is mistaken."
Patti stared at the forlorn buffet tables - the picked-over trays, the piles of unused plates and containers of still-clean silverware - and stifled a yawn. Saturday had been the slowest night she could remember working, yet she felt as if she'd cooked all the food herself. Shrugging off her blazer, she collapsed into a nearby booth and smiled as her boyfriend brought over two plates of barbecued chicken and sides. They usually had a late supper together once the dinner crowd cleared out, but tonight Patti's appetite seemed to have vanished.
"You know," she apologized, "I don't think I'm hungry now."
"You and everyone else in town," Eric groused, as he gloomily started in on his own night meal. "Don't know why it was so quiet today. But I hope this isn't the start of a trend." He stirred his white gravy into a scoop of mashed potatoes then desultorily pushed his plate away. "Hell, I'm not hungry either," he admitted. "Must be something in the air."
They watched the Sinorak wait staff clear the room, finally letting one take away their untouched plates.
"You think this had something to do with it?" Patti asked, indicating the Reverend's Crusades poster as Eric was locking the front doors. In reply, the restaurant manager pulled the placard out of the window and defiantly folded it into quarters. Carrying it into the kitchen, he tossed the Reverend's notice into the fullest garbage can he could find then he forced it down into the trash.
"People," he announced to the kitchen at large, "should not be made to feel guilty for enjoying a basic good meal!"
"Amen!" Delbert, who was usually in charge of the kitchen on weekends, shouted. A trio of wait staff applauded. "Sounds like something that Mr. or Miz Hues would say," the chef told them as the crew finished up for the night.
"Gotta meet the Hues one of these days," Patti told Eric as he led her to his car to take her home. "From everything I've heard, they sound like the exact opposite of my mother. A stable married couple, solid and yet unafraid to enjoy themselves: so different from living with Manic Depressive Mama."
"They're sweet folks," Eric agreed. "I bet when you finally do meet ‘em, they'll make a big impression on you."
A prophetic statement, though Eric didn't realized it.
He'd been putting it off all day, but it was finally time to phone his brother. Seated behind his desk, a volume of Socrates open before him, Jerry Moorcock speed-dialed Frank's office number. His brother, he knew, was just as much a workaholic as him: Frank answered the phone on one ring.
"Emblems, Ink," he opened before Jerry could say anything. "What can I do for you, Jerry?"
"I suspect you know," Jerry answered. "Saw a few of your people in town today, so I thought I'd check to see if I'd missed any memos from regional."
"My people, you say."
So Frank was gonna play innocent; well, Jerry knew his brother better than that. "Eight of ‘em," he replied. "Both male and female manifestations of the Four Cardinal Virtues: you should've seen the faces that Lady Temperance kept making at the Sinorak's buffet tables."
"Well, Temperance is not exactly a buffet person," Frank chuckled.
"Exactly," Jerry said, "but what's got me even more concerned is the fact that they were eating on my tab. Reverend Dan had invited ‘em."
A sharp intake of breath. It wasn't often that he surprised his brother, but then Frank always had a blind spot where Pride was concerned.
"What were they - ? What was he - ?" Frank was at a loss for words: also an unusual situation. Perhaps he didn't know what his people were up to, after all.
"It's clear they're working some sort of temporarily coalition," Jerry came to his aid. "These things aren't unheard of. They don't last long, but they have occurred in the past."
"Not on my watch, they won't!" Frank blurted. Just as quickly, he got control of himself. "You say they were out with Reverend Wilder?" he asked.
"Claiming to be Friends of Lane Salisbury - one of Pride's minions," Jerry explained. "Perhaps you've seen his show?"
"Just the Cardinal Virtues, you say," Frank pursued, refusing to be distracted. "No sign of the Theological?"
"Faith, Hope and Sweet Charity?" Jerry answered. "Now that would've been something to be concerned about. Nope. Was only the earthbound Virtues: Fortitude, Justice, Prudence and - of course - Temperance."
Frank exhaled noisily. "Two days ago," he explained, "I authorized a road trip through the state. It's been a pretty weak quarter for the Cardinal Virtues group, so when Belle - she's one of my Temperance reps - came to me with a request, I approved it. If I'd known she was planning on hooking up with one of your folks, I never would have done it, Jer. Things may be slow, but it's a Cardinal Rule: we stay on our side of the board; you guys stay on yours. Otherwise, the entire balance gets screwed up!"
"Reverend Dan doesn't care about balance," Jerry said. "He thinks he's above such concerns. I'm pretty sure this was his idea, though that doesn't let your folks completely off the hook."
"You're right," Frank agreed. "So what are we gonna do?"
"I think," Jerry declared, "we need to take this ‘un to the head office."
Two hours into morning brunch, and Patti was wondering if she shouldn't have taken her mother up on her invitation to attend the Reverend's Sunday Crusade. Sunday buffet was traditionally a time for post-church noshing, but today someone must've padlocked the congregations in their respective buildings: not a single soul had shown up for brunch.
She should've know the day was gonna be a bust when they'd arrived to open. First thing they saw from the parking lot was the poster in the window: pristine and fold-free, taped prominently on the inside - though she'd distinctly seen her boyfriend toss it in the trash. None of the staff could explain how it had gotten there.
"Leave it up," Eric decided, when he saw Patti making a beeline toward the window. "It's only for the afternoon, anyway."
Perhaps - but it felt somehow as if the poster were keeping folks away. You're just indulging in magical thinking, she chastised herself. The Sunday crowd had chosen to watch the Reverend's dog-and-pony show - and would probably come trundling in once the whole event was over. Nothing mysterious about that.
Oh yeah? a voice in the back of her head shot back. But what about the highway drop-offs? Don't tell me they've all headed for the Reverend Dan's Crusade!
"Del says one of the Reverend's people showed up during announcements at their church this morning," Eric told her at one point. "A Belle something-or-other. According to Del's wife, her big theme was the need for temperance: even went so far as to suggest that overeating at Sunday brunch undid the good of a morning's church service. The woman got Del's wife so worked up that they got into an argument over his going to work today."
"Is Del okay?" Patti asked.
"Yes, but he brought a five-inch television into the kitchen and has it set for public access. They just started broadcasting the good Reverend's show live."
"And Del's wife is in the audience?"
"She is, but I doubt that you'll be able to see her on the dinky screen," Eric said.
"Could you hold the fort a second? I'd like to take a peak at what all the fuss is about."
Eric glumly nodded, so she dashed back into the kitchen. There she saw the kitchen crew and wait staff huddled around a small silver mini-television.
"And of all the sins, the most un-Christian - worst than Lust, worst than Sloth - is clearly the sin of Gluttony!" a tinny voice was ranting from the set. "For is it not a sign of how far from God we've fallen that we who live in the Land of Milk and Honey grow fatter every day? How can we rise to heaven when our bodies are weighted down with avoirdupois, burdened with the physical manifestation of our excessive lifestyle?"
She squinted toward the screen. Lane Salisbury, wearing a lightweight suit that hugged his muscular frame, was pacing up and down the runway, preaching to the crowd. The picture was too small to show more detail, but at one point in his speech, the camera cut to show the stern-faced woman from yesterday's lunch (Patti bet this was the Belle that Delbert's wife had mentioned) mouthing an "amen." In that moment, she looked uncomfortably like Patti's mother.
"I'm going back out front," she told the crew, not wanting to watch any more.
"Anyone shows up for lunch, just tell us," Delbert said.
"You got it." She returned to the front just as Mr. Moorcock arrived.
He looked as dapper as ever, was better dressed than your typical Midwestern Sunday bruncher, that's for sure. Smiling at Patti as she rounded the half-wall that separated cash register from dining area, he cocked his head toward the entrance and said, "Eric told me that you wanted to meet the Hues. Well, today's your chance."
Through the glass, Patti saw a mini-van driving up to the entrance. The side door opened and a couple laboriously disembarked: they were dressed in loose-fitting casual clothing - the woman in a sundress, the man in a Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants - and looked to be at least 600 pounds apiece. Fascinated, Patti watched as the duo waddled into their business, passing through the front door one at a time. Ms. Hues was the larger of the two: bottom-heavy with a face that somehow made Patti think of one of those women you saw on tin signs reproducing old magazine ads. She was panting from exertion as she entered the smorgasbord, but it didn't negate her dimpled beauty.
"Patti Bunyan; Eric Dorian," Mr. Moorcock opened. "This is Rob and Michelle Hues, the owners of this establishment."
Michelle Hues approached and shook Patti's hand. As she did, a wave of something wonderful seemed to course through Patti's body. "Heard things were a bit slow today," she said in a breathy, surprisingly sensual voice, "so we thought we'd bring a few of our friends over."
She motioned toward the outside; there, Patti saw a host of super-sized men and women ambling toward the restaurant. They were talking animatedly among themselves, like members of a high school reunion who hadn't seen each other for years. There had to be at least fifteen couples, and from the looks of them, they were capable of doing a major job on the buffet tables.
Eric had the same thought. "Better go tell Delbert we've got some hearty appetites comin' in," he said, and Miz Hues offered to go with him.
"I'd like to say hi to Del," she explained to the rest of them. "From what I understand, he's been having a hard day."
"I'm sure he'll appreciate it," her husband said, as he pulled out a blue bandana to wipe his broad forehead. He placed his free hand on Patti's shoulder, and it almost felt as miraculous as his wife's brief touch. The restaurant, so familiar that she'd almost begun to take it for granted, suddenly looked more welcoming than she'd ever remembered seeing it. "I'm gonna check out the buffet - though I'm sure it's wonderful as usual. And Miz Bunyan, please, don't bother ringing any of these folks up; they're here on our treat!" He turned to toddle toward the table nearest the main courses, while Patti readied herself to welcome the Hues' guests. For the first time all day, she was anticipating her lunch break.
Cross town by the Armory, Jerry Moorcock's brother Frank was driving two more passengers to a nearby Dairy Queen. Though the two travelers would've preferred a more local eatery, the DQ was closest to the Reverend's show and best suited to their purposes. The parking lot was deserted, so they took a space right by the door.
"Ready?" Frank asked, as the two head office Gluttonies finished dwindling into public size. The female figure extended a fat thumbs-up, then slid the side door open.
Tracie Lyst and Fred Foil, the Hues' predecessors, dropped out of the Dodge Caravan, rearranged their super-sized forms in their clothing, and stepped into the fast food restaurant. The trio of teenagers who'd been zoning out behind the counter gaped in astonishment at the massive couple trudging toward the counter.
"I'd like your menu," Tracie Lyst stated, pressing her voluminous forefront against the glass counter. She was dressed in shorts and a blouse tied at the bottom to show off her jiggling midriff; the blouse gapped significantly before her bra-free cleavage: a provocative look that had both teenaged boys behind the counter stirring unexpectedly.
"We don't have a written menu," their co-worker, a pudgy college coed, explained. "Everything we serve is posted over head."
"You misunderstand," Tracie replied with a knowing grin. "I want to order your menu. Everything that's up there. In whatever order you can prepare it." She reached into her purse and pulled out a thick wad of bills. "This should cover it," she said.
The counter girl gulped. She looked to the two teenaged boys, who were still ogling the super-sized beauty. The sight roused an unexpected feeling of jealousy within her.
"This to go?" she finally asked.
"No," Tracie stated firmly. "I'll eat it here." She swiveled to her fellow Gluttony and asked matter-of-factly. "And what would you like, Fred?"
"Missus Hues!" Delbert was crowing, as the owner appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Wasn't expecting to see you here!" Breaking away from the mini-TV, he rushed forward to embrace the super-sized blond; as he put an arm on her shoulders, a puzzled look came across his face. "Have you changed your hair?" he finally asked, and Michelle Hues shook her head. "There's somp'n different about you," he declared. "Maybe it's just ‘cause I haven't seen you in the restaurant in so long."
"Could be," Michelle said. "Brought a few friends along," she continued. "But I don't want you to worry about it."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm taking care of brunch today!" she announced, then she grabbed the mini-TV and shooed all of the kitchen help into the dining area. Nearly every free table, the cooks saw, had a couple sitting at it. The booths, however, were all empty, and with good reason: not a one of Michelle's friends could have squeezed into ‘em.
"Sit! Sit!" she told all the Sinorak employees. "I haven't been around here much, but today I intend to make up for it." She backed against the nearest buffet table, grabbing her husband's left hand in passing. "Patti! Eric!" she called. "Want you in on this, too! Grab a table, okay?" As they did, she placed the mini-TV on top of one of the buffet covers, turning down the sound as she did.
"The Reverend," she began, "seems to have a lot of the town's attention this weekend. Well, business may be slow today, but that can be a good thing since it gives us more time to get together with friends and co-workers. Today's celebration is for us, so I want all of you to come on up and partake of the best that Sinorak has to offer!"
She waved her massive arms to symbolically embrace all of the food offerings, and as she did, the trays appeared to expand and fill with freshly made servings. Patti and Eric looked down at the table to see two plates of salad and entrées waiting for them to dig in.
"Where'd these come from?" Patti wondered.
"No questions," Michelle directed the restaurant employees. "There'll be time for that later. For now, just enjoy your offerings."
The scent of barbecue chicken wafted up to Patti's nostrils - and as it did, she felt her appetite revive even further. Happily, she cut into her first chicken breast. The first taste was so inspiring, so mouth-watering, that she inadvertently let out a small moan: Delbert's barbecue chicken was an area favorite, but this somehow surpassed it. Michelle Hues had worked some marvelous magic on Sinorak's buffet trays.
Patti was too focused on her meal to even notice the change in all the figures around them. For as she and her boyfriend lost themselves dining, both the Hues and their guests began to grow back into their true sizes. Their bodies waxed slowly and inexorably, their wardrobes expanding to accommodate their full-blown Gluttony forms. Leaning over the nearest buffet table, Michelle Hues was simply dining with a serving fork, holding up plate-sized slices of sliced roast beef and biting into them without losing a drop of au jus.
Across town in that strategically well-placed Dairy Queen, Tracie and Fred were also commencing their meal. They could feel the gluttonous emanations from Sinorak already seeping across the city; it was their job to grab, focus and direct them straight at the Armory - a task only the most advanced behavioral manifestations could accomplish. Behind the counter, the trio of teenagers was busily filling their orders, nibbling fries and onion rings as they did.
On Del's mini-TV, Lane Salisbury was still in high dudgeon. Patti bit into her third chicken breast: the first two had disappeared so quickly, it was almost as if she hadn't eaten anything yet. She would have that feeling throughout the entire meal - as if each fresh item was the one breaking an extensive fast. And as she continued to eat, she didn't notice the way her belly began to transform beneath the table.
Proximity to a room full of hard-working Gluttonies was having an effect on all the Sinorak staff. They wolfed their meals, barely taking in the fact that every plate they finished was instantly replaced by a fresh one. They ate silently and intensely, concentrating on their food to the near exclusion of all else. At times, Patti or Eric shifted in their seats to make room for their expanding bodies, but that was it.
Her blouse and skirt growing with her, Patti's belly was the first part of her body to manifest Gluttony's influence. Even as her middle torso visibly enlarged, it remained soft, never giving hint to the astounding amount of food that was being consumed at ever-more-rapid speed. From beginning to end of the day's wondrous banquet, Patti would never feel overfed - as if each bite she took were bypassing the digestive path altogether and simply turning into adipose tissue. And perhaps it was.
By her fourth or fifth plate, Patti's belly pushed ahead of her 32-inch breasts. The rest of her body began to work in conjunction with this explorer of new physical territories: her face began to round; her upper arms to widen; her thighs added extra padding. Focusing on single plates devoted to a single entrée, she worked through two plates of chicken, a plate of vegetarian lasagna, au gratin potatoes with chopped ham, blackened channel catfish, and bratwurst with sauerkraut before stopping to take a tall glass of fresh milk. Briefly smiling across the table at her pudgy boyfriend, she returned to her newest serving - a medium-sized Hawaiian pizza - and continued.
"We overeat for balance," Michelle Hues told the room. "Unapologetically and openly!"
On the mini-TV screen, Lane Salisbury had been replaced by Reverend Dan, who was momentarily looking like he'd lost his place in his sermon. He glared across the Armory audience, a tactic that he frequently used when he was trying to get himself back on track, then he launched once more into his anti-Gluttony sermon. Michelle smiled as she piled three pizza squares atop each other and bit into a corner. She looked across the room at the mid-sized Patti Bunyan: from the way her paunch was receiving so much of her new poundage, it was clear that the girl was destined to be apple shaped.
Patti's belly was spilling out onto her lap by now; it forced her to scoot her chair back twice. Her breasts, while never her most prominent feminine feature, almost appeared to have shrunk in comparison, though in actuality she'd added two cup sizes. Still, her tummy was obviously the most genetically favored part of Patti's body.
Her beau Eric, on the other hand, looked like he was going to be more of a bowling pin. His hips and rear spread with an ease that looked awfully familiar to the wide-hipped Michelle. In a tuxedo, he'd be strictly penguin shaped, she decided, before scanning the rest of the dining room. The rest of the staff was also dining enthusiastically, she saw, though none of them matched Patti and Eric's ardor. Some folks were just more readily attuned to Gluttony.
Out in the parking lot, Jerry watched his brother ease out of the mini-van, then stop to light a Salem. Emblems, Inc. health benefits meant that Frank was safe from the deleterious effects of smoking, but Jerry didn't understand the appeal. It was one vice he'd never been able to support.
"I can tell your gal's started the counter-attack," Frank observed. "You think the greater focus will work to their advantage?"
Jerry did. Reverend Dan had enlisted too many different emblems to his cause, he believed; his spiritual arrogance had driven him to ignore his fellow Sins and solely ally with Virtue. But by aligning themselves with Pride, the Cardinal Virtues had lessened much of their power. They were probably starting to realize this now, but he also guessed that Belle, at least, was continuing to deny it.
"You've got a line on your folks, Frank," Jerry asked, tactfully refraining from pointing out that if he'd kept better tabs on his people, they wouldn't be in this position. "What're you seeing?"
"Belle's being stubborn," Frank told him after a moment. The look on his face told Jerry that he was grateful for his brother's restraint. "The rest're backing off. I may be looking for a new female Temperance."
"The best emblems," Jerry said, "always possess a bit of one of the others in ‘em. Michelle and Robby both have a trace of Temperance - it comes out in their gourmet aesthetics and their preference for food over alcohol. And Belle clearly has her share of Pride. Sometimes that tiny tendency can become an overriding characteristic."
"You're right," Frank sighed, "but I still wish it hadn't happened in my office."
"Look at it this way," Jerry told him. "When this is over, I've still gotta work with Reverend Dan. You'll get to bring on someone new!"
Frank nodded, as Jerry mentally reached out for Tracie and Fred. They'd returned to their everyday size by now, and all three of the DQ brazier workers were themselves answering the call of Gluttony. Both boys and their female companion looked more roundly sensual. Because she'd once worked as Lust, Tracie tended to bring a trace of it with her. It was said that on the day she transferred from Lust to Gluttony, a million weight gain fantasies were born.
At the Armory, members of the audience were getting restless.
A row of dessert plates lined both sides of Patti and Eric's table; she went for the key lime pie first, he for an extra-large bowl of tapioca. By the buffet, Michelle Hues had returned to her usual size, but no one in the room looked at her twice. They all were focused on the last course of their meals.
The mega-sized Gluttony gazed lovingly across the room at her hubby, Rob - who raised a bowl of heavy cream in salutation - and knew that they'd done the best that they could. Turning her attention back to the tiny screen, it was clear they'd disrupted the Reverend's evening - what that ultimately meant was still unclear.
In the meantime, they all still had dessert to finish.
At their table, Patti and Eric were wiping out each helping with the steady efficiency of computers in defrag mode. In size, the two approached the weights that Sinorak's owners had earlier pretended to be, though their bodies went their own individual ways in accommodating the extra weight. When they were done, the two would make ideal exemplars of Gluttony. Perhaps some day they'd get promoted to full emblem status.
Patti, in particular, was showing remarkable potential. Chins quivering excitedly, she grabbed each slice of pie with a newfound fervor that Michelle almost envied. (Nothing like your first time, the Gluttony rep thought with a smile.) Her fulsome face had grown flush with excitement; her eyes were lit with the joy of fresh discovery. She was one of those women whose fatness enhanced their nurturing sociability - she was gonna make an even better hostess after this was over, Michelle decided.
Patti, to be sure, was unaware of Michelle's thoughts. Her swelling appetite was still pulling her toward the dinner table. Approaching it straight on, she had to lean forward to get close enough, her looming belly dangling between her outspread legs and pushing against the tabletop underside, her massive breasts resting on the tabletop edge. Somewhere in the back of her consciousness, she was aware of the way her body had changed, but it only was a peripheral detail.
What mattered was the Meal and the pleasure they all were getting from the Meal.
By the time she'd finished dessert, Patti was fully immersed in her gourmandizing body. Where once she'd seen her job at Sinorak's as a temporary stopgap to help her get through college, it was clear now that this was where she was meant to spend her life. Looking across the table at Eric - who surprisingly looked handsomer as a fully fat man than he had as a solid farm boy - she leaned back, sighed and patted her satisfied paunch.
"You look pretty good right now," Eric told her, after he'd caught up and swallowed the last of his pecan pie. "What you thinking?"
"Just wondering when you're gonna ask me to marry you," Patti replied, surprising herself with this answer.
"How about right now?" Eric asked. He slowly rose from his seat, inevitably jostling the table as his forefront bumped into it, then sidled over to his super-sized girlfriend's side. Grabbing a pudgy hand, he looked down at her and said, "I hope you'll forgive me if I don't get down on my knees. I'm not sure I could get back up that easily."
Patti understood completely. At that moment, she felt full in parts of her body that she'd barely acknowledged before. It wasn't that she felt uncomfortable - though she'd devoured enough to carry a small army across the desert, she still didn't feel it in her gut - but her new size was definitely going to take some re-acclimation.
All around them, the rest of the room was watching this proposal. Del and the rest of the kitchen staff, she saw, had also benefited from their meal - though Del was only half the size of Eric. She wondered what Del's wife would be saying about her 300-pound husband; she didn't know that the little woman had already sneaked out of the Armory show to the DQ drive-thru.
"Nothing to forgive," Patti told her fiancé. She grasped his hands and used them to pull herself out of her chair, feeling her new-built layers of womanly body quiver around her as she did. Basking in the glow of so many well-fed folks, she knew that Eric's proposal was somehow part of the ceremony that had been initiated by Jerry Moorcock and the Hues. "So why don't you ask me formally?" she concluded.
"Patti, will you do me the honor of joining me in marriage?"
"I would be honored," she answered, and while the two squeezed against their considerable forefronts to kiss, the room burst into applause.
"You two," Robbie Hues said once they'd finally separated, "will always have a place at Sinorak's."
"I know," Patti told the room at large. "In fact, we're counting on it." She looked to the two-ton couple, now standing side-by-side, then to their equally huge compatriots. She knew that in comparison to these mythic gluttons she was only an ingénue. But, she thought with a smile, she was still young.
Despite the hype and advanced excitement, the Reverend Dan Wilder's Crusade seemed to come to a disappointing finish. Though no one in the Armory could pinpoint the moment, it was clear they'd somehow lost their audience. The anti-Gluttony momentum that Reverend Dan had hoped to build had somehow petered out. Standing on the stage, the male Pride and his fellow Cardinal emblems watched the room empty, listening as the cars raced out of the parking lot - in many cases toward restaurant row.
"These people," Lane Salisbury noted, "they've got no real sense of self-worth. If they did, they wouldn't treat their bodies that way."
"Yeah yeah yeah," Reverend Dan muttered, already impatient with his minion's rationalizations. Now that he'd failed, he supposed he'd have to answer to Jerry Moorcock (success would've rendered this unnecessary, of course). He'd need to come up with something good.
"Tryin' to work up a good cover story?" Belle asked, staying behind as the rest of her Cardinal peers left the stage.
"It's crossed my mind," Reverend Dan answered, looking the Temperance emblem up and down. She carried her slender frame with a haughtiness that he particularly found appealing.
"Well, screw Frank and Jerry," she said defiantly. "We're better than them. There's no need to kowtow to either of the Moorcock brothers!"
Reverend Dan smiled then led her backstage. All this time, he'd been without a female Pride by his side. Now it looked as Belle was considering a lateral transfer. Maybe he could salvage something from this debacle, after all. . .
When the first Sunday customers made it across town from the Armory, they found Patti waiting for them on her reinforced stool. The mega-sized beauty was a fixture at Sinorak's: seated behind a glass counter that couldn't hide her 650-pound figure, she'd smile her fulsomely dimpled face at each customer, tell them the day's specials (which would inevitably be on a plate nearby) and ring them up on the restaurant's retro cash register. As far as anyone could remember, she'd always been her present dimension (though some, if pressed, would opine that maybe she'd gained a few pounds in the time since she'd joined the restaurant - but at her size, how could you tell for sure?) One thing they all agreed upon: she and Eric made an ideal couple.
Watching the restaurant's manager/partner waddle across the room to be with his fiancé, it was clear that both man and woman linked their love of good food with their love for each other. Between the two, they topped eleven hundred pounds, with Patti outweighing the love of her life by at least 100 pounds. You'd have thought that having a woman like Patti so prominently placed at the restaurant entrance would have served as a detriment to the customers in these diet-obsessed times. But she looked so placidly beautiful, enjoyed her food so openly and was so plainly in love with her life that only the most fat-phobic was uncomfortable in her presence. Her mother had ceased having anything to do with her months ago, of course, but Patti wasn't especially regretful about that fact.
This Sunday, Patti was sitting behind the counter with a couple of plates of prime rib and three cheese potatoes. The restaurant smelled particularly delicious today, as if the kitchen staff had gone all out to compensate for the nattering disappointment from the Reverend's show. Dressed in a flowing, brightly colored short-sleeved dress that draped to the floor when she was seated, Patti gently gestured each newcomer past the register into the restaurant proper, seldom leaving her seat and quietly thanking the wait staff whenever they brought her a fresh plate.
"So how was the Reverend's Crusade?" she asked one of the customers, a plumpish insurance salesman who still had a program sticking out of a sports jacket pocket.
"Okay, I guess," he told Patti, standing back to let his matronly wife through, "though it's kind of like going to a movie that you can barely remember afterwards. Lots of dynamic preaching, but it wasn't - you know - as moving as you expected it to be."
"Well, I bet even the Reverend Dan Wilder has an off day," Patti thought out loud. Then she did something that the salesman could never remember ever seeing before: leaned forward to get off her stool, squeezed her body from behind the counter and ponderously pushed her voluminous body through the entrance double doors. There, she removed a poster from the window and carried it back to behind the counter. "Souvenir," she explained, quickly picking up a fork of prime rib as if eager to replenish the calories she'd burned off in this twelve-foot walk. "Did you know the Reverend came here for lunch yesterday?" She dabbed a droplet of sweat off her upper lip, then dipped her beef into a small container of juice. The look on her face as she savored the piece was enough to get the salesman's mouth watering.
"Kind of surprised he'd show here," the customer noted. "Wonder what brought him." He shrugged and left to join his wife, missing Patti's reply.
"Checking out the competition," she said, returning to her meal. Del and the crew had really outdone themselves, she thought. Clearly, they'd been inspired by the Hues' visit.
They were close to filling the place when an unexpected visitor walked through the door. Eloise Bunyan, dressed in her best church clothes and accompanied by a stout gentleman (who looked a lot more stable than her usual companion), entered the restaurant. She smiled and waved slightly as they approached Patti.
"Thought I'd see how my little girl was doin' today," she explained, and, for once, Patti didn't detect a single note of irony or criticism in her voice.
Definitely a day for major changes, she thought, standing once more to welcome her mother to Sinorak's.
As for the other half of the Sinorak partnership, Michelle and Robby Hues were both back home, bidding au revoir to their fellow Gluttonies.
"Great spread," a dark southern rep told the duo before taking off to his home base. (Away from public view, they no longer felt the need for man-made transport.) "We should do these little get-togethers more often - not just when the need arises." He grabbed his wife's hand and vanished, leaving the scent of Cajun cooking in his wake. All around them, other emblems were winking out of the room. Soon, Tracie and Fred were the only visiting Gluttonies left.
"We haven't had time to visit," Michelle told her mega-sized predecessor.
"No, but it's been great seeing you in action," Tracie noted. Leaning back and pressing her chins into her forefront, she critically examined her successor and then grinned. "How many pounds have you gained since we last met?"
"Stopped keeping track," Michelle answered, and Tracie suspected this was true. Though they all had the wherewithal to instantly know their weight, for some Gluttonies that wasn't an important part of the experience.
She bet that Robby knew his wife's weight, though - to the ounce.
"Well, you look lovely," Tracie said, "and from the way you handled the afternoon, I'm proud of you. Not every Gluttony would've been able to manage the ritual part of this so well."
"Picked up a few things from the Reverend," Michelle chuckled. She held out her right hand and a large bowl of kouskous appeared. After handing it to her mentor, she created a second and started to eat. "A quick bite before you hit the road?" she offered. Behind Tracie, she saw, Robby and Fred were also having a brief meeting of the minds and taste buds.
"You do know how to be a good hostess," Tracie approved, tilting her bowl to let the food pour in a single controlled trail into her wide mouth.
"It's what the job's about," the female Gluttony said with a smile, taking her own large swallow of kouskous.
Back at the regional office, Jerry Moorcock and his brother were meeting to discuss what to do about their errant emblems. But that was a management problem. For the four emblems, all that mattered was the job - and the many many meals - ahead.
Copyright 2001 - Oakhaus Designs