It was evening in New York.
Assured by the elevator operator that Mr. Jet, as Heller was popular known, was still in his office, Krak tipped magnificently the chauffeur, stewardess and building porters
There's no paragraph covering Gris waking up or anything, the story simply continues as though it had a conventional narrator for a page or so.
We get our sweepingly romantic reunion between Krak and Heller. She steps into his office, he looks up and asks "Am I dreaming?", she says "You're not dreaming, Jettero. It's me," and it's time for hugs and tears.
They came together in a crush of embraces in the center of the room.
After a savage clench, they both began to cry.
They just stood there, holding each other, crying!
Minutes went by. They did not do anything or say anything. They just stood there holding on to each other, sobbing!
So were they crying?
The second thing out of Krak's mouth is the question of whether Heller fell in love with "a thousand beautiful women" in the what, month or two? since he's been on Earth. So maybe Gris' impression of her as a murderously jealous psychopath isn't as completely misguided as I thought.
Heller says no, kissy times, and the two sets of cranial bugs being so close together shorts out Gris' viewscreen - which is the first real evidence that he exists in this chapter. There's some sappy dialogue in which eventually Krak hints at a "wonderful surprise" waiting once Heller finishes the mission, which is of course Gris' forged royal pardons for her past crimes. "So let's get busy and wind up this mission to a rocket success and get home!"
While I'm boggling at "rocket success," Gris comes to a terrible realization:
Oh, Gods. My sending her was having exactly the opposite effect to what was intended.
Nnnnnnooooo, really?!
Even Lombar had told her Heller was working too hard and she was paying no attention to that! Oh, Gods, with all my other troubles, they really had to be slowed to nothing. If I could delay them long enough, then word would come and with a few shots I could kill them both. I prayed. Please, please, Gods of evil,
Who are they, again? Apep? Iblis? Ama-no-Kagaseo? Loki? Tiamat the Babylonian ocean goddess? Tiamat the Dungeons and Dragons five-headed dragon goddess? Do you really expect these evil entities to come to your aid when you don't even remember their names?
intervene for once on my side. How could I slow them? If I only had money. If I could only get rid of other crises, maybe I could do it. Not maybe. I had to, for it meant my life.
Let's recap. Last book, or maybe the book before last, Gris somehow got it into his head that the Countess Krak would murder or maim Heller if she learned that he'd been rooming at a whorehouse and building platonic friendships with the girls there. He had no real reason to believe this would happen, but Gris really wanted it to happen, so he decided it would happen. But lo and behold, it looks like it isn't happening after all! So his only recourse is to pray for (evil) divine intervention - which again he doesn't have any reason to believe will happen, but he wants it to.
The saddest part is that two chapters from now, Gris does get a sudden gold ex machina to solve his money problems.
Blah blah blah, Heller shows off his fabulous office/apartment, Krak likes it. The cat shows up, Heller admits that he doesn't have a name yet but he knows it's a calico, so Krak concludes that the critter's name is Mister Calico. Krak uses her incredible animal training skills to make it tap its paw on the floor four times - or more specifically, she uses her incredible animal training skills to make a cat listen to a basic command. Then Krak and Heller go back to the hugging and crying.
The chapter ends with the hero and his girlfriend talking about getting home and having kids, since after all they'll be "fully grown up in another few years" (?!) and Earth is no place to start a family. And Gris realizes with horror that Krak isn't going to slow Heller down, but "work like mad to speed him up." And the only one who can hope to stop them is himself, "a pennliess, shattered wreck, afraid even to go home!"
So that's our book's starting point - Krak and Heller together and poised to get stuff done, and Gris in poor shape to stop them. Is the situation going to be any different at the end of the book? I'm not sure, I'm still pretty traumatized by what I found when I decided to skim ahead.
Back to Chapter Six
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