She threw a wadded up fifty at the hyena head and lurched to the first open seat as the bus left the curb. The stench of the city in her nose, the worms on the floor of the dilapidated bus, the catcalls and whistles from the punks in the back - it all backed up on her and began to seep out of the corners of her mouth and eyes.

"Too much cold medicine," she thought. Slowly the scraggly flea-bitten head of the driver morphed back into the traditional human head with thinning gray hair. The worms on the floor wriggled back into their tile patterns. The morons in the back seats, however, remained the same.

Irene had been fighting the same cold for several weeks, and kept adding to the daily intake of decongestants and antihistamines. Long ago she stopped reading the labels and paying attention to the dosages. She would just tip the bottle up, let four or five of the capsules fall and slosh them down with soy milk.

There had been a few nights of sweats and tremors, and more than one occasion when she arrived somewhere in her car, but was unable to remember driving. Her complexion was turning chalky, her fingernails were brittle and yellow and she was developing a bumpy rash on her torso. But at least she had been able to keep working. And with Ed Loftus and the Nevada Project bearing down on her, that was "job one".

As Irene walked the last blocks from the bus stop to her bungalow, she could see the dark green shine of Ed Loftus' sedan in front of her house. "Ah, crap... what else, huh?" she muttered. Ed had a habit of knowing exactly when the worst time to show up was.

As she crossed the lawn, her left Louis V. sunk into a pile of something soft and wet - dog shit. From the Great Dane next door. Great. Fine. "Okay! Okay!" Irene screamed at no one in particular. "I get it!! It's just not my day! Anything else?!?!?"

Before her last syllable faded, Clancy and Fedaro came smoking around the corner in Fedaro's Saab. Slamming the brake and forsaking the clutch, Fedaro brought the ugly blue box to rattletrap stop just inches from Ed's BMW. She saw Loftus jerk her living room curtain aside and could read his lips, but was glad she couldn't hear him.

"This is going to be great," she thought, and sat on the wooden step to remove her once-lovely lime green stiletto. "Hi boys. Your just in time for supper." The bungalow door nearly came off the hinges as Ed Loftus jerked it open and took the sidewalk to his car in four long lunging steps.

"Come on, Ed. It's fine," she called lightly. She needed this meeting to go well, and Ed was sometimes easy to soothe. She hoped there was still some Johnny Walker Green in the cupboard. "Let's go in. I'll fix you a drink," Irene said in her sweetest hostess tones.

Ed stormed past the smirking Fedaro and glared at Irene. "Yeah, you do that," he said through his angry straight line of a mouth. She tiptoed in to the house after him in pantyhose feet, shutting the door on Clancy and Fedaro. She knew they would sit on the porch and smoke a joint before coming in.

"Ed, Ed, you gotta calm down," Irene said. "You know they're just messing with you. Here, let me take your jacket. Loosen up that tie and sit down."

"Irene, don't try to pull this shit on me," Loftus spit out. "You want to hire those two flat-dicks and I'm not going to sign off on that. I've been very clear on that."

Irene brought his highball and handed it to him. "Look, Ed. Can't we discuss this? Sit down, right here," she said, patting the sofa next to her skirt clad legs. "You're upset. What's happened? Tell me what's going on?"

She learned a long time ago that sex is not necessary when coercing men. What most men want, she had discovered by trial and error, is to be adored. For Ed Loftus, that meant soothing with alcohol, a tender voice and a little bit of proximity.

Ed was a happily married man, as happy as any man in this business could be. He would never cheat on Leslie. But being pampered by the exotic and lovely Irene, sitting next to those warm thighs, looking into the deep brown eyes, sipping the JWG, feeling her small warm hand on his bicep... this was too much to withstand.

Slowly and like an unwinding clock, Ed Loftus relaxed and Irene knew she would have all she needed by the time Ed left that night.