Link Arms with Toads! Read Online Free PDF

company, is waiting for him at her desk. They have a thing between them. It is not a growing concern, but it is acceptable to both. Like Mondrian, her nostrils are plugged with glums. Her former husband, a hopeless workaholic, used to binge on unpaid overtime, return home in a senseless temper and take her out for meals. Once, he even bought her a bunch of roses. “I have a big mission on Friday night,” Mondrian informs her. “If I fail we’ll be sucked in.” For some reason, she finds this killingly funny.
    They hold hands and wander out into the starlight. The moon has embarked on another slow crawl up the sky. “That’s persistence for you,” he jokes, but she can tell something is bothering him. It is not just pre-mission blues. She bends down and kisses the top of his head, spiky tuft of hair tickling her tongue. He shivers in the warm air. “They say that spicemen weren’t always like us. They used to go up there, out of the city. They walked on that crescent.”
    She nods soberly. “I bet there’s something in it. All myths have a seed of truth. I’ll look into it. Maybe my company can reproduce some appropriate technology? The past is such fun.” Away from the lamps hung outside the tents, her grin is undercooked, too bright. Mondrian squints in her direction, fearful she will drift away on the tether of his arm, taking the limb with her. Her strength and duskiness are what initially attracted him. The muscularity is real, the dark skin an illusion. She is so freckled she is one big freckle.
    “ I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a pattern to it all. I can’t accept that each new restaurant operates independently of the others. There must be connections, possibly with non-ethnic retail outlets. No eatery is an island.” Embarrassed by his outburst, Mondrian folds away his emotions. He has already thought long and hard about the problem. The Spice Centre are adopting too literal an approach. They calculate total opening hours, estimate takings, analyse atmospheres. Mondrian wants to look sideways, to venture beyond inductive reasoning and the epicycles of Cardamom Calculus.
    “ You mean jewellers, lingerie specialists, taxidermists?” She has decided to cheer him up by improvising on his mood. He clears his throat and changes the subject by saying nothing, but she has peppered a bland inspiration. Half-empty restaurants are only one kind of institution with no visible means. Others exist on different frequencies. Suddenly it seems the whole metropolis is about to implode, the furthest suburbs collapsing into this huge area of unvisited space, unpressurised life. He picks his teeth for emphasis.
    “ Maybe. I don’t know. Nobody has dared to investigate. The Spice Centre would consider it heresy. Ever since our founder wandered into his first takeaway in Notting Hill, the approach has been rigid. Curry houses or nothing.” As he delivers this rebuke of his organisation, he feels a measure of disgust, both with his superiors for ignorance and himself for disloyalty. Old Speckled Henrietta grins at the complexity of his expression. Sweat reclines on his cheeks. He looks to neutral facts for relief. “It’s called Spicentricism.”
    They complete their tour of the Gardens in silence. When it is time to say farewell, Mondrian plucks up courage to touch her breasts. They are soft as hot towels. Wiping his fingers in her cleavage, shaking her sweat from the tips, he shoulders his way back to the Spice Centre, chewing his lower lip bitterly amid the upper lip biters of the tunnel. Things have got darker: pilau rice and other perversions dominate the length. Gobi Aloo has made an appearance.
    Walking, he cannot shake away a feeling of doom. Few Khormanauts die in their beds, most retire to hospices with malfunctioning colons. His time will come, he must face facts. This mission might be the final one, the mortal dessert of his buffet life. Would his colleagues applaud when Weiner brought the news?