A heavy cloud of smoke hung over the dingy interior of the bookshop. It was morning, but the two lone residents were doing their best to ignore this fact. They sat, Bernard slumped at the desk, Fran draped over the sofa, both besieged by the worst hangover either of them could remember (or, at least, the worst this year).

"Oooh, my head," Fran moaned.

"You're still pissed," Bernard observed, absently plucking a mushroom from the patch growing on the wall and popping it into his mouth.

"So are you. What was that stuff, anyway?"

"I found it."

"Where?"

"...I don't remember."

Fran shook her head, winced, and lit another cigarette with the end of her last one. Silence fell once more.

The door opened with a bang that made them both jump and give a groan of irritation. A tall, bespectacled man stuck his head through. "Excuse me-" he said.

"Customer," Bernard spat. He made a shooing motion towards the door. "Get out!"

"I was just wondering if-"

"Get out, get out, get out!" Bernard shouted. He grabbed the nearest thing to hand, a hefty, well-worn copy of Middlemarch, and flung it at the door. The man shrieked as the book narrowly missed his head and he fled, slamming the door.

"Wanker. Can't he see we're closed?" Bernard grumbled.

"It's eleven A.M.," Fran replied.

"The sign's on! Read the sign!"

Fran squinted. "It says...'clopened'."

"See? Perfectly understandable."

"You know, you do have to deal with the public sometime."

"I hate the public. So do you. Greedy bastards. All they do is take. What do they ever do for me?"

"They give you money," Fran offered.

Bernard grunted. "Pfff. Money. Money just makes more work. And I can't do any work, or my head will fall off."

"You can't die before me. I'm much worse off than you."

"We can solve this situation," said Bernard. He made a grand gesture with his arm, causing himself to list slightly to the left. "More wine. You know, hair of the...thing."

"Right." Fran nodded. "Go get it."

"You go get it."

"I can't even open my eyes."

"So I'm your servant now, am I?" Bernard stood up in indignation, lost his balance, and sat down again, settling for a few emphatic thumps on the desktop. "You loiter in my shop, lie on my sofa-"

"I think I'm stuck to the sofa, actually."

"-eat my food-"

"You don't have any food."

"-drink my wine-"

"I'm not drinking your wine yet-"

"-enjoy my ambience-"

"This place has the ambience of a landfill."

"Nonsense! It's quaint! It has old-world charm!"

"Oh, shut up and let me die in peace."

"Oh, of course. You'll die first, and then I'll kill Manny, and then I'll starve to death and get eaten by the mollusks."

"Fine."

"I'm going to lie here until my brain explodes and dribbles out my ears."

"Where's the bloody wine?" Fran leaned back and covered her eyes with her arm.

Bernard perked up. "Hang on. Manny! Get us some wine, would you?" he shouted in the general direction of the back room.

There was no response from the back of the shop.

"Manny!" he shouted, banging on the desk. "Mannymannymannymanny!"

Silence.

"Hoy! Attila! WINE!"

Fran lifted her head with a groan. "Manny's not here."

"Where the hell has he got off to?"

"He's with Rowena."

"Oh, Roweeeena again, is it?" Bernard snorted. "RowEEEE-" he broke off into a fit of coughing, followed by a long drag on his cigarette.

Fran rolled off the sofa and began rooting around beneath it. After a minute, she emerged, covered with dust bunnies and flushed with triumph, grasping a bottle of wine. "Booze!" she said, waving it in the air. "Glasses, quick."

Bernard fished two glasses out of the desk drawer. Fran poured, and they both knocked them back and relaxed with a sigh.

They finished the first round and were starting on the second when Bernard suddenly sat up, nose quivering like a hunting dog on the scent.

"Someone's been in here!" he said.

"How can you tell?"

"I stacked those books just last week. Someone's knocked them over." He looked up. "That egg wasn't on the ceiling!" He pointed to the corner. "That dust has scuff marks in it!"

"All the dust has scuff marks in it."

"These are different scuff marks!"

"Well, you were drinking last night. Did you get into a fight with the wall again?"

"I don't remember," said Bernard. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, and tried to think.

The evening came back in flashes. Dark hair. Wait, he had dark hair. Could it have been his? It wouldn't be the first time he'd gotten drunk and stared into a mirror all night. Or so he'd been told.

All right, hair. Hair was good. What had been below it? He was reasonably sure there had been a face, but it was all a bit fuzzy. He searched his memory, but all he got was "pale".

Okay, forget the face. What else? He concentrated as hard as his aching head would allow. Suddenly, he got a flash of something else: breasts. Rather nice ones, in fact.

He patted his chest frantically and looked down. Those were definitely not his, which was a relief in one way, but damned frustrating in another.

He thumped his hands down on the desk. "Fran! Breasts!"

"What about them?" she asked.

"I had them! I mean, I was with them. I saw them. Fran, did I have sex?"

"What?"

"It's all a blur, but it was woman-shaped. There was a woman here, and she had no clothes on. I think."

"You're just imagining it. Who would you have sex with?"

"Right. I was with you all night, wasn't I? Was I?" He stared into space, making a face that looked like concentration, or maybe constipation, until the truth hit him square in the face. "Wait. The tits and the hair and the face, those were yours."

Fran's eyes went wide. "Bernard," she said. "You're not supposed to remember that."

"You said I wasn't allowed to remember the last time and the time before that. This is a different time!"

"Are you sure you're not just going mad? It wouldn't be the first time, you know."

Bernard stood on his tiptoes, leaning across the desk to point an accusing finger. "You're confusing me on purpose! It wasn't the last time or that other time or that other time! It was LAST NIGHT!"

"It wasn't. It's all the booze, it's playing tricks with your mind," Fran said. She slid casually across the desk, scooting around until she hovered behind Bernard's shoulder, right next to the tall bookshelf that stood directly in the back of the shop.

"Oops!" she chirped, and swept the books off the shelf.

They rained down around Bernard's desk, bouncing off the surface, sharp corners jabbing his arms. A particularly large one clonked him squarely on the head, and everything went black.

He opened his eyes to find Fran slapping him enthusiastically about the face.

He tried to bat her hands away and missed. "Stop! What? What's going on?"

"You passed out," she said in a horrid motherly tone. He dodged her as she tried to dab his forehead with a handkerchief. (Where had she gotten a handkerchief?)

"What were we talking about?"

"Nothing!" Fran replied. "More wine?"

She held out a glass with an ingratiating smile.