Author note: Psychobeautyqueen- I am not at all offended by your review and indeed, I'm very thankful for your criticism- there is nothing worse than an author that refuses to improve. You weren't psycho in the least. I've started reading "Lucifer's Garden," assuming that that is the most recent fic which you are referring to, and hopefully I will learn something from that as well as from your review. In this chapter, and I address this to my readers too, I'll try to demonstrate what you've suggested. I was concerned too with the lack of dialogue in my fic and I'll try to work on that (and cut down on the French.) But I'd like to respond to your criticism on one point: your example with Faye, and I realize that this was only and example, is difficult to show considering the form of storytelling I've chosen; Vicious is narrating- he wasn't there. But once again, I will try to make a departure from long and drawn-out narrations.

On the chapter and related future: Enter Julia. Exeunt Faye. Very short. (I'm afraid that it's choppy.) Hopefully I haven't annoyed you with the Nabokovian parenthesis, (Here we go- I do not intend for this to turn into Lolita. Even if I wanted it to, I 'm probably not capable of doing so. Lolita voice, perhaps, but Bebop characters. Perhaps I should make the secondary genre parody. I promise that there won't be any long journeys in the car, but I may stick with trains. I also happen to love Edgar Alan Poe in his own right, so don't be surprised if, like Nabokov, I reference him.) but I happen to like them quite a bit. As for other characters, I do plan on working in Jet, Edward, and Shin and Lin.

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Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her...

"I'm sorry, what?" She tore her hard green eyes away from him.

"Thus I learned quite a deal about the Belgian school of minimally-invasive cardiovascular surgery."

"How? I thought you said you were a linguist."

"I am. You just used the subjunctive."

Spike groaned and rubbed his eyes, arching his back away from his chaise lounge, jacket long off, necktie discarded.

"Don't you pay attention to anything? Tell me what you're good for, my god..." he yawned.

"I'm good for lots of things," she purred, and ran her long fingers through short, pin-straight, ink-black hair.

"Yeah, go on another coke binge, why don't you?"

"In that case, I'll see you next weekend. And maybe you too, Victor. Ciao."

Spike shifted uncomfortably in his seat as I watched her stroll out the door and down the hallway.

"Ashley Brandeisyevich, where did you find her?"

"In a gutter, christ. She's too vulgar for a lady, if you could even call her that."

"Any red-blooded man would call you extremely lucky to have a woman of such infinite variety come to one's home on her own volition."

"You'll eventually come to understand the nature of our relationship. Besides, even if that was what I'm after, she wouldn't put out. I'd think she's a virgin."

"Surely you jest," I hissed, perhaps as close to laughter I'd been the entire evening.

"You know Nisa Kenshiro? No, of course you don't. He was a client of ours about a year ago. Wealthy, handsome, tall for a Japanese... absolutely magnetic personality. Intelligent, and quite industrious, I might add- it was a high-yield partnership and satisfying while it lasted. If I were swinging for the other team... anyway, over the course of our professional engagement, he became so close to Faye, and as it appeared, she to him, that he asked her to come back with him to Japan. A vacation or something like that. He tried to play it down."

"She refused, I assume."

"She's our geisha, it's true. She appears to be enamored, but when the contractual partnership terminates, so does the emotional partnership. From what I understand, she barely even answered his overture with an email."

Spike stood and stretched, then laid himself down on his burgundy davenport, covering his eyes with one hand, and kicking off his polished leather shoes.

"Tell me about your mother, Mr. Speigel."

"Why can't I find another nice girl? Like Ophelia. You know, I'm due for another holiday; perhaps we could travel to Scandinavia and find ourselves some fair-haired wives? I've always liked blondes."

I responded with a meditative "hmm" and stared at the rich brown liquid in the shot glass I was holding- it surprised me that my brother, in his wealth and taste, did not own brandy goblets. I suppose that to him, alcohol was alcohol and he would drink it at every opportunity. Work had made him so. But do not get me wrong, he was certainly not an alcoholic. A blood-line of beer-drinkers spanning centuries had ingrained into his DNA a voluminous capacity to drink without getting drunk. I myself can drink vodka and rum like water.

Perhaps the only orderly room in my brother's home was the one in which we then sat. I ignored Spike, who was outlining a half-hearted retreat to northern Europe, and stared across the room at a large bookcase, made of American redwood, and the contents of its shelves. Besides a few of the classics (Gilgamesh, some Virgil, Portrait of a Lady, Fall of the Roman Empire, Two Treatises of Government, Das Kapital, et cetera.) and an impressive set of encyclopedias, the case held an assortment of objects: oriental, occidental, middle-eastern. What caught my eye, however, was a large, golden chalice placed conspicuously atop the center of the highest shelf.

"Of what origin is that bowl?"

"What?" He momentarily lifted a heavy hand from his forehead and tipped his head back on the armrest to gaze at the case.

"Greek. I should tell you about my daughter."

I had, since visiting him four years prior, an enduring recollection of young Julia sitting on a carpeted floor, crayoning neatly within the lines of a coloring book, pink stockings bunched about her knees, feral, yellow hair knotted and tousled, thrown carelessly over her shoulder.

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'Un vrai Da Vinci,' I said.

'Don't make fun of her. You should see her draw free-hand. It's wild- surreal.'

'In that case, a real Hieronymus Bosch.'

-----

I looked at my tired brother, hand over head, slow breath and lukewarm words.

"She's no genius, but she's fine at school. You'll like her- French is her strong subject. I've arranged it so that she's in one of your classes."

"And how old is she? Thirteen?"

"She just turned fourteen. Two months ago, in June. I bought her a cat, a Persian called Danoush."

"Did she look that up?"

"On the internet, probably. I highly doubt she knows Arabic or Urdu or whatever."

"Farsi. Urdu is Pakistan."

"Thanks, fine, whatever... Julia, it's late, go to bed."

I turned my head, the slight alcohol-induced haze clearing as I beheld Julia L. She stood, half hidden by the doorframe, one hand on the molding, looking at me with placid eyes. I stared back. Her father yawned and beckoned her into the room, never removing his hand from his forehead.

Blessed are the sleepy.

"Julia, come say bonjour to your uncle."

She shuffled into the room, eyes to the floor, bare toes painted bubblegum pink to match her carefully-guarded fingernails. Her skin, like mine, (a genetic similarity, surely) was of an incredibly pale and sickly pallor. Long locks of wavy golden hair shimmered and spilled over her shoulders as she leaned down to give me an obligatory kiss on the cheek.

"Bonjour, Uncle Victor," she said in sing-song and dulcet voice.

"Just Victor, darling."

"Just Julia, darling." A short giggle played across her rather commonplace face.

"Of course. Speak to me, Julia, to the best of your ability."

"Ça fait longtemps qu'on ne s'est pas vu?"

"Yes, that's quite sufficient. I won't bother you with that again until the semester starts."

She lifted her eyes from my folded hands to my own pale visage.

"What lovely eyes you have."

I should have hated her if she had been smiling. But she wasn't. She didn't blush, but continued to stare at me with large, aquamarine eyes- blue as Corsican shores and Caribbean lagoons.

"Julia."

"Yeah, dad?"

"Go to bed."