A/N: A longer chapter this time - I figured I should get some writing done while I still could. Two cautions for the reader: one, this chapter contains several references to violence; and two, there's more talk than action. Paradox? Maybe. But enjoy!

2. Sweet Melody

The autobus yeckated down Marghanita Boulevard, past Boothby Avenue and on downtown. Not too many lewdies were about this morning, save tired groups of chellovecks and cheenas waiting for the bus to open its yawning like mouth and swallow them in one gurgling gulp. These vecks and cheenas sat down, themselves doing their bit of yawning, then opening the gazetta or a briefcase or a chasha of steaming hot coffee. After a while there was no room no more to sit, brothers, so people held on to the hand-rails while big bolshy buildings and office towers went by outside.

A rooker gripped my right pletcho, or shoulder, and I turned around.

"Pardon me." An old starry cheena with lines down her litso removed her hand from my person and said, again, "Pardon me. I am very tired, I would very much like..."

"Yes, yes," I said quickly, not wanting to get into a bitva with some malenky baboochka about who deserves to sit on seats in buses even if she'd just got on and I'd been there a quarter-hour. I stood up, very gracious like, and bowed to her, waving with my rooker at the seat.

She sat. She smiled at me and went, "Oh, God bless you son, you're one in a million," and all that cal. "Say," and then she stopped, her liny old litso crinkling up even more, "haven't I seen you somewhere? The Duke of New York, perhaps? I think you were with your friends... you bought drinks for us girls..."

Very skorry this time I said, "No, no, not at all. It was different people altogether," and turned to face ahead. You might think me over-cautious, brothers, but the Duke of New York was part of my not-so-dobby jeezny. I didn't want the whole vonny world to know about it.

The baboochka nodded slow-like, and turned to the window.

The autobus finally stopped at an Underground station but I wasn't going on the tube, oh no, but on my own two nogas to the Gramodisc mesto three blocks away. It was a bright August day and the street was lit by the shining litso of old Sol. I'd half a rassoodock to sing some gloopy tune about how beautiful and sunny it was, but, little brothers, thou knowest I don't sing gloopy songs about the weather.

The National Gramodisc Archives had its eemya in gold letters over the front door. I opened it and ittied into this like foyer, where I punched my code 6655321 into a silver box to open the next set of doors. After that, brothers, I was in the main mesto, a large square room with row upon row of bookshelves. An open space in the front held a few malenky tables for computers, sound machines with knobs and dials, and even a real gramophone, quite starry and dorogoy. Mr. Cordwell, my employer, walked by carrying a stack of discs piled up to his glazzies. He nodded hello and I nodded back at his blinking glazzies and bald gulliver. Mr. Cordwell always ittied back and forth real skorry as if something very very important were vareeting.

Harmony Singh, already seated at a computer, greeted Your Humble Narrator with, "Hi Alex, you're late."

"I am not late, brother," I said with dignity. "You are merely early."

Harmony was a medium-sized malchick with black hair, brownish skin, and a pair of otchkies or spectacles. He had a friendly sort of casual manner, though a bad tendency to smeck at veshches he did not understand. Right now he was govoreeting, "So I'm your brother now, am I? Don't mind that, it's better being called 'brother' than 'Harmony', and to be honest I'd rather have you as a brother than that brat Jaydeep, although if I had to pick between you and Melody, now, I'd have to pick her, since she's a better sister than most…"

That was funny, a ptitsa named Melody being his sister. "Melody and Harmony Singh!" I started to laugh, softly at first, he he he.

He wheeled around in his swivel-chair. "God you're annoying sometimes. My name is Harmeet. Harmeet Omar Singh. Harmeet Harmeet Harmeet. Okay, so some people don't know how to spell my name because it sounds strange to them. And other people, when I tell them my name is Harmeet Singh, they say, 'Oh, like the cricketer' or "Oh, like the footballer' and I have to tell them I can't kick a ball to save my life—it's true, Alex, stop laughing, the only balls I'll kick are yours if you keep being so bloody annoying. Because no one, Alex, NO ONE except for you calls me Harmony! Even when people know that my twin sister's named Melody they still don't call me Harmony. I've lived nineteen years without people calling me Harmony and I don't intend..."

Brothers, I did not mean to annoy poor Harmony, but I could not help smecking. Laughter bubbled out of me like red red krovvy out of a smashed-in rot. No, no: like crystal-clear water out of a fountain surrounded by butterflies and sweet sladky flowers and like leaping dolphins. I needed not think of the old ultraviolence. That was not anymore my eegra. Anyway, I smecked ha ha ha, saying, "Twins! Harmony and Melody! Melody and Harmony!"

"MY NAME IS HARMEET," said Harmony, his litso growing red.

Mr. Cordwell ittied back with a smaller rookerful of discs. I could just viddy his rot move as he govoreeted, "Mr. Singh, stop telling Mr. DeLarge what your name is. Mr. DeLarge already knows your name. Mr. DeLarge, please sit in your seat and get to work. Where's Mr. Purcell? He's late." Then the veck hurried away.

I donned my ooko-phones and onned the machine, it making glorpy beeps and bops as it booted up. Today's rabbit was to adjust the volume balance on an old recording of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring because the strings were so gromky you could hardly slooshy the woodwinds. After five minootas it was like I was in the land at a milk-plus bar, not that I was really in the land, you understand, only very focused, so when the zvonock went ding-ding-da-diiing to the shoom of Beethoven's Fifth, I jumped.

"O Harmeet!" I called, not wishing to make him razdraz. "The doorbell!"

"Get it yourself," he said, not looking. "I'm busy."

Dave Purcell, the other malchick here—I hadn't slooshied him come in—went ho ho ho and said, "You're like an old married couple. But Alex, as it's somebody as doesn't work here, it's your job to answer. Remember the like contract. New chap does the welcoming stuff."

So I brushed past hound-and-horny Dave, him with his yellow voloss and nose stuck in the air, opened the foyer door, and then the outside one. To say I was surprised would be an understatement, brothers, but it was a dobby and choodnessy surprise. For our usual visitors were professor-type vecks or old piano-teacher damas, but standing there was the most beautiful, well, at least the third or fifth most beautiful devotchka I'd ever seen in all my jeezny.

...

The devotchka had dark brown glazzies like metal chocolate, though there is really not such a veshch, with tiny old-fashioned gold otchkies around them. She was smiling, and her whole litso glowed in the sun like warmly. She had long black voloss that swung down past her shoulders and onto a pair of round horrorshow groodies, neither too big or malenky, but I wasn't really viddying those, O brothers, just the package she held in her rookers.

"Hello, could you please give this to Harmeet?" she said, holding out the package in one brown like delicate rooker.

All at once I ponied she was from Arabia or Egypt just like gloopy Harmony was, and then I ponied she was like giving things to him, so putting two and dva together I figured out she was his like devotchka. Which was not fair, O brothers. It was not fair that the so-called dobby malchicks got all the horrorshow devotchkas. In fact I was quite jealous of poor Harmony, which was like pathetic of me.

But I also viddied she looked familiar, maybe like a veshch in a dream. In fact she looked like the sharp in my sneety last nochy who'd caressed poor dying Alex in her rookers while G. F. Handel's "Comfort Ye" flowed on in the background. Still there was something about her glazzies and otchkies that reminded me of someone in real real life, and I was frozen for a minoota trying to remember if I'd fillied with her in the past. I hoped not. I viddied old pictures in my mind: me yanking off a devotchka's spectacles and grinding them to dust with a stomp and twist of the old sabog while Dim laughed hu hu hu, me tolchocking another young ptitsa for fun and pulling her black voloss to make her creech in unholy terror while I waited patiently for my other droogs to itty out of a grocery shop, and us all doing the old in-out on a different ptitsa in the backlot outside the Filmdrome sinny a few weeks before I was finally loveted. But none of these devotchkas in my mind-pictures looked exactly like her.

I thought of all that, brothers, and while these messels came to my mozg the devotchka smiled again and said, slow-like this time as if I was dim, "Could you please give this to my brother Harmeet for me?"

Welly welly well. "Your brother, you say?"

"Yes, he's the one with the glasses sort of like mine. He's probably wearing a buttoned shirt. He..."

"Oh, I know who he is." That explained her familiar-looking litso. I took the package from her real skorry and shook her right rooker. "And thou must be his sister Melody Singh. A lovely eemya."

"Well, thanks," she said, and smiled again. It was bliss and gorgeosity, like violin sunbeams shining out of a blue oboe sky. Then she pointed at the package veshch and said, "It's actually for some guy called Alex. He's moving in to my brother's apartment, see, and my mum got all worried and concerned that this Alex wouldn't have enough school supplies since he's from the A Flatblocks and therefore poor and starving, which I don't think likely, but anyway she bought him two hundred sheets of music paper, six notebooks, and thirty pens and pencils and they're all in there." She pointed at the package I had plopped on the ground, it being heavy from all these like skolliwoll supplies for poor starving me. "I wonder if he needs it. I guess I'll meet him soon, since we're both going to the music college, Harmeet and I. He's in Electro of course, and I'm in regular Comp... Do you think my mother's completely daft, giving this guy all that stuff?"

This devotchka Melody looked at Your Humble Narrator, expecting an answer. "I think," I govoreeted carefully, "that this Alex veck will already have pens and pencils, but will be in need of paper to write music on, and notebooks to write notes in, him being too dim and not oomny enough to have viddied the need for such veshches before."

Suddenly Melody frowned, and it was like the clouds had clouded in or some nazz had dealt a flip tolchock to a violin, making it go skreeeek real oozhnassny. "You talk like... oh never mind. At least the words sound nicer when you say them."

"You mean," I leaned in closer, blink-blinking my blue glazzies, "the slovos have a dobbier shoom when I govoreet them?"

She didn't giggle or go pink and bezoomny. Instead she shrugged her pletchoes.

I tried again. "This name Melody," I asked, for I was very curious, brothers, "does it mean a different meaning in Egyptian?"

Now she smotted at me like I was bezoomny. "Egyptian?"

"Yes, yes, does 'Melody', which is a slovo meaning the tune of a song in English, have another meaning in the Egyptian language?"

She looked very confused, poor ptitsa. Maybe she was a malenky bit dim herself. "I don't think so. I don't think it does."

"But, but, why did your pee and em give you the name Melody instead of an Egyptian name like Harmeet?"

The devotchka sighed, whoouff, and said with a toss of her gulliver, "But we're not Egyptian at all! Me and my brothers, we're all England-born, and my pee and em as you call them are from India. And the reason my name is a plain English name is because my mother, when she first came here, lived next to a record store called Melodia, I think it's still around but I don't go that way much because it's dangerous, and when I was born she felt nostalgic and named me after the bleeding shop. But she thought 'Melodia' too flowery so she called me plain Melody."

"Sweet Melody," I corrected her, and clicked-clicked with my yazhick or tongue while she flushed pinkish at last.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Here I am arguing with a complete stranger. I apologize, I really do. Harmeet always says I talk too much. They'll be wanting you back at work, I reckon. But what's your name, if you don't mind? I may meet you sometime again..."

I bowed low. "Alex DeLarge, at thy service." Her rot opened in an O at that, and I went, "Give your em my thanks for the college veshches," as I took the pack and ittied away.

...

Mr. Cordwell's glazzies followed me back into my chair. "How's the Stravinsky going?"

The sarky, sneaky old moodge. "Very very very well, much thanks for asking... By the by, India is next to Egypt, right?"

"You must be joking," smecked Mr. Cordwell – too nadmenny, it would appear, to deign to answer my question – and goolied off the other way, perhaps to catch Dave Purcell also not rabbitting. As he ittied he grumble-chumbled, "Whatever do they teach in these schools?"