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nicknamed themselves Buffy, though perhaps not all of them had proceeded to marry bastards. “She would,” she muttered. Of course the Trophy had called her Madeleine. “I’m not going to listen to—I don’t have to—oh, shit, I can’t stand it.” She rewound the tape and swatted the machine back on.
    â€œHi, Madeleine?” Dahling. “This is Tempestt.” Her socool voice somehow conveyed the preciousness of the redundant t. “Madeleine?” Rub it in. “Emily has asked me to hire you, and she specifically mentioned, uh, your talking frog, to tell stories at her sleepover party this Saturday night. If—”
    Buffy turned the machine off again. “I won’t do it.”
    But—had Emily really asked for her? Emily wanted her own mother at her party?
    â€œI’ve got to do it. But they’re not gonna pay me.”
    â€œI won’t do it,” Adamus said.
    â€œYes, you will.”
    â€œBe a captive curio? Gawked at like a slave on an auction block, laughed at? I won’t.”
    â€œHate to tell you, Addie, but yes, you will.”
    â€œI won’t talk.”
    â€œVe haf vays to make you talk.”
    â€œI’ll curse. I’ll blaspheme. I’ll shock the children and make them faint. Boogers of God!” Adamus swelled up, then jumped up, energized by his own daring. “Spittle of God! Toe lint of God! CROTCH of God!”
    Buffy laughed so hard she had to sit down. Adamus deflated.
    â€œBut—you laugh at blasphemy?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBut—” The frog’s wide, blotchy, mud-green face looked even more pop-eyed than normal with dismay. “But—don’t you believe?”
    â€œNot in any toe-lint sense, no.” Buffy’s religious beliefs were hazy, and she preferred to leave them that way. “I don’t believe in Santa Claus, either. Or the Easter Bunny. Or the Tooth Fairy.” The frog’s ogle-eyed presence, walking-talking proof that maybe she should believe in something, discomfited her. “Of course, I do believe in fairy princes,” she added sarcastically, her voice rising. “Cinderella kissed a fella, all that fairy-tale stuff. Why not? I could use a fairy godmother.”
    With a thud the refrigerator went dead. Simultaneously the answering machine beeped off and the Gro-Lite flickered out. A dozen anonymous household machines quit, and in dim silence the frog sat tensely, head cocked, listening. Buffy could hear it too: an unidentifiable, almost mythical sound, like distant geese flying or winged wolves or banshees wailing, far and high in the sky.
    â€œOh ho,” Adamus said softly. “You’ve got to watch what you say. Now you’ve done it.”
    â€œDone what? It’s just a power outage.” Because the electricity had gone out, a person could hear things, that was all. Probably traffic. Echoing against the clouds or something.
    Someone knocked at the door.
    â€œ Now what?” Buffy heaved herself up to get it.
    There on her doorstep stood a sixtyish woman with hair dyed so stiffly blond it looked like it had been spray-painted gold. She wore massive gold circle earrings, a gold unicorn pendant, a cheap white sweater with tacky pseudo-gold dangles and beads all over it. Because of her golden spike-heeled boots, her droopy rear in its white polyester stretch pants protruded from under the sweater and her gold-draped boobs thrust forward, albeit from a rather southerly sector of her chest. She carried a gold purse the size of a Welsh corgi, somewhat battered and rubbed; brown leather showed through the golden surface. Her eyelashes were gilded with glitter mascara. Some of it had fallen off and caught in the creases flanking her mouth. The woman’s middle name ought to be “Ormolu.” Buffy felt dourly surprised, as always, that her former mother-in-law did not wear gold lipstick.
    She felt more surprised