21

The waitress put down four plates of yellow rice.

"Thank you," said Mary. She and her three children - Charlie, Doris and Merry - sat at the vegetarian restaurant and looked down at their vegetarian dishes. They were on Parquet Street in downtown Sloan City, at the Saffron Path restaurant. It was an odd feature of this city, run by a society some would call a cult religion, devoted to a shadowy figure called Bob B. Soxx.

On first hearing the name if the person who it was devoted to, Charlie was sarcastic, even more so than usual. "Bob B. Soxx? The cult is devoted to Bob B. Soxx?"

It was the first time that Charlie had eaten here. A waitress overheard his snide remarks and slowed down to talk as she passed their table. "Yes," she said unbidden. "we are the disciples of Bob B. Soxx. Is there something you'd like to know?"

Charlie just blinked. "Bob B. Soxx, Dude, I am so confused." Charlie called the waitress 'dude' - it was his current affectation to call everyone dude, including the cat, the dog and the fish. Mary picked at her yellow rice.

"Well," she said, "I've heard this story before but wasn't he a singer?"

"Yes," said the waitress, "Bob B. Soxx was a singer in the 1960s. He worked with Phil Spector. They had a couple of hits."

"I just know him for that Christmas song," Mary told the waitress. "I always liked 'The Bells of St. Mary' because that's my name. I know that dates me, but.." She laughed. "So what happened, how did he get here?"