The Cybersybils present Fork U

"Good morning, Professor!" JC brayed, "You do remember me? Look who I rescued and brought home!"

"Thank you," the nervous father mumbled, glancing at Maddie with concern. "Thank you, Mr. Don Juan, I mean..." and the man of letters turned red at his faux pas.

"Daddy, really..." Olivia laughed, rolling her eyes and sticking her tongue out daintily at her mother. "Don't give mummy a heart attack!"

"Olivia! Do behave...now where were we?" Posh segued, squirming in her seat at the head of the table. "Yes, we were discussing fine art - Juan Carlos, did you know that I am an elected member of the Poussin Commission of Les Andelys?"

"Yes and I work at the Hague...I'm head of the Special Collections Library...and I don't run about telling everyone," Ms. Madeline interrupted, spearing her french toast with a rather large silver fork.

"And I write poetry," Olivia chuckled. "How lame is that?"

"Miss Olivia used to be a very successful stock trader in Boston," a proud father piped, "yet she chucked it all in, didn't you my brave girl, to pursue..."

"...literature?" the Jackal mocked. "The restoration of some legendary books or something, I suppose. Yes, Olivia, that was a bright idea. Noble indeed."

"Enough!" Maddie decreed, not about to watch her friend be ripped to shreds before her eyes, especially not by someone of JC's ilk. She glared effectively at the Jackal and most probably would have taken a well-aimed swipe at him with her silver utensil, hallmarked with an impressive P, had Olivia not stood unexpectedly and exited the room with a polite, "Excuse me, please."

"What? What did I say?" the insensitive man demanded. "I never get any credit for anything. Professor and Mrs. Peyton, excuse me, too, for I think it time for me to be off. I know when I'm not wanted."

"Why don't you say goodbye to Olivia first? Looks to me as if she made for the garden. You two are friends, after all," Maddie remarked with real acrimony in her voice.

"Yes, I suppose," Juan Carlos concurred, thinking the remark to have been made seriously. "All right. But I can't keep the girls waiting back at Columba, either," he added. "Two of them are coming to pick me up in an hour, you know."

As the bibliophile made for the out-of-doors fast on the Jackal's heels, Posh leaned over towards her husband and whispered, "Where's Columbia - does he mean the country? Is he going to shoot somebody there?"

"Earth to Posh!! Hello...NOT Columbia but Columba - his whore house! Shouldn't we tell Olivia?" he added.

"No, no we shouldn't, Robert....best not to get involved, especially in affairs of the heart, that's what I always say!" Posh answered, as quickly as she had forgotten her earlier intervention into her own daughter's bed.