Looking more like a new species of wasp than any human, her large black eyes and skinny waist matching well with her grasping arms and her jaw which snapped like an insect's mandible when she spoke, Mrs. Warner descended upon the couple and the crew of workmen.
"Isn't that the creepy woman who lives in the dynamite factory above you?" The woman tilted her head in the direction of Mrs. Warner's hilltop home. Because Villa Escorpion had been constructed in a brutalist style from slabs of concrete, many people in Escorpion Estates did assume it was a county pumping station or the wreck of an alien death star.
Mrs. Warner exhaled and then addressed her neighbor. "My man Forester who is driving me tonight is so incompetent. No doubt you sent such a flyer about your delivery and no doubt Forester read the flyer and still scheduled my appointment at such a time that I would be traveling urgently on the same road at the exact time of your tent's arrival!" She smiled a strained smile, and swiveled her head toward the leery workmen. "You are blocking my exit from this road," she told the frozen men, who looked back at her with fearful, rolling eyes. "I cannot proceed on my way and I have an important gift to deliver tonight!"
