Free Date with a Sheesha by Anthony Bidulka

must have been running in circles, for although it seemed to take me eons to find the door to outside, it took me and my escort only a few minutes and one eon-length elevator ride to get back to the museum.
    When we arrived, Mr. Hamhock with the generous tummy tossed me into the room like a sack of detective. I barely stopped my stumbling, tumbling momentum in time to avoid toppling into a bust perched atop a Grecian-style column.
    “Watch it, you idiot!” screeched a woman’s voice. “Do you know how much Constantine cost?”
    Unfair question. I had an advantage. I was betting the cost was a lot less than one might think. Given that it was probably a fake. Just like the in-progress frieze I’d spied earlier.
    “Who are you?” the woman demanded, her head shaking with outrage, but her pixie cut (think Halle Berry in that James Bond flick) black hair not moving an inch.
    “I’m Russell Quant. Who are you?”
    “What were you trying to steal? Was it the coins? What made you think you could get away with this, anyway? The door was unlocked. You must have known someone was in here.”
    Steal? “I wasn’t trying to steal anything.”
    She rolled her eyes, then turned away from me toward Mr.
    Potato Head behind me. He’d now been joined by his cousin, Mr.
    Pimply Face.
    “Call the cops. And get him out of my museum,” she ordered, 56
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    disgusted.
    Cops? Uh, wait a sec. Wasn’t I the one who should be calling the cops? Shouldn’t she be worried I’d reveal her forgery scam to the world?
    “Lucy, no.” Another man entered the room.
    “Colin, this man just tried to rip off the museum.”
    Colin. The new guy had to be Colin Cardinale. My date for the evening, and, I hoped, my knight in shining armour come to rescue me.
    He was an impressive man. Six foot three, with dark features that could best be described as devilishly handsome. Dark eyes sparkled under heavy, arched eyebrows. His nose and chin and cheeks rivalled those of the statues of Greek gods he stood next to.
    And he smelled really good too.
    The man smiled a master-of-all-things-evil smile at my captor, showing off a wide expanse of white Chiclets teeth and a dimple in the hollow of each cheek. All that was missing were nubs of horns, which might have been covered by his generous crop of glowing, charcoal hair. I know this sounds fiendish, but in a good way. Studying him, I realized he looked a bit like a male version of my friend, Mary Quail. I wondered if he too had some Cree blood in him.
    “No, Lucy, he didn’t. This is Russell Quant…” he looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. He continued. “He came here to meet me.”
    She gave me a suspicious look through narrowed eyes. I couldn’t blame her. Even so, I gave her one right back.
    “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Quant,” Cardinale said, approaching me with a big hand held out in greeting.
    I shook the hand, but remained mum. No apologies accepted yet.
    “I asked you to meet me here because the route to the gallery is not clearly marked yet, and not easy to find on your own. And I knew Lucy would be working late as usual.”
    The woman and I exchanged further mistrustful glares.
    “This is Lucy Wu,” he said, “the curator here at the Museum of Antiquities.”
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    “Oh,” I said to Cardinale, “I thought you were the curator.”
    “No, that’s incorrect,” Lucy quickly informed all present.
    “Colin is the executive director of WACS. He’ll be the curator of the university’s soon-to-be revealed collection of antique carpets.
    But that collection will be housed in the Department of Antiquities.”
    “Uh, isn’t that right here?”
    “This is the Museum of Antiquities.”
    Okay, well that was clear.
    “Lucy, can we send Stu and Jack back to their regular duties now?” Cardinale asked, throwing the security guards a contented cat