Free Butter Safe Than Sorry by Tamar Myers

will shut you up."
    Now that was a friend. Agnes always knew when to coddle me and when to take off the gloves and give me a gentle tap on the noggin. If we had been best buddies in college, I have no doubt neither of us would have gotten much studying done; we'd have partied hardy like there was no tomorrow, and I might have well ended up a Presbyterian like Susannah.
    A soft cough ahead got my attention. The stranger was no longer peering at us through her binoculars, as we were but a scant thirty feet away. There was in her face the suggestion of Asiatic forebears--or not--but no matter, she was most definitely not the creation of some writer 's imagination, but a flesh-and-blood human being.
    "She's definitely not the Snow Queen," I said.
    "Maybe not, but she is a foreigner," Agnes said.
    "Of pleasing but ambiguous ethnicity," I said.
    As we made our final panting approach, I bobbed slightly. "Greetings, and welcome to Hernia, O strange one," I said. "From whence didst thou hail?"
    "Cincinnati, Ohio."
    "Well, that certainly explains the accent," Agnes said.
    I punched her fleshy biceps with an elbow even sharper than my tongue. "You can't get that from just two words," I said.
    The elegant, beautiful stranger appeared to suppress a smile. "Are you the famous Magdalena Yoder?"
    "Indeed, I am." It was only then, after having admitted who I was, that I began to fear for my safety. "I mean, let's just say that there are those who think I am Magdalena Yoder."
    She cocked her head.
    "Don't worry," Agnes said. "She's utterly harmless--although she did bring a giantess to her knees with a bra-cum-slingshot, and although she espouses nonviolence as her official creed, she's not above whacking the odd villain over the head."
    A wary glance was now cast in Agnes's direction. "Surely, you're joking."
    "Oh, but I'm not. Our Magdalena is quite the heroine. Why, once she even rescued a villainess by dangling her nemesis by her hair into a sinkhole. Of course yours truly was pressed into service on that one. I am, you see, her unofficial sidekick: the Tonto to her Lone Ranger, the Robin to her Batman. My point is--were I to be making one--that if you have come to request the famous Magdalena Yoder's services, be apprised of the fact that sooner or later I will be assisting her." Agnes crossed her arms over her breathless, heaving bosom.
    "I am a guest at her inn," the stranger said.
    I stepped forward. " Excuse me?"
    "My name is Surimanda Baikal. I am coming from Russia. Then New York, then Cincinnati. Then I am drives here. But you are hard woman to find, Magdalena Yoder."
    "But you don't have a reservation," I wailed.
    She shrugged, almost burying her face in the white fur collar. "So? My plans, she has--how you say?--they change from day to day."
    " Your plans?"
    "Oh, come on," Agnes said, much to my annoyance. "You have enough room. The more the merrier. Right?"
    "Stifle it," I hissed. "She doesn't fit in with this bunch."
    "Maybe, but from what you've described to me, this bunch belongs in a loony bin. At least she'll add some class."
    "Da, I vill add some class," the elegant woman said.
    Decked out in her fur and velvet, with the crown piece on her head, Miss Surimanda Baikal was my image of an empress. When compared to the Zambezis, the Nyles, and the Timmses--Well, one could hardly compare a swan to six moorhen, could one?
    "Velcommen to zee PennDutch Inn," I cried, my arms extended in an only slightly overly exuberant greeting (after all, someone as handsomely dressed as this woman would be able to afford a lot of ALPO). "Who cares if your untimely arrival is, at the very least, extremely inconsiderate? Of course you'll just have to make do with PUS tonight--that's previously used sheets--because laundry day is not until tomorrow. But look on the bright side: for the distinct pleasure of going beddy-bye whilst wrapped in the scent of a previous guest, I shall levy a surcharge of only fifty percent."
    "That's ridiculous," Agnes