The landlord drove off before Tug could formulate a comeback. Leaving Tug once again alone with Olive.
Short and stout and a few years younger than Tug, Olive Ridley favoured unadorned smock dresses in various dull colours of a burlap-type fabric Tug had never seen elsewhere, at least outside of barnyard settings, complemented by woolly tights of paradoxically vivid hues and ballet-slipper flats. She wore her long grey-flecked black hair in a single braid thick as a hawser. Her large plastic- framed glasses lent her face an owlish aspect.
Tug and Olive had met and bonded over their love of vintage postcards, bumping into each other at an ephemera convention, chatting tentatively, then adjourning for a coffee at a nearby branch of Seattle’s ubiquitous Il Giornale chain. Subsequent outings
