“John Hancock Fleischer, get out of that window this very minute!”
John, who was nine and a half and slightly overweight, ignored his mother and leaned even farther out of the open clerestory window just below the ceiling. How he had managed to climb up onto the rather narrow window sill seemed beyond her comprehension, even though the door to the stepped armoire was cracked open.
“There’s nothing to see from there,” Myna Fleischer said as she brushed a flyaway wisp of blond hair away from her forehead. Thanks to plastic surgery, she was the living, breathing image of Botticelli’s golden Aphrodite as depicted in his most famous painting.
“There’s lots to see up here,” John said, scratching his bottom with one hand while he held onto the side casing of the window with the other. He was w
