We are halfway there! Huzzah!
“SHAAAAAMUS!”
“Come on, Louie,” I said. “I’m right here.” I’m two feet from your mouth, I could have added but didn’t. You had to make allowances for maestros.
Not that Louie — Louis de Vaudreuil to us parvenus — looked like a maestro. He looked like a short, fat man who’d spent his entire life becoming the best laundryman in Cin City. Hell, the man smells like steam and starch by now. And he is the best, if you don’t take points off for excitability.
Like now. “Observe! OBSERVE!” he shouted, pointing at one stain. “What monstrosity, what perversion of the natural order produced this disgusting mark?”
I looked at it. “That one? Zombies.”
He squinted at me. “Necromantic, or abomination of science?” he asked, in a much more normal tone of voice.
“Necromantic.”
“Ah.” He circled it with some chalk, made a cryptic note.