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asked, ready to pull back from Reggie.
    Big and Hot flipped his opponent. Reggie grinned. “Yes.”
    “You do, then?”
    “Yes.” Big and Hot tossed the other guy from the ring. “Go for it.”
    “You got it.” Herbie pulled her closer and nuzzled his cheek against the top of Reggie’s hair.
    Reggie began to feel smothered. When she snapped out of her wrestling world, she cleared her throat and nudged Herbie back. “Sorry,” she said, her eyes moving back to the television. “I can’t dance that close. I have a full frontal rash. Highly contagious. I have to be careful.”
    Herbie eased back.
    Everyone said Bud Harland was ninety-eight years old. In fact, Bud was just a ripe seventy-four. He was the first business owner in Seville to have cable television in his establishment, and later the first one with flat screens. Rumor had it, 3D was next. But Bud Harland ran his business his way and cared little what his customers thought about it. So when his wife suggested that he turn on the news, he did. Reggie seemed to be the only patron pissed off that the wrestling match took a back seat.
    “Hey!” Reggie yelled. “Bud! Come on! This is for the title!”
    “Hush,” said Bud. “They’re talking about our local heathen boy.”
    Reggie pushed Herbie further away, and moved closer to the set, ears perked...
     
    ...with security tightened, especially surrounding Dr. Marcus Leon who is set to orchestrate the experiment.
     
    The first in-vitro fertilization-slash-cloning of the shelled-out ovum with the new DNA nucleus is scheduled to take place Tuesday at the Westing Biogenetic Institute in Chicago. Chicago authorities are gearing up for what they suspect may be one of the heaviest days of protesting and violence in the city’s long and storied history.
     
    Archbishop Ronald Oswald of the Chicago Archdiocese is emphatically opposed to the alleged cloning of Christ in his city. Yesterday, in a news conference, he also criticized the timing of the experiment, calling it a slap in the face to all Christians and questioning its proximity to the Christmas holiday. Westing’s Dr. Marcus Leon, responded that the timing is purely coincidental.
     
    In other news, Israel is gearing up...
     
    Bud flipped the televisions back to their primary all-sports function. “Didn’t you used to date that guy?”
    “No, I didn’t,” she replied, briefly dazed, until wrestling snapped her back to reality. Then she stomped her foot as she realized that Big and Hot had lost his match. “Damn it!”
    She swung out her hand in frustration, turned and came face-to-face with Buzz, her verbal adversary from the diner.
    “Excuse me,” she said sarcastically, and stepped to her right. So did Buzz. “I thought they had special bars for your kind,” she said, eyeing Buzz’s rough looking crowd about ten feet away.
    “We come here all the time. If you left your closet more often, you’d know that.”
    “Ain’t I lucky that the closet door was left open?” Reggie tried to get past him.
    “I think your date is real cute.” Buzz winked, blocking her way again.
    “Better looking than you,” Reggie snapped back.
    “You know what I think.” Buzz snickered and lowered his eyes to Reggie’s. “I think now that your boy Marcus is the world’s most hated person, Herbie over there is the best you can do.”
    “Oh, yeah, well Herbie can pound the hell out of a dent. Can you? No. “
    Nervously, Herbie stepped forward. “Hey-hey. Please don’t fight about me.”
    Reggie smiled and looked around Buzz, speaking softly. “It’s okay, Herbie. Buzz and I are actually friends. It’s this fake fighting thing we do.”
    “When we were young,” Buzz said. “She used to flip me over her shoulder. I’d challenge her every single time. But, hey we’re older and I’m bigger. Or I’d challenge her again.” He winked.
    “You don’t think I can?”
    “Reg, come on.” Buzz laughed. “Weren’t you at the hip doctor the other day?