Forward
Fallen God is the fifth and final story in the A Mortal God series, which relates the tale of Damien, an otherwise ordinary man who can effortlessly change anything around him.  It directly follows the previous story (Coffee Shop) and three preceding stories (Acid of the Mind, Evening Commute, Jaywalker) but the reader may skip the antecedants without missing anything essential.  As always, I hope you find the story sufficiently entertaining, or at least interesting, to draw your attention away from the numerous plot flaws.  
       – Downing Street

PART I:  February

February, 2017

She found him outside.  He was sitting on a bench in the little green space not far from her flat.  Piles of old snow heaped on the grass all around.  He was sitting with his head down, staring at the ground, lost in thought.  He did that a lot.  He was wearing only a light jacket, no hat.
       Ava approached him diffidently.  The night was cold.  Ava wasn’t as cold as she should have been, given how she was dressed.  No time to ponder that now.
       The heels on her expensive leather boots crunched on the icy pavement.  The green space wasn’t very big.  A bit of grass, a few trees; benches and flowerbeds in between.  Ava called it the parklet.  The leafless branches of the trees etched brown and black lines against the steel-grey sky.
       “Damien!” she cried, when she was close enough, “What are you doing out here?  You’ll catch your death from this chill.”
       He didn’t even look up for long seconds.  When he did, his face was unsmiling.  “Ava,” he said.  “I . . . must have wandered again.  Thinking.  I was – I didn’t mean to worry you.”
       Ava studied him.  Middle height, middle weight, shaggy brown hair, unexceptional features.  An ill-tended goatee that was a poor fashion choice to begin with.  He told her once that he was twenty-eight, but he looked older.  There were worry lines on his face.  He had the most troubled, haunted eyes of anyone she had ever known.
       “Come inside,” Ava said.  “It’s cold.”
       He nodded, almost meekly.  “Very well.”  He got to his feet and let Ava lead him back to her flat.
       She got him inside, up the lift to her flat.  She was still getting used to using the private lift, instead of the stairs.  She settled Damien in an overstuffed chair beside the fire.  She gave him a blanket and some tea, then left him to change out of her work clothes.  When she returned, Damien was silently sipping tea.  He sat there unmoving for a long time.
       “I was a Cambridge man,” he said abruptly, staring into his tea cup.
       Ava arched a flawless eyebrow.  “Oh?” she said, noncommital.  The revelation surprised her only a little.  It had long been obvious that Damien was no ordinary vagabond.
       Now he was shaking his head.  “That’s not true, that’s not true,” he said.  “I was enrolled at Cumbria.  But it was a joint anthropology program, hosted by Cambridge.  I would have gotten a Cambridge diploma.  I . . . never finished.”
       Ava sipped her own tea.  She was seated on the gold brocade loveseat nearby, shapely legs tucked up under her.  Semi-precious stones on her tight short-shorts twinkled in the light.  “What happened?” she asked, as casually as she could.
       Another long silence.  Damien said nothing for so long that Ava began to wonder if he had heard her.  Abruptly he looked up.  He gazed at her with those troubled eyes.  Ava got the sensation of barely contained panic behind that gaze.  The man was fighting demons.
       “Have you noticed,” he said carefully, “some odd changes since I moved in with you?”  For a moment his gaze dipped downward, to where the perfect globes of Ava’s over-abundant breasts distended a thin, white pullover.  Ava was an exceptionally attractive young woman.
       “I’ve noticed,” she said.
       Her response was an epic understatement.  Damien’s arrival had coincided with a sequence of increasingly bizarre transformations of reality that lately had Ava questioning her own sanity – and the sanity of the universe.  
       Damien was in her flat in the first place only because of a moment of dubious judgment on Ava’s part.  He had been wandering down the street, looking lost, when Ava passed by.  At first she dismissed him as a drunk, or an oddball, of whom there were enough in her neighbourhood.  A closer look revealed contrasts.  His hair was uncombed.  He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days.  Yet his clothing, while rumpled from being slept in, was expensive and new.  He looked more like a barrister on a bender than a bum.
       “Sir, are you all right?” Ava said.  She was on her way home from work.
       The man looked up at her.  When she looked into his eyes Ava instantly realized she was dealing with a deeply troubled man.  “Too much,” he said, not really seeing her.  “Much too much.  Too much for anyone.  How could I know?  So much power, so strong.  Too much, too much!”
       Ava gripped him by both arms.  She was becoming alarmed.  “Sir!  Are you all right?  Can I help you?”
       Abruptly the man came to himself.  He stood up straight.  He looked around, apparently surprised  by his surroundings.  He said:  “I . . . I’m sorry, I was walking and . . . oh lord where am I now?”
       Ava told him.  He received the news with a shake of his head.  “I must have blanked,” he explained.  “I took the train up, yesterday morning?  I think.  Then I got to . . . thinking about things . . . and . . . .  Well, thank you.”
       Ava made a humanitarian decision.  “Sir, if I may speak freely, you look like hell.  We aren’t far from my flat.  You can rest there, get yourself cleaned up.”  She was reasonably certain the man was harmless, perhaps slipped off his meds.  But those eyes!
       “My name is Damien,” the man said.  “And thank you very much.”
       “Ava.  Is there anyone you would like me to call?”
       The question seemed to hurt him.  “No.  Can we go to your flat now?  I desperately need a shower.”
       Ava led him back to her digs.  They climbed the narrow staircase to the first floor.  “It’s not much, I’ll allow,” Ava said as she pushed open the scarred door.  “But it keeps the rain off.”  She pointed.  “There’s a shower in there.”
       Ava lived in a one-bedroom flat above a clothing store.  An immigrant couple, the ever-arguing Mercati’s, ran the store and lived behind it.  Ava could hear their raised voices almost every night.  
       Her rooms were cramped, and dilapidated, and frequently cold.  Paint peeled off the walls. The floors creaked beneath her feet.  Ava didn’t mind so much.  It was better than the street.
       Ava listened to the thumping of the pipes as her guest showered.  She had no curiosity about peeking.  A few minutes later he re-appeared.  Ava had offered to press his clothes while he showered, but Damien said he would take care of it.  He did.  His shirt and trousers were crisp, his jacket clean.  “I would be grateful for something to eat,” he said.
       Ava found some leftovers in the refrigerator and reheated them.  Damien dug in with gusto.
“So,” Ava began, when he had eaten a bit, “what brings a man to be wandering the streets of a small northern city, in the winter?”
       “Short attention span,” he replied.  “I recently returned from France.  I’ve been travelling a great deal.  Lately my personal affairs have become, well, rather tumultuous.  Sometimes I find myself . . . thinking too much . . . about . . . the situation, and when I come out of it I find . . . I’ve been wandering.  Sometimes for days.  Majorly annoying.”  There were long pauses in his reply.
       Ava said:  “I don’t want to sound intrusive, but maybe you should be getting some kind of treatment?  It seems serious.”
       He smiled without mirth.  “Trust me, there are no ‘scripts for this.”
       “Do you have a job?”
       That joyless smile again.  “Independently wealthy.  More or less.”  He looked around the tiny flat.  “What about you, Ava?  Slumming billionaire?”
       “I’m a fugitive,” she told him.  “On the run from my father’s ambitions.”
       “Ah.  Your father has plans for you?”
       “Big plans.  Father is a barrister.  Very successful, very respected.  He is determined that his clever daughter follow in his footsteps.  I would sooner spend my days living in a yurt with nomadic Kazakhs than practice law, but father wouldn’t hear of it.  I got as far as second year university, then I broke out of jail.  Right now I’m a waitress.  Father is not happy.”
       He nodded gravely.  “May I stay here tonight?  I’m rather rootless at the moment.  I’ll be no trouble.”
       “You would have to sleep on the floor.  I have no spare bed and the loveseat is too small to lie on.”
       He shrugged.  “I’m sure I’ll be perfectly comfortable.”
       When Ava arose the next morning, she found her house guest was in fact stretched out on the loveseat, sleeping soundly beneath the blankets she had provided.  She tilted her head, perplexed.  She would have sworn an oath that the sofa was too short for anyone but a child to sleep on.  Damien’s feet weren’t even hanging out.  Ava shrugged, and went to make coffee.
       Damien appeared in the kitchen nook just as she was finishing breakfast.  He was fully dressed.  He shook his head when Ava offered coffee.  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, sitting down at the other end of the little side table, “I really need someplace to stay, for a while at least.  While I get my head together.  Would you mind terribly if I bunked here?”
       Ava set down her coffee cup.  “Can you be serious?  This place is so small the mice bump into each other.”
       “I can split the rent,” he said.  He reached into his trouser pocket and retrieved a small sheaf of bills.
        Ava looked at the money in his hand.  She wasn’t so far from sleeping on a park bench herself.  “Don’t run the shower very long in the morning,” she said.  “The hot water runs out.”  
       Thus Damien became Ava’s flatmate.  Almost immediately, the world began to go peculiar.
       Damien himself wasn’t the problem.  He was, in fact, a fine flatmate.  He paid his share of the rent on time.  He washed the dishes, he didn’t pinch her food, he was tidy and quiet.  Very quiet.  Sometimes he didn’t speak for so long she almost forgot he was there.  The fighting Mercati’s downstairs created more noise than Damien did.
       Yet he could make intelligent and interesting conversation when she needed someone to chat with.  He had travelled a great deal.  He listened patiently while she unloaded about work.   While the propinquity of a man and a woman sharing a small space inevitably created awkwardness, Damien was quietly diligent about respecting Ava’s privacy.
       Still, there was a strangeness about Damien that Ava could never get used to.  Behind those haunted eyes, she could sense dark forces at work in his mind.  A torment writhed beneath his equitable persona.  Addiction?  Mental illness?  Neither seemed to fit.
       There were other oddities too.  Damien had no job but he always had money.  A little bit of money, anyway, enough to pay the rent.  He always seemed to have food, yet Ava had never seen him actually buy any.  Similarly, while he kept his clothes clean, she had never seen him do laundry.  Or worse, ask her to do it.  The Mercati’s kept a washer and dryer downstairs for Ava to use.
       Of course, he could be doing these chores while Ava was at work.  Damien spent much of his time sitting around the flat.  Sometimes he worked on an old laptop computer he picked up somewhere.  Other times he stared out the window, watching the rain.  Ava didn’t have much time to ponder these peculiarities.  She was soon distracted by oddities of her own.
       It began with the shorts.  One afternoon, before her shift began, Ava went out to the corner store to fetch a carton of milk.  Only on the way back did she realize she was wearing an old pair of denim short-shorts that usually lay in the bottom of her bureau.  She sometimes wore them around the flat on hot summer days.  She never, ever, wore them outside – especially in the dead of winter.  The hem barely covered her ass-cheeks.  No wonder the checkout clerk had been staring.
       When she got back to her flat, Ava took off the shorts and tossed them in the back of her closet.  She found a pair of cotton joggers and put them on.  She chatted with Damien, who was sitting by the window.  Half an hour later she discovered she was wearing the shorts again.
       Now that was odd.  It was winter, and the hissing pipes in her flat barely kept the frost out.  Yet here she was walking about in a pair of tattered short-shorts fit for cleaning the oven in July.  
       She didn’t remember putting them on.  She did remember taking them off.  Didn’t she?  The memory was indistinct.
       It didn’t matter.  It was time for work.  Returning to her bedroom, Ava stripped off the tight shorts again.  She put her waitress dress on.  She tossed the shorts in the rubbish bin and left for the restaurant.  She didn’t notice at first that her dress was a couple of inches shorter than she remembered.
       A couple of days later, she noticed something wrong with the window.  Her flat had two old casement windows overlooking the street. The glass in one had cracked long ago and never been replaced.  The crack ran like a fissure up one side of the glass.  Someone had laid a piece of tape over it, to keep the heat in, which looked even worse.  Stepping out of the bathroom, dressed in a long white robe, Ava glanced out the window as she rubbed a towel on her hair.  It was drizzling again.
       She stopped short.  The window looked different.  The white paint around the frame was no longer flaking.  It looked clean and fresh.  There was no crack in the glass.  The panes were all smooth and unblemished, so clean they nearly disappeared.
       Ava stooped to look closer.  Her robe opened, revealing womanly cleavage.  She traced two fingers along the edge of the glass.  It was clear that the window had not been replaced; it had never been broken.
       How was that possible?  She had been looking around and past that foot-long crack since the day she moved in.  Drafts blew in where the tape had peeled off.  She was utterly certain of this.  But her own eyes insisted that it wasn’t there.  More disconcerting, that it had never been.  
       Puzzled, Ava returned to her bedroom to get dressed.  Damien was still sleeping.  She discovered the pair of short-shorts she had thrown away, neatly folded at the bottom of a drawer.  They didn’t look nearly as tattered as she remembered.  
       She wasn’t going to wear those again, not in winter certainly.  She tossed them in the rubbish bin, again.  A pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt were fine for slopping around her flat.  She slipped into a well-worn pair of black trainers.
       As she left the room, Ava caught sight of her reflection in a mirror.  She stopped short, again.  Her sweatshirt and jeans were gone.  Instead she was wearing tight denim shorts – the pair she had just binned – along with a black spandex half-top.  The sleeveless top cupped her breasts and bared her skin from sternum to navel.  She was wearing glossy dance-tights beneath the shorts.  Her immaculate, platform trainers were as white as new-fallen snow.  It was an outfit for jogging around the park, showing off.
       Not only that, but it seemed that she had rather more to show off than she remembered.  Though Ava was fit and healthy, she had never considered herself curvaceous.  The figure in her bedroom mirror was head-turning.  The shorts and top did nothing to hide it.
       Neither did her waitress dress, when she got ready for work that evening.  The dress was light blue cotton with a row of front buttons.  It was made to fit anybody.  Yet she couldn’t help notice how the dress clung to her figure, emphasizing the sway of her hips as she walked.  The top button was too tight to do up.  
    Ava watched herself in the bedroom mirror as she wound up her hair.  Her dress stopped several inches above her knees, revealing shapely legs.  Had it shrunk in the wash?  A memory came to her of impishly washing the uniform in hot water to be sure it shrank.  She tilted her head, considering.  Had she actually done that?  And if she hadn’t, why not?  A snug-fitting dress would ensure better tips.
       Perplexed, she slipped on her white waitress shoes, said good-bye to Damien, who smiled in return, and headed out.  If she wasn’t prompt she would miss the bus.  She didn’t stop to contemplate that her flat-soled shoes now had substantial wedge heels.  That was clearly impossible so she refused to think about it.
       “Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Lorna McTavish exclaimed, when Ava arrived.  “Prisha is off sick and Nadine is going to be late.  Can you and Rika handle double tables till Nadine gets here?  It looks like we’re set to have a busy night for once.”  She gestured toward the half-dozen tables already occupied.  
       Ava worked at a struggling family restaurant run by a middle-aged husband and wife team.  He was a chef, sort of, and she managed the business.  They were perpetually short-staffed, which is why Ava had found work so easily.
       “I’d better get going then,” Ava replied.  She picked up a small red tablet for taking orders.  “Though I do wish Nadine would learn to haul her cute ass out of bed a little earlier.”
       Lorna smiled.  “Thank you, Ava.  You don’t know how much I depend on you.”
       You’re right about that, Ava thought wryly, as she approached the first table.  Ava could hardly remember anyone getting a compliment from Lorna, ever.  Ava hadn’t known Lorna could smile.
       She turned on her own smile as she catwalked toward the table.  “Hi, I’m Ava,” she said to the young couple sitting there.  “Can I get you a drink to begin?”  She noticed the man scanning her nyloned legs, between hemline and heels, even as his date scowled at him.  It was going to be a good night.
       It was indeed a good night, if tips were the criterion.  That good night was followed by another, and then another.  Three days later, Ava stepped off the bus in front of her digs at the end of a late shift.  “Thanks Walter,” she said to the young bus driver, “You’re a dear.”  She hiccuped.
       He touched his cap.  “My pleasure, Ava.  My pleasure.”  He was openly scanning her legs as she stepped down onto the street.
       Ava knew why.  It was the same reason diners had been throwing money at her all night.  She looked smashing.  She was wearing the standard waitress uniform all the girls wore:  a stretch-fit mini-dress in electric blue.  The dress was as short as it was tight.  It made the most of Ava’s dynamite legs.  A narrow gold zipper, designed to be opened from the top or the bottom, ran down the front of the dress.  Ava wore flattering nude hose and blue suede booties with blocky heels.
       Ava wobbled toward the door to her flat.  It was almost two o’clock in the morning.  She was coming off the most profitable shift she had ever had.  The restaurant had been busy, the tips lavish.  The sexy server uniform looked great on all the girls.  Ava made it look striking.  After closing, Ava and some of the other staff had celebrated by polishing off all the half-empty bottles of wine left behind by patrons.  This practice was unhygienic, strictly illegal, and a whole lot of fun.
       She had caught the last bus home.  As there was no one else on board, Walter the bus driver had graciously gone off his route to drop her off at her door.  Given her tipsy condition, and her high heels, Ava was glad of the courtesy.
       One tiny detail dampened Ava’s festive mood.  That was the recurring conviction that none of this was real.  Little bubbles of discordance kept popping into her mind, throwing off her mental balance.
       She was quite certain, for example, that the restaurant, Tavish’s, had long been a popular destination for sophisticated diners.  Yet part of her remembered, or imagined, or something, that short days ago it had been a bedraggled family restaurant with plastic menus.  These two facts could not both be true.  Logic forbade it.  Yet somehow both versions of reality demanded a place in her consciousness.
       Ava admired her feet in her high-heeled booties as she made her careful way to the door.  Ava loved heels.  She lived in them.  She loved the way they shaped her legs, drew attention to the sway of her hips and slowed her walk to a sexy strut.  Nothing helped a woman make the most of what nature gave her like a good pair of heels.
       Simultaneously, she found heels impractical, uncomfortable, and silly.  She wore them only when occasion demanded, like weddings, and then reluctantly.  Her standard footwear was a good pair of sport shoes.  How could these two contradictory convictions hold sway in her mind at the same time?  She stumbled on the uneven pavement.
       The spontaneous after-work party provided another discordance.  Lorna McTavish, the stern and scowling manager, had burst into the kitchen where the staff had been laughing and flirting over surplus wine.  They had been playing a game.  A waitress would take a big gulp of wine, then transfer it to whomever was sitting beside her, through a kiss.  The idea was to avoid spilling any, even while the kisser was being groped by the kissee.  After a couple of rounds the kisses were growing longer than strictly necessary.
       The door opened.  Lorna McTavish was standing there, hands on her hips, a scowl on her face.  Silence fell on the room.  “Oh, shit,” someone breathed.  Ava braced herself for mass dismissals, with shouting.
       “In future,” Lorna proclaimed, “I would appreciate it if you saved the champagne for me.”
       Lorna was younger than Ava remembered her being, and prettier too.  She looked good in a brief designer dress and matching shoes.  And when did Tavish’s start serving champagne?  They always had, of course.  Or maybe the most exotic drink on the menu was diet Pepsi.
       What?
       Ava’s head was spinning.  And not just from the drinks.  She leaned her head against the door of her flat as she fumbled in her purse for the key.  She got it into the keyhole on the fourth try.  Inside was a narrow corridor, mostly occupied by steep stairs leading to her rooms.  A side door to the Mercati’s store was on the right.  The space by the staircase was used for storage.
       Ava groaned.  The foyer was not how she remembered it.  The walls she remembered (?) as dingy beige were wainscoted below rich, gold-patterned wallpaper.  Recessed pot lights provided soft illumination where she part-remembered harsh fluorescent lights.  The steps to her flat were wide, with a red runner down the middle and gracefully curved handrails along the sides.
       “I am seriously drunk,” the shapely server sighed, as she made her way up the sweeping staircase.  She reached the top, ignored the fact that the scratched metal door was now varnished oak with a gleaming brass doorknob, and stepped into her digs.  There she found Damien lying prostrate on the livingroom floor.
       “Ohmygod!” she cried, abruptly sober.  She dropped her purse and hurried over to his side. “Damien!  Are you all right?”  She checked his neck and found a pulse.  She gave his shoulders a shake.  No response.  “Come on man, say something,” she urged.  “Don’t make me call the medics on you.” 
       He groaned.  Slowly, very slowly, he rolled over.  He stared up at her, blinking. “Ava,” he said at last.  He sat up.  He wiped his face with one hand.  “It’s getting worse,” he said.
       Ava knelt beside him.  “What?  What’s getting worse?  Do you need to visit the A&E?”
       He ignored the questions.  He got to his feet, then extended a hand to help Ava up.  He collapsed onto a sofa.  “I ache.  I must have been lying there for hours.”
       “I’ll get you some tea,” said Ava.  She hurried into the kitchen.  Her roommate’s condition did not prevent him admiring the receding view provided by her clingy minidress and high heels.  
       When she returned, bearing tea in a fine china cup, Damien was sitting with his head on the back of the sofa, staring at the ceiling.  “Thank you,” he said, accepting the cup.  He sipped tea.
       “The kitchen,” Ava said.  “Freshly painted.  New appliances.  Granite counter-top.”  She listed the items like a bailiff reading charges.
       Damien’s cup clinked against the saucer.  “Of course.  You sweet-talked Mr. Mercati into remodeling it for you.  About a month ago.  Don’t you remember?  Long over-due, I would say.”
       Ava tilted her head.  “Right.  Of course.  It had slipped my mind.”  
       She did remember her conversation with her landlord.  She had dropped into the store one afternoon when he was working.  She had deliberately worn a pair of shiny-tight stretch pants and a matching half-top.  A little feminine appeal never hurt.  She made it look casual, like she always lay about the flat in skin-tight spandex.  Which was pretty much true.  The high-heeled ankle boots were harder to rationalize.
       Mr. Mercati was a big man with a slight paunch, a flamboyant, long moustache and an outgoing nature.  He raised his voice easily.  He was standing behind the register when Ava hip-swayed into the room.  His face lit up.
       “Ava!” he exclaimed, smiling broadly.  “So fine to see you.  How fares my favourite boarder today?”  His eyes swept over her tights-encased figure.
       Ava smiled back.  “Mr. Mercati, I’m your only boarder.”
       “Excellent point, my dear.  Excellent.  But you are still my favourite.”
       Ava kept her smiled turned on.  “If I’m really your favourite boarder, you would want me to be happy with my rooms, right?”
       “Are you not happy?  What’s wrong?”
       Pretty much everything would have been an accurate answer, but Ava decided to be strategic.  “Well, it’s like, the kitchen.  It’s really worn out.  It would be awfully nice if it were prettied up a little.  Don’t you think?”
       “Ah.  I see.”  He paused for a moment, perhaps thinking of the cost.  Ava swayed her hips back and forth to give hims something better to think about.  He said:  “Perhaps some paint, eh?  And whatever repairs are needed.”
       “And a new stove?” Ava ventured.  She gave him a bright and hopeful look.
       “Well, I suppose . . .”
       “Oh, and a new fridge too?  I’m sure it would be cheaper to buy them as a pair.”  She toyed with a strap on her bra-top.
       “Ava, I’m not sure . . . . The price.”  But his eyes were lingering on a different pair.
       She gave him a doe-eyed pout.  “Not even for me?  Your favourite, favourite boarder?”  She leaned forward a little as she spoke.  The top slopes of her breasts came fully into view, lifted and displayed by her scant top.  “A new kitchen would make me so happy . . . Tony.”
       Mr. Mercati’s resolve was no match for Ava’s feminine appeal.  Her pants started below her naval.  His moustache quivered.  “Uhm, maybe . . . I can see . . .”, he began.
       “A new kitchen?  Really?”  Ava exclaimed.  She replaced her pout with a radiant smile.  “Oh thank you, Tony, thank you so much!  Here, let me give you a big hug.”  
       Before her bemused landlord had a chance to react, she hopped up on the counter, leaned over and hugged him like he was her long-lost lover.  Her breasts pressed against his chest.  “You’ve made me so happy, Tony,” she whispered.  “You’re the best!”
       He tried to protest.  “No, wait, Ava, I didn’t – ”  Suddenly his sexy boarder was kissing him, sweet and warm, on the lips. 
       “New cupboards would be nice too,” she cooed, at least twenty seconds later.  Abruptly she jumped down off the counter.  She blew him a kiss on two fingers.  “Don’t tell the missus I did that,” she said, with a wink.  Then she strutted away in her high-heeled boots.  Shiny faux leather announced the exact shape of her legs and ass.  Mr. Mercati watched her go, stunned and smiling.
       “Right,” Ava said, but without conviction.  “Right.  I persuaded Mr. Mercati, who resents calling a plumber for an overflowing toilet, to give me a brand new kitchen.”  And apparently she did the persuading mostly with sex appeal.  When did she start doing that?  Never; or ever since puberty: choose one.  
       “Don’t look a gift kitchen in the mouth,” Damien said, smiling a little.  He rolled his head around.  “God I’m sore.  You should hit up Mercati for a rug.  Hardwood is called that for a reason.”
       Ava flopped down beside him.  “Are you all right now?” she wondered.  “I have to hic! get these off.”  She started working on one suede booty.  The project did not go well.  She kept losing her balance.  She nearly fell forward off the sofa.
       “Let me help you with that,” Damien said.  He reached over and deftly removed her shoes.  He handed them to her.
       “Than’ you very mush,” Ava said.  Now that the adrenalin rush of helping Damien was over, her inebriation was back in full force.   “I am preposhtrushly plastered,” she announced.  “I’m goin’ t’ bed.”  
       She got to her feet.  Removing her heels didn’t make her any steadier.  She made her way toward the bedroom, waving her shoes about.  The trip took longer than it should have done.  As if her flat were somehow larger.  She refused to contemplate that possibility.  She made it to her bedroom, tossed her booties toward the closet, and collapsed across a queen-size bed she didn’t remember owning.