Deliver the envelopes from you and Dot to Greta

Dot tells you, "You go along, I don't know. I don't know if I can, you know?" She holds out the nice envelope with the curly script writing saying GRETA stamped with a speckled tiger lily blossom in orange ink. "I'll wait for you."

"Let's try it together, Dot." you say. "You've helped me be brave."

Roll +COOL(-1) to get Dot to come with you to see Greta: 8 - 1 = 7. She will, but you'll have to coax her.

"I don't know if I want to be brave," Dot says. She brushes her curly red bangs out of her eyes.

You look up and down the entry hall of the old house where Greta has an office. "You'll look suspicious if you stand here and fidget . You could help me. With the questions? As a peer sex educator."

"I signed up as a peer sex educator because I was scared I didn't know squat," Dot says. "Especially about girl sex. Half the time I was just reading from Our Bodies Ourselves or Our Whole Lives." She smiles. "The New Joy of Gay Sex was a hoot, actually."

"Reading counts," you reassure Dot. "That's real. I didn't do that. Can you come? For me?"

Dot squeezes your hand. "All right, then. For you."

You see her shoulders relax. You smile inside. The magic phrase works when you use it on her, just like she used it on you.

You and Dot enter the reception area of Greta's office. It's a room converted from the front parlor of the old house. The reception area is painted brightly and decorated with silk flowers and art prints.

STALK Greta: 8 - 1 = 7. She's in, but she'll be leaving soon.

When you tell the receptionist that you're here to see Greta Lehrer, she looks at a desk planner "Anna and Dorothy?" she says.

"Dot, ma'am," Dot reflexively says.

The receptionist smiles. "Dot," she says. She points you to a staircase that goes up from the corner of the room beyond the reception area. "Room 202. She's expecting you."

Room 202 is an office furnished in eclectic hippie fashion, even a beaded macramé plant hanger attached to a ceiling hook near the sash window. There's a beat-up couch that looks big enough for naps, an easel with a blank paper flip chart, and an old, plain wooden desk with a cheap office chair. Greta's handbag is hooked over the back of the office chair.

"Where is she?" Dot says.

You blink.

A toilet flushes. A sink runs. A door opens.

"Oh there you are!" Greta Lehrer says from the hall behind you. Greta's European accent is unmistakable. You forget if she's German or Swiss or Austrian, but something like that. Greta walks toward you as you stand in her office door. "Just in time. I was afraid I would miss you. Hello Anna. And you must be Dot?"

"Yes'm!" Dot squeaks.

You offer Greta your envelope.

"How precious," Greta says, looking it over. She laughs. "Oh! You have a flower stamp now, like my daisy? Edelweiss! Well, now."

"It was Dot's idea," you tell her. "She picked it out for me to make it special."

"What sweethearts you are, both of you," Greta says. "I'm glad you caught me. I have to do Ossi a favor this afternoon. There's a delivery at the railroad freight office, but they won't be open when he can get away from the restaurant, so I offered to pick it up."

"Dot, you have one too," you prompt her.

Greta's face transforms to a beaming smile. "The same as Anna's?"

"No, no," Dot says. "Mine has p-pictures of me." She blushes. "Because I saw yours. When we were doing the questions. I call 'em the yes no maybe-so questions."

"Dot is a sex educator at her college," you supply, to Greta's raised eyebrows. "She helped me do the questions before we looked at your answers."

Dot anxiously offers her envelope. Greta shoos both of you into your office and enters, closing the door.

"Say the word sex and get a room," Greta says. "At least no sex talk in the hall. This is an old-fashioned small town in many ways. Door closed. All good now." She takes Dot's envelope. "Oh, how pretty," she says. "A tiger lily."

"B-because I have freckles," Dot says.

"You have lovely freckles," Greta says. "I had freckles when I moved here when I was a young woman. Probably your age, Dot." She smiles. "Your hats are very practical this season. I used to get terrible sunburn until I got some sense." She laughs. "Yours still has the price tag on, Anna! Just like Minnie Pearl."

Greta has to explain who Minnie Pearl is. Neither you nor Dot ever saw Hee Haw, so a country woman who leaves the price tag on her hat to brag that she's rich enough to buy new clothes at the store is a joke lost on you.

She tucks both envelopes into her handbag. "I'll take very good care of these. But I have to catch the freight office while it's still open."

"Do you need any help there?" you ask Greta.

"To be honest?" Greta says. "Yes. It's some heavy crate for the restaurant kitchen. A special oven or something, I forget. It wouldn't hurt to have some helpers." She looks at you and Dot. Greta wasn't big, but she looked like she could pick up each of you under one arm. "Or at least some spotters to help get it into Ossi's pick-up without bashing anything around."

You and Dot follow Greta to the railroad station. The freight office is in its own building off to the side, in a long shed. It's a big crate, but the freight handlers get it into the bed of Ossi's beat-up old Ford without your help.

"All done!" Greta says. "I can just leave it in Ossi's pick-up and get my car back."

"Would you like to look at our pictures and answers together?" you ask Greta.

Greta sizes up you and Dot. "I wouldn't mind that at all," she says. "Dot, Anna says that you're a sex educator at your college and you know these questionnaires very well. Maybe you can help us stay on the right page."

"Yesss," Dot breathes. "I'd like that."

"If you're not busy, you can just follow me home," Greta says. "I'll have Ossi give me some soup and bread, and I have watermelon and fresh berries. Do you like blackberries?"

The afternoon ends with you and Greta and Dot sitting on the back porch of her little house in town, spitting watermelon seeds into the back yard. Further back there are raised garden beds with vegetables and berry bushes, one of which is a tangle of thorny blackberry brambles held back by sturdy wires from overrunning the yard.

After an early light supper you gather around Greta's round wooden kitchen table. She brings out your envelopes. You put Greta's filled-out sex questionnaire on the table and smooth out the creases where it was folded up.

"I am having a glass of wine," Greta says. "Do you want one?" She pours a glass of red for herself.

You decline. "I have water. That's good."

"Just half a glass," Dot says, after looking at Greta's big wine goblets.

"Whose shall I open first?" Greta asks.

"Both," you say. "Read my note. Then Dot's. After that it's up to you. But I would look at the pictures next. We had them done specially for you."

Greta laughs. "Well, then. Let me light a candle for the mood."

She lights a tall thick pillar candle sitting atop a cone of colorful wax runoff in a bumpy textured cone like a confetti volcano or a skirt beaded with gems and ribbons.