On the other side of the peephole, I saw a disheveled looking woman. She appeared to be in her 30s, maybe 5 foot 8, rail thin but with B cup breasts, and dressed as though by random number generator. She was wearing a beret like a french artist, a kinky looking black leather corset over the top of a loud floral print blouse that was clearly too big for her and poked out at odd angles. She had on a pair of jeans so tight he could see the coins in her pocket, the left leg ended in a bell bottom flair, but the right leg was totally missing, cut off almost indecently high. Her left foot had a simple canvas side tennis shoe, while the right had a long white tube sock and no shoe at all. She was carrying a large plain denim purse with an almost comically large flower on it. She was knocking frantically, bouncing from one foot to another as though desperately trying not to wet herself.
Bemused, I opened the door. Some lost junkie, I assumed. She could be a fun guinea pig, "Hello?" I offered tentatively.
"Hello. Hello? He says hello!" she said, almost too fast to follow. She stared intently at my shoes. "There you are, or there I am... pleased to see that I've met you... have I met you? Are we meeting?"
I scratched my head. Definitely a junkie, "Uh... I don't think we've met before."
"Oh... okay so we haven't met before but we're meeting now? So now we've met before, just a minute ago. It's been one minute and already I've met you now." she was still bouncing from foot to foot, "Well!?!" She said, apparently exasperated that I hadn't done something yet.
"Uhh... I'm Cal, nice to meet you?" I offered, deciding to inject some normalcy into this conversation, forcibly if necessary, "...and you are?"
"Oh yes. Names. Names are good. Just a fragment. A name piece. Part of a name. Very good, very smart" the rate of her nervous bouncing increased. She was beginning to make me nervous too, "Cal, he says his name is Cal. Could be Calvin, Calvert, Calder... name... my name... he wants to know my name... what was that... doesn't say it... names... names have power... a name spoken from my own lips, oh goodness, what is a girl to do?" she reached into her canvas purse up to the arm and rummaged for a moment, before producing a business card.
Lulabel Ambrosia Bellboz
General Manager of Rezzo's Magic Shop
Enchantments for All Occasions
(555)555-1212
Oh shit.
"Uh..." I stammered, "I can explain, we thought the building was empty and we--"
She waived her hand impatiently, as if I was trying to talk about the weather, "Yes yes I'm sure that's very interesting... lots of space... open space... so many ears, so many minds. Please, for gods sake, aren't you going to invite me in?"
I blinked. "Invite you in?" Why was she standing on ceremony. Come to think of it, why hadn't she showed up with cops, or some kind of magic cops? Why hadn't she vaporized or bewitched me yet?
"Invite you in he says? He asks me if I invited him in? Into the hall? This is your threshold, I don't invite you, you have to invite me, that's how it works" her rate of speech was picking up again, "You say, do come in or won't you come in or how lovely to see you come on in or something like that but it has to have come in in there somewhere and then I come in and I'm your guest and we have an accord and then we all have a lovely time and that's how it works." She nodded authoritatively, as if she had just explained something very important, "I've done it loads of times."
My mind was racing. If she wanted that badly to be invited in, that seemed to indicate that she couldn't come in unless I did. In folklore, lots of supernatural creatures can't cross a threshold without an invitation. She certainly didn't seem angry, and if she was it stood to reason that I'd be a newt by now. Then again maybe she needed to get past the threshold to hurt me. She certainly looked like she was afraid of something, but that could just be a ruse.
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