The quiet man simply drank his Talisker, his sixth? seventh? seventieth? He'd quit counting some time ago.

Exciting evening, what with the wave of the fuschia and all. He'd gotten pretty disgusted, too, with the various puns engendered: Liz, spying a small puddle of the paint off to one side, had said, "Look! The waif of the fuschia!" Amos, afraid that once the flood was stopped it would return as a ghost, had babbled about the "wraith of the future."

He turned his back to the window and called to bartender for more. It was, he knew, either back to the fuschia or he'd be suffering from fuschia shock.