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buck-toothed face - was ugly. No wonder the little guy was sensitive. New tactics were required.

  ‘Okay,’ Shylock suddenly announced aloud. ‘I’m ready to answer your question now.’

  ‘About time!’ replied the seriously challenged sulkee, presenting himself once more. ‘So, can I help you?’

  ‘Yes please, if you would. You can start by telling me your name,’ said Shylock.

  ‘Hmm. That is unusual, no-one has asked that for a very long time,’ blinked the suspended shape. ‘Everyone knows my name around here, you see.’

  ‘No-one has asked your name for a very long time?’ asked Shylock, querulously.

  ‘Now let me think…what did I last say…hmm…let me see if I can remember it precisely. No-one has asked my name for a very long time. Was that it, yes I believe it was,’ mocked the hovering orbiculate. ‘Do you have a listening difficulty, you know…a hearing impairment of some kind? ARE YOU DEAF!’

  Shylock fumed, but didn’t respond.

  Deliberately mistaking Shylock’s silence as proof positive, the floating inquisitor began shouting his answer. ‘NO-ONE HAS…’

  ‘Al-right, al-right already,’ interrupted Shylock. ‘I get your point. No-one has asked your name for a long time.’

  Accepting the concession, the Obeloid continued. ‘Not yet, but there’s always a first for everything and you happen to be it in the case of my shop. Not only the first to ask my name in such a long time, but also my first customer in Get Lucky. So, without further ado, for you - what can I do? What would you like to buy, acquire, or obtain? What perchance would you care to purchase while generating me the maximum profit? Tell me, tell me do.’

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ asked Shylock.

  Buck-tooth’s mouth dropped open - his look of confusion not a pretty sight - and Shylock swore to himself that he would try not confuse his host too often as he went on to carefully explain. ‘I don’t know what you sell?’

  ‘Now that’s just so ridiculous. If you don’t know what I sell, why did you enter my shop in the first place?’ came the reply, quick as a flash.

  ‘Hmm, I suppose don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about that,’ replied Shylock, mystified at the lack of logic in his own action, and wondering how his host seemed to be so able to turn the table on him so easily.

  ‘Something you haven’t done a lot of since you came in here,’ replied the floating conversationalist. ‘Thinking, that is.’

  ‘Look,’ said Shylock, a little peeved. ‘We didn’t get off to a good start, but can’t we put that behind us now?’

  Cyclops stared at him, blinked once, twice, and then smiled – or at least turned up the edges of it’s lip-less mouth further accentuating the rows of irregular buck teeth. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he agreed. ‘Very well, my name is Bounteous Beauty, but you can call me Bb for short.’

  ‘Bounteous Beauty?’ choked Shylock. ‘Why, that’s an….unfamiliar name,’ he added, choosing his words carefully, choking on a grin that simply demanded escape.

  ‘Yes, but I prefer Bb,’ replied the suspended caricature, still smiling disconcertingly. ‘And you are?’

  Gathering himself, Shylock replied with a straight face. ‘Shylock Winston III, at your service.’

  ‘No, no, no! I’m at your service. You’re the profit-source and I’m here to service you and take the profits. For goodness sake, try and get things right, can’t you?’ Bb rebuked.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Shylock. ‘It was just a turn of phrase.’

  ‘Hmm…’ mused Bb. ‘Where were we before you almost took my mind away from the primary objective. Yes, your name…Winston…I like that. Yes, I do. I shall call you Winnie!’

  ‘Winnie?’ retorted Shylock. ‘But that’s a Woman’s name!’

  ‘No matter,’ responded Bb. ‘You can be who-so-ever you want to be when you’re in my shop. Who care’s what you call yourself?’

  ‘Well, nobody I suppose,’ Shylock agreed, grudgingly.

  ‘Fine. Then Winnie you shall be. Do you have friends like the other famous Winnie?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Shylock.

  ‘You know. P-p-piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit and that re-dikerous Tigger the tiger!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Winnie the Pooh bear, of course, said Bb. ‘I was always afraid of the Heffalumps myself.’

  ‘What on Earth are you talking about?’ demanded Shylock. ‘You ask me my name, then confuse me with …with…a bear! Who cares about Winnie the Pooh? I want to know where I am, and what’s going on?’

  ‘Ah! Real questions at last - much more obvious ones by the way. You caught me a little off guard asking me my name. I assumed that customers would be more interested in where they were, after I’ve pocketed their offerings that is.’

  Shylock remained silent.

  ‘Well,’ began Bb, sensing the growing frustration in his first customer. ‘Firstly, pertaining to your whereabouts – you’re in my shop. Did you notice the name by the way?’

  Shylock glowered and remained silent.

  ‘Oh, very well!’ said Bb. ‘It’s ‘Get Lucky’. Most people might come in here thinking that they’ll suddenly inherit a fortune or win the lottery or some such nonsense. But they’ll be disappointed. I mean, I didn’t call my shop ‘Get Good Lucky’ now, did I? No! Just ‘Get Lucky’. Of course if I’d called it ‘Get Bad Lucky’ people wouldn’t come in at all. So I just called it ‘Get Lucky’.

  Shylock began to despair. If his host was going to gibber on like this in answer to every question, he could be here forever. However, needing answers, now probably wasn’t the time to discuss the Trade Descriptions act, and whether he was misleading an unsuspecting member of the public. He began muttering under his breath.

  ‘Right! I hear you say,’ continued Bb, on a roll and no longer concerned about Shylock’s evident displeasure. ‘So what is the purpose of my shop then? Is that it – your next question? Is it? Is it?’ he demanded

  Shylock nodded, not trusting himself to speak aloud.

  ‘Good question! Thought you’d never ask,’ grinned Bb.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake GET ON WITH IT!’ Shylock erupted, suddenly.

  ‘Petulant, petulant,’ scolded Bb. ‘You never bake a good cake if you rush it you know.’

  Shylock groaned, sensing a divergent culinary chasm was opening up in front of him - leading straight to eternal damnation.

  ‘I sell things, of course!’ proclaimed Bb.

  Shylock groaned again, and feeling the weight of expectancy hanging heavily in the air, reluctantly asked the inevitable question. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Things like chance-spells - there’s a whole range of these,’ Bb explained, launching into a diatribe of merchandise. ‘Mere-chance, that’s lowest risk. Then there’s happy-chance and happenstance all the way up to serendipity and my personal favourite – fluke!’

  ‘Fluke! What kind of spell is that?’ Shylock asked.

  ‘It’s the ultimate in chance-spells. No chance of any frauds with this one. You always

  can tell because if it works at all, it’s a real fluke! I love that one, it’s so…wonderfully

  unpredictable!’ explained Bb.

  Not at all sure what to make of Bb’s preference, Shylock asked what other items he sold.

  ‘Oh, you know. I’ve got the usual run-of-the-mill sort of things. Silver spoons, rabbit’s feet – still on the rabbits of course, thanks to the animal rights league. Then there’s pennies-from-Heaven and lucky stars – extremely attractive, although delivery times are in light years and are a little on the long side for most people. Also, pieces of good luck and all kinds of amulets, talisman and charms. Quite a selection if I say so myself. You won’t find another shop like this in any of the dimensions.’

  ‘Dimensions?’ asked Shylock.

  ‘Oh my goodness, you are lost aren’t you,’ Bb frowned. ‘Dimension as in one, two, three and so on of course.’

  ‘But there are only three dim
ensions, aren’t there?’asked Shylock.

  Bb laughed. ‘My dear Shylock, how high are the Heavens, how long is a piece of string? There are as many dimensions as you want there to be of course.’

  Shylock was now even more confused than he had been earlier. ‘Where I come from there are only three dimensions,’ he stated firmly.

  ‘Three! Why that’s ridiculous. No-one’s thought like that since…well, let me think…the twenty-eighth century!’

  ‘The what?’ Exclaimed Shylock.

  ‘The twenty-eighth century,’ repeated Bb. ‘There’s that hearing problem again. You really should get it seen to, you know. I could introduce you to someone if you like, although I’m obliged to tell you that I get a small, almost infinitesimally small, commission of course.

  ‘What century is this?’ Shylock asked, not at all sure he really wanted to know, but determined to ignore Bb’s offer of a referral to an Ear specialist.

  ‘Oh, sorry, no idea, we stopped counting such a long time ago!’

  ‘No idea! How can you just stop counting?’

  Bb furled the brow over his eye and concentrated on Shylock’s question. ‘Hmm, let me see,’ he mused. ‘I don’t want to cheat, it’s too easy to cheat.’

  Shylock collapsed down onto the sand once more and watched as Bb argued with himself, apparently undecided as to whether he could answer the question or not. Eventually the decision was made. ‘I’ll need some help with that one,’ he announced. ‘That’s very good you know. You’re the first one to stump me since…eh, let me see, since…Mzzxyplyx! Now there was a riddler, but no, that was someone else entirely – also quite good as I