I spun so fast in my seat that I came dangerously close to tipping my chair all the way over. Since Agnes is not the world’s most conscientious housekeeper, I might well have put my exposed body parts in contact with varieties of mold as yet unclassified by science. Still, it was worth the risk; sure enough there was a woman looking right at us.

“Why, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”

“You don’t believe in evolution, Magdalena. And you’re far too curvaceous to be an uncle. What say you we go out and confront this interloper?”

“Let us lope away!” I cried, as I whipped my coat off the back of my chair.

Agnes was more of a huffer and a puffer than a loper, and not wanting to confront the strange woman by myself, I pretended to twist my ankle whilst going down the steps. Now please allow me to make perfectly clear that feigning an injury to one’s own person under such circumstances is a deception of the smallest magnitude-surely, no more serious a transgression than, say, acting out a part in a school play.

“You won’t sue me, Magdalena, will you?” Agnes had stopped moving altogether.

“Of course not, dear; we’re bosom buddies-well, our bosoms aren’t buddies-not that there’s anything wrong with it-but your bosom, by the way, just don’t float my hovercraft.”

“I get it, Magdalena. But you do agree that you should have watched your step, right?”

“How can I argue with that?” I tried peering around my friend, but to no avail.

“So you’ll promise you’ll be good and not sue?”

“Sue, shmoo! How well do you know me? Uh-never mind, dear.”

I tried matching my pace to that of Agnes, but even though I did my darnedest to hobble, I kept getting way ahead. Finally, I had no choice but to resort to desperate measures.

“Yoo-hoo, up there on the hill,” I hollered. “Come on down and show yourself.”

“And just so you know,” Agnes rasped, “we’re harmed.”

“She means ‘armed,’ ” I said, “although personally, being the traditional Mennonite that I am, I am totally committed to a non-violent existence.”

“Except for her tongue,” Agnes panted. “It’s as sharp as a board.”

“She means ‘sword,’ ” I clarified through cupped hands. “It goes along with my rapier-sharp wit.”

“You’re such a faker,” Agnes groaned. She was clutching her side by then.

“What?”

“You’re not even limping now.”

“Oh that-Well, perhaps it’s the adrenaline.” I fell back, taking what for me were baby steps so that Agnes wouldn’t have a heart attack. After all, I had never gotten around to taking a CPR class, and wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do if she did have a heart attack-except to scream and pray. I am, however, pretty good at both of those.

On closer inspection, it was as if the woman on the hill had stepped out of the pages of a storybook. Never had I seen someone so splendiferously attired, nor so regal of bearing. She wasn’t tall, perhaps all of five and a half feet, but she was clad in a full-length white velvet coat, trimmed generously with white fur, and with an enormous white fur collar and matching cuffs. Through the break in her coat front, I could see that she wore white leather boots that laced up to the knees and sported gold eyelets. Her headpiece, which was half gold crown and half fur hat, set off her blue-black hair to perfection.

“It’s the S-S-Snow Queen,” wheezed Agnes. “I knew I shouldn’t have inhaled that time I smoked pot in college.”

“You smoked marijuana?”

I was aghast and agog, but mostly just gaping in wonderment. Who knew that Agnes, a somewhat reclusive maiden lady, had been such a wild woman in her coed days?

“Okay, so it was more than once. Will you get off my case already? It just goes to prove that college campuses these days are nothing more than replicas of Sodom and Gomorrah.

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll get off your case-and not tell anyone else-if you share with me what it was like.”

“What do you mean by that? Do you want me to find you a joint?”

“A what?”

“A marijuana cigarette-at least that’s what they used to call them. It’s been so long, I don’t know what they’re called anymore. But if you’re going to rat me out to the community, then by all means, I’ll drive into Pittsburgh and try to score one for you. Of course I’ll probably end up getting arrested and spend the next thirty years in prison with a ‘boyfriend’ named Betty-but don’t worry, Magdalena. I’m sure Betty will be very kind to me. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even let me write to you.”

My eyes welled with tears. “You’d do that for me?”

“Double space, of course; Betty won’t want me to spend that much time away from her.”

“No, I mean that part about buying me marijuana?”

“If it will shut you up.”

Now that was a friend. Agnes always knew when to coddle me and when to take off the gloves and give me a gentle tap on the noggin. If we had been best buddies in college, I have no doubt neither of us would have gotten much studying done; we’d have partied hardy like there was no tomorrow, and I might have well ended up a Presbyterian like Susannah.

A soft cough ahead got my attention. The stranger was no longer peering at us through her binoculars, as we were but a scant thirty feet away. There was in her face the suggestion of Asiatic forebears-or not-but no matter, she was most definitely not the creation of some writer ’s imagination, but a flesh-and-blood human being.

“She’s definitely not the Snow Queen,” I said.

“Maybe not, but she is a foreigner,” Agnes said.

“Of pleasing but ambiguous ethnicity,” I said.

As we made our final panting approach, I bobbed slightly. “Greetings, and welcome to Hernia, O strange one,” I said. “From whence didst thou hail?”

“ Cincinnati, Ohio.”

“Well, that certainly explains the accent,” Agnes said.

I punched her fleshy biceps with an elbow even sharper than my tongue. “You can’t get that from just two words,” I said.

The elegant, beautiful stranger appeared to suppress a smile. “Are you the famous Magdalena Yoder?”

“Indeed, I am.” It was only then, after having admitted who I was, that I began to fear for my safety. “I mean, let’s just say that there are those who think I am Magdalena Yoder.”

She cocked her head.

“Don’t worry,” Agnes said. “She’s utterly harmless-although she did bring a giantess to her knees with a bra-cum-slingshot, and although she espouses nonviolence as her official creed, she’s not above whacking the odd villain over the head.”

A wary glance was now cast in Agnes’s direction. “Surely, you’re joking.”

“Oh, but I’m not. Our Magdalena is quite the heroine. Why, once she even rescued a villainess by dangling her nemesis by her hair into a sinkhole. Of course yours truly was pressed into service on that one. I am, you see, her unofficial sidekick: the Tonto to her Lone Ranger, the Robin to her Batman. My point is-were I to be making one-that if you have come to request the famous Magdalena Yoder’s services, be apprised of the fact that sooner or later I will be assisting her.” Agnes crossed her arms over her breathless, heaving bosom.

“I am a guest at her inn,” the stranger said.

I stepped forward. “Excuse me?”

“My name is Surimanda Baikal. I am coming from Russia. Then New York, then Cincinnati. Then I am drives here. But you are hard woman to find, Magdalena Yoder.”

“But you don’t have a reservation,” I wailed.

She shrugged, almost burying her face in the white fur collar. “So? My plans, she has-how you say?-they change from day to day.”

“Your plans?”

“Oh, come on,” Agnes said, much to my annoyance. “You have enough room. The more the merrier. Right?”

“Stifle it,” I hissed. “She doesn’t fit in with this bunch.”

“Maybe, but from what you’ve described to me, this bunch belongs in a loony bin. At least she’ll add some class.”