One woman gasping for breath in a closed automobile can use up a significant amount of oxygen, but two of them-gaping and rasping like a pair of giant banked fish-present a life-threatening situation. Heroically, I managed to lower three of the four automatic windows. Even then I had to wait until the initial shock wave passed before I could speak.

“You what?”

“Oh, get over it, Magdalena. You know I had a difficult period of adjustment, and you better than anyone should know that the Bible commands us not to judge, unless we ourselves be judged.”

“But I was an inadvertent adulteress. I didn’t have a clue that Aaron Miller was married.”

“Did you ever ask him?”

“What? Of course not! Why would I have done that? He moved back to the family farm across from me, he was obviously single, he-Well, I certainly didn’t know he had a wife who was out of town.”

“I didn’t know Pernicious did either,” Dorothy hissed, “until after the fact.”

“That may be so,” Agnes said, “but you knew that you were married, and to his cousin to boot.”

“Fourth cousin, twice removed, and only on his father ’s side,” Dorothy said, but she’d suddenly lost some of her steam.

Good old Agnes. I could always count on her loyalty, and she on mine. We were sisters joined at the hip-metaphorically, at least. Yes, I had a real flesh-and-blood sister, but she languished in the state penitentiary, having been convicted of aiding and abetting the escape of an accused murderer, the diabolical Melvin Stoltzfus (who, I’d just learned, was my biological brother).

“Whatever the case may be,” I said in my best conciliatory tone, “you can put your time as a two- timing trollop to good use and tell us the layout of the house. It will make our reconnaissance mission so much easier.”

“Reconnaissance?” Agnes squawked.

“Perhaps that was an echo I just heard,” I said, not unpleasantly. “But if not, you might want to speak up, Agnes; there’s a woman in Altoona who couldn’t make out what you said.”

Agnes put her right index finger to her lips. “Shhh. But I just want to go on record, Magdalena, as saying this might be the dumbest idea you’ve ever had, and you’ve had some doozies.”

I smiled happily. “I have, haven’t I?” I turned to the floozy in the backseat. “You’re our lookout. My cell number is 555-3289. I’ve got it on buzzer. Now come on, ladies, let’s rock and roll.”

“ Magdalena, you’ve never rocked and rolled in your life.”

We were crouched on all fours in the shadow of a large rhododendron, but still only inches from the house and a large picture window. This was no time to be having a conversation, much less a highly charged, emotional one like this.

“I have so,” I hissed.

“Oh, yeah? A good Mennonite girl like you? You once told me that premarital sex was wrong because it might lead to dancing.”

“I did not! I said that having sex while standing up could lead to dancing.”

There followed a minute of blessed silence-well, relatively speaking. Agnes is a heavy breather under the best of circumstances, and we’d had to make a mad dash across a patch of well-lit yard to get to our current position. But, like I said, it was only a minute.

“Do you mean,” she said “that it is possible to have sex while standing up? I thought that was only a myth.”

“A myth? Where does one hear such myths?”

“Well, if you must know, at my VALID meetings.”

Agnes belongs to a support group of like-minded spinsters who call themselves the Virgin Awesome Ladies of Impeccable Demeanor. However, since I am her very best friend in the entire world, I have been known to tease her, and may have even hinted that the acronym stood for Vapid Avaricious Lounge-lizards of Intense Desire.

I sighed. “Yes-theoretically it is possible to have sex in a standing position, not that I’m speaking from personal experience, you understand. But trust me, don’t believe those stories about honeymooners swinging from chandeliers. A moving target is indeed hard to hit, and when the bough breaks-well, in this case, the chandelier chain-down will come Magda-I mean baby, crystals and all.”

“You didn’t!”

It was time to change subjects. “Do you want to hear about my dancing or not?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I knew she didn’t believe me, but it was true. And although it may seem very strange to some people that I should take the time to share such a shocking, and personal, experience whilst sniffing around in another Yoder’s bush, this was one sin I had yet to come to grips with, and I needed to get it off my bony chest.

“Remember Alice Gillespie’s sweet sixteen party?”

“Of course, I do. Even we liberal Mennonites didn’t have those back then, but Alice was a Methodist; they got to do everything.”

“Did you go?”

“You bet. The Gillespies rented the Holderman barn and fixed it up to look like the high school gym. Then they brought in this rock band from Pittsburgh, and-Oh, wait a minute. You being an Old Order Mennonite-you didn’t go, did you?”

I let the Devil take over and gave her a wicked grin as I recalled my shameful behavior that night. “That’s what you think. I told my parents I was going to an all- night Bible study over in Summerville with Judy Bontrager, except that I didn’t. You see, Judy had just gotten her license. Anyway, we went to the party as well, only we hung out by the henhouse with the rest of the kids who wanted to come, but who weren’t supposed to be there.”

“You didn’t!” I heard admiration in Agnes’s voice like I’d never heard before.

“There must have been fifteen or twenty of us by the henhouse-hiding in the shadows, like we are here. But we could still hear the music. Nice and loud too, because we were downwind from the barn. At any rate, at first we just stood around and mostly talked about how cool it was that we had all sneaked away from our parents, but then Marlene Jacobs began moving to the beat, and the next thing you knew we were all twisting the night away.”

“You weren’t!”

“But I was,” I whispered. “I even shimmied and shook. My nimble young body did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”

“No way!”

“Way,” I said, even now electrified by thought of all that pulsating energy flowing through and not going to waste. “And the momwraths outgabe,” I added.

“Uh-I think now you’ve lost me.”

“You may not be the only one. But do you at least believe me?”

“Yes, and I hate you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“ Magdalena, you have everything. You have a handsome husband, you have a child, you know what it’s like to swing from a chandelier, and now I find out that you’ve even danced. I don’t know why you even bother to be friends with me. Face it: we have nothing in common.”

“Don’t be silly, dear, of course we do; we’re both fond of moi.”

“I can’t believe you said that.”

“I was only trying to be fun-will you look at that!”

We’d been keeping watch on a living room, or perhaps a den, but it had suddenly sprung to life as Pernicious Yoder III entered, followed by a young woman. It took me a moment to recognize Amy, the young teller, because this evening she was dressed casually in jeans and an Obama ’08 sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that rode much too high-Okay, I didn’t recognize her at all until I heard her name spoken.

“Thanks for coming, Miss Neubrander,” Pernicious said. “I know this is highly irregular, and just so you don’t feel too uncomfortable, I want you to know that Mrs. Yoder is in her bedroom watching television.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pernicious gestured for her to sit, which she did, perching like a bird on the edge of a red- and-green-checked wingback chair. He, however, remained standing. He who looms has the most power, I mused.

“I suppose you’re worried,” he said, “that I might have some bad news for you. Especially given this economy-Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac-they sound like the Bobbsey Twins, heh, heh. Of course you’re too young to remember those books-so am I, as a matter of fact, but I found a box of them in the attic at my grandparents’ lake house when I was a boy. Forgive me. The older I get, the more I tend to ramble.”