Part 9

Part 9 - Appleton, Wisconsin and (eventually) The Unicorn Queendom

Sex and drugs and rock and roll

Is all my brain and body need.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll

Are very good indeed.

Ian Dury, 1977

Caroline took a long drag on the joint and allowed the popular smoke to swill around her lungs. The boy, sat with his face only a few inches from hers, made a aheming sound. Caroline held up one finger, closed her eyes and for a moment saw stars twirling in the dim darkness. Good s**t this. She released her eyelids and the somber glow of the room flooded back in. The boy opened his mouth. She kissed him and evicted the smoke into him. 

The boy was called Anton. He was a Swiss exchange student visiting Appleton for the summer and lived with the family across the street. He was seventeen and quite adorable. Even better than his eyes, edelweiss in front of pure snow, he was adept at securing grade-A weed. Marijuana, Caroline had discovered, was a marvelous way to forget many things she would rather not remember. Another good thing about Anton was that he had no historical perspective on her. He wasn’t aware of her previous life, or did nothing to admit it. Even if vindictive girls - jealous of Caroline’s newfound popularity probably - tried to sew seeds of despise, it was impossible for Anton to realize the extent of her entrapment. He could imagine it no doubt, but assembling the pieces of a Caroline puzzle in his mind would produce nothing like the real thing. Even furtive videos of her, and god knew there were plenty of those stashed in cell phones, must produce a layer of incomprehension in new friends and cohorts. It would be like looking at maps of the world before the continents separated. You could see that Pangea was the antecedent of today’s world, but your mind just shrugged it off and said “hey, look at what you’ve got in front of you now.”

Anton was seeing her reborn, and he wasn’t the only one. Her new-found fame had made her practically the queen of Appleton. In a city where the major excitement was a party in your neighbor’s garage, she had become the center of attention. And of course to be the city’s center of was to succeed to heights of popularity at school only dreamed of by sobbing cheerleaders and displaced athletic wannabes.

Caroline reclined on a monstrous cushion. The drone of Teutonic rock created sound waves in her glass of beer. Anton’s room had proved a useful refuge from both the fading media coverage, and the increasingly draconian rule of her father. Her refusal to go through with the Hopper interview had sent the American news networks into a hissy fit. Like a pouting child they had crossed their arms, held their breath and turned red with anger. Caroline, for her part, had ignored them. She had better things to occupy her time. One of those things was Anton. His olive good looks had, as if my magic, appeared in her life some weeks after the kerfuffle in Florida. Having an unusual (for a European so he said) ability to snoop into other people’s business, Anton had wondered what prey the circling TV news trucks had sought. Finding no obvious answer from the time-honored method of staring out of his window for fifteen minutes, Anton had asked Mrs. Kleinman, his host mother. Martha Kleinman, a matronly woman with a bust sizable enough to be labelled as a pair of barrage balloons, had lavishly filled Anton in on Caroline’s miraculous recovery. Perhaps sensing the opportunity to transplant back to Switzerland a tale of Hollywoodesque conquest, Anton had launched on a mission to entice Caroline to his lair. 

Caroline was wise enough to realize that there was only one reason why seventeen-year-old boys invited sixteen year old girls to their room. And it was not to help them reduce the quantity of drugs they had illegally and, no doubt, carefully acquired. Indeed, Anton was relatively forthcoming about this at their first meeting. He had tracked Caroline down to a stall in the bathrooms at the local library. Here, Caroline reasoned, she was able to find private time to acquaint herself with another new occupation, her cell phone. Not perhaps the phone itself, but the tempting window into the metaverse that it opened. People didn’t realize what dropping through this door meant. They took it for granted. Caroline, however, appreciated its bizarre tangents. 

Anton, who later claimed that unisex toilets were all the rage at home, simply waited and followed her in. It was a surprise to be sat on the edge of the toilet seat and encounter a sharp rap on the door. 

‘It’s taken!’ Caroline had said.

‘Yes, I know,’ came the (male) reply.

Caroline had waited a few moments before responding. As if effect and cause were cross-dressing, the statement and reply had confused each other. Like someone thrusting a loaded revolver into your face, so close that you could see the bullets glimmering in their nests. “It’s loaded,” you could say. The perpetrator would frown. “I know,” they’d say, since they had tucked the bullets into bed.

‘Go away,’ Caroline had said. Then, for the sake of good form, added, ‘or I’ll call the cops.’

‘Ah,’ said the voice. ‘That would be a problem.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have a rather good joint in my pocket.’

Caroline had pulled herself out of the internet. Sometimes reality was more interesting than disincorporation. Inhaling anything more radical than one of Anya’s noxious farts was tempting. She knew all the jargon from TV; her mother had indulged her in viewing which, normally, would have been locked down. Caroline supposed that her mother thought - since Caroline would never be able to have sex, take drugs or mosh at rock concerts - there was nothing wrong with her seeing such behavior on TV. Now that decision looked dicey, but to be fair her mother could never have predicted the events in Florida. So all in all, Caroline had no complaints. Oddly her mother had, since their return to Wisconsin, noticeably started enforcing a stricter TV policy. All too late. 

So she had flushed the toilet - no sense in Anton knowing that she’d been faking it - opened the door (with her can of mace held behind her back) and confronted this boy. She had liked what she saw. Images of yodeling lads in lederhosen, backgrounds of snowy peaks against a cobalt sky. Here was something un-American. To be honest, she had grown tired of the attention her cure had brought. What she wanted now, more than anything, more than to be the 21^st Century’s Joan of Arc, more than Finn’s incessant demands that she take up her responsibilities, was to be a girl. She had sixteen years of catching up to do. Didn’t people realize she’d never applied her own makeup? Never washed herself? Never been kissed? Anton had escorted her nimbly out of the bathroom, and they had repaired to a handy copse that backed on to the library car park. Here, Caroline had partaken of natures’ herbal remedy for the first time. Oh the giddy heights she had flown to. 

Kissing Anton had not taken many weeks to achieve reality. She had wanted to try to explain to Finn. But no matter how she rehearsed it, the words were hollow and black. Finn would not understand how she felt. Once she had been a wheeled joke, something to be tittered at or pitied. Now she was whole. Her life, once a poor tracing of existence, was now repaired and renewed. How could he understand? Her cure had impacted not only herself but her whole family. Her uncle was the only one who stayed away, and she did not miss him. 

‘Hey,’ Anton said. ‘You awake?’

Caroline shook her head clear. She realized that the joint had been burning down in her fingers. 

‘Sorry,’ she said and passed it over.

Anton took a short drag, exhaled and stubbed the remains out in leaf-shaped ashtray. He slunk over and started kissing her. His hand began to travel adeptly up her leg. The hippie skirt she wore offered little defense. Her n*****s hardened. She put her hand behind his head and played with a curl of hair that emerged at the nape of his neck. Was she ready? She had been wondering to herself for a month now if she would allow Anton to do the things he wanted to do. Do the things she wanted him to do? Would she close her eyes and think of Finn as Anton loved her? Would she think of Anton if she allowed Finn to sex her in the Unicorn Queendom? 

Her phone rang. 

Saved by the bell. Or not?

Caroline pushed Anton’s hand down. He resisted a little, then gave up with a sigh and moved to review his own phone. It was late afternoon in Zurich. His friends had been throwing social media at him for hours. Caroline reached for her phone. It was her mother. She considered not answering it, but that would just elicit fundamental panic. She activated the facial recognition.

‘Hey mom,’ she said.

‘Caroline?’ her mother said.

Caroline sighed. Who else would it be? 

‘Yes mom, it’s me.’

‘Where are you? You should have been home an hour ago.’

Another sigh. Her mother’s protective instants had hiked up after Florida. Now that Caroline had become what her parents considered a real person, the danger to her life and limb had (it seemed) increased exponentially. Apparently the sort of vultures out to prey on teenage girls didn’t consider wheelchair-bound catatonics of any interest. But now that Caroline was “a walkin’ and a talkin’” (her mother’s words) it was open season on the temple of her virginity. Her father, during such instructional sessions as her mother deemed necessary to educate Caroline in the world’s evils, would normally repair to his office. There she would find him, looking mournfully at tottering towers of post which they never had time to open. 

‘What’s up princess?’ he would say, knowing full well what was up. 

He knew that she knew. And she knew that he knew that she knew. It was a game they played. 

Caroline would roll her eyes towards the kitchen. 

‘I’ve been educated,’ she would say.

Her father would grimace, as if she had pricked him with a pin. It occurred to Caroline that her parents sex life had ceased to exist after her birth. The waking hours of caring for a disabled baby were no doubt littered with infrequent naps. She doubted that either of them had possessed the energy to indulge in one tenth of the shenanigans that Anton tried to facilitate on an hourly basis. 

Her mother’s voice bleated, ‘Caroline? Are you listening to me?’

Caroline fended off a new incursion by Anton’s fingers into the rim of her bra. Honestly the boy was a raging hormone hive!

‘Sorry mom. I got caught up with homework. I’ll be home in fifteen, ok?’

Her mother harrumphed and mumbled a grudging acceptance. Caroline disconnected before any follow-up questioning. She would already have to make up something believable to back up her story.

‘You would go home?’ Anton asked.

Caroline looked into his puppy-eyes and sighed. Well, home was only a ten minute walk, so that left five minutes…

**********

Three weeks and some amount of fornicating later, Caroline realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she visited the Unicorn Queendom. This elicited a feeling of heavy, although fleeting, guilt. Like a cold shower it drenched her carnal enthusiasms. The debt that Finn and Skagen had spent on her behalf could not be repaid, had she ten lifetimes to do it. But she had not chosen them. This justification for not even conducting the merest check in floated like fetid oil on top of her consciousness. Many times she had decided to slip into her dreamworld by stealthy means. But always, at the last moment, she rejected the mission and forced herself (she had retained this ability) to drift away on memories of Anton. What was different now?

She lay on her bed and examined her mind. Outside it was night. Some twittering daytime dweller was also apparently having difficulties deciding what to do about sleeping. The noise distracted her. She turned on her side and tucked her arm under her pillow. 

What did she want? 

She realized that before her lay two lives. In one life she was a regular girl; probably she’d go to a crappy college (she was far behind at school due to the lag of her disability), graduate and get a job doing something humdrum. Mr. Right may or may not come around, but she’d have a couple of kids and make a dent on the sofa watching the Packers every Sunday during football season. In the other life she became some sort of messiah to the aquatic society only she, of all humans, knew existed. She would work behind the scenes to bring parity to the Earth’s occupation. In all reality she probably wouldn’t have time for a family. The best she could hope for was a cat that some kind neighbor would love until it finally left Caroline after this localized affair. 

Which person did she want to be? The first option would be easy. The second would be hard and, she had no doubt, risky as well. Weren’t there countries out there still with whaling fleets? How would they respond to being told the oceans were out of bounds? Decisions like this weren’t fair. She’d do as well tossing a coin; there was always that option of course. But really, there was so much to see and do in the world. She’d been confined to her wheelchair for the first sixteen years of life, now she was set free. Free to live a life she had never dreamed of. Dreams; damn them, they haunted her now. It was so little time ago that she would escape to her Queendom and time she wanted to be rid of the torture of reality. Now the memory of even the familiar palace was fading. Simonale she could remember clearly, but what of Finn?

Finn. There was a problem that she could not solve. She sometimes felt him nudging at the edge of her subconscious, like being in your basement and hearing a dim knocking at your front door. She guessed he was in the Atlantic, somewhere close to the New Jersey shoreline. Trying to contact her, trying to wake her. But she was awake, and alive. If she went down the path laid out for her by Skagen, she would become trapped in a world no different than the construct of her Queendom. Would it replace the prison of her wheelchair with a cell of commitment? 

She needed a drink. She tiptoed down the stairs, careful to avoid recent creaking acquaintances. She went to the pliable drinks cabinet and checked out the frontage selection. Jaunty colors leered back. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…her finger stopped at the rum. Good stuff, from Barbados; proper pirate swill. She extracted the bottle and took it to the kitchen. Plastic cups, she had learned, were best for filching alcohol. Accidentally clattering one onto the kitchen table did not elicit the give-away chime of glass. The booze didn’t taste as good, but stealth and secrecy were the watchwords here. She poured herself a couple of fingers, and returned the bottle to its place in formation, throwing the soldiers a jaunty salute as she closed the door. She took the cup to her bedroom and sipped it casually in bed. She liked rum. The sweetness of it masked the alcohol. She’d have settled for bourbon or vodka (gin she could not abide neat). But rum was the treacle of liqueurs. 

How much time had passed since she had last spoken to Finn? It was more than a few months. Winter’s cloak had already been flung back to reveal the naked flesh of spring, lusty and ready to throw the pearl covering away. Their last contact had been during late summer, so it was at least six months ago. What had she done with herself in that time? Like a surgical patient coming out of general anesthetic, she groped for explanation as to the chronological gap in her life. It did not take much rum to make her realize that she had filled the time with hedonistic pursuits. 

She hurled the cup at the far wall. Rum ejected over her bed, floor and wall. The liquid on the wall slid down the outdated wallpaper, making a triptych of colors devolving from putrid brown to wild violet. Caroline burst into tears.

Sometime later, having (surprisingly) not woken her mother - perhaps grown so accustomed to late night fits of excess that she had become immune to it - Caroline unwound herself from the pillow she had been hugging. Reality it appeared, had really done a number on her. Guilt had been revealed, and the realization that she had wasted the miracle given to her. And for what? So she could be like all the other girls. She so badly wanted not to be different, wanted them to like her for who she had become. She had leveraged her social success to ingratiate into circles that she had been painfully aware of being closed to her before. 

Now, like any penitent, she struggled to understand how she could make amends. Having journeyed so far down the wrong, was there a thread that would lead her back to the crossroads? If not a thread, perhaps an ephemeral leak that she could use to retrace her steps. She lay back and closed her eyes. A distant owl’s hoot countermanded the transient wail of a siren. She needed sleep to come, that blessed shaft to the subconscious. She needed to go back to the place she had abandoned. From there she could reach out in the hope that Finn would at least hear her, if not respond.

Night softened. The owl’s bassoon and siren’s violin gave way to the peace in-between movements. Caroline’s breathing slowed. Her eyes closed. She dropped the wall of consciousness that kept her in place; behind it she discovered she was nervous. This created resistance. She crawled down her subconscious like a cave explorer descending into unknown blackness. But as she descended she moved faster, and her conscious faded behind her. 

The transition to her Queendom was as vivid as she could ever remember it. Cobalt light blazed around her, blowing the bleakness of reality aside. She flexed her body. It did not fill her with the previous sense of release. When she had been confined to her wheelchair, this unfurling of her sinews had released something akin to a sexual surge (she understood that now). Yet her wheelchair had now been consigned to a corner of the garage. She could not garnish the same sense of delight that had surmounted her before. It was a joy to be sure, but she couldn’t help wondering if this was how people who’d turned twenty-one felt when they went into a bar. The sense of risk enjoyment had been erased; what was desire had become what was common. 

Caroline touched down facing her castle. The drawbridge was up, and portcullis down. A tattered black flag limped at half-mast on a flagpole that had not been there before. She stared at the walls and they stared right back. She’d already decided she wouldn’t blink first. She won. With an ominous creak the drawbridge began to lower. The descent was painfully slow, no doubt this was a torture designed to punish her absentee monarchy. She had no doubt who was behind this mechanical knuckle rapping. As the bridge leveled out, she allowed her irritation to subside. It served no purpose. Anyway she was due some retribution for her tardiness. 

A transitional figure stood in the shadows behind the portcullis. 

‘Simonale,’ she called.

They did not reply. She clopped a few paces towards the entrance and willed the portcullis open. It did not move. She moved closed and tried again. Nothing. This wasn’t right. She had ultimate power here and…

‘Having problems?’ The figure said. It was Simonale. 

Before she could retort, they continued. ‘Don’t bother apologizing, no one cares. We’re under new stewardship now. Your magic doesn’t work here anymore.’

The first sentence was to wound her. The second to enrage her. But the last. She remembered a song on the radio about the third cut being the deepest. She sank to the bridge, its hewn texture jabbed needles into her underbelly. She curled her head into her legs, like a dog hiding from its master’s wrath. Her mind found the fulcrum between acceptance and denial. Of tears she had none. It seemed trite to flood the scene with things that were past caring. The weight of her fall pushed her down, as surely as if it had been tied to her back. She could not support its tone. Perhaps, she realized, she should die now. 

Maybe she slept; a sleep within a sleep. All she knew was that one moment she was alone, and the next someone was beside her. She unsheathed her head and opened her eyes. Finn stood there, in his unicorn persona. 

‘Are you here to absolve me?’ she asked.

He bent down to look her in the eyes. ‘You wish me to save you from the moment of forgiving yourself?’

A sob escaped her. ‘Yes!’

‘My words would be meaningless,’ he said. ‘We have an expression in my world. It does not translate very well, but the gist of it is “the tide will come every day, even after you have returned to the source.” It means that�"’ 

‘I understand what it means,’ she said.

Finn said, ‘Yes, I believe that, of all people, you do.’ He raised is head and walked towards the barrier. ‘Open the gate,’ he commanded.

There was a grinding clang as the gears meshed and the mottled iron grill rose up. Once it had cleared half the gateway’s height, Simonale stepped forward and padded to stand in front of her.

‘Hello Caroline,’ they said.

Not Princess Caroline, or Your Highness. She was demoted to commoner in her own imagination.

‘Hi Simonale,’ she replied. ‘Are you…ok?’

They inclined their head. A look which Caroline classified as pity played over their face.

They said, ‘Would you like me to say that I’m fine? Would that make you feel better about yourself?’

Simonale had always been feisty, mostly bordering on sarcastic. But whatever Simonale now thought about her life it was not a valediction of the world she had inhabited beforehand. Clearly the further she had risen from a motorized cabbage, the further the measure of her internal worth had sunk. 

‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t.’ 

Simonale shrugged, turned and walked back through the gate. Finn followed without looking at her. Caroline heaved herself up and trudged behind them. 

Straw in varying states of decay littered the courtyard. She saw none of the animals that serviced the castle, although her peripheral vision detected shapes that moved in the shadows. Simonale led them into the great hall. The gay banners were gone. In their place hung strands of kelp, some long enough to touch the floor. 

‘You’re work?’ she asked Finn.

He nodded. ‘You might call it an echo of home. Something for the banished to latch on to.’

He pronounced banished like ban-i-shed, so for a moment Caroline didn’t understand the word’s importance. Realization made her falter and stop.

‘Are you telling me,’ she said, ‘that you have been squatting in my subconscious?’

Finn sighed. ‘Only metaphorically. And squatting is a harsh description. I’ve been visiting regularly, hoping to see you.’

‘These,’ she nodded at the kelp fronds dangling like drying socks, ‘would seem to indicate something more permanent than visitation rights.’

Before Finn could reply, Simonale made a aheming sound. They both turned to look at them.

‘I believe,’ Simonale said, ‘that we’re getting off track. Should we not be focusing on Lord Skagen’s dilemma?’

Caroline turned to look at Simonale. Their whiskers twitched.

‘I assume,’ she said, ‘that I am playing catchup here. What dilemma is Lord Skagen in?’

Simonale snarled. ‘If you had�"’

‘Peace Simonale,’ Finn interjected. ‘We discussed this. It is my responsibility, so I will tell Caroline.’

Simonale stared at Finn, then glared at Caroline. Their conclusion was to cross their arms, then turn their back on them.

‘You’d better recline,’ Finn said.

‘I’ve done enough reclining,’ Caroline said, then mumbled, ‘Sorry.’

Finn patted her hoof, a sign of tenderness that Caroline found  erotic. Oh my God, was she getting horny? An image of their unicorn selves humping in a fractured glade titillated whatever level of imagination she was indulging now. 

Get a grip girl, she thought.

She moved to a crimson velvet chaise longue beneath an arching window. Reoccupying her throne didn’t seem appropriate. She plonked herself down in a very un-ladylike fashion. 

‘OK,’ she said to Finn, ‘what have I missed?’

Finn looked towards Simonale. But the seneschal was still in a huff. Finn sighed. 

‘You must understand,’ Finn said, ‘that my mother placed great faith in us. But it was Skagen that persuaded her that you were the only one capable of healing the human-dolphin rift. He went…what is the human expression? All in, yes he went all in with you. There had to be a focus for blame. Every dolphin in the world gave up part of themselves for your spell. Some more than others, but no more than my mother. The merest dolphin sought an explanation. My mother sought revenge. Skagen saw it coming of course, he’s the smartest dolphin I’ve ever met. I’m sure he had measured the scenario when planning this. It must have crossed his mind that you would desert us.’

‘Hey!’ Caroline said. ‘I didn’t�"’

Finn stamped his hoof. 

The shame of black night smothered Caroline. She dropped her head over the arm of the chaise lounge. Her neck straddled it as if awaiting the fall of a slow and mighty axe.

‘And you?’ she whispered.

‘I?’ he replied. ‘My mother said enough to me to last me my whole life. But I am to be king. So there was an admonishment, but not punishment. Skagen took it all.’

‘What happened to him?’ she asked, lifting her head to look at him.

‘My mother gave him a choice, suicide or expulsion. I’m sure you’d think that banishment was the lesser evil. But for us, being cut off from dolphinkind is the same as death. We are not singular creatures. We live all our lives in groups. Even when we’re alone we’re connected via telepathic link. But to be cut off from us is to have all links severed. Lord Skagen chose expulsion.’ He frowned. ‘In fact, he seemed to be quite pleased about it.’

‘Pleased?’ Caroline said. ‘You mean he was happy to be thrown out?’

‘So it seemed. I didn’t get a chance to speak to him. My mother performed the severing herself, then guards escorted him to the Atlantic border and watched him swim away. They said he never looked back.’

‘But where did he go?’ she asked.

Finn made a circular pattern with one of his hooves. ‘I have an idea, a suspicion if you will. The very notion of it fills me with dread actually.’

Caroline looked at Simonale, who had turned to stare at Finn, then looked back at the black unicorn. Finn was looking out of the window at the little fluffy clouds.

‘Well?’ she said.

Finn said, ‘There’s only one thing that a dolphin as wise and canny as Skagen could do to seek restitution for wasting magic so badly. He would have to wield a spell even more powerful. To do what, I am not sure.’

Caroline’s intestines took this opportunity to practice their knot tying technique. ‘I thought that the magic used on me was…’

‘Incredible?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘It was, by modern standards. But the records of our unicorn ancestors report feats of magic so wonderful that they make your transformation seem commonplace. Many old myths that have survived humankind’s whispered history are truer than you think. If Skagen wanted to redeem himself by magical means, there’s only one place on the planet that he could go. He was certainly swimming in the right direction the last time he was seen.’

‘Where’s that?’ Caroline asked.

Finn seemed to swallow a house. ‘The ruins of Atlantis, in the depths of the Mediterranean.’

‘Oh,’ said Caroline. She felt that she had missed something, notwithstanding that Atlantis was a name that inspired little in her imagination. ‘And…that’s dangerous?’

Finn laughed. It was the laugh of someone given terrible, comical news. ‘Dangerous? You have no idea. Actually I have no idea. All I know is that in the remains of Atlantis is the only thing powerful enough to do any work that Skagen has planned for it.

‘What’s that?’ Caroline said.

‘The last unicorn horn,’ Finn replied. He flopped down as if a popped balloon. ‘But that’s not the worst of it.’

Caroline didn’t dare ask what could be worse.

Finn said, ‘You see the unicorns transformed each other, one at a time. So of course there had to be one left, with no-one to transform him. It was the king you see. He was the most powerful, and also accepted the responsibility for his kinds’ failure to resolve their differences with humankind. After he transformed his wife he stood on the shore of Atlantis, with all the new dolphins in front of him, and declared the city forfeit. They all agreed to it. They knew what it would cost him, to drown the city. But his horn still has more power than all the dolphins put together. It is a dangerous blessing, and a valuable curse.’

Caroline said, ’So Skagen’s gone to use it?’

‘Yes, I think so. He knows the history as well as anyone and understands the power that the horn can wield. I’m sure he plans something inventive. Yet the risk is incredible. To get the horn…’ he shook his head.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You have to understand. The unicorns knew that the king’s horn would be a mighty temptation. So they placed the worst, or best depending on your point of view, guard on it possible.’

Caroline had a vision of a kraken rising from the deep to crush sailing ships of old. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

Finn sighed. ‘The unicorns employed what was nearby. They used their magic to pull through the Gibraltar Straight the most ferocious animal they could find. It was like releasing lions into a school.’

Two notes lurked into Caroline’s mind. She struggled to open her mouth.

‘Indeed,’ Finn said. ‘You probably didn’t know that the biggest Great White Shark officially recorded was caught in the Mediterranean did you?’