All in all, Dillinger Sang had two hundred verses. Like the Masonic Rites, each revealed new mysteries, so the longer the song went on, the more important it was that the listener either be prepared to absorb the secrets it contained, or unable to absorb them at all. Katryn and Barth had already absorbed about five verses consciously in the last weeks and accepted three as fact. They had also heard the song as far as the hundredth verse while laying half-alive in a thin layer of cat hair, day-old vodka, and fresh whiskey. That had been last night. "I'm not usually like this," Katryn had moaned before passing out.
She was serious. (She was almost always serious.) And she was suspicious. And curious. The first three verses had matched her own theories about Geraldo Rivera's relations with Indira Sousa, Dillinger's bastard great-granddaughter -- and Katryn's godmother. So Katryn had been drinking from her own bottle tonight (apple juice, her favorite!), and counting anxiously on her 30 years of acting experience to pull her through. But her act was wearing thin alongside her patience, and to make matters worse, her curiosity was growing. She could feel the hidden secrets in each verse, but could not understand them, and it was infuriating. The thirteen verses that she had newly heard this night were a sort of "Volume Two," that much she could tell. But nothing else. A hokey mishmash of allusions to My Little Pony, West Side Story, and War and Peace, she guessed. But no sense, little rhyme, and only a bit more rhythm.
The one hundred and fourteenth verse ran:
"Severus Spike tonight, everybody get drunk tonight,
Pull out your banjo like Dillinger's gun
Gandhi's aces beat a one-eyed jack
And the Volga's gonna rock 'em tonight!
But the lady fooling me is the one being fooled, because --"
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