CODA:OOOPS!

      Gal walks into a story.  Sees a good friend.  "Emcee!", she shouts.
"Got no rose 't pin on YOUR nose.", spits the reply.
"Well, what up?"
(Emcee and gal go back some.  And go back deep.  Fact is, Gal knew Emcee, a pet name for 'Main Character', known to only a few (thousand) buds, when Gal was just a literary parvenu named, 'Hey, You!'.) 
"What up's been ME.  All night.  Waitin'."
"What?  Somebody didn't show?"
"Yeah. Somebody-didn't-show, y' ole fool."
"Emcee.  It's me.  And it's early.  My missin' somethin'?'
Emcee perches pertly on a handy stool, crosses her still-quite-shapely-gams, like she does when things have her in a 'way'.  Then, hand on hip, chin up and off to the side (her bad side), she mimics accusingly,
" . . . what WAS that thing in that bay window?  Hmmm?"
      (Lordy, time flies and if you don't catch up with it, it'll run circles around your sorry arse and wind up biting you - JUST when you were thinking you had a 'grip', as they say.  Truth be told, "they" chuckled all night, watching Emcee pace around muttering denouement, crap-for-brains.  Denouement!"
      But did 'they' say anything to Gal?  That's clearly rhetorical and sooo like 'them'.  You see, back in the day - that would be "yes-ter-day", Gal was all lathered up, doin' Charlestons, hootin' out "you're a grand old flag. . .", and stopping just long enough to swig some Geritol from her garter-secured, silver flask - ALWAYS at the ready in her silk stockings - that she forgot THE most important and beautiful thing that Emcee treasures in her home-for-the-lovely-and-longed-for.
      Emcee's had the most prized period bird cage that a master craftsman's hand has ever tenderly assembled.  Mahogany - with some copper wire, shaping the domes - it rests regally on a matching table, ever vigilant, lest the world forget from whence she came.  This highly-polished, intricately-carved, wood skeleton of a magnificent cathedral was once home to the softest, trembling, feathered creatures who sang with an unforgettable lilt of joy.  Feathered, kaleidoscopically-colored angels, crooning of a time when people were high on creativity, low on the blues and telling about it - with strokes and faces and shapes.
      It is Emcee's paean to 'her' time, representing, reassuring, all who pass that she holds fast to abstract thinking; she believes in human freedom.  And when she's moved to 'treat' a passerby with herself and her art, she sings out, "Long live painting!"  And the 'treated' one comes marchin' in.  Think Satchmo.  And don't forget.)
Later, Lorane. . . .