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Show Ida's Sabbath 95 Ida watched herself leap up from the organ which continued to play. With an aerial maneuver, she landed on top of the walnut Baldwin and pulled ostrich plumes from the depths of her unshielded ample bosom. With a f l i p , she fluttered the fan and her eyelashes and began to gyrate. The curtains over the exit door slowly f e l l to velvet thickness, covering the rain-spotted glass. The hanging lamps glowed pink as Ida pirouetted and leaped over the metal backs of the chairs, balancing expertly, arabesquing at row ends. Ida squeezed her eyes against the sight. The f l o r a l arrangement above the sacrament table, arranged and delivered by B i l l Parson's Nursery every Sunday morning, started to grow out of the hardwood as i f from the richest compost heap ever. The gladiolas' trumpet faces opened wider and wider, their tendrils curling over the edge of the table and coiling their way to the feet of the seated brethren. Chrysanthemums puffed, and stems leaped to the ceiling with jungle vine vigor. Ida's pink dress shrank to a scanty leotard, and her hair sprouted twenty inches. She looked electrifyingly lovely in all of the pinkness. Catching hold of the vines, she climbed to the starspackled ceiling of the chapel. "Twinkle, twinkle, l i t t l e star," she sang as she scraped her newly grown, five inch fingernails across the rough surface to scratch through to the steeple. After clearing a hole big enough for her and the growing vine, she squeezed through insulation, picked her way through chunks of plaster, and f i n a l l y swayed on top of the church's peaked roof. Wind swirled around her ankles, and she leaned against a rough timber that had supported the steeple's copper, shingles, and paint through the twenty years |