As they often did when they craved social isolation, Pim and Bim sealed themselves in jars, each sibling continuing to speak despite being inaudible to the other.

Following Clive’s eventual entrance, Pim and Bim escaped unnoticed.

Clive preferred to assess a situation surreptitiously, before interpenetrating with it.

Clive was known to wander for days while working through a mathematical problem. His path often intersected with parties in need of his acuity.

Over a glass of Glenfarclas single highland malt that he’d left with Pim and Bim on his last visit, the Well-Dressed Albatross explained his plight.

Forced to choose between two distressing outcomes, the Well-Dressed Albatross moved intuitively towards the comfort of old friends.

Slim discovered Mrs. Love’s evil plan. Of an evening Slim was given to lurking the ajar doors of darkened corridors. One night he absorbed a conversation between Mrs. Love and a flock of aviation engineers.

In the stark quiet of the hotelroom Mr. Love discovered that Mrs. Love had made a breakthrough in drone technology and required the wings of an albatross, as it can can sustain long flights with less expenditure of energy than any other bird.

Like a child returning home with a report card he knows will be unfavourable, Mr. Love drove his 1965, candy-apple-red, droptop, Buick Skylark to the place he always went on receiving orders from Mrs. Love.

You’ll recall that Mr. Love had been discorporated by Mrs. Love and set adrift over forsaken and woebegone places of the earth. One evening, with a jolt, he regained his material form, at which very moment the Shadowy Figure approached him in the guise of a process server.