We're reading a bawdy farce of old-time radio (
The Pleasure Dial by Jeremy Edwards), and the spectacles are one of the tools we use whenever we delve into material from (or set in) the past (to help filter and focus the mists of time, naturally).
What has us so delighted? It's a passage in Chapter 22, involving imaginary water. (Jeremy Edwards is the first author we've encountered who is witty enough to make a glass of water hilarious.) Here are the lines, though we mustn't explain the context lest we ruin a plot twist:
The last time she’d been here, she’d been in the company of a Dada composer she was sleeping with, who wanted to see his sister carry a bucket across the stage in a rustic allegory. Not a memorable role for the poor young woman, who had not yet graduated to 'ingenue'; but to her credit she had not spilled a drop of the imaginary water, and Mariel had duly congratulated her.
