In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

Penny stifled a yawn.
"You want to sleep now, or would you like a coffee?"
"I think we gotta talk."
"I make us some coffee, Inez is asleep."
He came back with a tray: coffee, a bottle of brandy, two
snifters, a plate of chocolates decorated with drizzles of vanilla glaze.
"Okay," Penny said. "So the Muellers have all this stuff at their
place, including a loaded semi-automatic pistol, which I'm sure is a
whole lot more illegal here than where I come from. How's all this
gonna help us get to the bottom of this and find Ula?"
He shrugged, his nose in his glass.
"If this cyber con guy was an expert hacker, then it would all
make sense, but I doubt that."
He put down his glass, covering it with his hand to keep the
fumes from escaping. Penny took a sip from her glass. After the beer,
the wine, why stop now?
"I think he is, em, a simple crook, not a hacker, but a middle
man in the porno business. I said to Max, leave it alone, but he did nut
listen, that is Max."
"Yeah, if Ula's going down that road, there's no telling. Sure
won't be good for her career, be sure of that."
"That is the big problem, her career is nut in so good shape nor
is she. She is old for a dancer and desperate. The act, too, managgia."
"OK, I get the picture."
"Whut?"
"Mid-life crisis."
He rubbed his brow, shrugged.
"More than that. Dance is in terrible shape, like the
symphonies, companies are closing everywhere. The electronic medium
may be the only way to survive, but it is two dimensional and does not
live, it is frozen in time. And performance film is marginal. It does not
generate capital and so is a losing proposition for the media.”
"I know what you mean, it's like what happened to
improvisational music with the invention of the phonograph. So much
was lost, became fossilized or was chopped up into easy listening sound
bites. The same is bound to happen with performance unless it can
exist in real time, the way musicians now can improvise entire concerts,
real time on a real stage using just a laptop and a sound system."
He grinned, took a bite of chocolate and a swig of brandy to
swish around and melt the candy.
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