"It's like a spaceship, daddy!" Janice sat in a wicker sphere and eyed me from its round entry hole. The whole thing was suspended by a chain from the ceiling. "Push me, make it swing!"

I obliged, applying warp-pendulum speed to her vessel, and she squeed with delight.

Fortunately, the Chillaxium at Best Boston Insurances had been taken over by the Daughters and Sons at Work, and the usually quiet retreat was filled with howls, yells, and laughter, much like the monkey house at the zoo.

Next to the wicker sphere, a coffin-sized wooden box—it wouldn't be a coffin, would it?—had been press-ganged by some interior decorator to serve as a coffee table. Comics lay scattered all over it.

One of them caught my eye.

"Peanut, you've gotta see this!" I stopped the trans-dimensional motion of Janice's spaceship and pointed at a cover depicting a woman with a black mane, metal wrist cuffs, a tight bodice, and liberal amounts of skin.

"What is it?" Janice and Baby Yoda clambered through the hole, tumbled to the padded ground, and picked themselves up.

I handed the comic to her. "That's how the train lady, the one we saw today, looked in June, trust me."

My daughter inspected the picture, her eyes wide. "Wonder Woman! I love her! She is one of my favourite DC heroines! Did she really look like this, Dad? The train lady?"

I nodded. "She sure did. Exactly like this. The hair, the metal things around her arms. And she had the same dress."

"Wow! Cool!" My daughter leafed through the book.

"And, the train woman, she—" I was about to report on her hair dying habits when a hand on my shoulder stopped me.

"Evan. Introducing your offspring to our company brochures?"

I turned to find Liam, my boss of bosses, smiling at me. His bleached teeth lit up a perfectly tanned face.

"Hey, Liam. Good to see you." I gestured to Janice with one hand while getting the other one squeezed in the man's firm grip. "This is Janice, my daughter."

"Pleased to know you, milady... and miYoda." He bowed at her. "And this here is Maximilian, my son." He pointed at a blond boy next to him. He seemed to be a year or two younger than my daughter. The lad held a plastic machine gun and looked willing and able to use it in lethal combat action.

"Hello, Maximilian." I smiled at him in what I hoped was an amicable fashion.

The boy glowered back at me and pointed the muzzle of his weapon in my direction.

"Er..." I looked back at his father, seeking some kind of support. " So, Liam. Janice adores the comics collection here. She loves Wonder Woman, you know." I changed the topic.

My boss of bosses raised his brows. "Ah, yes. Wonder Woman. Who doesn't love her indeed? Did you know, Evan, that we here, at Boston's Best Insurances, have one Wonder Woman comic for each Superman comic? Gender equality is one of the paramount—"

"Pssh! She's just a girl, that Wonder Woman," Maximilian said, interrupting his father. "I bet Superman would kick her fat ass any time. And now I wanna see the servants. Take me to them, Dad!"

"The servants?" Liam frowned at his son, puzzlement written all over his face.

"Yeah, the big computers, you know" The boy wiped his nose with a hand, and then he wiped the hand on his weapon. "Those that you told me cost a lot of money."

"Ah, the servers, you mean." Liam smiled.

"That's what I said." Maximilian brought the gun to his right shoulder and aimed it straight at my daughter.

I stepped between him and his target.

Liam laughed uncomfortably. His laughter had a higher pitch than usual. "Okay, young man. That's quite enough for today. Let's go and look at the servers." He nodded at me in a goodbye fashion. "As you see, Evan, I've got to move on. My Maximilian is interested in technology. See you around!"

"Bye," I said, watching them leave.

"Hey Dad, are the servants running Call of Duty?" Maximilian asked as he pulled his father by the hand and towards the door.

I'd have loved to hear his dad's reply, but lamentably, they were out of earshot by then.

"Dad, I don't like that boy." Janice squinted her eyes at the two as the pair left the Chillaxium.

I merely nodded, silently sharing her feelings, and checked the time on my wristwatch. "It's lunch time, Peanut. Let's go. Remember that we've got a reservation in the restaurant on the roof."

We decided to skip the elevator, and we took the stairs to Chef's Retreat since it was but one floor up. A waiter in steel-gray trousers and a perfectly ironed, immaculate white shirt showed us to our table, right at the window, with the entire city sprawling below us for our visual enjoyment.

Janice ignored the view, though. She placed Baby Yoda next to the window and pulled the Wonder Woman comic out of her bag, placing it on the table before her.

"Oh, we've gotta take this back, after lunch." I hadn't noticed that she had nicked it from the company brochures. Stealing it might tilt Best Boston's gender equilibrium the wrong way.

"Sure, we'll take it back. But why don't we have a look at it, first!" She traced Wonder Woman's face and body with a finger. "She's super pretty."

"She's Wonder Woman. Of course she's super pretty." I smiled, stating the obvious.

Janice looked up at me. "The train lady, I mean."

I nodded after a brief pause. "Yes, you're right. The train lady is pretty, too. And you should have seen her earlier this year. The first time I saw her, she had this marshmallow blue hair, like the sea waves. The next time, it was cotton candy pink, I think. And once... Once it was even golden."

Her eyes widened. "Golden? For real?"

"Yeah." I tried to remember the hue. Metallic, somewhere between molten gold and platinum silver. It had been the day she had inadvertently introduced me to Dunkin Donuts. The Sugar Raised had powdered the tip of her cute button nose.

"You like her, don't you?" Janice asked, startling me from my own train of thoughts.

"What makes you think so?" I wondered if I was blushing now.

"Because you smile when you think of her." She tilted her head, scrutinizing me.

Uneasy under my daughter's stare, I opted for opening the menu. "Oh, look at the lunch offering of today. They've got a fennel and parsnip soup. Would you like that, Peanut?"

She scrunched her nose, as I supposed she would. "Do they have real food, too?"

I suppressed a snicker, scanning the offers until I found a match. "Well, they have spaghetti with tomato sauce, which I happen to know you like very much." I censored the fact that it came with les légumes du jour.

"Okay. Yeah, spaghetti's good." She grabbed Baby Yoda and made him look at me.

"Ladies with dyed hair, you like," he said.

"Right, little Yoda." I grinned at him, then at Janice. "But I also like them all natural, at times."

When she noticed me watching her, Janice shook her head and pointed a finger at Baby Yoda.

"Dye her hair, Mom never does," he said.

"Right again." She'd never do that, I was sure.

"So, prefer the train lady, you do."

"I..." Now I did blush, definitely. "She's..." I swallowed. "I don't even know her."

Janice sat Baby Yoda back to his place by the window. "Then, go and meet her. I'd like to know her, too. You're superdad, you can make it come true."

I seized Baby Yoda and made him face my daughter.

She grinned.

"To meet her, I would like to, yes," little Yoda said. "But never easy, life is. A handsome man with muscles like a gorilla, she already has."

Her grin was replaced by a frown. "A gorilla man? That's too bad." She squeezed my hand, then she smiled again. "But, fortunately, we still have Mom."

Yes, Mom we had. And nothing but a dream, the train lady was.

A crazy dream.

And to wake up from it, I had to.