* * *

At first, the room appeared empty. Two heavy-set vacant armchairs faced each other. Despite the thick slabs of foam hidden beneath the low-lustre vinyl covering, they looked about as comfortable to sit on as a wooden picnic table.

A tall man moved towards the chair on the left, which was close to his desk.

A thirty-something year old woman plopped down in the chair on the right.

A set of three tall windows overlooked the private garden and terraces beyond.

“Nice place you have here,” the woman said.

"Thank you," the man said, gesturing with a slight wave of his hand. “Let’s get to it.” He tapped his clipboard with a recently sharpened pencil. “We’ll start with a word-association exercise.” Touching the bridge of his glasses with his index finger, he asked, “Are you familiar with that?”

“Yes,” the woman answered, as she kicked off her shoes, then shifted her position to sit cross-legged in the chair.

“Tree,” he said.

She responded, “Firewood.”

“Potatoes,” he stated.

She replied, “French fries.”

“Broccoli,” he declared.

The woman leaned forward and asked, “What kind of broccoli?”

The man made a coughing sound. “That is irrelevant to this exercise.”

“I disagree with you, Doc.”

“My name is Doctor Franco.”

“Yeah, yeah. W-h-a-t-e-v-e-r Dr. Franco-fraud-stein.”

“The word is broccoli,” he said as he wrote something down on the paper in front of him.

“Octopussy,” she answered.

“I do not believe you are taking this process seriously.”

“Of course I am,” the woman said as she removed the bright pink elastic from around her wrist, then lifted her long dark hair up behind her head. After twisting and coiling her rope of hair, her quick-moving fingers wrapped the pink band around the twisted knot, holding everything in place. A few seconds later, a large purple bubble appeared between her lips as her exhaled breaths expanded the chunk of gum.

“The word is broccoli,” he repeated.

“Octopussy,” she proclaimed once again.

“I fail to understand that connection.”

“Well, it’s like this,” the woman answered, gesturing with her hands. “Quite a few of the James Bond movies were produced by Albert Broccoli, right?”

“Yes,” he stated.

“I like James Bond movies a lot more than I like the vegetable.”