"Why Rollie, your mother must have been an Amazon because you certainly don’t favor Dingo’s genes very much," she told him, coyly smiling at him as he grunted.

"Mum wasn’t an Amazon…"

"She were tall, Rol- I have to give her that," Dingo commented as Rollie gave him a quick, disapproving look. Dingo shrugged his shoulders at his son. The boy was always in a foul mood when he came to visit.

They took a table near the back, the waitress remembering both Rollie and Dorinda. Dingo ordered his usual pint and Rollie waved the round as Dorinda smiled and took her foot out of her shoe and ran it against the shin of his leg. Rollie blinked as the contact surprised him.

"Yeah well, I guess I should tell you what it is we need, son," Dingo began as he patted Dorinda’s hand who shifted her attention back to him as Rollie let out a sigh of relief.

"Best be quick- I got to meet up with Angie and go over some sequence shots for the movie. I really don’t have time for this!" Rollie drummed his hand on the table waiting for the tale to begin- there was always a long tale…Dingo never had a short one.

"Right you are, well, I meet Miss Dorinda Bailey in Sydney two weeks ago," he began and smiled at her as she patted his hand again. Rollie rolled his eyes because it always seemed to start this way.

"I was doing a show at the Goldfish," Dorinda chimed in and giggled slightly.

"Yeah, the Goldfish…" Dingo remembered then, "anyway, there she was- a vision in leather!" His face beamed as she took her even white teeth and lightly bit the lobe of his ear.

"Leather?" Rollie’s eyes widened, trying to recall the Goldfish but he had never heard or been to any place like that in Sydney.

"Part of my routine, darlin’…" Dorinda said, her voice again sultry and low and she reached for Rollie’s hand with her index finger, swirling it across the top of his hand slowly.

"Great- you’re a coochie dancer!" Rollie said, shaking his head and looking at Dingo who smiled back, that all-knowing smile.

"Oh my, we prefer lap dancer, sweetie," Dorinda interrupted, feigning her shock and dismay at him as if he had insulted her.

"Whatever"

"Anyway- we get to know each other a bit, have a few beers and off we go to have a good time, you know?" Dingo continued and Rollie just breathed deeply and listened.

"Before I knew what was happening and Dorinda will bear this one out, son- these blokes came up behind us and threatened both me and Dorinda."

"It was horrible!" Dorinda said, her face contorted as she recalled the confrontation, "they told me they would do unspeakable things to me if I didn’t do as they said!"

"Mmm, apparently, not so unspeakable," Rollie murmured as Dingo flashed him a warning. It was then that Rollie finally saw that Dingo might really be in some sort of trouble. He was sweating and clearing his throat repeatedly.

"They wanted to know where something was, something they said I had. They gave me a week to get it for them or they would follow up on their earlier threat and take my other finger." Dingo then removed his hand from his pocket and Rollie could see a partially amputated little finger, starting to heal on his left hand.

"Bloody hell! What in the name of…?" Rollie was now paying closer attention and watched as Dorinda patted the stump and turned to Rollie with tears in her eyes.

"It’s all my fault, Rollie!" she said, her weeping now uncontrolled as Dingo patted her on the back and Rollie took her hand in support. Both men reached for handkerchiefs and as usual, realized that they weren’t carry one.

"Oh, dear- you see, I did steal something from your father during the dance at the Goldfish. It was so beautiful and so different. I couldn’t get over how gorgeous that stone was!" Dorinda cried.

Rollie looked from her to his father. He could see now that Dingo was not wearing his shirt open as usual. He grabbed the top button of Dingo’s shirt and pulled the shirt roughly open, the button popping off in the quick jerking motion.

"Rol! Now before you go and get all tanked off, you best listen to me!" Dingo began to beg but Rollie stood up and looked down at the two of them.

"Damn you, Dingo! You wore Mum’s ring around your neck for years. You told me that it was mine when I got married!"

Rollie had been planning to contact Dingo without Angie’s knowledge before her pumping him about calling him. The reason was to get the ring. It was all he would have of his mother. Dingo assured him that he kept it on him at all times so that it would never get lost or stolen. He loved that ring and he knew that his mother had cherished it as well. It had been made in Greece. Dingo had been in the merchant marines and had won the ring during a card game. It was called the Chalice ring by the Greek who had made it. It had been made for his daughter. It was gold with inlaid black onyx work around the band in Greek biblical symbols but it was the stone that everyone looked at with awe. Held in gold leaf prongs was the most exquisite blood red Ruby with the very rare natural occurrence of a white diamond formed in the corundum’s center. Dingo called it the heart of God stone. He had given it to Rollie’s mother when they got married. Dingo, in his sorrow and guilt had put it on a gold chain and wore it around his neck, near his heart- he had told a then, distressed young Rollie to remind him of his mother and keep her memory close.

"Now, hold on, son! I need to bend you ear a tick more so don’t jump to conclusions! The ring is safe!" Dingo pulled Rollie’s clenched grasp on his shirt away as Rollie breathed a sigh of relief.

"How did these guys know about the ring?" Rollie asked, suspicious.

"Eh? Well, they was Greek, Rollie. I guess the old man sent them. He has been mad all these years, I guess, losing that game and angering his daughter. My God, Rollie- he must be 100 years old, the buggar!"

"Don’t tell me that you’ve been in contact before about this ring?" Rollie asked, shaking his head.

"Well, you see, I did have a very dry spell about a month ago, Rol. I did put out a very discreet ad about the ring. No one followed up on it or so I thought until a week ago," Dingo told him, lowering his eyes, as he knew his son was going to hit the roof.

But Rollie only shook his head again, "you old fool! You would sell that ring knowing how much it meant to Mum and me because you needed the cash. Bloody hell! You could have asked me for the money- I would have given it to you gladly if I knew you were going to try and sell the ring."

"Um, well that’s just it…I don’t think you could have given me the amount of money I really need, son."

"How much are you in for?"

"Two hundred thousand dollars," Dingo said, pursing his lips and looking at Dorinda who patted him again on his injured hand and looked back at Rollie with fresh tears in her eyes.

"You’ve got to help us, Rollie! Your father says you could do anything. He said you could make a good paste that would pass until he could slip out of sight," Dorinda told him, her pleading again, so intoxicating to Rollie.

"Hmmm, so these guys are following you, right?" Rollie asked, looking around suddenly.

"Which ones?" Dingo asked confused.

"Which ones? Why the ones that cut off your finger, mate!" Rollie said, his words sharp and irritable, "how many people are after you?"

"Counting the Greek blokes and then the loan sharks, um- that would be about six or seven," Dingo said, counting them up in his mind.

"Bloody fool!" Rollie said, standing up from the table, disgusted, "Just one thing more! Where is the ring?"

He watched as Dingo looked at Dorinda and she, back to Dingo. Together, they looked up at Rollie, their faces betraying yet a new wrinkle in all of this Dingo mess.

"I was so scared!" Dorinda said, shivering as she recalled the threats made by the Greeks and then witnessing Dingo’s finger being amputated, "that while they weren’t looking, I – I swallowed it!"

"You WHAT?" Rollie asked in total disbelief. The ring was large and rather sharply angled.

"I swallowed it whole!" she replied again, then smiled, "and I have been waiting a whole week and nothing!"

Dingo looked at Rollie and put his hands up in the air turning them palms up to his son, "We have kept close track and nothing. We ended up here in New York to see you, of course and see a doctor about shining a light down there or taking an x-ray to see where it is?"

"I got a great constitution!" Dorinda piped in.

"Oh jeez!" Rollie said with a whimper, "what am I going to tell Angie?"

"Angie- that slip of a Cuban girl? What’s she need to know for?" asked Dingo, not wishing for anyone else to know his dilemma.

"Well, that slip of a girl is going to marry me, Dingo. How’s that?" Rollie blurted out.

"Say what? Ain’t she more like a sister?" Dingo asked, curious about the two of them since the last time he had seen Rollie in New York.

"No! She’s a responsible and wonderful woman, Dingo. I love her dearly and you are not going to ruin this for her, you hear?"

"No problem, Rollie. If she’s the one- then, I say, go for it. Just remember that once you marry um, they tend to get way different than when you was courtin’ them." Dingo told him, slapping him on the back and shaking his hand.

Dorinda looked suddenly uncomfortable, "Oh, you know- I have the most terrible pain in my tummy!"

"That doesn’t surprise me," Rollie told her, "I think you need to see a doctor and soon. Come on- let’s get out of here and I’ll call Angie from the van. We are going to hospital and get my future wife’s ring out of your coochie dancer."

"I prefer lap performance demonstrator," Dorinda told him, correcting him as she squeezed his arm and held on with her other arm entwined in Dingo’s, "my, my- the Tyler men! What more could a woman want?"

Angie had almost given up on Rollie ever returning to the location. She paced and played with the sequence designs. Finally, she got an alert on her PDA. It said only one word and she laughed- ‘DINGO’.

Rollie did call finally and she told him that she had pacified the director with the promise of a spectacular sequence for tomorrow’s shoot. He had mumbled about F/X people being a dime a dozen and Angie had pulled the piston on the wire control of the Ectoplasmic creature, causing a run of goop to slide out of it’s gaping mouth and onto the director’s shoe.

"There isn’t anyone better than us!" she told him, her eyebrows raised and hands on her hips.

She met Rollie at the hospital. He sat with Dingo outside of radiology, in the waiting room. As she rounded the corner, she saw the familiar unkempt, head of Dingo crouched over and holding cards with Rollie seriously trying to win against him.

"Hi there, hi Dingo!" Angie greeted them as Rollie stood and kissed her quickly and Dingo stood, looking a little ill at ease.

"Well, this is to be my future daughter-in-law, um?" he said, nervously standing with his hands behind his back.

"Oh Rollie, you told him!" Angie said, surprised but happy. She stepped forward and hugged Dingo who suddenly wrapped his arms around her in a tight, long embrace.

"Oh my- you’re built like a brick house!" Dingo remarked, his hands on her hips as Rollie cleared his throat and Dingo released her.

Angie let out a breath then and sat down, "So- what’s going on?"

"Well, why don’t you tell her, son?" Dingo said, putting his hand in his pocket quickly and sitting down himself.

Rollie chose the quick, down and dirty version and Angie just sat there. Both men waited for her to digest it and then get up and lose it. They expected it but she just continued to sit and bounce her head up and down, looking at her feet.

"Cool," she said suddenly, after a long spell of silence, "so how soon before you put that ring on my finger, Rol?"

"Uh? Um, don’t know quite yet- Ange. The doctor hasn’t come out. Dorinda was in some horrible pain there right before they took her in," Rollie told her as Dingo nodded in agreement.

"I can imagine. She seems to have been able to swallow it okay though…" Angie thought and then giggled. Only she could have a postponed engagement like this. The man she loved was announcing their engagement in a hospital waiting room with her future father-in-law minus one little finger, in hock for over two hundred thousand dollars, with crazy Greeks and loan sharks waiting in the wings; a lap dancer with some great swallowing techniques getting the ring fished out of her by any route necessary, and she had just gooped the director and possibly gotten them fired off from Ectoplasmic Ranger which, by the way- she informed Rollie was now going to be called: Ectoplasmic Ranger- in 3D!