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“Sooooo… ” I said, suddenly even more nervous, if that was physically possible, “he’s not joining us, is he? On the trip down? This Natural Born Killer artist?”

“No. He’ll meet us there. And he’ll have his own room. He won’t be sharing ours.”

My eyes widened. “Ours? Sharing…sharing ours…sharing…”

“Yeah. Morgan invited me to stay with you. Fun, huh?” I would have to re-check the definition of the word ‘fun’. But I was already fairly certain this wasn’t it.

“Your hotel sounded nicer than mine,” Waboombas continued, examining a piece of flesh she had removed from her mouth and now hung off the end of an impossibly long fingernail. “So I cancelled my reservation. I hope the beds are more comfortable than this place, though.” She rubbed her back, smearing paint. “No offense. You should change the mattresses once every hundred years.”

“Change the what? The mattresses? You…” I turned to Morgan. “You stayed here?”

“It was late, and she lives on the other side of town,” Morgan said, laughing heartily and hoping that would encourage me to see the ‘lighter’ side of it and not murder him with any nearby kitchen implements. “We wanted to get an early start on the drive, right? And she already had her costume with her at the club, so…”

“Don’t worry,” she said, seeming a bit annoyed with my apparent distress. “I didn’t leave stains, or nothin’. Your roommate made me be careful.”

“Careful?” I jerked my head toward Morgan, who had developed a sudden, intense interest in the floor tiles. I couldn’t seem to speak. “My roo…my roo…my rooooommuh-muh-muh…”

“Yeah, well, like I told you,” he mumbled, speaking more to her than his future death-dealer, “he pays most of the rent, so I try to keep things clean.”

I looked back and forth from one to the other, my mouth working rapidly with very little actual sound being emitted. “You…you…I…you…”

“This a problem?” Ms. Waboombas asked, still sounding irritated, and potentially homicidal.

“No! No, no, no,” I said, trying to do damage control before she could—well—do damage. “I was just thinking, had I known you were here last night, I would have made you more comfortable.” I paused. “Last night.”

She stared.

“In my…” I caught myself and corrected, mid-sentence, “…in our…spare bed.”

“Yeah?” she asked, grinning, and taking a break from the endless tooth-picking. “Like maybe you would have tucked me in?”

“Orrrrrrr—gotten you drinks!”

“We had drinks. I needed to be tucked in.”

“You had drinks,” I said, becoming less surprised by the second. Clearly, what was mine was Morgan’s, and hers.

“I would have tucked you in,” Morgan offered, with a whine. She ignored him.

“Oh!” I said, partially relieved. Partially. “Oh—you slept separately then?”

She looked positively revolted. “I wasn’t gonna sleep with him. Guy wouldn’t even buy a pity dance from me on a slow night. I don’t spread ‘em for a guy won’t even pay for a pity dance.” She leaned back a bit and waved absently at her body. “Come on! This is worth something.”

“Of course it is. Absolutely it is. No question,” I agreed, to Morgan’s obvious annoyance. “Without a doubt. A good deal, I should imagine, on the…em…open market.”

“There are different kinds of payment, though,” she said, leaning in, again on her bumper cushions, and returning to the offensive. “Sometimes a pretty face on top...that’s enough. Especially if it’s rich.”

“Ah. Good to know. Good to know. Lock that away in the old ‘reference file’ for later, if I see…if I come across…if there’s…so you slept well?”

She shrugged blankly.

“Oh. Right. The mattress. And now you’ll be sharing our hotel room which will—I’m certain—have a better mattress.” I laughed like a giddy piece of electrified Jell-O. “Of course there, they’ll turn down our beds at night. And speaking of ‘our’ beds, and who’s sleeping where…”

“Woodruff turned my bed down,” she said.

“What?” I said, shocked. That comment so completely derailed my train of thought that even Harvey the Happy Crane Engine would have had a hard time getting it back on the tracks. Woodruff did something? For a guest? This guest? With no