"This is delicious," Faith protested, popping a morsel into her mouth. "Really Aunt Doris. Try some. We call them monkey paws, but they're really made out of-"
Aunt Doris held up a hand. "Don't tell me. Please." She leaned close, looking searchingly into Faith's blank eyes.
Faith stared back unblinkingly, perfectly willing to be searched.
"It's no use, is it?" Aunt Doris said at last with a sigh, then straightened. "I could knock all day, but there's nobody home."
She shook her head and turned to leave. "I'm going to bed. Maybe in the morning we can make some sense out of all this."
"There's no hope," Charity moaned, not half an hour later, as she and Ross escaped into her bedroom and shut the door between them and the shards of remaining re spectability that lay strewn all about the rest of her apartment.
She'd done her duty as hostess, checking to make sure Aunt Doris was comfortable before providing sleeping areas for all the others and distributing bedding all around.
"I sleep in the nude," W.A. had announced as she'd handed out the covers and pillows. His barrel-shaped chest had swelled with pride. "The way nature intended."
"Great," Charity had snapped. "Just keep your nudity wrapped up in this sheet, will you please? Because I don't want to share nature with you. Even if I should wander out for a drink of water at two a.m."
W.A. had frowned, holding the sheet as though it were something odd and not quite clean.
"I'll feel strait-jacketed," he'd complained.
"He ought to be straitjacketed," she muttered to Ross as they left the nomads to their own devices. "And held down and tickled with a feather until he agrees to clean up, get a job and stop following my sister around the desert like a lovesick iguana."
"Oh, Charity." Faith stuck her head around the corner and smiled beatifically just before they made it to the safety of the bedroom. "Just a warning. W.A. does tend to walk in his sleep, and when he does, he generally crashes into things. So if you hear a lot of banging around out here during the night, it's only him." Her smile broadened. "Good night," she said liltingly, then disappeared.
Charity stared after her, her own hands balled into fists at her sides. "This entire project is doomed," she said at last in Cassandra-like tones. "Doomed."
Ross took her arm and led her into the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind them.
"There's no hope," Charity groaned, leaning on his shoulder. "I think I am going to go out of my mind now. It will be better for everyone."