"Lucinda, calm down! We can get them out…I would imagine we can post bail as soon as I talk with the officer in charge of their case. From there, we can figure out what to do next…come on, now- just relax," he told her as her arm twisted around his suddenly and she rested her head on it.
 
 

"I just can’t believe they were…you know…doing something like that with us so close and well, it just isn’t like them," Lucinda was saying as Vanduran suddenly cracked up. He had been trying to stifle himself but the look on Rollie and Angie’s faces as they were being taken away in the patrol car had been priceless.
 
 

"Stop that! Marvin T. Vanduran, you’d better stop that laughing! God knows what kind of people they’re having to put up with down there!" Lucinda was saying, pumping him with her fists against his shoulder and arm as he tried to stop laughing.

"So, he your man?" asked the gum-smacking prostitute in a hem to waist, back zippered leather skirt, as she eyed Rollie, sitting across the bench from Angie and the other female prisoners.
 
 

"Yeah…that’s him…" Angie replied, dejectedly, now reduced to talking with the woman just to pass the time.
 
 

"He beating you up, you keeping on him, huh?" the woman deduced, grinning as she revealed a less than stellar row of yellow teeth. She popped her gum and curled her tongue around it as she studied Rollie from head to toe; "seems you gave him a licking as well,"  she added, appraising the shiner under Rollie's eye.
 
 

"Uh, no- he’s my husband…he’s not my pimp," Angie answered, smiling slightly as Rollie rolled his eyes and then rested them on the woman who had turned on one hip, allowing him to see how she attracted some of her clientele.
 
 

He blinked slightly, reddening as Angie glared at her; "Cut it out…" she told her through clenched teeth.
 
 

"Okay…okay- I believe you, honey…no pimp would get rosy like that with a look at the honey-pot…I just got to wonder, you know, why you guys are here on pleasure row…Yuppie crime is up the hall- they get chairs, not these hard-ass benches," she further explained, with curiosity now her business.
 
 

"Angela, mind not telling the world our business?" Rollie asked, his embarrassment over and his anger taking root.
 
 

"Not at all," Angie replied, tightening her lips as the prostitute grinned and crossed her legs again.
 
 

"Whoa! You guys were caught doing it…yeah? Out in the open, jeez, let me guess! Either at the Bowl or Lookout Point…!"
 
 

Rollie and Angie both flashed indignant stares at the woman who laughed and told the working girl beside her. Shortly, there was a steady stream of laughter on both sides of the benches.
 
 

"Great, just great!" Rollie told Angie who jerked on her handcuff that restrained her left arm to the steel rod positioned less than an inch under the bench.
 
 

"I want to go home!" Angie told him, muttering the words as the laughter continued.
 
 

"Tylers- Rollie- Angela Tyler?" a woman’s voice asked, breaking up the chorus of laughter.
 
 

Rollie and Angie both looked up to see a large, severely dressed woman standing before them, with a couple of files in her arms.
 
 

"Yes…" Angie replied, eager now for any interruption.
 
 

"I’m Rollie Tyler," Rollie answered as the woman began releasing Angie from the handcuffs. She proceeded over to him as Angie sprang to her feet and shivered slightly. She didn’t look back at her former bench mates who had once again started to laugh. Rollie put his arm around her shoulder as they followed the woman who had released them down the hall. They were headed toward ‘yuppie crime’ chairs just as the prostitute had described.
 
 

"That’s it girl, swing those hips, my, my, my…." cheered the prostitute as Rollie and Angie were taken inside an open office.
 
 

"Will I ever live this down!" Angie remarked, her cheeks hot as Rollie hugged her shoulders. Together, they sat down and waited as the no- nonsense, stern woman slapped the case files down and left them alone, never giving them further eye contract.
 
 

"What time is it, even?" Rollie asked, looking around for a clock. His watch, he realized wasn’t on his wrist. It suddenly occurred to him that he had been missing it since the airport…the bathroom incident.
 
 

"Um, looks like just after two o’clock…" Angie replied.
 
 

"My watch was lifted…in the bathroom at the airport, look…must have happened when I got punched," Rollie told her as she looked up at his bruised eye and touched it slightly. He reacted by jerking slightly to her touch, making a face.
 
 

"What a pair we are!" he added, shaking his head and just as Angie was about to remark to that comment, a man walked in, grabbing the chair behind the desk and flipped through the arrest reports. He was lean, in his mid-fifties, balding and just as stern as the woman who had just left them.
 
 

"Mr. and Mrs. Tyler…my name is Captain Mark Eisley. I have been briefed on your arrest and have also been in touch with a Captain Vanduran of the New York Midtown South precinct…" he began, his voice deep and almost in monotone.
 
 

Rollie nodded, hoping that everything had been put right by Captain Vanduran or at least, bailed out. Angie slipped her hand into Rollie’s, wishing for the night to go away. Escaping to LA had only led to a new and rather indignant start to her best laid plans.
 
 

"Okay, here’s the bottom line…you’re not going to stay in jail tonight…bail has been waived in this case. You’re being released into Vanduran’s custody. You will have to appear in court in the morning at 9 A.M. Do you understand?"
 
 

"I…" Rollie began and then felt the squeeze from Angie and shut his mouth.
 
 

"We understand," Angie answered.
 
 

"Good, now, get out of my precinct and go get yourself a room, okay? Leave the California scenery alone for the rest of the night." He stood up, Rollie and Angie both standing as he walked out the door, flipping the files in a collection bin. He never looked back.
 
 

"We’re out of here!" Rollie told Angie as they collected their personal things from the desk sergeant and walked hurriedly out the front door of the precinct.
 
 

Standing down at the curb, was Vanduran, dragging on a cigarette as Angie spied poor Lucinda, conked out against the glass of the car window.
 
 

"Where trouble goes, Tyler follows…" Vanduran commented, grinning just a bit as Rollie rolled his eyes and shook his head.
 
 

"Thanks, Captain…I’m really sorry about this mess…I just want to say that we really weren’t going to…"
 
 

"I don’t want to know…" Vanduran interrupted Rollie , putting his hand out and walking around to the driver’s seat, "it’s late and Lucinda has to be on set at six. That’s in four hours…so let’s get home and everyone can just go to bed."
 
 

Rollie and Angie got in the back seat as quiet as possible as Lucinda remained asleep. The drive to Venice was quiet and quick at that time of night as Angie didn’t even look out the window. Instead, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the car seat. Rollie, she knew, was silently seething. This incident certainly didn’t help their business reputation. She wondered what they would be charged with and what would happen in court…and then, she smiled softly, thinking of Aidan and how she wished she was holding him in her arms right now.
 
 

Once at Lucinda’s house on one of Venice’s canals that led to the Marina Del Rey, they exited the car quietly, luggage in tow as Vanduran half carried the extremely sleepy Lucinda into her house. It was not a large house and in the dark, Rollie could barely make out that it was a modest-sized bungalow. Lucinda had probably paid a fortune for it however, being so closed to the scenic Venice Bridge.
 
 

Inside, they were shown to the spare bedroom, already prepared by Lucinda sometime the day before. Angie smiled as she picked up the Godiva chocolate that was resting on the pillow. Luce was so wonderful about that kind of thing and she wished a hundred times over, that they had never sat by that rock at Lookout Point.
 
 

"Your bathroom is just next to your room…I’ll be going in with Luce at six. You guys can use Luce’s car. I’ll leave a map for the court buildings so that you can make your nine o’clock appearance. Look, just tell the judge you were tourists and let the place sorta sweep you away…" Marvin Vanduran told them, his head barely inside the door.
 
 

"Captain, we weren’t there, I mean, we hadn’t started to…" Rollie began, looking at him, with an honest plea for understanding.
 
 

"Nope, don’t want to hear anymore…" Vanduran replied, ducking out of the doorway, his face flushing as he disappeared.
 
 

"Rol, no one is going to believe us," Angie said, moaning as she suddenly sank back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, "Oh my God!"
 
 

"What?" Rollie spun around in reaction to Angie’s exclamation.
 
 

Angie pointed to the ceiling and Rollie just sank down beside her then, laughing softly as the two of them looked at themselves in their mirrored reflections from the ceiling mirror. It was the size of their bed exactly and beveled on the edges.
 
 

"Great, just great…" Rollie said, whimsically.
 
 

"I feel like I’m in some sort of tawdry seventies movie…now, all we need is a lava lamp or a black light," Angie replied, waving her arms around and felt the bed move as the waves inside the waterbed suddenly rock them.
 
 

Rollie kept laughing; "Sweetie, guess what?"
 
 

"What?"
 
 

"Your wish is my command…"
 
 

"Huh?"
 
 

The lights went out in the room as she realized he had braved the angry seas of the waterbed and left her side. Suddenly, the darkness gave way for the small, but unmistakable glow of red blobs of oil moving ever so slowly on the bedstand.