Marvin Vanduran sat in Lucinda’s suite at the Jefferson and watched from the edge of the bed as Lucinda ran a comb through her wet hair. She had been cheerful enough in the taxi on the way over from the hospital but once they had arrived at the room, she had immediately taken a shower as he waited to talk with her seriously.

"Lucinda…what’s wrong?" he asked, clearing his throat.

She didn’t turn around, but viewed him from the mirror as he watched her reflection;

"What? Goodness, Marvin! I’ve just been subjected to needles and people dying and a fire, what do you think?"

"Ordinarily, uh, those things don’t seem to bother you, I mean- your life has always had adventures…" Marvin protested, his eyes suddenly falling to the floor.

"Adventures? Are you saying that I am grandiose or something?" she asked, putting the comb down hard, as she began to rub a green lotion over her face.

Vanduran made a face as Lucinda continued covering her face with the masque.

"No! Jeez, you trying to pick a fight? I mean, I thought you’d be happy to see me!"

"Fight! Wait a minute, buster! I’m not the one who came unannounced and just assumed that I would have time to spend with you…!"

Vanduran’s mouth opened slightly as he frowned and then sighed, leaning back on the bed until he rested on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

"It’s come to this…hasn’t it? This long distance romance is dying, isn’t it? And I suspect, you’ve found someone else, is that it?" he asked softly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulder twitch slightly.

"There’s no one else! God, men! Always think it is someone else, instead of trying to understand a woman!"

"I understand you, Lucinda….I mean, I thought that’s why we clicked so well. That’s what you used to tell me, anyway…" his voice trailed off as he felt the blood rising in his face.

Lucinda stood up. She turned around and looked down at the tired man who had flown in, rumpled suit and all, lying on her bed. His expression made her heart ache.

"Marvin, I am such a basket case! You know that! This movie has left me a little crazy right now. I’m sorry that I’m so bitchy…and well, if you want to know, I did have a little hot flash over the new lead….but hey, every woman would."

She said it fast, flirtatiously and leaned over, kissing him on the cheek, leaving a clump of green goo on him as she immediately got up and walked into the other room.

Vanduran grinned, wiping the organic masque from his cheek as he sat back up. He stood, unbuttoning his shirt, pulling off his tie, and followed his towel-clad fiancée into the next room.

"So, I’m second rate, huh? No hot flashes with me, right?" he said as he entered the adjoining room with a spring to his step.

"What took you so long? Men!" Lucinda answered, as the towel dropped to her feet. Marvin Vanduran did have some of his own vigorous qualities, she thought, cracking her masque as she grinned.

Rollie woke suddenly, something had probed deep within his ear as he sat up in the bed. A giggle followed as he blinked, seeing that Aidan had crawled in bed with them and was wiggling his finger at him.

"Oh bloody morning, Aidan…what did I tell you about that finger in my ear trick? Daddy gets all put out with that!"" Rollie scolded as Aidan’s face crumpled and he instantly began to cry, rolling over next to Angie who had woke up with a start as well.

"Ohhh, sweetie, daddy didn’t mean it like that! Come here, curl up with me, okay?" she told him as he did as she told him. Angie put her arms around her son and then looked up at Rollie who rolled his eyes slightly. He trounced off to the bathroom, having gotten his physical wake-up alarm.

"Where’s Mrs. Gallagher?" Angie asked, sitting up, and yawning. It wasn’t like her to let Aidan just wander around.

"phone, she on phone…" Aidan replied, his tears gone quickly as Angie nodded. The woman did seem to get a lot of phone calls lately.

Angie heard the shower start and knew that Rollie was not coming back to bed. She got up, leading Aidan into the bathroom as Rollie watched from inside the glass quadrangle shower stall.

"Now, this is the way Mommy wants you to use the toilet, okay?" he heard Angie tell their son. She was pointing to the little potty chair and he smiled, seeing the perplexed look on Aidan’s face as he stood, holding his dilemma and looking instead, up to his father.

"Daddy? Big boys, big potty!" he said, stubbornly as Angie flashed a look to Rollie. Rollie pretended not to hear as he reached up and tried to adjust the shower nozzle. It was hitting him too low.

"Bloody plumbing, loose as a goose!" Rollie said, complaining as Aidan watched his father and laughed. Angie sat on the toilet lid, in defeat.

"Missus Galger do it!" Aidan said, continuing to laugh as he pointed up at the shower.

Angie moaned. She wasn’t up to a Rollie and Aidan show this morning. She was going to get a check-up and find out once and for all, if she really was pregnant and then, well, she didn’t know…the mescaline in their systems…she wanted answers!

"Mrs. Gallagher fixed the shower here?" Rollie asked his son, his face suddenly serious from the inside of the glass as Aidan pressed his hands against the outside of the door.

He wiggled the nozzle again as Aidan pointed and nodded his head.

"She do it!"

Rollie suddenly jumped. The nozzle head had fallen off barely missing his toes. He bent over and picked it up, looking at it, intently and then up, back up at the piping. He turned off the water then as Angie stood up, curiously.

"Hello? What’s this?" Rollie asked, his finger probing the inside of the pipe.

Angie grabbed a towel and opened the door to the shower, giving it to Rollie and stepped inside with him.

"Damn, my glasses!" Rollie said, squinting slightly.

"I see it, hey! It’s some sort of plastic thingy, like a bulb, clear plastic…" Angie replied, reaching up and with her small fingers, able to pull it out with a little resistance.

"What the hell?" she asked, as she felt the slightly porous surface and the slight wetness of something oily touch her skin. The bulb itself was approximately three inches in length.

Rollie had stepped out of the shower, Aidan pulling at his legs as he went for his glasses outside the bathroom. By the time he got back to the steamy room, he found Angie on the floor unconscious, the bulb still in the grip of her hand.

"So, are we still on or off?" Vanduran asked as Lucinda pulled her hair back over her shoulder and lay back against her pillow.

"On, silly….we just need to wait until this movie is over and then…"

"That’s what you said about the last movie…and the one before that…" he protested as he sighed and lay on his back beside her.

"I mean it this time, really!" Lucinda replied, her hand coming to rest on his chest as she swirled her fingers in the curls of his chest hair.

"Well, good. I’ll get the paperwork in order and we can get our blood tests right here in old Virginny…all your friends are here and shucks, we can honeymoon at a little bed and breakfast on the James River!"

Lucinda looked over at him incredulously. He just didn’t give up!

"Do I have anything to say about this?" she asked, pouting.

"Yes, you can say "I DO!" he replied, emphatically.

In all the commotion of the paramedics in the room, Aidan crying and Rollie scampering around for clothes, Rollie had forgotten about something. He couldn’t put his finger on it at the moment as he grabbed Aidan in his arms, following Angie out the door, taken by stretcher toward the elevator.

A gloved paramedic had put the little bulb in a plastic baggie and it was taped to Angie’s abdomen so that it wouldn’t be lost as they headed for the hospital. Rollie rode with his wife, his son hysterical as he lost all track of time and surroundings. The fact that Angie wouldn’t respond even to the paramedics taking their knuckles and running them up and down her breastbone was startling to him. He had heard them tell their dispatch that she was comatose but the words weren’t sinking in yet. Medical terminology was thrown around them as the ambulance made the short distance to the hospital; to the same emergency room where they had just spent the evening the night before.

The paramedic that rode in the back with them, frequently lifted Angie’s lids and monitored her pupils. He watched the monitor as well and wrote constantly. Rollie would just ask over and over; "what’s wrong with her?"

By the time they had arrived and been pushed back to the waiting room, Angie’s almost lifeless form disappearing from sight; Rollie knew what he had forgotten.

"Aidan? Aidan…please…for daddy! Did Mrs. Gallagher play with the shower nozzle last night?" he asked his bewildered son, as he sat in his lap in the crowded waiting room.

"She fix it!" Aidan replied, with tears spilling over his cheeks, eyes that reflected Angie’s as far as Rollie was concerned at that moment. He saw nothing but Angie in his son’s little face and he hugged him tightly.

"Right….did she fix anything else? Can you remember? It’s like a game, right? What else did Mrs. Gallagher fix, sweetie?" Rollie asked, massaging his little back as he wrapped himself against his father.

"Fix walls!" Aidan replied, looking up then, his chin shaking slightly.

"Walls?"

Aidan looked around the busy waiting room, momentarily, his attention drawn to the other people upset and crying and moaning about the room. Rollie asked again; "walls, Aidan? What do you mean!"

Aidan crawled up against Rollie, in a standing position, his hands on Rollie’s shoulders for balance as his little feet dug into his father’s thighs;

"Walls, fix walls!" he answered and pointed up behind Rollie, upward.

Rollie looked up as he turned in his seat. He stood up, with Aidan in his arms and without thinking how it would look, got up on the chair, still holding his son.

"Walls? Here?" Rollie asked, pointing to a heating/air-conditioning vent.

Aidan clapped his hands; "Walls…fix wall!"

Rollie tapped the vent with his hand and made a gesture as if to pull the grate off.

"Like this?" he asked.

"Yesss, where’s mommy?"

Rollie got down from the chair and sat back down. He hugged Aidan again, muttering to himself as he shut his eyes tightly for a second. Grabbing the cellphone from his jacket pocket, he called the hotel.

"Yes, I need Ms. Scott’s room, please, Lucinda Scott," he said in reply to the hotel operator.

"Luce? I need to talk with Vanduran, it’s an emergency!"

By the time he finished talking to Vanduran about checking their room out, a doctor appeared in the waiting room, waving them on to follow him.

Rollie blanched slightly and carried Aidan in his arms as they followed quickly behind him. The physician said hardly a word until he showed them into a rear exam room.

Angie sat up in the ER bed, an IV in her arm. She was awake, smiling and holding her arms out to them as they entered.

"Oh, there you guys are!" she exclaimed.

"Angie!" Rollie replied, leaning over and hugging her as Aidan demanded his fair share of attention.

"What? What happened?" he asked, looking from her to the physician.

"It seems, Mr. Tyler…that Mrs. Tyler took in a very heavy dose of Mescaline through her skin. This reservoir still had some residue inside it. Commercially, this thing is used in chemical crop dusting, some of these are deposited into the soil as well and the chemical is released with a mixture of irrigation dilution. In the drug world, however, these little babies can be used for some very powerful trips. One rubs it against the skin, the tiny pores on the reservoir releasing small drops of mescaline into the pores of wet skin. From what I gather, you found this in your shower piping?"

"Yes," was all that Rollie could answer as his mind began to click.

"Tell me, could one inhale this as well?"

The doctor nodded his head; "I’ve heard that placed in a humid location, with some degree of propelled air flow, that a much smaller dose can be inhaled. The trip is not as intense."

"And ingested too, yes?" Rollie then asked, as Angie followed to a certain point, his questions.

"Yep, that’s the way the Indians did it…peyote…powerful stuff. Enhanced the dreaming and the tripping they did as well."

Rollie looked at Angie. She could see the anger seething in his eyes. She put her hand on his; "What? Who did this to us?"

"I believe Mrs. Gallagher holds that honor…and I have Vanduran checking the vents in our hotel room right now," Rollie answered, angrily.

"No! That can’t be!" Angie protested, shaking her head.

"Aidan said she was messing with the shower and the vents in the room," Rollie told her, pointedly.

"But why?" Angie asked, shocked.

The doctor interrupted them then, pulling up what looked like a photograph and Angie smiled then, sharing a secret that only she and the doctor knew at that point.

"Mr. Tyler, we have something to show you as well…"

Rollie forgot his sleuthing for a moment and opened his mouth, as Angie nodded.

"As I told Mrs. Tyler, based on size and physical examination, we are looking at around three months here. AND, physically, I see no evidence of malformations and although, the heart beat is faint, I believe you see an excellent beginning!"

"You ARE!" Rollie stated, grinning but then frowned as he looked at what was to be another Tyler addition, albeit, rather gawky and fledgling at this point..

"The Mescaline! What harm did it do and now, this big dose, did it or will it cause harm?"

"No, Mescaline is not known to impair fetal growth or development as we know at this point. I can’t give you a hundred percent, Mr. Tyler…but from the sonogram and physical examination, everything looks normal," the physician answered, smiling, "that is, if you give this nasty habit up!"

Rollie looked as though he had been insulted as he indignantly said; "we are not Peyote heads, doc. Someone’s been doing this to us!"

"I gather, Mr. Tyler, settle down. I was, well, joking. Never mind. My humor never has gone over well. It must be the setting."

Angie touched Rollie’s hand, tightening her grasp; "Rol, I just don’t believe it! How could she? Why?"

Rollie relaxed and cupped her face, kissing her softly as Aidan squirmed on the bed beside them.

"Bloody hell!" he said, emphatically in his little voice as Angie put her hand to her mouth and looked squarely at Rollie.

"I know…I know…I guess he does hear me say that a lot!" Rollie replied, shrugging his shoulders.

Marvin Vanduran had something else to work on besides Lucinda. With Rollie’s call, he acted immediately, canvassing the Tyler's room. The woman Rollie called Mrs. Gallagher had pulled out quickly of course, before he had arrived. He marveled as he pulled out his briefcase, that he still had it in him…that is, bringing a fingerprint kit and collection bags. He dusted the nozzle of the showerhead, the vents, the knobs on the door, and basically everywhere that the woman could have touched something. He also pulled the vents and reached inside, but disappointedly, found nothing. But the smile came back as fingerprints showed up around the vent over the bed in Rollie’s room, small ones!

"What ARE you doing?" Lucinda asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, worried about Angie and the fact she was late on the set.

"Just doing a little job for Rollie," he replied, adding nothing else on the matter. He wondered why Rollie wanted to keep the whole thing hush hush…but then again, Tyler had said, he wanted to pull out everything at the right time, that timing…was essential!

"Look, when you finish painting little spots all over the room, look me up on the set. Rollie can give you directions. I have to go!" Lucinda told him, hands on hips as she frowned.

Vanduran, not wanting to spoil their first day together, turned around and pulled her to him, a finger in front of her nose;

"Remember, no more excuses…." He warned her.

She saluted him, smiling and left him there with his little world of crime scene investigation in near completion.

"He’s always telling me what to do!" she said out loud, making a face as she got on the elevator.

"Who’s telling you what to do, my dear?" asked the graceful voice of John Grant as he leaned back against the wall of the elevator, his hands resting on the railing with a handsome grin on his face.

"Oh, my parole officer!" Lucinda snapped, getting in and patting his hand as she then giggled.

"Ah, your fiancé is here, eh?" John asked, winking.

Released after receiving a dose of Narcan in her IV, Angie felt well. The reversal of the affects of the overdose of Mescaline were gone completely. The doctor had told her as well as the CD representative that he believed she had been the target of someone’s ill humor and not a drug user as first suspected the night before. With a stamp of honor now on her chart, Angie felt relieved and somewhat mystified. She was almost three months pregnant and it was really starting to sinking in!

"So, is it a girl or a boy?" Rollie asked, in the taxi on the way back to the hotel.

"Too early yet…by sonogram to tell," she answered, smiling coyly.

"What say you, Aidan? Want a little brother or sister?"

Aidan put his hands over his eyes, almost in a peek-a-boo manner; "No!"

"Oh dear! Already with the sibling rivalry!" Angie commented.

"Well, our boy here has had a big day already, haven’t you?" Rollie asked, pulling Aidan’s hands down from his face.

"Big day! Pay day!" Aidan replied, busily playing with his shoe strings then.

"Where does he come up with this stuff?" Angie asked, looking at Rollie with amazement.

"I like pay days, yeah!" Rollie told him, "Pay day!"

"I like pay days, too," Angie joined in, smiling as she put her hand to her abdomen and closed her eyes.

"Judd like pay day! Pay day! Big day!" Aidan exclaimed, raising his hands over his head and then giggled.

"JUDD?" Angie and Rollie both asked in unison, looking down at their son in shock.