"Then shouldn't we move him closer to the heater?" I suggested.

"Would you throw a drowning man into the desert?" replied the Human Lizard. "Or would you remove the water from his lungs? We must make him well, not hot."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked.

He merely stared at me again, and then turned back to the Man of Many Colors.

I walked back to my chair and sat down, feeling absolutely useless. It was not an unfamiliar feeling.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew Alma was standing in front of me, shaking me by the shoulders.

"What is it?" I said, blinking my eyes. "What's happened? Did he die?"

"Who?" she said, confused.

"The Man of Many Colors."

"How the hell would I know?" she said hotly, and I could tell by her face that she was terribly upset about something. "But you can tell the one with the three boobs that she can stay with the freak show."

"I'm very glad to hear that," I said.

"Bully for you."

"Why are you crying, Alma?"

"He had another one of the fucking locals in there with him!" she snapped.

"I'm sorry," I said. I pretended to have more difficulty getting the words out than was true, so I wouldn't have to say anything else, because I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Doesn't he care about anything, Tojo?" she said, tears streaming down her face. "Doesn't he know what he's driving me to do?"

"I don't understand what you mean," I said.

"I mean that everybody needs a certain amount of human affection," she said, wiping her face with a crumpled piece of Kleenex. "Everybody needs warmth, and comfort, and to know that they're wanted."

"But not everybody can have it," I said softly.

Suddenly she looked down at me as if she had heard me for the first time.

"Oh, Tojo, I'm sorry! I didn't mean—" She stopped in mid-sentence, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek. "Oh, God!" she muttered, straightening up. "I hope he dies!"

She turned and left again, and this time I knew she wouldn't be back.

I walked over and told Mr. Ahasuerus that the Three-Breasted Woman would be staying with the other aliens.

"Perhaps there is a germ of decency in him after all," said Mr. Ahasuerus.

"Perhaps," I said, though I knew it was far more likely that he had merely agreed to get rid of Alma and avoid a prolonged scene in front of his latest bedmate.

I fell asleep again, and didn't wake up until Gloria and one of the other girls brought in some breakfast—hot dogs and coffee, as usual—and the aliens began waking up.

Then, at about nine o'clock, Jupiter Monk walked in, leading Bruno the Bear by a short chain. Bruno was wearing a muzzle and pulling a huge portable toilet behind him, and Monk guided him to a corner where the straw was stacked. Then he unhooked Bruno's harness, wheeled the toilet around so that the door was facing us, and stood back, hands on hips, to admire his contribution.

"Don't all rush up to thank me at once!" he said in a loud, irritated voice.

"I'm sure everyone is extremely grateful," I said. "On the other hand, I don't think you have to worry about people rushing up to thank you as long as you've got Bruno with you."

"Bruno wouldn't hurt a fly," said Monk, slapping the bear on the head while ducking a vicious swipe of the animal's paw. "People, maybe," he added with a grin.

"I thought we didn't have any toilets," I said, trying to keep Monk between Bruno and myself.

"There weren't any available," corrected Monk.

"So how did you get this one?"

"I won it from the Rigger!" laughed Monk. "I just hope he freezes his cock off pissing in the snow!"

"You won it? How?"

"I suckered him," said Monk, looking inordinately pleased with himself.

"No one suckers Diggs."

"Well, he takes a special kind of suckering, that I'll have to admit," said Monk. "He's such a devious bastard that he's always looking for the angle. I gave him a straight bet, and when he couldn't figure out the catch, he finally put up the toilet against two hundred dollars just to find out what the answer was. Don't worry about old Rigger, though; if he doesn't turn into one funny-looking snowman, he'll make a couple of thousand dollars off his learning experience."

"What was the bet?" I asked him.

"I bet him that I could name a Triple Crown race in which half the field went off at odds-on. Well, right off the bat, he said it was Man O' War's Belmont Stakes, because there were only two horses and Man O' War paid something like one cent on the dollar. But I told him no, it wasn't a sucker bet, and that it was a field of six." Monk paused for effect. "Well, this drives him batty, because the way the tote board figures the odds, it's impossible for more than two horses to go off at odds-on, and even then the rest of the field would all be fifty-to-one or more. So he rants and he raves and he refuses to bet, and I leave his trailer, but I know it's going to keep eating away at him until he figures it out. He knows there's an answer, because I'm willing to put up two hundred bucks on the spot, and it's driving him crazy. He even calls a couple of bookies, but they tell him it's impossible, and that drives him even wilder. Finally he can't stand it anymore, so he tells me to come over and pick up the toilet, but he's gotta know the answer."

"Was there an answer?"

"Sure," grinned Monk. "Bold Ruler and Gallant Man were both odds-on in the 1957 Belmont Stakes. Field of six."

"But that's only two," I pointed out.

"Just what the Rigger said. But there was another horse in the field called Bold Nero. By himself he would have been about a trillion-to-one, but he had the same owner as Gallant Man, so they ran as an entry. One owner, one betting interest—so he was odds-on too. If you listen real carefully, you can still hear the Rigger screaming foul."

"Well, we thank you for the toilet," I said.

"You're welcome. It may seem to all assembled here that I'm preoccupied with shit, but actually I'm just working out the foolishness of my youth."

"I don't understand you," I said.

"Go spend a winter capturing Kodiak bears on the Klondike and you'll understand my obsession with the comforts of home," he said with a laugh. "Anyway, I'm glad to have been of help. I've been saving that little bet to pull on Diggs for two years; I guess I found the right time for it."

Bruno started getting restless then, so Monk gave him a couple of smacks on the head and led him out, and Big Alvin, who was back on guard duty, started hauling the straw away.

I checked on the Man of Many Colors. He was still the same pale blue, neither richer nor lighter in color than he had been the night before. The Horned Demon and the Three-Breasted Woman were tending to him now, and after their demeanor convinced me that my help wasn't wanted, I walked over to the table Gloria had set up and had a cup of coffee.

"An interesting beverage," said the India Rubber Man, who was standing nearby, also drinking coffee.

"What do you drink on your world?"

"I couldn't describe it very well," he said. "You have no analog words for it."

"Can you tell me what your world is like?"

"It's a world, like any other."