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    “Yeah, my brother and his ladies did it. Got the idea from one of those back-to-the-twentieth-century home decor mags. I plan to reverse it as soon as I can afford to get it stripped. The original finish was a beautiful rich dark brown. Fumed oak. Can you believe it?”
    Morgan laughed. “I am so glad you said that. I was wondering if you’d had an aesthetics transplant since university!” She lunged for Marbl, who, emerging from behind a stack of canvases with their faces turned to the wall, was poised to leap up onto the painting table, and caught her just as she left the ground. One paw had indeed been leaving tiger yellow prints already, and Morgan wiped it with a paint rag. The cat protested with a tiny plaintive mew, and Morgan hugged her and petted her in apology.
    Marbl hated cuddling, pushed away from Morgan with soft paws, her claws retracted. Morgan scratched under her chin and she half-purred, still struggling. “Ach, ye poor beastie!” Delany crooned, laughing. “Doomed to have affection lavished upon you.”
    Morgan wasn’t listening. She was struck by the image on the easel, the only image in the room. The rich yellow light, created with rays of the “tiger yellow” which was almost saffron where the thick smears of paint had folded, cascaded behind a dark figure which, though small, dominated the canvas. In front of the figure, however, in a reversal of traditional road images, there was only darkness, and it was clear that the figure itself saw none of the light outlining it. Below the feet of the figure there was a brown tabby cat, realized in meticulous detail, almost as if it had been created hair by hair. Though the painting was clearly unfinished, it already had a disturbing, raw challenge about it.
    “Marbl! You’re a star!” Morgan said, and Marbl, as always when her name was spoken, meowed a fierce alto response. Morgan and Delany laughed together, and Morgan reluctantly drew away from the image. Delany waited for her to go out, wheeled through the door, and then turned to pull the pocket door shut.
    “It’s very good,” said Morgan.
    “She comes in and models now and again,” said Delany, and Morgan was not sure if Delany misunderstood accidentally or on purpose. Morgan let Marbl go, and the cat poured down from her hands to the stairs and leapt away, vanished through the open door of Morgan’s room.
    “Hmph,” said Morgan. “She doesn’t think much of our company!”
    “She only loves me for my paints,” said Delany, and wheeled ahead to the elevator.
    Morgan watched her, and something readjusted in her mind. When Delany said, “I need room to paint,” Morgan had unconsciously supplied her laughing, joking, physically-limited friend with a talent for minor landscape watercolor, hobbyist pap, or at best the kind of interchangeable scenic painting loved by the decorators of show homes. She should have known better: the Delany she knew in university was wild and angry: her meticulous good manners, obviously learned since, had misled even Morgan.
    Delany turned. “Coming?” Morgan, startled, hopped into the elevator after her, and they went down.

    Morgan sat at the house terminal in the house office, working out budgets. She was setting up the monthly funds transfer to the teenager who had the recycling route, and sighing at the bank balance, when Russ breezed in to pay his rent.
    “Here, I’d like to pay for six months right now,” he said, “while I have it. You know how I am.” Morgan opened an entry port into her bank account into which he could direct his deposit.
    “I won’t even argue about what a bad money-management choice that is,” said Morgan, hitting the enter code. “I need the money. Look at this. All that insurance, and I still am going to have to get a job.”
    “The insurance paid out?” He perched on the edge of her chair to enter his password, and the transfer flashed as complete. “There,” he said with satisfaction.
    “Yes, there