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well as the next girl.
    I hold my hands up, palm forward. “Hey! I object to that look. You know I’m right. You were there with me. You saw the Myanmar government goons’ weapons. You’ve got to figure with directors and agents and all that, it’ll be a gun-studded trip this time too.”
    “Now, Andie, dear,” my boss says. “It’s a different country, Kashmir is. You need to change your attitude. You don’t know that we’re going to have to have the same kind of supervision all the time—”
    “Hello, ladies,” says a dark-haired gentleman in an ill-fitting brown suit. “For you trip in Kashmir, I you escort, Robert.”
    If you’re Robert, then I’m Bart Simpson. But I don’t tell him. I’ve seen lumps like the one under his crooked side seam before. In Myanmar.
    As Miss Mona steps forward to take the reins of the introductions, I step back and sigh. Here we go again.
    The Daunting Duo doesn’t need me to help land them in trouble. They’re experts at sinking-ship scenarios. And my love, as well as my need to help and protect them, has dragged me into their chaotic escapades a time or two. Like when Aunt Weeby went stall-mucking and wound up with a broken leg, in traction, in a hospital—that’s when I knew I had to come home and keep an eye on her. Then there was the time when a flea-market junket landed Miss Mona’s new Jaguar in the junkyard and Miss Mona in the hospital.
    You get the picture. I’ll just chill and wait for the arrival of this latest sinking ship, and come to their rescue when they need me.
    When “Robert” hails a waiting van, I’m thrilled to see it’s one that stands a chance of getting us to where we’re staying. Can’t say the same about other vehicles we pass on the way through what he calls the Old Town.
    We zip down a crooked spiderweb of roads in the deepening dark, where the ghosts of triple-decker buildings loom on either side of the street. The yellowed glow from scattered streetlights gives the ruddy brick walls an eerie blush. A bit farther along our route, the tables and booths in the abandoned bazaars wear shrouds for the night. Men and women in flowing traditional clothes scurry down the sidewalks. Goose bumps ripple my skin as I watch.
    In spite of the relative safety of the van and the apparent normalcy of the intriguing sights, I can’t shake the sense of danger that hit me the minute I set foot on this penthouse of the world.
    “This, ladies,” Robert says when we turn onto a road that runs along the bank of a wide river, “is the Jhelum. It very important for Srinagar. Once, commerce came and went on boats on this river, and this made Srinagar Kashmir’s most important commerce town.”
    Lights on the opposite shore hide and flash in between the unusual, squat buildings we drive past on our side of the water. At first, the structures’ proximity to the riverbank surprises me—I’d worry about erosion eating my backyard if I were the owner. But then, by the beam cast by a particularly bright streetlight, I recognize what I’m actually seeing.
    “Look!” I cry. “They’re houseboats. How cool is that?”
    Miss Mona chuckles. “That’s my surprise.”
    I tear my gaze away from the floating structures. “Your surprise?”
    She nods. Her excitement says it all.
    “Really?” I bite my tongue to keep from squealing—I’m more sophisticated than that. I think. “You mean we’re staying in a houseboat?”
    “Before I decided where we’d stay,” Miss Mona says, “I did me a little research. That’s how I learned that lots of tourists like to come to Srinagar and rent the houseboats. I’ve never stayed in one, so I made the reservation. Then I learned they come with all the conveniences of a luxury hotel.”
    I gape. Then I snap my mouth shut and peek out the window again. “Luxury? Here? I thought this country was war-torn and earthquake-rubbled.”
    “Yes, miss,” Robert says, his voice somber. “Our country have much problems, but