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this week. She was starting to develop a habit.
    “It’s just that I’m very linear,” she said slowly, looking at Martika. “I get the feeling you’re very…organic.”
    Martika stared at her, then burst out into another round of raucous laughter. “Oh, sweetie, if you keep popping out with gems like that, I may have to live here!” She chuckled. “No wonder you’re a friend of Taylor’s. You’re so cute, I could eat you up with a spoon.”
    Sarah wasn’t sure how to handle that comment. Things were already getting less linear by the minute.
    “This will work out perfectly,” Martika said with a flourish. “I’ll have Taylor and the boys move me in on Saturday. Do you have a spare key?”
    “Wait a second. I hadn’t decided yet.”
    Martika shot her a skeptical look. “You’ve got rent on the first, right?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “Where else were you thinking of looking for a roommate?”
    Sarah fidgeted. “I hadn’t…well, I’m still in preliminary stages,” she hedged.
    “In other words, you don’t know,” Martika said, cutting through her excuse. “Let me fill you in—if you advertise in the L.A. Times, you’re going to get the crème de la crème of freakshows. If you go through an agency, you’ll get the freaks that are willing to pay some clerk at a Mailboxes Etc. to put their name on a list…and you’ll have to pay to find them. If you’re going for someone who’s willing to go month to month, you’ll get somebody who probably likes to turn young Asian boys into patio furniture in his spare time.” She did a slow twirl. “Or, you can get me—who’s vouched for by Taylor.”
    Sarah winced.
    “I don’t even really think it’s a question, do you?” Martika said mildly.
    Sarah sighed. “I…er. I’ve got the spare key somewhere.”
    Martika smiled sweetly. “Wise choice.”
    Sarah smiled back uncertainly. Glad one of us thinks so.

Chapter 3
People Are Strange
    “W ell,” Martika murmured, “it’s not much, but it’s home.”
    “I think we moved you in record time,” Taylor drawled, surveying her new digs with the air of one bored with the process. “What, five hours?”
    “I’ve unloaded a lot since last time.”
    “You mean, besides Andre?”
    “Let’s not be bitchy,” Martika chastised, then stuck out her tongue at him before arranging her peacock feathers in a tall wooden vase in the corner. This looked much more homey. The way this Sarah chick had decorated—ick. It looked like corporate housing. She was surprised the girl hadn’t put a Sanitized For Your Protection banner across the toilet.
    Kit glanced around, muttering incoherently.
    “Sorry?”
    He half smiled at her. She didn’t think he ever full smiled. “I said, there’s no place like home.”
    “Wizard of Oz,” Taylor said promptly.
    Martika simply rolled her eyes. “You two still playing that game?”
    Kit shrugged. Taylor started babbling. Martika grabbed her last moving box, labeled Private in big block print, and moved to the bedroom. This was always the last part of her unpacking ritual—the nightstands. She wondered how Andre would faretonight, getting his bed out of storage, since the three pieces of furniture that she had since she was twenty-two was a California king bed and two nightstands. Girl’s gotta have her necessities, she thought. She loaded up the nightstand on the right of the bed with condoms and a variety of oils and other lubricants, her handcuffs, and a few other knickknacks she’d picked up along the way. The one on the right was always for guests. The one on the left…she put her chicken-scratch-filled journal, loaded with the most disgustingly self-pitying poetry ever spouted on earth, a few Chunky bars, several boxes of cigarettes, a vibrator and a pack of gum.
    That drawer wasn’t for anybody else.
    She closed it with a nod, and headed out. The guys were on the couch. Sarah was giving them glasses of lemonade. How very Martha Stewart, Martika thought