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of her whips on Robert. When he tries to sneak into the house.”
    Coco was shaking the candy bag, sniffing it. She stopped. “You mean you haven’t let him back in the house yet? He’s still living in the garage? It’s been six months, Dallas.”
    “Shush!” Dallas grabbed Coco’s arm and hustled her away from the counter. “It’s perfect. No more dirt tracked in the kitchen. No more dishes appearing in the sink in the middle of the night. No more snoring to wake me up when I’m asleep. No more whining and begging when I’m not in the mood. Robert doesn’t fit in with the new decor. Robert requires a … high tech atmosphere. He doesn’t fit in with Ming vases and fine carpets. LingLing, my Shar Pei, has more respect for fine furnishings.” At the look of shock on Coco’s face, Dallas went on. “Besides, I let him in some. When he’s really good, or when he’s brought me a present.” The corners of her almond-shaped eyes turned up. “Sometimes I even give him a reward.”
    Coco sighed. “I don’t know, Dallas, you treat that man awful.”
    “I do not.” Dallas’ tone was distracted as she herded Coco to Chez Artistique. “They’re having a sale on hats,” she explained as she pushed open the door.
    “No one wears hats anymore.”
    “I intend to revive them.” Dallas smiled knowingly. “In my book, Cassandra creates her own hats, and they’re so unique and mysterious that she single-handedly brings hats back into vogue. I think I need to wear a few hats so I could get the feel of what it might be like to peek out from under a brim, or observe someone through a veil.”
    “Research.” Coco nodded as she fell into step.
    Andromeda Ripley stood in the living room doorway and stared at the recliner. Her mother’s gray head, tilted to the right in sleep, was perfectly framed in the blue glow from the television. The sleeping pill she’d dissolved in Natalie’s bourbon and coke had been just the ticket. Andromeda took a long, deep breath. It was going to be easier to escape than she’d dared hope.
    She flexed her hands in their black leather gloves. It wasn’t fair that she had to go to such extreme measures for a few hours to call her own–for a chance to function as the science fiction screenwriter that she knew herself to be. Only the members of WOMB truly understood her ambitions, and her abilities.
    The copies of her latest script were under her mattress and she retrieved them, angered anew that she had to hide her work from her mother. Natalie didn’t like Andromeda to go out. Natalie didn’t like her daughter to write. Natalie didn’t like her daughter to smile, or talk, or breathe.
    Andromeda felt the anger and pain creep along her arms, just below the surface of her skin, until her fingers clenched together and she had to force herself to relax or she wouldn’t be able to hold her keys. She picked up the keys, which she kept hidden in the bathroom cabinet by the toilet cleaners, a place her mother would never, ever look. Her bike was parked down the block because her mother wanted her to sell it. What did they need a motorcycle for when they could have groceries delivered?
    Turning away from the television, Andromeda fluffed her chin-length curls with one hand and then pushed up her dark sunglasses. The fact that she wore her sunglasses, even to bed, drove her mother insane.
    Andromeda’s smile was hard. Sometimes, she dreamed her mother was abducted by aliens. It was a recurring theme in her work, an alien abduction where the abductee was an elderly woman taken from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In her latest screenplay the twist was that when the aliens tried to bring the old woman back, they found the house abandoned and the caretaker daughter had assumed another name and moved away, leaving no forwarding address. The aliens were stuck with the mother. In a tip of the hat to great literature and international entertainment, Andromeda had titled her story
The Ransom of