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'We're going to rape you,' I said to Chipper Dove.

'Hey, look,' Dove said. 'That was never exactly what I'd call a rape,' he said. 'I mean, you really liked me, Franny,' he said to her, but Franny wasn't talking. 'I'm sorry about the other guys, Franny,' Dove added, but Franny's pinhole stare gave him nothing. 'Shit!' said Dove, turning to me. 'Who's going to rape me?'

'Not me!' Frank screamed from the bedroom, bouncing higher and higher. 'I like fucking mud puddles, myself. I do it all the time!'

Chipper Dove still managed a smile. 'So it's the one on the couch?' he asked me, slyly. He stared at big Ruthie; he must have been remembering Junior Jones when he looked at her -- she just stared back at him -- but Chipper Dove even managed to smirk at her. 'I have nothing against black women,' Chipper Dove said, dividing his attention between Ruthie and me. 'In fact, I like a black woman now and then.' Ruthie raised up one cheek of her enormous ass and farted.

'You ain't fucking me,' she told Chipper Dove.

Dove directed his full attention to me. Almost all of his smile had left him, because I think he was beginning to suspect that I was the one appointed to rape him and he wasn't so fond of this idea.

'No, it's not him, you asshole!' Frank yelled from the bedroom, panting and leaping-higher and higher. 'He likes girls, like you do!' Frank yelled at Dove. 'Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting girls!' Frank hollered. He fell off the bed, but he was right back up and dancing, fiercely. Lucia was really sounding crazy.

'Are you trying to tell me it's the dog?' Chipper Dove asked me. 'Do you think I'll hold still for a fucking dog!' he snapped at me.

'What dog, man?' Ruthie asked Chipper Dove. Ruthie had a smile that was as terrible as Chipper Dove's.

'That dog right there,' Dove said, pointing to Susie the bear. Susie was curled up in a ball, snoring, her hairy back turned to Dove -- her paws tucked in, her head tucked down. Ruthie stuck her big bare foot in Susie's crotch; she started kneading Susie with her foot. Susie started to groan.

'That ain't no dog, man,' Ruthie said, smiling -- and obscenely kneading, kneading with her foot. Then Ruthie twisted her foot, sharply, in Susie's crotch and Susie the bear roared awake; she wheeled viciously on Ruthie, snapping at her. Dove saw the muzzle barely restraining her, he saw Ruthie bound out of the way of the long, striking claws. Ruthie threw the leash in Susie's face and ran to the far side of the room. Susie looked ready to charge after her, but Franny just reached out her hand. She touched Susie just once and Susie calmed right down. The bear put her head in Franny's lap. Susie growled softly there.

'Earl! Earl!' she moaned.

'That's a bear,' Dove said.

'You bet your ass, man,' Ruthie said.

And Frank, sailing even higher, singing his way into Lucia's song -- and, seemingly, rising above even her madness -- yelled out, 'That's a bear in heat!'

'That's a bear that wants you,' I said to Chipper Dove.

When Dove looked at the bear again, he saw that Franny had her hand on Susie exactly where a bear's private parts would be. Franny was rubbing the bear there, and Susie the bear got suddenly playful; she lolled her head around, she made the most disgusting noises. The West Village Workshop had simply worked wonders with Susie the bear; she'd been a smart bear before, but now she was a bear to be reckoned with.

'That bear's so horny,' Ruthie said, 'she'd even fuck me.'

'Hey, look,' said Chipper Dove. He was holding fast to the illusion that I was the only one among them who was sane. That was how he was reading it, now; I was his last hope. We had him right where Lilly wanted him when Scurvy, the maid, knocked on the door. I slung the barbell aside as if it weighed nothing at all. I yanked the door open so hard that Scurvy flew into the room in greater confusion and disarray than had marked Chipper Dove's entrance. Susie the bear growled -- not liking too much sudden movement -- and the terrified maid stared up at me.

'It says DO NOT DISTURB, you moron!' I yelled at her. I pulled her to her feet and tore open the front of her little maid's costume. She started to get hysterical right away. I held her upside down and shook her. Frank howled with delight.

'Black panties, black panties!' Frank shrieked on the bouncing bed.

'You're' fired,' I told the sniveling maid. 'You don't come in when the sign says DO NOT DISTURB. If you can't learn that, you moron,' I told her, 'then you're fired.' I passed her, still holding her upside down, to Ruthie. Ruthie and Scurvy had been practicing this routine together all year, Susie had told me. It was a kind of apache dance. It was a kind of woman-raping-another-woman dance. Ruthie simply proceeded to maul Scurvy right there in front of Chipper Dove.

'I don't care if you do own the hotel!' Scurvy was crying. 'You're terrible disgusting people and I won't clean up after that bear again, I won't, I won't,' she moaned. Then she did an absolutely stunning job of convulsing under Ruthie -- she gagged herself, she spewed, she gibbered. Ruthie left her in a ball, shriveled up and whining -- with an occasional, absolutely chilling spasm.

Ruthie shrugged, and said to me, 'You got to get a tougher crew of maids than this white trash, man. Every time the bear rapes someone, the maids can't handle it. They just don't know how to deal with it.'

And when I looked at Chipper Dove, I saw -- at last! -- that his ice-blue looks had left him. He was staring at the bear: Susie was more and more responsive, under Franny's touch. Ruthie went up to the bear and took her muzzle off; Susie gave us a toothy smile. She was more bear than any bear; for this single performance of Lilly's script, Susie the bear could have convinced a bear that she was a bear. A bear in heat.

I don't even know if bears ever get in heat. 'It doesn't matter,' as Frank would say.

All that mattered was that Chipper Dove believed it. Ruthie started scratching Susie, cautiously, behind the ears. 'See him? See him -- that one, over there?' Ruthie said sweetly. And Susie the bear began to shuffle and sway; she started nosing her way toward Chipper Dove.

'Hey, look,' Dove started to say to me.

'Better not move suddenly,' I told him. 'Bears don't like any sudden movement.'

Dove froze. Susie, taking all the time in the world, started sniffing him over. Frank lay on the bed in the bedroom, exhausted. 'I'll give you some advice,' Frank said to Chipper Dove. 'You introduced me to mud puddles, so I'll give you some advice about bears,' Frank said.