She looked more like her mother every day. She had Alex’s eyes and lips and hair. Alex’s smile, half coy, half knowing, top lip slightly curled. She even walked like her mother. But in temperament she was quite different. Where Alex had been gentle and soft, Lexi was fiery and energetic. Mrs. Carter affectionately referred to her as “our little piranha.” Even Peter, with his chronically rose-tinted paternal vision, could see that Lexi was not perhaps the model of a decorous young lady. Spirited was the word he used. Less partial observers tended toward spoiled. Willful was another favorite. Totally out of control was not unheard of.

“There’s my princess.” Peter kissed the top of Lexi’s head. She smelled of warm cookies and talcum powder. He felt his anger melting away. “What are you doing out of bed so late?”

Lexi frowned, then pouted, her deep gray eyes welling with tears.

“Robbie!” she wailed. “I want Robbie! Where’s Robbie? Where is he?”

Peter felt the bitterness choking him. First Alex, now Lexi. Robert had sucked away their love like a vampire, leaving Peter with nothing. Only with immense effort did he keep the emotion out of his voice.

“Robbie’s not here right now, sweetie. Would you like Daddy to tuck you in? I could read that story you like. The one about Squirrel Nutkin?”

“NO!” It was a yell. “NOT Daddy! Rooooobbiiiieee!”

Mrs. Carter ushered Lexi back into her bedroom. Poor Mr. Templeton. He looked like he’d just had acid thrown in his face. He had to learn not to take things so much to heart. Mrs. Carter had four kids of her own. Like every mother, she knew that children could be spiteful and thoughtless, especially at Lexi’s age. You couldn’t take it personally.

Once Lexi was settled back in bed, Mrs. Carter came downstairs. She found her boss in the study.

“Is she asleep?”

Peter’s voice sounded odd. Deadened and dull. Mrs. Carter noticed the tumbler of whiskey in his hand and the open bottle on the desk. The hairs on her arms began to tingle with foreboding.

“Yes, sir. Sound asleep.”

Peter took a big slug of his drink. When he looked up, his eyes were glassy.

“Good. Thank you. You can go.”

Suddenly Mrs. Carter didn’t feel right about leaving Lexi alone in the house with her father. What if Mr. Templeton passed out cold, and something happened to the girl? She’d never forgive herself.

“It’s all right, sir. I can stay for a while. At least until Master Robert gets home safely.”

Mr. Carter-Mike-would be at home expecting his dinner. He was bound to make a fuss, but it couldn’t be helped.

“I can fix you some supper if you like. There’s leftover beef in the pantry. I could whip you up some Stroganoff.”

“No. Thank you.”

Peter drained his glass and immediately poured himself another.

“Go home, Mrs. Carter. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The words were polite, but the tone was liquid steel. The housekeeper hesitated.

She thought about Lexi and poor Master Robert. Should she leave them here, alone, with their drunken father? Probably not. But if she forced the issue and demanded to stay, she might lose her position. Where would that leave her own kids? With Mike out of work, her salary was all they had.

She reached a decision.

“Very good, sir. As long as you’re sure.”

The children would be all right. ’Course they would. She was blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Mike would get his precious dinner on time, and all would be right with the world.

Far be it for that lazy bastard to learn how to turn on a microwave.

Robbie sat up in bed, trying to focus.

“I know you want it. You’ve been staring at me all evening. What are you waiting for?”

Maureen Swanson, naked from the waist up, crawled across the bedspread toward him. Her repellent, swollen udders swung beneath her like bloated bagpipes. When she peeled off her panties to reveal a neatly trimmed rust-red bush, a pungent whiff of rotting fish assaulted Robbie’s nostrils. He felt the bile rise in his throat.

What am I waiting for? I’m waiting for Scotty to fix the teleporter and beam me back to the Enterprise, that’s what I’m waiting for.

Unbidden, an image of William Shatner in a tight green shirt and spray-on pants popped into Robbie’s head. He smiled. Then Maureen came closer and the smile died on his lips.

“It’s okay,” she whispered huskily. “Everyone gets nervous their first time. You just relax and let Mama take care of you. Everything’s gonna be sweet.”

Oh God, no!

Even in his coke-fueled haze, Robbie could see the filth under Maureen’s fingernails as she slipped her hand beneath the waistband of his Calvin Klein briefs.

“What the hell?”

Maureen glowered at him accusingly. In the palm of her hand she cradled his limp penis, like a useless lump of Silly Putty.

“Are you queer or something? You’re not even hard.”

“Of course I’m not queer.” Robbie found his voice at last. “I…I just…I think I took a bad pill, you know? I don’t feel so good.”

Talk about an understatement. The whole evening had been a nightmare, a fitting end to one of the worst days of his life. Maureen’s so-called friend turned out to be a small-time drug dealer and wannabe mafioso called Gianni Sperotto, a rat-faced Italian kid with an acne-scarred face, a nose that streamed like a faucet, and breath so putrid you could practically see it. Gianni’s “apartment” was the top floor of a condemned warehouse. In a year or two, no doubt, some hotshot real-estate whiz would have developed the place into a chrome-walled bachelor pad and sold it for Park Avenue prices. Not even a shit hole like Yonkers had been immune from the development fever that had swept America in the past decade. Overnight, it seemed, an entire generation had become millionaires by the simple expedient of knocking out a few walls and rechristening crumbling industrial relics as “loft-style penthouses.”

But not Gianni Sperotto. Gianni Sperotto was too busy shoveling coke up his nose to see the fortune right under it. His “party” consisted of a bunch of half-dead hookers and junkies shooting up on one of the scores of fetid mattresses littering the floor. The bed where Maureen had dragged Robbie was Gianni’s own sleeping area, cordoned off from the rest of the room by a cardboard screen, over which their host had thrown a pair of psychedelic velour curtains, a lone shot of color in the otherwise bleak and desperate squat.

There was no music, no dancing, no other even vaguely attractive male to distract Maureen from her prey. Robbie figured his only hope was to get her so looped that she forgot about him. It was a great plan, apart from one tiny snag. In order to get Maureen high, he’d had to get high himself. Robbie got hazy after one strong joint. Maureen Swanson, by contrast, appeared to have the constitution of an ox. No, make that a team of oxen. The girl popped X like they were M &M’s and vacuumed up the coke like a pig rooting for truffles. The drugs had done nothing at all to dampen her ardor.

“A bad pill, huh? We’ll see about that. Lay back and close your eyes.”

Too disorientated to resist, Robbie did as she asked. The next thing he felt was Maureen’s warm, wet tongue between his legs. Apparently, she saw his flaccid state as some sort of challenge.

If only I could rise to it!

When the curtain was yanked aside and the men burst in, Robbie’s first emotion was pure relief.

His second was panic.

“Police!” Robbie felt a rough, male hand on his arm. “Party’s over, kids. Get up, stand against that wall, and put your hands on your heads. Now!”

Robbie’s mind was racing. Years of Sunday nights religiously spent watching T.J. Hooker on TV told him that this must be a drug bust. His pants were in a heap at the foot of the bed, with three ecstasy pills tucked into the back pocket-Gianni Sperotto’s version of a party favor.