"Oh, no Karen. I don't consume alcohol as if it were air," Will said, nodding.

Karen scowled at him and picked the glass up by the stem, stirring it with her finger for lack of a cocktail stick loaded with olives. She sucked it slowly dry but the innuendo was lost on Will, who just stepped back in slight fear to go and stand by Grace.

"Grace, she's scaring me again," the lawyer hissed to his best friend.

"I know, but I left the garlic and holy water in my other bag," Grace whispered back, straightening and smiling at Karen. "Why exactly were you in the swatch room?"

Karen thought about it over a long draught of vodka. "Oh, Lord, honey. I don't know... I was just winding up for the day and getting rid of that awful fat man with the bad toupee that was doing all of this for you," she gestured at the electronic door lock. "I told him I'd left a ham in his truck… And then I thought I'd take my uppers for the night with some martini and the next thing I know there are all of these little tiny people dancing around me wearing purple kimonos and my cell phone is ringing..."

She picked up a prescription bottle and scrutinised the label, rattling the pills next to her ear. She clicked off the childproof cap and spilled a detritus of tablets across the wooden surface of the desk, sorting them out with a French-manicured nail into separate piles on the surface.

"Oh, I know what happened. See here? I downed when I should have upped. Ooh, up." She took a pill between finger and thumb, placed it on her tongue, tilted her head back and swallowed it without the aid of the vodka she had in her hand. "Stan's sister came round to discuss the imminent death of the mother-in-law and brought that awful kid of hers. He was bawling his eyes out and poking him with that pair of tongs wasn't helping any, so I gave him my pill bottles to play with. Quietened right down after that. Shrunk into a little corner, just like his pupils. You know, there were a couple of pills missing after that… And see? He goes and puts them back in the wrong bottle! Can't he tell that this isn't Dexamphetamine? Good Lord. They don't teach children anything anymore. So now I've got my pills confused and I don't know where I am and what is Wilma doing here?"

Will looked at his client for a couple of seconds before answering. "Uh-huh. So when you finally manage to find your way out of your drug-induced fog we need the card to get out of here, okay?"

Karen blinked, looking a little taken aback. "Well, I don't normally do this but what the hey. You're only young, rich and beautiful three or four times in your life, right? Unless you're Grace, of course. No offence, honey."

"Offence taken! But I figure you don't care, so why bother?"

Karen laughed. "Oh, honey. You know me so well…" The assistant located what she was looking for and handed it to Will.

The lawyer looked down at it, rolled his eyes and held it back out for Karen. "Karen, I didn't ask for your American Express."

"You said you wanted the card to get us out of here," Karen said, slightly confused.

"Yes. The card to get us out of here is not a credit card. We're in a situation money can't solve."

Karen choked on her vodka, nearly loosing precious drops of it to the rug. She slammed the glass down on the desk and the clear liquid inside sloshed about dangerously. "Wilma! Why would you say such a thing!"

Grace took Karen's hands and led her gently to her seat, guiding Karen into it. She spoke slowly and calmly, looking into her assistant's eyes and punctuating every few words by moving Karen's hands up and down. "Yes, Karen. Will is right. This is a situation that cannot be solved by the number of zeroes you have on your monthly balance. We're stuck and there is no currency that can help us now."

Karen appeared to be rapidly descending into a state of shock. "Honey, I… I… I don't understand."

"I know this is hard for you. Your husbands' millions have solved everything for you in the past but right now we need the cardkey that can get us out of this office before we have to start eating each other, okay?"

"Honey, I don't know what you're talking about!" Karen said, pushing up from her chair and startling Grace, stamping her foot on the floor. "I lost nearly all of last six days of my life while I was passed out in that room! And why would I eat you? I think my stomach would give up altogether if I ingested that blouse!"

"Huh. Well, you see, Karen, that's a funny coincidence because it turns out that a large chunk of the last six days of your life was you passed out in that room," Will chimed in with, smiling at Karen.

Karen opened her mouth in outrage, but then closed it. "You know, I think you're right. I like you. I'm going to make you my lawyer."

"Karen, I already am your lawyer," Will deadpanned, crossing to the coffeemaker and pouring himself a mug of the coffee Grace had put on earlier. He blew on the surface, whipping it up into a series of choppy brown waves and took a sip. He then spat the sip back into the mug and left it on the side. "Grace, you've been buying that cheap coffee again, haven't you? The one that tastes like someone dug dirt up from the communal garden and is masquerading it as a drink?"

Grace put her nose in the air and walked over to the central desk where she tried in vain to sift through the mess and find her cookies. "Maybe."

"Oh, good Lord. Just propose to her already!" Karen snapped, stalking over to Will's abandoned mug and emptying the contents of her martini glass into it. "See? Tastes just fine to me."

Will tucked a hand into his hip and used the other to pinch the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. He closed his eyes wearily. He could already see his in tray, piled high with the cases he was meant to be working on right now. "Karen, do you have the cardkey or not?"

"Well, I don't know. If I do it's probably with the rest of them."

"Where are the rest of them, Karen?" Grace asked.

Karen reached into her purse and pulled out a wallet. Inside a small, credit-card sized translucent plastic wallet was a MasterCard. "Right here, honey."

"Well, that's not it," Will send, flicking a hand in the vague direction of Karen's wallet and going to pace across to the lift and back again.

"Huh…" Karen mused for a while, looking at the wallet and suddenly let another eight or so sections fold out from the top one. Cards of every colour cascaded down in plastic confines.

"See? Now we may be on to something."

Karen let another set of cards fall, ten this time. The wallet was brushing the tassels on the rug and Karen held it higher to let the last fifteen sections fall to the floor, trailing off the rug and onto the boarded floor, snaking its way under her desk. The wallet then opened up sideways, revealing the same number of cards running parallel to the first set. Will and Grace goggled.

Karen suddenly gasped. "Oh, look! Spare change!" She took five fifty dollar bills out of the wallet and carefully put them into her bra.

Will picked up the trailing end of Karen's wallet and Grace took the end Karen was holding whilst Karen went to go and sit on her desk and watch.

Will dismissed the first one. "MasterCard."

Grace was next. "Barneys' card."

"Debit card."

"ATM card."

"Visa."

"Hallmark Card."

"Gold Delta SkyMiles Card."

"AmEx rewards green."

"Ooh, and AmEx rewards gold."

"Diner's Club Card."

"Cheque guarantee card."

"Discover Card."

"And apparently, Karen," Will said, reading a card at arm's length, "you're a member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance."

"Oh, that's Jack's."

When the wallet had been officially completely emptied and Karen had relived every single card she had ever spent money on with a fond smile, Grace threw it onto the floor and flopped down onto her chair.

"I never thought one person could carry around that much plastic without several major surgeries," the redhead complained, massaging her temples. "And half of them were made out to Anastasia Beaverhausen!"

"Oh, honey. Is it my fault that I'm on a couple of bad credit lists because I owe the companies a few thousand dollars?"

"Karen, you could pay them off with the interest your bank account makes in a month," Grace said tiredly, a headache forming.

Karen poured more vodka into her glass. "Oh, I know, but… I don't want to. The red letters amuse me. I shred them and mix them in with the helps' food, you know? To give it some colour?" She took a long drink. "Why is Wilma still here?"

Will closed his eyes and counted to ten. He had to keep his temper. Karen was probably completely stoned out of her mind. He had to remember that and be considerate. "Wilma is still here because he needs the card to get out of here so he can go to his own office and do his own work, okay?"

"Oh, Lord. He's PMSing." Karen rolled her eyes and hopped off of the desk, her heels clacking across the boards but then softened by the rug. "Do what I did, honey, and just get rid of the whole damned thing."

"Karen! Do you have the card or not!" Will demanded, finally losing his cool.

"Bup, bup, bup, bup," Karen raised a warning finger. "Be nice. A man in your shoes can't talk. And I mean that literally, honey. What are they? What's going on? What's happening with those?

"What do you mean? These are the latest things out of Milan!" Will protested, bending slightly and checking out his shoes.

Karen laughed. "Oh, you're a scream Wilma. No. These are the latest things out of Milan," she pointed to her own two Gucci-clad feet, "those… you know? I don't know where they're from. If I had to stretch I'd go for somewhere like Burma or Pakistan. Somewhere they don't care about fashion."

Will was incensed. These were real Italian imports! And he had spent a fortune on them. How dare Karen rubbish them?

"Karen," Will sad slowly, his voice low. "Do you have the cardkey that's going to get us out of here?"

Karen looked taken aback. "Keys? Honey, I don't do keys. They're so working class…"

Will clamped a hand over the keys jingling in his pocket and Grace shifted paper over the set she had dumped on her desk.

"If it's a key Rosario has got it."

Will leaned on Karen's desk with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other. "Why didn't you tell us this before!"

"I didn't know you were looking for a key before!" Karen shot back, getting angry now. She looked Will up and down, sizing him up. Will had no doubt she could take him and stepped back behind Grace's sanctuary again, clearing his throat.

"Okay, we all need to take a deep breath," Grace said, demonstrating. She exhaled. "Now, Karen. Where is Rosario now?"

"I don't know, honey. Somewhere in the hospital. I'm having her stomach pumped today," Karen said, sitting down heavily on her chair and picking up a compact mirror, admiring herself from different angles. She pressed gently on her face with her fingertips.

"You're having her… Karen, why?"

"We're going to find out once and for all who ate that lamb joint," Karen informed Grace, liberally powdering her nose, "And if it were the fat one, so help me…"

Grace closed her eyes wearily. Yup, this was progress alright.