I wasn't that bitter towards Jessica. I blamed her for the damages to the hotel, because she brought me there, but the half doodle thing was my fault.

This is all to say that I fully intended to restore Jessica's possessions once she got tired of boinking Mr. Eyepatch.

Speaking of which, I was starting to have doubts that she'd be able to cure me, in the unlikely event that she actually did want to sleep with me.

I pocketed her keys and mine (plus the room key and my phone, of course), shoved her things into her suitcase (including the clothes she'd peeled off in the bathroom), then stuffed my old funeral clothes in there with them, for convenience. I did trade my cartoon shoes for my pennyloafers, though.

Since I could only carry that and a couple sketchbooks, I asked Riffraff to carry something, but he said, "I think we've forgotten who the slave is here," and Holli didn't help either.

"We need to look at The Spike," she said.

So Amanda ended up taking as much as she could carry, and coercing Sneezer to carry a few things as well.

I wanted to head straight downstairs, but Holli insisted on seeing The Spike, so I led her into that dusty old suite with the boarded wall, setting everything down.

We frowned at the barricade for a moment before Holli got another idea.

"Everyone hold Sneezer," she said, grabbing a dusty pillow. "There's going to be some recoil."

She held the pillow over Sneezer's face, and in seconds, all the plywood went flying outside and down below, creating a chorus of shouts, yells and angrily honking car sounds that made me wince.

And then we were standing on the low part of the building's roof, beneath the giant light up sign.

There was nothing but some gravel covered roofing pitch and a waist high wall between us and a two hundred and seventy foot drop.

While I took in the scenery, Holli was already climbing a ladder to a higher section of roof.

"Hey!" I cried. "Where are you going!"

"To The Spike!" she yelled back.

I dreaded where this was going, but I followed her up.

My companions, naturally, came with.

When Holli climbed the scaffolding inside the sign, I cried, "Oh hell no!"

She gave me this look like I was stupid. "Drew. The Spike is on the very top of the cursive L."

I looked up at the gloomy sky, then at the teeny buildings below. "Oh God. Please tell me you're joking."

She didn't. She just climbed.

I felt I had to follow her.

Amanda tried to join us, but Holli quickly climbed down, shouting, "Stay here! You're a noid now! It's not safe!"

Her daughter reluctantly obeyed.

I crawled up a narrow metal stair, framed by loose wiring, joining Holli on a small platform.

"You're going to want to stay animated for this," she said. "Detective Harris fell from here. I wouldn't take any chances."

"Wait," I said. "Didn't you...do something to him?"

She shrugged. "That's not important. My point is, you don't want to fall from this height as a human."

She was scaring me, but I had gone too far to back out now. "I don't have any control over it," I said.

"Yes you do," she insisted. "I should know. Your father was able to scale the side of this building with cartoon hands."

"He was?"

She nodded. "Drew, I want you to clear your mind of everything, and repeat this mantra over and over: Oh, what a loon I am...Oh, what a loon I am..."

Feeling stupid, I repeated what she said a few times and found my cartoon form stabilizing somewhat.

"The walls, in the mall, are like, totally, totally tall."

Repeating that seemed to help too.

"Do I have to repeat that bullshit, or can I just say anything mindless and get the same effect?"

"I don't know," she said. "I guess if you clear your mind and don't think very much, anything should work. I think."

Focusing on my hands, which had turned human for a moment, I said the old tongue twister, "Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously..." It seemed to work.

Appearing to be satisfied with the results, Holli turned away, climbing upward.

When I followed, I briefly turned human the moment I looked down, but I forced myself to `toon' everything out by singing the theme song to BJ and the Bear, then I Want to Rock All Night by KISS, both appropriately mindless.

"They fixed the wires," Holli said when we reached a higher platform. "When I last came up here, I nearly got electrocuted."

In response, I sang Charlie Brown by The Coasters, following her to a higher point on the scaffolding. When I got to the chorus, Extra popped out of my Scout uniform to sing along.

At last, I found myself looking up the back of the ancient looking giant red sign, watching Holli creep across a thin rail to the letter L.

I shuddered at the immense height, scouring my mental jukebox for a song I not only knew the lyrics to, but also didn't make me think of falling off the building.

I settled for Fernando and Dancing Queen by ABBA.

Ironically, this turned me into Kimono Rat, probably because that was the only way I could sound like the performer.

And then I saw it. The Spike.

It looked like an ordinary railroad spike, except for the fact it had an eerie unnatural glow.

Holli pulled the roll of film-like material out of her cleavage, wrapping it around the object.

She grabbed the top of the thing, giving it a few clockwise twists as she straightened the film, tightened it, twisted, repeating the process until she had formed sort of a swollen hourglass, affixing her coffee maker piece to it.

I don't think I have described the items properly enough. When I stated that it resembled part of a coffee maker, I meant that it looked like the module that you put the grounds inside, but this one was all sealed up, making me wonder how one changed the filter.

Attached to the bottom of this thing, instead of the standard dripping fixture, there was a pipe fitting, which she screwed a faucet head into, an item she also apparently had been storing in her cleavage.

To this she attached a third fixture, which looked like an ordinary garden hose with a valve at one end. She must have had Hammer Space between her breasts.

Only when she had the devices set up did Holli notice the flaw in her plan. "I need a container."

I shrugged. "Sorry. I don't have any."

Sneezer, who had been following me the whole time, suddenly left the roof, returning with an empty champagne bottle. "Will this do?"

"Wait," I cried in alarm. "Where did you get that?"

"From that little locked cabinet in your room," he said with a drunken hiccup.

"Just add it to my tab," I groaned.

Sneezer only hiccuped in response.

The hose gushed out a seemingly endless flood of inky black ooze that splattered on the roofing tiles, each drop squirming a little before writhing and laying flat as if dead.

"Be glad it doesn't have eyes," said Holli. "You wouldn't have wanted to see this stuff in its natural state."

When the bottle was full of fluid, she called for another container.

Riffraff climbed up from below, handing her one of those industrial sized metal coffee thermoses. "Will this work?"

Holli poured out the coffee and loaded it with more sludge.

Once she had the lid screwed on, she asked me for another container, but I said I'd have to get one from my apartment.

That's how I finally got to deal with the car situation. Pretty sneaky, huh?

I took the elevator to garage level, and suddenly realized I couldn't remember where Jessica parked. We did bypass the valet, but the act of entering another dimension can be a little disorienting.

Yes, she did have a `HWOOD' vanity plate, a stuffed Pikachu in the back window, and a giant door sticker on the driver's side reading `Sexy Squirrel Graphic Art', but under the dim lighting it still took me about ten minutes to find it in the rows of cars of similar makes and models.

I opened the Sexy Squirrel car, clearing the books and CD's and trash off the seats the best I could, but there wasn't much room in the trunk, so my companions just had to squish themselves in around the remaining clutter.

In fact, I had to remove a couple of the paintings, propping them up against the garage wall to make space.

The paintings weren't much to look at anyway. Just a few paint blobs, shaped like a pair of lips, the other like a butterfly, both with bits of hair stuck to them. A label on the back said something about Martian Kissing or something. I figured it Jessica wanted her glorified Rorschach tests, she could come back and get them, or ask me to buy her some new canvases.

Being behind the wheel felt good. Once I had the luggage and passengers loaded in, I was enjoying myself so much that I nearly backed into an oncoming car.

When I drove back in the spot and pulled out, I suddenly noticed the fuel needle inching toward empty.

Well, I thought. No big deal. I have the cash.

We were supposed to have parking passes to enter and leave the place, but the guard box was unoccupied, the gates open, so I just drove out.

It was a little distracting, driving a car when my hands kept changing from human to animated Mickey Mouse gloves to dainty rat paws, but I've driven while fighting off sleep before. The process wasn't that different. Crank up the air conditioner, keep my eyes on the road, will myself not to sleep, maybe pop in an ear splitting metal CD with the volume cranked up if the other things don't work.

Honestly, I was kind of tired. I pushed play on the stereo, turning the volume to the max, and found myself being blasted by Skitzofrantic by the Insane Clown Posse.

It helped. A little. At least it wasn't the Bee Gees or Elton John.

My passengers had become oddly quiet. I only heard papers rustling, and low mumbling.

Glancing back, I saw Riffraff poring over some art magazine called The Review, which Holli was helping him to read. Cartoons, as a rule, are illiterate, maybe even dyslexic.

Amanda, in the front passenger seat, occupied herself with studying one of Jessica's notebooks.

Riffraff showed me a magazine article, nearly making me wreck in the process.

I turned down the volume. "Sit down!" I cried.

"Sneezer says this is your girlfriend."

When I glanced at the photograph, I rolled my eyes. Pictured next to a series of green blobs on various sizes of canvas was the kangaroo snogger herself, clad in a tight fitting blouse with a plunging neckline and a dog collar.

I brushed the magazine out of my face. "I'll look at it later."

"She paints without using her hands," I heard Holli saying.

"What," I said. "She uses her feet?"

"No...Something else. It's really clever, actually."

When I thought about the hair, I put two and two together and nearly wrecked the car. "TMI!"

And mom calls my art junk.

I drove for a few blocks, pulling into the nearest gas station, which just so happened to be Quiktrip.

"There's more than one brand?" Riffraff said with astonishment. "Is this the shifty imitation of the other one or something?"

"No," I said as a generic cartoon kid from Schoolhouse Rock. "It's called the free market system. I guess you guys don't have that, or someone would have competed with Acme by now, right?"

The cat's eyes bugged out. "Does that mean you are allowed a maximum of two?"

"No," I said, turning into a baby clown. "We can have as many as people can build. There's hundreds of different types of gas stations. Texaco, Conoco, Phillips 66..."

"Hmmm..." He became lost in thought, his eyes frequently changing to dollar signs.

"We have zones," Amanda explained. "Products can be shown in a specific zone, and not others. And you can't show them outside that zone. I got arrested one time for carrying a Pepsi Twist in a Coke zone."

She sighed, looking back at her mother. "This is the first thing we've done together in months. We don't talk to each other anymore, and we live in the same damn building. When's the last time we even talked? A year ago?"

Holli sighed. "I've been busy."

"Yeah," Amanda mocked. "Running the Slash Club is real busy. You couldn't take a break from your business to say `Hi, how are you doing, Amanda? How have you been?'"

"How have you been." Holli said this with an edge of anger in her voice.

"You're only doing that because I said something. Of course you know how I am now. Now you're interested in me because my half brother turned me completely human. Ordinarily you wouldn't give me the time of day."

"What do you want, Amanda?" Holli said in an exasperated tone.

"Nothing!" Amanda spat. "Forget it!" She sighed and looked away.

Holli frowned at the black gas pump with its bright yellow Department of Agriculture Weights and Measures sticker. "Is this stop absolutely necessary? We just went to one of these places a few minutes ago."

I was a blue bird now, clad in a white lab coat. "We have to go to another one, because this is a different car! You can't save, or conquer the world if your car stalls in the middle of the street."

"I've never truly realized how frustrating this world can be."

"Then maybe you should drink your...gunk and go back," I said.

She only harrumphed in response.

I got out and walked into the store. Riffraff, of course, just had to follow me.

"What are you doing?" he said as I was opening the door, transforming into Awesome Possum as I did so.

"I'm paying for gas. What does it look like?"

I had to push the cat out of the way as a wiry bald headed Mexican guy in a tank top stepped out. It seemed Riffraff didn't understand the etiquette of foot traffic in business establishments.

Of course, I'm not sure the guy cared. In fact, he laughed and muttered something about "Gatito Garfield."

Since Heathcliff has been dubbed into a variety of different languages, Riffraff yelled, "¡Mi nombre no es Garfield!"

It only earned him a laugh. Riffraff groaned and cast me an annoyed scowl. "Dane didn't have to go in the store."

"People are entitled to pay at the pump if they want, but after my debit card information got stolen awhile back, I never paid at the pump again. Anywhere."

The cat looked confused, so I had pull him aside and explain bank accounts, debit cards and the hacking of gas pump credit card scanners.

I made it entertaining by accidentally turning into the Frog Prince while explaining it. Let's just say it was a little hard to open the door afterwards.

If you've seen one Quiktrip, you've seen them all. Most of them have gone to the QT Kitchen mode, which is great if you stop in before, say, nine P.M.

This one had The Kitchen, but of course, they shut all the lights off already. It was just as well. I probably would have just stood there for an additional two minutes before deciding not to get a smoothie.

It is a custom of mine to spend at least three to five minutes pacing up and down the drink aisle, eying the Slurpee dispensers, the soda fountain, the bottled teas, before marching empty handed up to the counter with my gas order.

As I continued this practice as Drew Scout, I felt more normal than I had been all day.

Well, until I, as Baron Munchhausen, asked for ten on pump five, with a cartoon mouse standing behind me.

The clerk was a chunky African American woman with braided hair. Happily for me, her eyes were heavy lidded, prone to a frequent dipping nod, causing her to overlook the fact that her customer and his companions were both animated. She rubbed her eyes several times during the transaction, but the exchange of goods and services remained refreshingly dull and perfunctory.

"Aren't you going to get one of those things you looked at?" Sneezer asked me while I was walking out.

"I got drinks at home," I replied as a court jester. "I thought I wanted something, but I changed my mind."

"Anticlimactic." Riffraff said.

During the process of filling up the tank, I noticed Riffraff take a real bag of spicy taquito chips out from under his hat, and Sneezer was chewing pieces of Fruit Stripe gum, also real.

I suddenly had on a police uniform. "Did you pay for those items?"

They both shook their heads.

"They're on display," Sneezer said. "Like people were supposed to walk in and take them."

I smacked my face, which incidentally had grown a muzzle. "You take them out of the store after you pay for them!"

They acted surprised.

"I don't buy things very often," Riff said.

I glared at him with the solid blue eyes of a Dune Fremen. "No! Really?"

Amanda, who had been leaning on the side of the car, grinned when she noticed my costume change. "Kuhl wahad! I am profoundly stirred. Grrowl."

I cringed.

When I had reached ten on the pump meter, I stomped back in (as an afro wearing Thundercats character) and paid for everything.

...Almost everything. Riffraff had also smuggled out a bottle of Yoohoo, which I had failed to notice until I was halfway to the funeral home.

Upon making this discovery, I immediately heard a siren, as if the cops were coming, but it turned out to be nothing but Sneezer turning red and blowing steam and fire engine sounds after eating one of Riffraff's chips.

I hurried us to J.D. Newcomers and Sons.

The long one story building was closed for the night. None one anywhere around. No cars, not even a limousine. You would have thought someone would have been around to tidy up corpses after hours, but no. No lights were on, save for the exteriors.

I found my gold Corolla where I'd left it, either due to the negligence of the staff or out of respect for the grieving. I decided not to push my luck any further.

I opened my car and got everyone in.

Okay, so maybe it was only a degree tidier than Jessica's car, but it was cleaner. I only had to toss some trash and throw a couple things in back and everyone had ample room.

"What about the other car?" Amanda asked.

"It'll just have to stay out here and get towed."

I had to explain that one. The weird part was that I explained the whole thing as Chester Cheetah...and somehow I had a bag of orange chips on my person. Not from the store, of course. The chips were animated, and they materialized out of thin air, because Chester does that.

"Would it help if I drove the other car?"

For a moment, I seriously considered it, but then I shook my head with a Chester-like ayeeayeeayeeyii. "I don't think so. You don't have a license, and you tend to drive a bit fast."

"I can drive slower..."

"No..."

That's when I got another animated light bulb.

Taking out the business card, I opened my flip phone and dialed the number.

"Hello?" the voice was faint and crackly on the other end, but I could tell I had the right number.

"Uh, hi!" I said. "It's me. Drew Deebes. We met in your room."

"Ha ha. Just kidding," I heard her say. "This is my voicemail. Leave your name, number and message after the tone."

"Great," I groaned as a baby clad in a bonnet and diaper. "This is just perfect."

Clearing my throat, I started all over, explaining who I was to the recording.

"Hello?" I suddenly heard a voice saying.

"Hell-o?"

"You're that guy, aren't you?"

I nodded, though I knew full well she couldn't see it. "Yeah. Drew Deebes. Listen. Uh, Garfield needs lasagne. Badly."

"Is this a literal lasagne or a metaphorical one?"

"I'm going with metaphor right now..." My stomach gurgled. "Unless you happen to have one lying around in your fridge. Look, I've got a big favor to ask, and I think we're going to need both you and your boyfriend to pull it off."

"You're robbing a bank! Yes! I knew it!"

"No," I said. "Nothing that exciting. Listen. How would you like to have a free car?"

"Get, out!" she cheerfully exclaimed. "You're joking, right? You've got to be joking."

I just sighed.

"You're not joking," she said in disbelief. "It's not a lemon, is it?"

"I...don't think so."

And so I told her how to get to the place and everything.

After she hung up, I stood around in that lot for about twenty minutes. I made constructive use of my time by loading everything of value into my car, mine, or semi-not-mine. I also read the Review magazine article, which explained a few things about Jessica's lifestyle that I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to know.

I figured if Sneezer hadn't interfered, Jessica would have `documented' me and her having sex, and my pasty ass would be magnified twenty times on a huge display in some art gallery.

"This isn't important," Holli said as we waited. "No one cares if someone turns your car into a toad."

"Excuse me!" I shouted. "I do! I exist in a world where there's laws and rules and people that take advantage of you whenever your back is turned, such as landlords, bill collectors and impound lots. It's a complicated dog-eat-dog ecosystem that never takes a holiday, unlike your cartoon land. And when something is gone, like your car, it's gone. So excuse me if I want to get my shit together before going back to the cast of Merry Melodies!"

Holli scowled at me. "That car isn't yours."

"So maybe I don't want to be a total prick."

"You still love her, don't you?"

I blinked at her, shaking my head in confusion. "Love who?"

"Who do you think. The owner of the car. I'm guessing you must. You apparently shared a suite with her, and now you're taking extra special care of her vehicle..."

"Maybe I do." As I said this, Extra popped out of my shirt, floating upwards on one of my rising Valentine hearts. "Maybe just a little. And then there's the golden rule: Do unto others as you don't want a psycho bitch breathing down your neck."

"I've never heard that one."

Extra rolled off the heart, flying back into my shirt.

"Neither have I," I said. "I made it up. But it's true."

She sighed, and we just stood there, waiting.

"This is taking too long," Riffraff complained.

"You're right," Amanda said. "There's no time compression, and we've been silent for a long time. Isn't there a musical montage or something we can do to hurry things along?"

I shrugged. "My cel phone has a trial version of Pac-Man, but you can't play it because it needs to stay charged until Dane gets here."

"It wouldn't help to sing a song?"

"Well, it would kill some time, but no, not really."

I watched car after car passing by, hoping that the next one would be our new acquaintance.

As I had turned into Drew Scout anyway, I sang, "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for Dane to come..."

My companions just stared at me.

"It didn't work," the cat muttered.

Amanda crossed her arms, giving Holli a pleading glance. "Mother, do you love me?"

"Honey," Holli said. "You know I love you..."

"You don't act like it. It's always what Holli wants. When have you ever thought about what your daughter wanted?" Holli opened her mouth, but Amanda shut her down. "And please don't say that rubber costume machine. Or Chips, for that matter. Token gestures to show that you appear to be my mother. Do we ever do anything together?"

Rubber costume machine? I thought. Chips?

I suddenly felt ill.

"You're a completely different generation," Holli said. "It's hard to relate to you anymore."

"What, because I like to read books with substance and actually think instead of acting like a cartoon villain?"

"You take that back!" Holli shouted.

"I'm not taking anything back! Amanda yelled in return. "I have a human side to me, and I can't live like you!"

"And you wonder why we don't talk."

"I try to get you to read things and you don't. Did you even look at Walden?"

Holli just sighed.

At last I heard the distinct rumble of a small diesel engine, saw the lopsided yellow lights showcasing the insect encrusted grill with the coathanger hood latch.

Dane was alone. When she got out, silently appraising Jessica's car, I asked, "What happened to Greg?"

"We broke up," she said with a shrug. "Is this stolen?"

"No. More like borrowed. I have keys."

"I got it!" she said with a grin. "You're getting back at the ex! Right on!"

I shook my head. "No, uh, it's more like time sharing a car. All I ask is that you keep the car looking..." I was about to say "clean" or "nice", but the car wasn't. "Kind of the way you found it. You know, in case the owner comes back."

Dane frowned. "And when will that be?"

"That I don't know. I'm thinking she's gone off the deep end, and won't be back...ever. But just in case something happens, don't total the car, don't let it go out of service, and don't take that embarrassing sticker off the door."

"What about the tags and the insurance? Or the title?"

I rubbed my clown face in frustration. I really hadn't planned things out this far. "Uh, if you see any bills in there, pay them right away."

I didn't know for a fact if she had paid her car off, or if Jessica still had a loan agreement. If she had a loan, it was bad news. Especially considering how she handled everything else.

"If there's a bill," she said. "The car technically isn't free."

"I didn't say it wasn't paid, but I can't say for certain that it is."

Dane rolled her eyes.

I thought about actually taking her keys and doing it myself, but I thought I'd done enough of a good deed by keeping her car from getting impounded. Paying off someone's car loan and insurance was far beyond what is reasonably considered to be common courtesy.

As Bubsy the Bobcat, I said, "I think her address should be on at least one of those bills back there, and I imagine the house or apartment keys are on the ring. Maybe a mailbox key, too. I'm not sure. I'd look into that as soon as possible, though. You don't want to see a tow truck in the driveway."

"Gotcha," Dane said, grinning at my transformation. "At least I only have half a loan to finish, right?"

I turned into a koala. "One can only hope."

She giggled at me for a moment, then glanced in the windows. "Can I keep all the swag?"

I laughed at her flattering description. "Sure. Of course, I'd keep it in a special place so it doesn't get lost, again, in the unlikely event that she comes back."

I glanced at her Mercedes and sighed. "I guess you can take a taxi or something to get back to your old car."

"Or, if I like the car, I could just have them tow the old one away."

"If you like," I said with a shrug, a gesture that didn't translate well through a four legged unicorn body.

Dane took a sketchbook out of her car, flipping back a few pages. "I want to show you something. Tell me what you think."

I rolled my eyes, expecting she wanted a critique.

When I saw what she had drawn, my eyes bugged out like dinner plates.

It showed a caped dominatrix that looked suspiciously like Jessica, and Mr. Eyepatch, in some kind of factory that manufactured babies...and the girl was tampering with the machinery.

Dane smiled. "It just came to me. Pretty crazy, huh?"

"Yeah," I stammered. "It's crazy, all right."

"Whenever I take out my sketchbook, it's all I seem to be able to draw."

I showed the drawing to Holli.

"Miss Paint By Privates is at the NBF factory," she said with a scowl.

She turned to the next sketch and frowned.

"Cool World's just about to get uglier."