“I thought those lights only clapped on and off,” Michael said. “I didn’t know you could make them change colors.”

“You’re darn tootin’ they change colors,” our dad said. “And you should see the lights on my new throne upstairs, so make sure you check out that baby before you leave. I stocked up on toilet paper when I moved in, so don’t you worry about that.”

We all nodded.

Our father shook his head in wonder. “No need to even clap in the necessarium. There’s a built-in motion detector that senses your body heat or some such thing when you approach the facilities. It turns on the light, and then shuts it off again when you walk away. Makes a great nightlight, too, in case your night vision doesn’t happen to be what it used to be. Changes the water in the crapper bowl to sixteen LED colors, if you can imagine that.”

“Might be even more colors than that,” Michael said, “if you factor in how they mix with piss yellow.”

“Language,” our father said.

“Yeah,” Christine said. “Don’t be a sasshole, Mikey.”

“Sasshole.” Billy Jr. shook his head. “That’s forking ridiculous.”

“Put a cork in it. Now.” Our dad gave us his stern face. “Never forget for a minute that while Billy Boy Hurlihy is still alive and kickin’, not one of you is too old to have your mouth washed out with a bar of Irish Spring.”

I was just dozing off when John finally came into the cat room, which I had to admit I still thought of as the cat room. Apparently, the love shack thing wasn’t going to stick.

“Hey,” I said. “How’d it go with the demolition?”

I rolled over, propped myself up on one elbow. “I was afraid if I went upstairs to check on you, Joe would realize what time it was and leave. So instead I drove Christine to Carol’s house to pick up the kids and then dropped them all off at home.”

John lowered himself to the other side of the mattress on the floor. He smelled like sandalwood soap and Tom’s of Maine peppermint toothpaste, mixed with a dollop of sweat.

“Joe and I demoed the snot out of those walls,” he said.

I smiled. “I can’t believe you said snot. You’re such a bad, bad boy.”

“I know, right?” John leaned over for a kiss. “Joe kept saying he was going to quit, but we kept going and going. He called to have a new dumpster dropped off tomorrow, so if you and I can get those rooms cleared of debris, Joe and his crew will be able to jump right in first thing Monday morning.”

“That’s great.” I yawned. “As soon as I get a good night’s sleep, I’ll be all over it.”

John yawned back. “How did it go at your end?”