For a Saturday morning, it was unusually quiet in the King
household. Or at least, Amanda thought, it had been. Now the
quietness was gone, replaced by the hearty laughter of her mother.
And no, it wasn't just a quiet giggle, whatever it was had her mother
in complete stitches. Finally, Amanda could not stand the torture
anymore, her natural inquisitiveness taking over, and she headed into
the living room.

Her mother's face was flushed and she was wiping tears from her face.

"Mother, what on earth?"

"Oh, Amanda dear, I'm sorry," Dotty managed to choke out between
giggles.

"What?"

Dotty patted the couch beside her, inviting her daughter to sit with
her and Amanda did so.

"You know the latest order that I had placed with Rebecca's Fantasies
arrived yesterday, right?"

"Oh yes," Amanda said, "believe me I know."

"Well, this time they included a sample of their monthly magazine."

"They publish a magazine? Oh my gosh."

"Amanda, really, you're a grown woman, don't sit there and tell me
that you don't have a bit of a sexual wide side. You are, after all,
my daughter."

"Mother!"

"Well, anyhow, there's a little fun game, determine your stripper
name in this."

Amanda's eyes opened wide.

"Oh, Mother!"

"Amanda, its fun. My name is, well if I go by Dotty, which I usually
do, I mean that's how people know me and so that's what I did the
first time and so I'm Raquelle Heavenheat."

Amanda buried her face in her hands and sighed.

"What am I going to do with you?" she murmured. "My own mother."

Ignoring Amanda's reaction, Dotty chattered away. "And, if I go by
Dorothea then I'm Sugar Heavenheat."

"Oh Lord," Amanda groaned.

"Oh, and Amanda?"

She raised her head up, hoping it wouldn't get any worse, but knowing
her mother as she did, she knew it would be.

"Yeah?" she asked weakly.

"I figured your name as well."

"Please, don't tell me, I really do have a headache, do you now how
little sleep I got last night?"

Dotty laughed again. "Well, I've seen that boss of yours and don't
play innocent with me, Missy. You can't be spending all of your
night in an editing room."

"Of course I spent all my night in an editing room, where else do you
think I'd be? Out on a midnight cruise, eating caviar?" Amanda asked
her mother, knowing all too well that Dotty would never really
believe the real truth as to how she and Lee spent most of those late
nights.

"Well, darling, your stripper name is Fantasia Lustyridge."

"Oh, my gosh," Amanda moaned.

"Please, no more, I can't take this," Amanda said as she stood up.

"Are you going to the kitchen dear? Would you please get me some
more coffee? There's another article that I want to read and I just
don't feel like getting up."

"Yes Mother," Amanda said as she retrieved the cup.

Still shaking her head as she filled Dotty's cup, Amanda sighed.

She returned to the room to find her mother deeply engrossed in the
article and she sat the cup down on the coffee table.

"Dare I even ask what you are reading?"

Dotty looked up with a smile.

"Fifty ways to entice the man in your life using your new stripper
name. Oh, Amanda you should read it. Now I know you say there isn't
anything going on with you and this boss of yours, but darling, the
ideas are positively scrumptious. I'll just leave it here on the
coffee table when I'm finished, you know, just in case."

Amanda turned and walked back to the kitchen and looked out the back
kitchen window, hoping that Lee would suddenly pop up and tell her
that she was needed for an assignment. Any assignment, she'd even
take the KGB right now. Anything would beat spending the day with a
mother with hormones in overdrive.