At two in the morning on January 20, there came a tap on Oscar’s hotel room door. It was Fred Dillen, the krewe’s janitor and launderer. Fred was drunk—the krewe had been celebrating the official and long-awaited swearing-in of Senator Bambakias, while drinking many patriotic toasts to the new Administration of President Two Feathers. Fred was accompanied by a chunky Anglo woman in her thirties, who was wearing bright orange medical-emergency gear.