Stupid goddamn bowtie. Carter, dressed in a rented suit, yanked on the thing to try to get it straight. The one around his Mareep's neck was easy, but something about the angle here...ah, forget it. He wasn't wearing a mask because those were stupid.

He was out by the pool, keeping an eye on everybody else since he'd agreed to that other cop's idea to chaperone. The Petilil had insisted on coming, too, but she'd calmed down some since the day she'd been dropped on his doorstep. She was down by the pool, trailing a leaf in the water. She was in a tiny little white dress. Blake had no idea they even made those for little onion-bulb things. Or bipedal dogs.

After being pestered through mime and "Snubbull, snubbull!" and "Ilil?" for a while, he'd figured out what they wanted, given them some money and told them to go to town. They'd come back with that and the red one Steve Buscemi was wearing. She'd spent a damn hour in front of the mirror fiddling with the bow around her ear. Now she was scampering around, wide-eyed, trying to talk to everybody at once.

"Girls, McNulty," Blake sighed, patting the Mareep's wool.