There were bite marks in the cheese. It was

There were bite marks in the cheese. It was 4.45am and icy cold. Also, 3 hardboiled eggs were missing, presumed eaten and a hole'd been taken out of the cooking brandy. Mariella

's head whipped around. What was that sound? And OH GAWD, what is that smell? A door slammed down the hall. Mariella had suspected that Joey was sleep-eating again, but this was

..shocking. He was sleep-cooking. Mariella would scream at him to stop but he was cooking her favourite dish, the simple curry so she couldn't bring herself to do it. She waited to

see if put in the right amount of coconut milk. His somnambulant masaman was smelling delicious. Mariella thought, "Why wake him?" Then the night terrors struck.

Splats of flung curry clung to the walls as he turned more Pollock than Emeril. She tried then to wake him but it was too late; he couldn't be reached now. She had to let the fit

Pass through the bathroom window. Jackson Pollock visited and did a painting before the walls were cleaned up after four in the morning, to please the landlord, who noticed nothing

because he didn't know his Mondrian from a bullet hole in the head. He had been a friend of the dead father's lepidopterist on his Orthodox side. When the early breakfast crowd got

poisoned over his use of oil pigments in this Jackson Pollock scrambled egg dish, he felt misunderstood. How dare they die when he was only trying to express himself? Philistines!

And then, magically, she appeared at his door selling nontoxic paints, and edible underwear. Sparks flew as he slammed the aluminum door into her grill. He invited her in and she