Q: I guess that means they need $2K now in addition to the airfare and stuff. Nancy better come correct.

Hooman and Schiff and Shane are opening up every grandma-scrawled envelope, piling the cash in the middle of the room while discussing things like Indian casinos and the puppetric wonders of Jeff Dunham. When Silas arrives, Shane is awesome: "We're stealing Christmas card money from the past!"

Q: Oh, and he has the paternity results too.

A:

Q: Why would you not want to know?

Hooman opens a letter Schiff stole that was addressed to him. "I GOT INTO COLLEGE?" Schiff stares mutely; Hooman makes a hilarious mad face that goes on way too long.

Nancy's been reduced to standing outside Vaughn's motel window, knocking like a meek Catherine Earnshaw, and Vaughn paces around in his tweedy mess of an outfit, still hating Nancy and, synecdochically, women. The other side of her particular coin. She's never tried so hard to get into a trap before.

Eventually he lets her in, and time passes, and she tells him her story now that she trusts him, and as they're wrapping up she apologizes for the camera. "You wait to publish, and you don't say where we're going." He has no idea where they're going, and when she gives her alias -- Celia Hodes -- he giggles more honestly than he's done anything else.

A: He might not be under her spell but he was never under any illusions about her capabilities: The exact kind of man she actually deserves, of course, but she can't even see him. Confession is a rollercoaster too. He turns off the recorder.

Q/A: "They'll find you. Pilar doesn't just disappear and nobody has to answer, she's a legitimate businesswoman. Someone has to answer. It's an open murder investigation, and not just the cops: FBI. Them. And if I'm coming to that conclusion -- Shane -- then others will too."

It's an unvarnished truth, a set of them lined up like shot glasses, but for some reason it seems almost more of an admission on Vaughn's part: The respect, in his voice and in what he's saying. The way he doesn't treat her like a goddess or a bitch, just another human being. He doesn't hate her, he doesn't love her. He likes her okay. He got over it. She's not a cunt, not a vampire, not a monster, not a bitch, not even sexy: Just a woman. Just the thing she keeps saying she is. The only truth the fourth estate has is truth, and the second that gun's not pointed at her she can look at it for what it is. She knows he's not wrong.