"Yes," hissed Vivian breathlessly. "Desperate."
I underlined desperate.
"We are, as you may know," Clare continued giving Vivian a dark look, "Trisexual symbiotes. You do not have any analogous situation among mammals on Terra."
I glanced at Thais. "We sure haven't," she said with feeling. "But it sounds fabulous."
"It is not, I assure you," Clare said running a four-fingered hand over his scaly crest in what I took to be a Venerian gesture of distraction. "We are not married as you people understand the term—"
"Not married," I wrote, underscoring it heavily.
"But your law enforcement agencies insist that our symbiosis is analogous to marriage and therefore subject to the regulations governing that odd institution."
"What a bore," Thais said helpfully.
"Our problem is this. The three of us live in what you might roughly call a connubial state. We—what is your word?—co-inhabit?—"
"That's close," I said.