it

I'll just use a part of your floor."
Marie nodded. There was a certain air of satisfaction about the gesture, as if she'd just scored a point in the debate.
"You best do so! You try makin' it back to your officer's quarters, in your condition and this late at night, you won't get there. Not in this part of New Orleans. Not without being robbed, for sure, and maybe havin' your throat cut. And it won't be no evil rich white man do it, neither. Be one of those virtuous poor niggers you blathering about."
Driscol grinned at her. "Did I ever say I thought being stepped on made a man a saint? Not hardly!"
He drained his glass and set it down carefully on the table. "Leave it at this, Marie. I just feel more comfortable—always did—in the midst of outcasts. Lot more than I ever do with the so-called proper classes, that's for sure. Maybe that's my ideals at work. Maybe it's just my contrary nature. Whichever, it's the way it is."
She looked up at him, coolly and consideringly. Marie had drunk a lot less than he or Ball.
"Good enough for me. Help yourself to the floor, Patrick Driscol. I recommend somewhere there's a carpet. Thin as it'll be, it'll be better than nothing. And there'll be some breakfast for you in the morning."
Ball managed to sit fully erect. "Lordie," he muttered. "Marie, what poison you give us last night?"
Marie was on her feet now, wrapping herself in a robe and heading for the kitchen area of the apartment. "Poison! I told you Criollo Jim's so-called whiskey was rotgut. Maroons make it, out in the bayous. What you expect?"
Maroons were runaway slaves who lived in the semi-impenetrable waterways and cypress swamps west of the city. There were entire little towns of them out there, according to the stories Driscol had heard.
He was inclined