I started to protest, to say that as long as Barbara Selby was in this hospital, I wasn’t dropping out, but Ranson waved me silent.

“This was a warning, Micky. You’ve caused them a lot of problems. Someone connected to the police force is passing information on and I want it passed on that you’re not going to have anything more to do with the police or fighting drug rings. Understand?” Ranson said.

“She’s not going to be doing much of anything for a while,” Cordelia answered.

“Good. I’ll come back later to see you,” she said to me. Then to Cordelia, “Take care of her and make sure she doesn’t try anything foolish.”

“You’ve got it, Joanne. Say hello to Alex for me,” Cordelia replied and Ranson left.

Alex? Who was Alex? As in Alexandra Sayers, perhaps? Cordelia started poking on my side some more and I became preoccupied with more important things, like my threshold for pain. After a long (it seemed long) while, she said, “You’re lucky. It appears your ribs are bruised and not broken.”

“Good, can I go home now?” I asked.

“I think you should stay at least overnight for observation,” she answered, in typical doctor fashion.

“If I promise not to sue you for malpractice, can I leave?” I asked. Being sick is not a luxury poor people can afford in this country. I always rate my medical needs on whether or not I worry about how much it costs. If the first thing that struck me about staying overnight in the hospital was how much it was going to cost me and how little I could afford to pay it, then I wasn’t damaged enough to have to stay in the hospital.

“What’s your hurry?” she asked.

“I hate hospital food.”

She chuckled, then asked, “What’s the matter, don’t have health insurance?”

“Only the Mack truck variety.” She gave me a questioning glance. “In case of getting hit by a Mack truck and being in bed for six months,” I explained.

“Well…did you get hit in the head?”

“No, I’m always like this.”

“I want some X-rays of your ribs, if they’re negative and nothing else shows up—and you make good on your promise not to sue me—we’ll work something out.” She smiled at me and then got an orderly to wheel me down to X-ray. After X-ray, I was deposited in an out-of-the-way examining room, given some pain medication, and left to enjoy it. Cordelia showed up a couple of hours later.

“Your X-rays are negative. How do you feel?”

“I’m not ready to race the Iditarod, but then it doesn’t snow down here enough for me to worry about it.”

“So you say. Let’s see you stand up and walk a straight line.”

I slowly sat up, then slid off the examining table and assumed a standing position.

“Should I touch my fingers to my nose and recite the Pledge of Allegiance?” I asked to cover my unsteadiness.

“Not necessary,” she replied. She gave me a thorough look over. “Okay, let’s go.”

She threw me an old sweatshirt to put on, obviously hers. Good thing America’s getting in shape these days and wearing baggy clothes or I’d have nothing to wear. I followed her all the way out of the building.

“No, this way,” she said as I started to branch off.

“But the bus is this way.”

“My car is this way.”

She led the way to the parking lot. This was fortunate, because I wasn’t sure I had bus fare. Her car was a silver Toyota, a couple of years old. We got in and I gave her my address. She pulled out of the parking lot.

“How do you know Joanne Ranson?” Good detectives always ask questions, even if their noses are packed with cotton.

“Grandpa Holloway is a staunch law-and-order supporter. Every year around Mardi Gras, he has a big formal party for assorted law enforcement people. I always have to attend. So I’ve seen Joanne in passing for a while now. Where did you meet her?”

I had to stop and think for a minute. I had met Ranson through Danny, but it had been socially, not professionally. I didn’t know if Cordelia knew that Ranson was gay and I didn’t think I should tell her I met Ranson at a party for girls only down in the Quarter. I was trying to come up with an alternate story, but the pain and drugs were slowing me down.

“Wait a second,” Cordelia said. “You weren’t lovers, were you?”

“Us?” I said, my surprise at the question clearly showing.

“I guess not,” Cordelia answered her own question.

“It was at some party in the Quarter a couple of years ago,” I answered. Cordelia obviously knew that Ranson was a lesbian.

“This isn’t the best section of town,” she said, noticing the neighborhood.

“But it’s not the worst,” I replied, defending the surroundings of my humble abode.

“True. Have you worked with Joanne before?” For a doctor, Cordelia was being a good detective.

“Not really. We spar a lot.” Before Cordelia could say that that was obvious, I clarified. “In karate. Once, after class, we saw a mugging and Ranson and I ran the guy down. I guess you could say that was working together. She’s a tough fighter. Hard to read.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Cordelia answered. “And you’re the faker, always misleading people, so they never expect a punch when you throw it.” She stopped in front of my building. I wondered if she meant my karate, or me in general. “For example, right now, you’re in a lot more pain than you’re admitting. The only clue is that your reaction time is slower. And, if I hadn’t just treated you in the emergency room, I’d find it hard to believe you aren’t the mercenary bimbo that Karen makes you out to be. I still have no idea who you are.”

“And that bothers you?”

“A bit.”

“It’s what you get for hanging around with the Karens of the world. Real people are always complicated,” I answered and started to get out.

“Wrong,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder to stop me. “Real people are usually very simple, I’ve found.”

“You’ve found your kind of real people and I’ve found mine. I’m sure you’ve had more psych courses than I’ve had, so I’m not going to bother arguing with you.” I shrugged her hand off and got out of the car. She got out and followed me.

“I’m coming up with you to make sure you have nothing to sue me for,” she explained.

“A doctor making house calls. Aren’t you noble?” I opened the downstairs door. She entered behind me.

“It’s true what they say about you, isn’t it?” she retorted.

“I don’t know what they say about me,” I replied, with my back toward her as I started up the stairs.

“That Micky Knight has never slept with the same person for more than a week and has never in her life held a serious conversation.”

I kept walking, faster than my pained body wanted to. It was just true enough for people to have said it, and true enough to sting.

“For a straight woman, you’re sure up on the queer gossip,” I shot back down the stairs. “Does your boyfriend know how well informed you are about us dykes?”

“My personal life is my own,” she replied.

I noticed that the light on the third-floor landing had been fixed. Miss Clavish had probably given the landlord an earful. At least this time, if anything was going to hit me, I would see it. Cordelia was still coming up the stairs behind me. My door wasn’t locked. I swung it open and turned on the light. Chaos met me. Papers were all over, furniture overturned, broken glass from the windows all over the floor.

“Shit,” I said. Cordelia came up behind me. I heard her sharp intake of breath. Everything in the place was on the floor and trampled over. Almost everything. Something was missing. No cat.

I started looking frantically for her. I threw open the closet to look on the top shelf, where she usually hid. The closet was in disarray, with all my clothes crumpled in a heap on the floor. The top shelves were bare. I pawed through the clothes on the floor, hoping she was hiding under them. But she wasn’t. I went into the kitchen to look in the one other place that I knew her to hide. What little food I had had been spilled and ground into the floor. I looked for the stool to stand on, but couldn’t find it. It had been used to break the kitchen window and was lying in the alley three floors below. I jumped up, jackknifing my upper body over the top of the refrigerator, so that I could see down behind it. I felt a sharp pain in my ribs. There was no cat behind the refrigerator.

“Micky, Micky,” Cordelia called from the doorway. “What are you looking for? It can wait until tomorrow.”

“No!” I yelled, sliding off the refrigerator. “Those bastards. Those fucking bastards! They killed my cat. They fucking killed my cat!”

This was it. The point where everything becomes too much. Too much anger, too much pain, and all I wanted to do was hit something or get very drunk. Or both. I slammed my fist into the wall.

“Stop it. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“So?” I demanded. I took off her sweatshirt and threw it at her. It landed on the floor with everything else. “Get out of here. Take your goddamn do-goodism and leave me the fuck alone.”

“No,” she replied.

I shrugged and started looking for my Scotch bottle. Maybe they hadn’t gotten to my back cupboard. I found the Johnny Walker against the back wall, twisted it open, and took a long swallow. Fuck her, she would leave soon enough if I ignored her. I took another gulp, feeling the liquor burn its way down my throat.

Cordelia grabbed the bottle out of my hand.

“No,” she said. “You’re not mixing alcohol with those pain killers.”

I didn’t want her here. I didn’t want anyone to watch me. I couldn’t cry at my father’s funeral, and I wasn’t ever going to let anyone see me cry again.

“Just get out,” I said, trying to make my voice calm and controlled. “Please.” I had acted calm and reasonable many times before, I could do it now. If I hid how upset I was for a little longer, she would leave. Aunt Greta and her children didn’t know what to do with me when I cried or was angry. She had told me to stop and they had laughed at me, telling me I should be glad that my dad died and I got out of that backward bayou. I hated them and I learned to never let them see what I felt. It was my way of tricking them and getting even, even if they didn’t know. Never let anyone watch you when you’re weak.

“I’m all right,” I said in my calm rational voice. “Please go.”

“Come on, Micky. People have tried to kill you two days running. Your apartment has been thoroughly ransacked, your cat’s dead, and you’re all right? Bullshit. Even if you were Karen, I wouldn’t leave you alone in this mess.”

Then Cordelia did something I didn’t expect. Most people at least pause and genuflect at my defenses, but she ignored everything I was saying and doing and walked over to me and gently put her arms around my shoulders. When I didn’t jerk or move away, she pulled me closer and with one hand on the back of my head, pressed my face into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said and that was all.

No “you’ll get over it,” “there are plenty of cats at the pound,” “no one told you to be a detective, you could’ve worked for the bank.” None of the things I had expected her to say. Tentatively, I put my arms around her waist. I realized that it was cold when I felt how warm her arms were about my shoulders. I shivered a little from the chill on my bare back.

I couldn’t cry, not in front of her. I knew that Cordelia wouldn’t hold it against me if I did. But it takes a long time to break old patterns. I still felt tense, I couldn’t relax into her embrace. There was nothing sexual between us. I couldn’t sense that she wanted anything from me. She warmed me because it was the decent thing to do, like I was a kitten that was wet and needed to be dried and kept warm. Maybe that was why I was stiff; if she didn’t want anything from me, then I had nothing to offer her. If nothing else, kittens are cute. Soggy detectives aren’t.

Cordelia, I was beginning to realize, was one of those rare people whose instinct is to be kind. Most of us have to think about it. I started to pull away from her because genuine kindness is the hardest thing to repay. I didn’t know if I could.

“I’m very sorry,” she simply repeated. She didn’t let me pull away from her, but held me a moment longer. Then she released me. “It’s chilly in here, you need to put a shirt on. You’re shivering,” she said.

“Look, I’m sorry for the way I acted…”

“Pretty bad acting.”

“I’m trying to apologize.”

“I know. But put a sweater on first. I’m getting cold looking at you.”

I turned to go over to my closet when I noticed a silhouette walking on the ledge outside my window. It meowed. I always kept the bottom window shut, because, cat or no, three stories is a long way to fall. Hepplewhite was not allowed to play balance beam on the five-inch ledge around the building. With the windows broken she had found her way out.

I grabbed her off the ledge and carefully pulled her through the broken glass.

“You are an idiot cat,” I said. “Next time you scare me like that you’re going to be out catching rats on the river.” Hepplewhite purred as usual, ignoring my threats.

“Don’t you believe her, kitty cat,” Cordelia said. “Just minutes ago, she was tearing up this place looking for you.” Heppy had found an ally. Cordelia took her from me, saying, “Cats and bare skin don’t mix.”

She was right. I had enough scars for the moment. I rummaged through the clothes pile on the bottom of the closet until I found something to wear.

“Get a change of clothes. You’re not staying here tonight,” Cordelia said.

I would have to clean this mess up soon. But before I went to bed tonight was too soon. Cordelia helped me look until we found two shoes, two socks, some jeans, and a top. She did come across my panties that had “A lesbian was here” stenciled in the crotch, but we both ended up laughing.

Cordelia also found the little pile that Miss Clavish had left. She had collected my belongings from the stairway and put them inside my doorway. She also left a note, which said:

Dear Ms. Knight,

I hope you’re all right and that the police catch those men soon. I would have aimed the shotgun at them instead of over their heads, but I was afraid of hitting you, too.

Don’t worry about your cat. She can get into my office through the old steampipe hole in our shared wall. I love her company and she and Hecuba (my cat) get along quite well. I’ve left out enough food for them both and there’s a litter pan, so she won’t be making any messes on top of the mess you’ve already got.

Sara Clavish

To prove her point, Hepplewhite yawned, stretched, sneezed disapproval at the mess, and then disappeared into my closet and through a hole in the wall behind the clothes pile.

“Well, she’ll be fine,” Cordelia commented.

“I know. She’s probably been eating food at two places for years.”

“Let’s get out of here. We’re both dead tired.”