I quickly hurried down the stairs and out of the courtyard, feeling ragged and torn, unwilling to have her voice leave another mark on me.

The courage to fight those who deserve it,Cordelia had said. I didn’t know if I could stop myself from being angry, but maybe I could take that energy and fury and aim it—the young girl Cordelia had treated today, Cissy with her nameless monsters, the others who hadn’t walked so directly into my life. I began to believe in evil, the monstrosity that can see nothing beyond its desires. It turns or devours the needs and hungers of others, so that a brief sexual spurt becomes more important than the damaged trust and terror of a child. That was evil. I would fight it as best I could.

Chapter 17

Sunday was a day of laundry, dishes, mopping, a major grocery run, all those mundane things that kept me occupied. Body and mind, at least. I knew my soul was elsewhere. In the evening I finally gave in to what I knew was turning into an obsession and started the list of men with access to Cissy. And women, I reluctantly admitted. I couldn’t blind myself to that possibility. I remembered Warren Kessler and wondered if I could ask him about Cissy’s teachers. Then I wondered if I should put him on the list. I scribbled his name at the bottom, then, because I liked the man, put two question marks next to it. I sat and stared at the list for a long time, but no possibility greater than the others appeared.

Finally, I flipped the page and started another list, a chronology of the events in Karen’s case. Colombé nagged at me. Was it just idle curiosity that prompted him to invite me into his inner sanctum, a fly to his wanton boy, toyed with for sport? Was Joey what he seemed—a small-to-medium-time grafter who somehow had squeezed through the doors of the Sans Pareil Club? Or had Colombé invited him in? And, if so, why? Did Joey procure sexual playthings for Colombé as Torbin’s less-than-reliable source had hinted at?

I looked at my jumble of questions scratched across the page and realized that not only did I not have any answers to them, I had no way of getting answers. And if I did get answers, they would cost me a lot. I closed the notebook. For a moment, I considered tearing out the last page, but I left it.

Monday turned into a bureaucracy day. My friend Ralph had been a bartender until the day his persistent cough had turned into something worse. The bout of pneumonia had left him weak and unable to work. I was taking him to the food stamp office. I’d offered and he’d accepted, but I suspected that he was afraid to be alone in this strange, new world of poverty and that he didn’t want his still-healthy friends to see him pale and emaciated, asexual. I was a woman, a lesbian. He’d never have sex with me, never wanted to have sex with me. I would never look at him and see a man I’d once desired.

The food stamp people were basically kind. Maybe they figured that by the time you reached their office, life had already humiliated you enough. I remained with Ralph for a while. We talked of nothing important, local scandals, the weather, movies, until he was tired. After wishing him good night, I left. It was only seven thirty in the evening.

I drove around for a bit, trying to decide what to do. Finally, I ended up at the lakefront, sitting on the breakwater watching the glint of distant lights on the waves. I knew I should call Cordelia, but my demons were back, and I wasn’t sure how to make them leave, or even how to prevent them from hurting someone I cared about. I deliberately stayed at the lake until it was too late for her to call me.

The next morning no bureaucracies awaited me. Tomorrow you take Cissy to see Lindsey, I told myself. If that doesn’t change anything, then you get to ask Barbara those uncomfortable questions. I reviewed the chronology to remind myself that there was indeed motion and direction in what I was doing.

The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts. “Hello?” I answered.

“Micky. Hi.” It was Cordelia, her voice subdued, tentative.

“Hi, how are you?” Then, without giving her a chance to answer, “I meant to call you. I’ve just been real busy.”

“That’s okay. I understand.”

Did she, I wondered? Or was it one of those polite lies? And did she understand my being busy or did she understand my lying about planning to call her?

“Actually, I’m calling about Alex’s party,” Cordelia continued. “It’s this Thursday.”

“I haven’t forgotten it,” I said somewhat defensively. I hadn’t been paying much attention to it either, though.

“I didn’t think you had. Are you still willing to have Alex foisted off on you?”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed, then, not to seem too abrupt, “Alex gets off around five?”

“Usually. You can plan to pick her up around then.”

“Okay.” Then there was an awkward pause, the concrete details taken care of.

“And Micky?” Cordelia said, breaking the silence, “You don’t have to go with me if you don’t want to. You’re Alex’s friend, too. I know she’d like you to be there, even if we’re not…” She trailed off.

There is was, out in the open. “Do you want to go with me?” I turned the question back to her. “Or would you prefer not to?”

“I would…I would prefer to go with you. If you don’t want to… Let’s be honest. It will be easier in the long run.”

Some absurd part of me wanted to ask why is honestly easier? “I guess…I’ve got some things to work out. But I would like to go with you.”

“Okay. Good. Good, I’d like that,” Cordelia replied, the tension in her voice easing. “So, I’ll see you on Thursday, dragging a confused Alex with you. I’ll call you then. Millie’s poked her head in twice now, so I’d better get back to work.”

We said a hurried good-bye and she was gone.

On Wednesday, I got to Cissy’s school early. It was raining, and I knew parking would be complicated by overprotective parents wanting to make sure their little Johnny or Susie didn’t melt. I sat in my car watching the rain drip down the windshield, trying to be practical and realistic. There would be no miracles today, no dramatic changes, and I would have to ask Barbara all those difficult questions.

I spotted Cissy. I wondered if she would remember that I was picking her up today. After a moment of uncertainty, she saw me and ran toward my car, her raincoat only half fastened against the downpour. I opened the car door as she got near, letting her jump in out of the rain.

“Hi, how are you?” I greeted her.

“Okay. Wet, I guess,” she answered, brushing back a strand of dripping hair.

“So, how was school today?” I asked as I pulled out. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Fine. Nope,” were her succinct answers.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

“To see that lady.”

“Dr. McNeil?”

“Yeah, her.”

“Do you like her?”

“She’s okay, I guess.”

I couldn’t really watch her to get an idea of what she wasn’t saying. Too much of my attention was demanded by driving in the rain; the streets were starting to flood. Was she angry at me for arranging this, for sending her to see Lindsey? Had I become just another adult not to be trusted? Or were her demons so powerful that nothing could get in?

I turned into Lindsey’s driveway.

“Why don’t you go ahead and get out here?” I suggested when the car was as close as it was going to get to the porch.

Cissy nodded and ran to its shelter. I parked the car, rummaging around in the backseat until I found the least broken umbrella of the ones accumulated back there. Even with an umbrella, I was soaked from my knees down before I got to the porch.

The door opened; a mother and daughter came out. The mother was protected by a fashionable trench coat, an umbrella with her initial on it, and perfectly fitting, feminine rain boots. Her daughter had gone a long way down the road of adolescent rebellion. She was probably sixteen, her hair a buzz cut, an ear pierced in three places; her blue jeans were torn, she wore black boots, and, what was causing her mother the most consternation of all, a sweatshirt that read, “Amazon U.” with a double women symbol below it.

Elegant mother did not look comfortable with strangers seeing her dyke daughter. She hurried the girl past us, then pointedly looked at the contrast of my dark hair and eyes and Cissy’s blondness and blue eyes. Her superiority established, she turned away. Her daughter cruised me, a look I didn’t dare return.

I led the way into the waiting room.

“Hello, Cissy. Hi, Micky,” Amanda greeted us.

“Hi,” Cissy answered shyly. She headed for the fish tank, ignoring us. Amanda turned back to her computer, and I sat down, letting Cissy have the fish tank all to herself.

In a few minutes I heard the chime followed by Amanda saying, “Why don’t you come this way, Cissy?”

Cissy obediently followed her down the hallway to Lindsey’s office.

Amanda came back to the reception area, then called to me, “You can pay us this time. We prefer that you pay by month,” she explained, “but you can do it by session.”

“How long have you worked for Dr. McNeil?” I asked, wondering how much information I could get out of Amanda Jackson as I wrote a check for the month.

“Around six months, since she opened her practice,” she answered as she took my check.

“How is she as a boss?”

“I have no complaints about Dr. McNeil,” she answered. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,was her unspoken message.

I sat back down and picked up a magazine, leaving Amanda to her computer. It would be another forty-five minutes before Cissy returned.

I had skimmed through just about every magazine in the waiting room before I heard Lindsey’s door open again. Cissy came out, her face still closed and unreadable. I wondered if she had opened up for Lindsey. If she had, there was no outward sign. Lindsey followed behind her. She nodded at me, then put her hand on Cissy’s shoulder, clearly the beginnings of a tentative connection between them.

“I like your fishes,” Cissy said.

“They are pretty colorful fish, aren’t they?” Lindsey answered her.

“Uh-huh. I like the little blue ones best.”

“You know what,” Lindsey said, talking only to her, “so do I.”

Cissy smiled for her, then turned and went to the aquarium to look at her favorite fish one more time.

Lindsey turned to me and asked, “Are you taking her home?”

“If the flooded streets let me.”

She nodded, as if this was important information, then said softly so that neither Cissy nor Amanda could hear, “I’m going to be here until six or so. There’s something I’d…”

Amanda, who had just answered the phone, called to me, “Micky, I have Barbara Selby on the line. She’s still at the office and wants to know if you can drop Cissy off there.”

“Tell her that’s fine,” I said.

The door opened and Lindsey’s next client came in.

“Six,” I said quietly to Lindsey. She nodded, then headed back to her office.

“Come on, kiddo,” I called to Cissy, “time to make like a duck.”

She waved good-bye to the fish, I waved good-bye to Amanda, then we were out the door. I paused on the porch to stuff Cissy into her raincoat, then we dashed to my car, my semi-dry pants legs getting wet again.

“We’re going to your mom’s office,” I explained to Cissy.

“I know, I heard you,” she replied, letting me know I’d said a stupid adult thing.

I had to pay attention to driving; the road was half flooded and a traffic light up ahead didn’t seem to be working. Cars were either inching through the flooded streets or playing kamikaze, assuming if they went fast enough, we’d get out of their way.

Somewhere beyond this mess, Cissy asked, “Do you think my mom would let me have some fish?”

“For dinner or as pets?”

“For pets, silly, like Dr. McNeil has.”

“Probably, they’re pretty easy to take care of.”

“Did you ever have fish pets?”

“No, but a…a cousin of mine did.” Bayard had kept fish.

“What kinds did your cousin have?”

“I don’t really remember. Nowhere near as pretty as what Dr. McNeil has. I don’t think he really liked fish.” When he decided he didn’t want them anymore, he’d taken bleach and poured it in the water. I remembered him calling me over to watch the fish die.

Barbara was waiting just inside the lobby of her building. I stopped in front. Barbara waved and Cissy opened the door to bound out to her.

“Thanks for doing this,” Barbara called to me as she gathered Cissy safely under the overhang.

I gave Barbara a wave to let her know it really was okay, then pulled out before my stopped car became a target for a moving car. It was still raining heavily.

I headed back uptown. Between the still-pouring deluge and threading through stalled cars and flooded streets, I didn’t get back to Lindsey’s office until almost six thirty. Her car was still in the lot. I didn’t even bother with my dilapidated umbrella, instead just dashing from my car to the porch. Wet was inevitable, fighting it would just take time and effort. I tried the door, but it was locked. The dim streetlight wasn’t much help in locating the buzzer, but I finally found it.

It took a minute or two before I heard her footsteps and cane crossing to the door.

“It’s Micky. Micky Knight,” I called through the door.

“A wet Micky Knight, I see,” she said as she stood aside to let me in.

“You’re here by yourself?”

“Yes, why shouldn’t I be?” She was leaning heavily on her cane.

“Well, it’s a mess out there. Your parking lot’s a swamp.”

“So?” Lindsey countered.

“How could you be sure I was coming back?”

“I wasn’t. Believe it or not, I can make it across the parking lot, even in a drenching rain. It may not be easy or pretty, but I can do it.”

“I didn’t mean to—” I started, taken aback at her sudden passion.

Lindsey cut me off. “The only things I don’t do are the ones I cannot do. If there’s someone around to help or a shortcut, I’ll take it, but I won’t have my life ruled by imagined limits.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, abashed at my clumsiness.

“It’s okay. Overly helpful people are a sore spot with me.”

“Was Cordelia overly helpful?” I asked, taking a shot in the dark.

“No,” Lindsey replied, “she was not. Why do you ask?”

“Curious.”

“Well, I have something for you to be curious about,” Lindsey said, turning to lead the way to her office.

I followed her. She motioned me to a chair, then slowly lowered herself into hers. After putting her cane aside, she opened her drawer and took out a matchbook. She handed it to me. On the cover of the matchbook was the name of a bar. Not one I’d ever heard of. I looked expectantly at Lindsey.

“Sometimes what someone doesn’t tell you is the most potent signal of all,” she said.

“What’s that have to do with this?” I asked, holding up the matchbook.

“How does a matchbook like that get in a little girl’s pocket?”

“She got it from her parents, found it on a street corner, a playmate’s father goes there or mother works there. Any number of ways,” I replied.

“True. Cissy spent the entire hour we were talking with her hand in her pocket, playing with that matchbook as if it were a talisman. When I finally asked her about it, her whole demeanor changed. She became reclusive, as if hiding something. She seemed torn between not wanting to give it to me and feeling compelled to let me see it.”

“So you think it’s significant?”

“I think Cissy has found a way to tell us something without violating whatever taboo she’s constrained by.”