

# The Most Dangerous Time

# by

# David LaGraff

### For Cynthia, My Everlasting Love

Copyright © 2013 David LaGraff. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

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### Chapter 1

To the world at large, Hirschfeld was the much-celebrated producer of many important films, but to Rickie, he was a large, powerful troll. In the beginning, he'd been blown away by her long slender legs and red hair, and she'd been swept off her feet by the whirlwind of his power. Following their hasty marriage in Vegas, his whirlwind morphed into a nasty, unrelenting storm.

It was always worse on Friday night. In their kitchen inside The Dell, away from the prying eyes of Beverly Hills tourists and Hollywood gossips, Hirschfeld's storm was brewing.

"God damn it, Rickie," he said. "You got the wrong wine."

Rickie froze and regarded him fearfully. He'd come home from the studio drunk, and whenever that happened, he was going to find something. To make matters worse, she was guilty as charged. Instead of his favorite wine, the Joseph Phelps 2005 Insignia, priced at 200 bucks a bottle, she'd tried to substitute the Cobblestone 2002, the 40 dollar stuff he served at parties.

"Don't blame me," she said. "It's those idiots over at The Cheese Store. I ordered your wine, but when they made their delivery, they forgot to bring it."

"Why is it when something goes wrong around here it's never your fault?" He was closer now, his hooded eyes looking at her and through her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have checked when they made their delivery."

He shattered the half-full glass of inferior wine in the sink, splashing the countertop and floor with what looked like blood. The big man approached her. Her breathing stopped as the heat and panic of fear flooded in. Friday night.

"You don't do shit all day," he said. "And you don't even do that right."

"Honey," she said, "if you want me to, I'll run down to The Cheese Store right now and get your wine."

He wasn't listening. His eyes closed and he cocked his head, as though listening to a faint message within himself. His eyes opened, narrowed with rage.

"You lazy, stupid bitch!"

She felt oddly grateful no damage was done to her face. As good fortune would have it, she'd reflexively stepped back, slipping on the freshly spilled wine as he threw the first punch, and his knuckles only grazed her cheek. He more than made up for it when he landed on top of her, driving his knee into her stomach. She lay motionless, gasping for air for what felt like an eternity.

When he finally left her alone, she remained where she was, curled in a ball and listening carefully to be sure he'd really left the house. It wasn't until she heard his Rolls leave the driveway that she dared get up.

She made her own escape down the hill, across Sunset Boulevard to R.J.'s Bar and Grill on Beverly Drive, the place she always retreated to whenever this happened, instinctively choosing the place most familiar and yet somewhat impersonal.

Standing with one foot on the brass rail at the far end of the oak bar, the darkest spot she could find, she tossed down a short scotch and signaled for another. Perhaps it would help dull the aching pain in her stomach. She'd finish her drink before the industry people poured in, and be long gone by the time Hirschfeld figured out where she was and came looking for her.

There were a couple of options. She could make the long trip out to Encino to seek shelter with her son, Jesse Edwin, or drop in on her best friend Judy, who lived close by at Venice Beach.

She stepped outside to find the late winter sky prematurely blackened from an incoming winter storm. A heavy rain would make the trip out to her son's place somewhat treacherous.

Judy was her best bet. While waiting for the valet to bring the Mercedes around, she whipped out her Blackberry and punched the speed dial.

"It's me," she said. "I need a shoulder to cry on and a place to stay. It's either you or Jesse Edwin."

"He did it again, didn't he?" Judy said.

"I can't talk about it now."

"Understood," Judy said. "Can you drive? Or do I need to come and get you."

"I can drive."

"Then forget about driving to your son's place in the Valley. KFI just broadcast a traffic alert. The storm's already hit out there. I'll open a fresh bottle of wine."

Rickie felt slightly better. There was some serious soul-searching to be done. Judy could always be counted on in this regard. An additional bonus--heavy rains would clear the beach of tourists. The strand would be deserted, isolation she always appreciated after such episodes of violence, which always left her feeling shaken and claustrophobic in crowds.

She put the powerful car in gear and slid out into the rush hour traffic, driving carefully, cautious of the alcohol in her veins. There were a lot of decisions to make and a lot of things she wasn't certain about, but of one thing she was sure.

This time, she wasn't going back to the troll.

### Chapter 2

They were in the cozy kitchen of Judy's place, a cute bungalow with a large front garden, walking distance to the Pacific Ocean, and steps away from the monolith of Shutters hotel, the only hotel in Los Angeles which sat directly on the beach.

Judy, a quick, slim woman, her elfin face crowned with arty, spiked wisps of henna-tinged black hair, conducted an experiment on a Foster Farms all natural chicken. The bird appeared to have fared poorly in life, only to have died badly.

"Hirschfeld always pulls this little number on Friday," Judy said.

"Not every Friday," Rickie said.

"Don't argue," Judy said. "When you defend him, it makes me feel like you're blind. Admit it, Rickie!"

"You're right. Friday is usually the day."

Rickie's mood was tamped further into its dark emotional hole by the steady splatter of the big, flat, wet drops against the kitchen window, the storm gaining in power by the minute.

"I don't know how it all came to this," she said. "Can you believe the man was a charmer when I met him? And a genius."

Judy began basting heavy dollops of what may or may not have been plum sauce over the skinless breast of the dead chicken prior to the final insult--its incineration on her downdraft grill.

"Do you remember it was I who advised you not to marry him? He always scared me, but you never saw past his charm."

"I guess I'll be here awhile," Rickie said.

"You can stay here as long as you like. Same rules as before. Hirschfeld doesn't come inside for any reason. I'll put the police baton under the couch the way we did last time."

"Thank you, Judy."

"You better put your car in my garage. We don't want the bastard to see it. Not to mention nobody leaves a hundred and fifty thousand dollar vehicle parked on the street in this neighborhood. I'll park my old heap out front. It'll be like last time you stayed here. We should probably close all the curtains. I suppose he'll be cruising by here at all hours of the day or night."

"Leave the curtains open. I want him to know I'm not alone. He won't try anything if he knows you're with me."

"We don't know that. Last year he was bragging about how he hired two hit men to kill somebody."

"He was drunk," Rickie said. "I'm sure that never happened."

"Are you? Rickie, do you really know this man?"

Rickie sighed. "I almost made it to the weekend. I had the perfect evening planned. Juana and I cleaned the house top to bottom. I personally spent most of the day waxing the kitchen floor. I had his favorite old Bronson movie cued up."

"Why'd he hit you? What was his excuse?"

"I think it was his usual end of the week blues," Rickie said. "He has his greatest emotional difficulties during the latter part of the week. He's been under a lot of strain lately."

"The man is a psycho," Judy said.

"He's under a lot of pressure. The production company's behind schedule and they won't take his phone calls, even though he controls a fifteen point share. They've got a big pyrotechnics scene to shoot Sunday night down near the bus terminal. He's pretty worked up. He's tired of being the only one on the project holding up his end."

"Everybody's under pressure," Judy said. "What was his specific reason for flying into a rage and punching your lights out?"

"I screwed up. I forgot to order the wine he likes."

"Right, Rickie. You screwed up again. Or maybe that wasn't the real reason. Maybe the big fat slob hit you because you are too thin, or because you could double for Audrey Hepburn, or because you're a whole lot smarter than he is, or because you didn't have your makeup on quite right. The handwriting's on the wall, Rickie. The man is going to kill you."

Rickie's voice squeaked. "I'm not going back."

"You don't have to say that to me," Judy said. "It's only the two of us here. Besides I'm tired of you saying that and always changing your mind."

"I know I've threatened to leave him before. I know I've always gone back. This time I mean it."

"Rickie, don't tell me. Convince yourself."

"I know. I always go back to him because I can't stand the pain and loneliness of the separation. You don't know him like I do, Judy. After we have a blowout, he becomes his old self again."

"Correction," Judy said. "It's not after we have a blowout. It's after he has a blowup."

"I'm a little worried that he might have hurt me. I've got a sharp pain in my stomach where he slammed me with his knee."

Judy refilled their squat tumblers with the excellent, buttery, dark red cabernet, which Rickie sipped carefully.

The roof leaked in a few places, and Judy had placed several pots, the resulting atonal symphony of droplets providing a sort of droll music for the interior spirit of the home.

"It won't be easy for you, Rickie. Adjusting to the single life, I mean. There'll be nobody to hug you, nobody to fill in those little blank spaces life seems to be so full of. Maybe you shouldn't be promising yourself anything right now. Just make it through tonight and we'll go from there."

"I'm getting a little buzzed from this wine. I better go put my car away while I still can."

At that exact moment, there was a loud bang and scrunch of glass breaking in the living room, followed by tires squealing in the street.

Judy caught Rickie's arm and squeezed it tight. The two women remained united for a moment in their fearful frozenness, aware that the signposts guiding their lives no longer pointed at the heart of happy things, but rather to distant, fearful domains, places where anguish and disbelief, like the storm outside the cottage, caused one to lose sight of all the little pretenses people invented to make their lives bearable.

Judy broke free and went to peer out the living room window. "It was him. Oh! I can't believe this! He threw a tequila bottle through my front window! Hirschfeld's been out there the whole time, watching us, and getting drunk. He's a fucking stalker."

"I'm going to put my car away before he comes back."

All the tires were flat. Shaken, Rickie rushed back to the safety of the kitchen.

"He must have turned off my car alarm before he flattened all my tires," Rickie whispered. "I'm sorry, Judy. I'll pay for the damage to your front window. I won't stay here tonight."

"Where will you go?"

"I'll have to brave the storm. I'll call a cab stay with my son."

"You can't do that. He's only been out of rehab a few months. It's not easy on him being newly sober. You need to give him a little space. Besides, you can't get a cab when it's raining."

"You're right. Jesse Edwin might fall apart when he finds out. It would be unfair of me to test my son's fledgling sobriety. I'll tell you what. Let me borrow your umbrella and I'll walk over and book a suite at Shutters and call you in the morning."

"That's way too expensive."

"It's Hershey's money. Think of it as payback."

"Hirschfeld's a belligerent sonofabitch," Judy said. "He's beneath contempt." She released her grip on Rickie's arm and began puncturing the burning chicken carcass with a long-handled fork, the action vigorous, gratuitous, even, as though the chicken represented certain specific parts of Hirschfeld's lower anatomy.

"It'd be a whole lot easier if I hated his guts. Not that I still love him."

"You've got Stockholm syndrome. Hirschfeld is a terrorist and you bonded with him. He's done nothing but humiliate and degrade you. Not only physically, but in everything he says to you and everything he does."

"We're not as bad as some couples. We've never been featured on an episode of COPS."

"That's because COPS doesn't film in Beverly Hills."

"It's not like we're trailer park trash. For heaven's sakes, Judy. Even our house has a name. The Dell. How many people do you know have a name for their house?"

"It's not a house. It's a medieval mansion, with you trapped in the dungeon. Now do me a favor."

"Anything."

Judy speared the chicken carcass and unceremoniously dumped it into the trash. "Shut up for the next five minutes and get yourself together. I'm treating you to dinner at the hotel."

### Chapter 3

They were down to coffees laced with Drambuie, accompanied by cheesecake pudding at a dim, small booth in the back of One Pico, the French joint located inside Shutters. The ground floor location of One Pico was not without peril as the storm outside drove the surf high up the beach on which the hotel sat.

"When I married Hershey," Rickie said, "it all happened so fast. You remember that wedding we had in Vegas?"

"How could I forget?" Judy said. "As your maid of honor, I can testify he was drunk the whole time."

"I must have been out of my mind to marry him on the spur of the moment like that," Rickie continued. "What was I thinking? I didn't even tell my son his mother was getting married."

"That should have told you something," Judy said. "But don't blame yourself. Five years ago, Jesse Edwin was too busy getting wasted to care what his mother did."

"I had no idea how quickly things would turn to shit. The first week after we got back from Vegas, Hirschfeld and I started arguing over the pattern the vacuum made on the carpet. That was the first time he slugged me. He broke off my left front tooth. I went into total shock."

"We all did."

"Looking back, Judy, I think I married Hirschfeld because I was overwhelmed by his money and power. The night I met him was the first time I'd ever ridden in a Rolls. I was also very flattered. Starlets throw themselves at him four or five times a day."

"Rickie, forget the starlets. He was lucky to find you. You're a natural beauty. That's something rare in Hollywood. And you're mature. There's no way he could keep up with a young trophy wife."

"I guess. Sometimes I think the real reason I got married was because I was single and going nowhere at 45. I sacrificed my life for my son, and I was facing the empty nest years alone."

"Okay," said Judy. "It's all behind you tonight. The question is, where do you go from here?"

"I don't know. I do know I'm not going back. I meant what I said earlier."

They were practically alone. There were few diners, save for a table of unlucky tourists trapped by the storm. Even the main attraction of Shutters--the infamous Venice Beach boardwalk--was deserted.

"My biggest fear is finding the courage to start over," Rickie said. "I wish I was a little younger. I'll be 50 next year."

"You will be, if you make it that far. Don't worry about finding the courage first. Courage comes when it's needed and not before."

"I don't know what I'll do about money."

"That's easy," Judy said. "You'll hire Gloria Allred. She eats pit bulls for breakfast. You can take Hirschfeld for everything he's got."

Rickie spooned up a healthy glop of pudding liberally slopped with raspberry sauce and glommed down the mixture with a greedy sucking sound, followed by a slurp of the coffee. "Try some," she said, holding forth a spoonful towards Judy's envious eyes.

"I can't. I'm doing my after New Year's Simmons's diet again, and I've already snapped down all the little windows in my daily card."

"You don't know what you're missing."

"Oh hell, give me a bite," Judy replied. "Oh God, that is good."

"I'm pregnant," Rickie said.

The statement zinged out there, going much too fast for either woman to grab hold of. Unbroken silence held sway for a considerable length of time. For long minutes they held on to each other, during which time the waiter appeared and, rebuffed by their complete detachment, disappeared without comment.

"I'm scared, Judy. He hit me in the stomach and now I've got cramps. I'm afraid I'm going to lose the baby."

"Did he know you were pregnant when he did that?"

"No. I was going to tell him tonight. I think it was why I was preoccupied and forgot to order his wine."

"I'm taking you to the emergency room," Judy said.

"No. I'm probably exaggerating. If it gets any worse, I'll call Dr. Lerner. Listen, thanks for the sympathy. I think I'll go on up to my suite and rest."

"I'm coming with you, Rickie."

"No. You've done enough. I'm going straight to bed."

"Rickie, it's me you're talking to. You're going to call him, aren't you? You're going to tell him you're pregnant."

Rickie smiled sadly and squeezed her friend's hand. "I'll call you in the morning."

There wasn't much more to say at the end of this conversational path. In fact, there was very little reason to do much of anything at all in the aftermath of this confrontation with love and life, and the accompanying inexpressible loneliness Rickie felt. She arose from the table slowly, realizing it had been a long time since she'd heard herself laugh, and wondering when it would be before she heard it again.

She was certain it wouldn't be anytime soon.

### Chapter 4

The best efforts of the hotel suite designers to convert Shutters from a former slum-by-the-sea into a luxury resort were not enough to help Rickie feel like she'd escaped her problems. That would take more than a deep whirlpool tub and a private balcony overlooking the storm-shrouded Pacific. Rickie felt like she had arrived at the exact coordinates of the loneliest spot on earth.

She stood beside the fireplace with a glass of decent sherry and speed-dialed Hirschfeld.

"You should never have punctured my tires," she said.

"Forgive me," he said.

She almost wanted to. Her resolve to hate him, to punish him, was weakened by her overwhelming loneliness.

"Why should I? You don't pay attention to me as you should. So what if I didn't order your wine? Judy said to call the police and press charges."

"I'm sorry, baby," he said. "I punished you, but the real person I'm punishing is myself. It hurts me deeply when I behave like this. Where are you? Judy's?"

"Shutters. I want you to replace my tires and fix the window you broke."

"I'll have somebody replace the tires tonight and a crew come out as soon as the rain stops to put in that fancy bay window your friend has always wanted. Will that help?"

"Maybe."

"All right then. Now come back to The Dell. I'll send a car to pick you up."

Rickie sucked up her courage, remembering her promise to Judy. In a voice which felt like it belonged to someone else, she made her declaration of independence.

"Hershey, I'm not coming back. In the morning, I'm calling Gloria Allred. She's going to sue you to death and splash your name all over TV."

There. It was out. Instead of feeling relief, her fears began to increase.

"Baby," he said softly. "We both know you're not going to hire Gloria Allred. You don't need to threaten me to get what you want. Our problem is simple. Everything's been too hard for us both lately. The production company's playing games with me, and your son is fresh out of rehab. We haven't had time for ourselves. Don't you think that's the real problem?"

"Why do you always refer to Jesse Edwin as my son? He's your son, too."

"Only my step-son. We haven't bonded like a real father and son."

"He wouldn't have started drinking again if you'd helped him when he needed you to. When you threw him out of the house, it pushed him right back into the bottle."

"Rickie, no. He was already into the bottle, and who knows what else? I was right to throw him out. How many times did the neighbors call us about the noise from his guitar?"

"You could have helped him."

"Rickie, I can't believe you're blaming me for your son's drinking problem. If you're going to blame anybody, why don't you blame his real father? Oh, I keep forgetting. The drunken Indian skipped town thirty years' ago and hasn't been seen or heard from since."

"Jesse Edwin's dad had a right to get drunk. He returned from Vietnam with a lot of emotional problems to deal with, something a draft-dodger like you would never understand."

"I was in film school then. Was it a sin because I copped a student deferment? We couldn't all go over there and set fire to the little men in black pajamas. Some of us had to stay here and hold the country together."

Hershey, if you were only willing to try, you could still be Jesse Edwin's real father. Fathering is a matter of the heart."

"I have a heart," he said. "I could be a father to Jesse Edwin if he'd meet me half way."

"Okay, you win," she said. "The truth is, you're right. His drinking problem isn't your fault. It's mine. Being a single parent wasn't easy on either of us."

"Yeh, yeh. You're a bad, rotten person who failed your kid."

"You don't have to mock me."

"I think you should drop the guilt and start realizing he made his own bed."

"You are a bastard."

"Okay, you win. I'm a shit-fucker with a piss tongue. Rickie, listen to me. We've been on the phone two minutes and we're already fighting. What's wrong with that picture? You need to come home so we can work this out."

"I'm pregnant."

There was silence on the line for the space of a minute.

"Rickie?"

"It's true. I went to UCLA yesterday. Dr. Lerner confirmed it. What I've been going through the past three months isn't about the change of life. It's about the beginning of new life inside of me. Now I'm scared to death. When you landed on my stomach, you really hurt me. I'm cramping."

There was no cross-examination, only Hirschfeld's labored breathing. "I understand everything now," she said. "When you attacked me tonight, it was a revelation. Perhaps being pregnant has cleared my head. I realized you've never wanted to hurt me, but you are incapable of doing anything but."

"You need to come here," he said. "Or I need to come there."

"You need to go straight to hell."

The judgment, which sprang from her lips from the recesses of a person inside her she was but dimly aware of, relieved her completely of the burden of responsibility for Hirschfeld and replaced it with something else--a growing anger which drove her former self into a corner.

A high wind shook the outer walls of the suite and banged a loose shutter on a balcony somewhere below. For a split-second, she relished the hugeness of the power she held over Hirschfeld, a power which made her former, submissive life with him seem ludicrous, somehow.

It was a moment or two before she realized the phone pressed to her ear had gone dead.

She stepped onto the balcony, threw her head back and shrieked into the face of the storm, dictating boldly into the face of God. Out it all came, her angry plans for the elimination both of new lives and old, her rampaging words equaling in rage the driving storm itself.

### Chapter 5

She was halfway through a hot bath and a decent shaker of room-service martinis when Hirschfeld's familiar polite quiet knocking at the door of the suite brought her adrenaline surging. Against her better judgment, she threw on the extra-thick hotel robe and opened the door a crack, leaving the chain on, receiving a blast of hot, boozy breath from the large, white-haired, irritable man in the soaking wet Armani suit outside. Rickie was not surprised to find him drunk.

Hirschfeld was a man whom, she knew, used up huge amounts of energy swimming around all week neck-deep in movie production politics and thus required a requisite amount of high-powered refueling at week's end, especially when things appeared to be out of control.

"I'm here to take you to the hospital, Rickie. We need to make sure the baby's safe."

"You can't come in," she said, exercising a firmness she didn't feel, but which, bolstered by the chained door, seemed safe enough. "Judy told me over dinner that I've got to start some new habits. The first habit I've adopted is not to let you push me around anymore, especially when you're drunk. Don't think that you can turn on the charm and get me to do whatever you want."

"I've never seen so much rain outside," he said. "It's some kind of El Nino thing or whatever. There's a crew out on the beach working under portable lights with bulldozers building berms even as we speak. Can't I at least come in and dry off?"

"You didn't even hear me. I said you can't come in. Earlier, I said I'm not coming back."

"I heard you. I couldn't believe my ears. That's why I'm here--to hear it again--especially the part about you being with child. We've got to work this thing out. This is no time for you to be isolating."

"We're a dysfunctional family," she said. "We need treatment and therapy to break out of our loop. You're right. I shouldn't be alone like this. I should be back at The Dell with a loving husband, sharing the joy of being pregnant. Which is why I'm asking myself how I came to be here in this hotel with a cramp in my belly on a night when the whole building may be swept away with me in it?"

"We can work it out. We can't do it through a crack in the door. Let me in and we'll talk. If you're smart, you'll realize that to find the right answer for what we're facing, we have to sit down and talk like two human beings. You're pregnant. You may need medical attention. That's a sacred trust God has given us. We need to talk."

The remark about God did it. She opened the door and instantly regretted it when he swept past her. She'd been excited at her decision to go it on her own, and now that she'd opened the door, she hated herself for her weakness, for her easy forsaking of the vow to seek higher ground in her own emotional storm.

By the time she turned around, Hirschfeld was already pouring himself a martini. "I'm sorry about my behavior earlier. I had no right to hit you. I can only say it's been a crazy day. A real battle against the entrenched powers who preside over us mere mortals from their established dominions. I had to fight like a wild man to get them to see it my way. I don't know where they're getting these new writers. You'd think the ones working for us never heard of a cop picture before. This new breed can't seem to focus, or get in tune with the straight-line energy which usually drives a good project."

"Don't try and change the subject. You hit me because you'd been drinking. You're drinking now. Personally, I think we're alcoholics. All the signs are there."

"What are you talking about? Where is this coming from?"

"Think about it. An alcoholic is the sort of person who is prone to spectacular disasters without remedy. For instance, they drink and drive and wind up killing somebody, or they destroy perfectly good marriages. Their kids are all screwed up. Look at me. You beat me up, you may have caused me to miscarry, my kid just got out of rehab, and I'm working on my third martini."

"Okay," he said. "We may have failed in our duty to face reality, but how many alcoholics make the kind of money I make, day after day and year after year? How many alkies have Beverly Hills by the balls the way I do?"

"It's not about money and power. It's about being tired. Right now, I'm very tired and very alone. I'm inwardly freaking out, wondering at what point I will finally crack. You really hurt me tonight. I've got a sharp pain in my stomach that seems to be getting worse."

"We're going to the hospital."

Rickie pushed forward with her false bravado. "We're not going anywhere. I'm staying right here. Besides, do you really want to risk coming under a doctor's scrutiny? They'll know you abused me. They might even call the police and have you locked up. You won't make bail until the Judge comes in on Monday."

"You gonna press charges?"

"Do you know why I don't? Because I know you'd con the cops into thinking you were sorry about what you'd done and they'd let you out with a slap on the wrist. That's why I don't call them. They'd let you go, like they let O.J. Simpson go. If they'd put you away for twenty years like you deserved, I'd call them in a minute."

"I like this suite," Hirschfeld said. "I'll tell you what. We've both been under a lot of stress lately. Why don't we make it a weekend right here, the two of us? Tonight, we'll relax in the Jacuzzi. I'll have them send up some champagne and caviar. In the morning, if you're feeling up to it, we can walk on the beach. If it's still there."

Rickie sank into the deep leather cushioning of the couch. "I'm sitting here wondering, like, have I lost my mind? I've begun to realize that you aren't the answer to my life. Maybe when we first started out, I thought you were. At this point, if I'm totally honest about it, I must admit that before you got here, I was really enjoying sitting in the tub alone. We don't have a real marriage. It's something that we're doing inside our heads. It's not real."

"What's this about, if it isn't real? Tell me, Rickie, you're so smart."

"You know, Hershey, all the times I've taken you back before, we go through the same routine. We smile awkwardly once again and in a demeanor that would shame a dog we mumble something about how we're going to try harder. Blah, blah, blah. All this time, I've never said it like I really want to say it. It's like every time you've beaten me before, I've wanted to erase the whole thing and start over. Why, you may ask do I always take you back? Because I'm afraid. I'm afraid of you Hershey. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Okay! For the last time--I'm sorry! What more do you want? Shall I go out in this wind and rain and find a Torah and prostrate myself before it? What's this about, Rickie?"

She arose and drained the last of her martini. "You ask me what it's about ... all I can tell you is ... it's about everything, you idiot!"

"I'm trying to be patient with you. You're not making it easy."

Rickie's fear was about to reach the point of overwhelming her, but something deep inside her urged her to keep going, to get it all out once and for all. Perhaps it was the growing knowledge that this time, something had been taken from her--a baby in her womb, perhaps denied existence, a chance casualty of their little game.

"I finally figured it all out," she continued. "You say you're working on trying to be patient. You're the kind of man who has no patience. You're the kind of man who has bought in to the whole package of deadlines and calendars and the expectations of others. You're a performer trying to play the game of delivering this or that at a certain place or time. You can do it because you get everybody around you to agree what the place and time is going to be. You know what? None of it's real. Your life is as insincere as your movies!"

"I'm tired," he said. "You're drunk. You're making no sense. What do you mean, none of it's real?"

"Do you know what Judy told me tonight? She told me that if God stopped loving you, you would cease to exist. She wanted us to pray and ask God to quit loving you. I personally think God saw what you did to me tonight, and He's seriously considering hating you. You'd become the first person on earth God hates. Think, Hershey. What would happen if that were true?"

"Rickie. Stop talking crazy." He set down his drink and took a menacing step forward.

"You'd simply disappear," she said, walking to the door and holding it open.

Please, God, she prayed. Give me the courage to stand firm. Don't let him come at me now. "I want you to leave now and think about what I said."

"I can make you come back. I could probably even have you committed. It's obvious you've lost your mind."

"You know what I hate most about you, Hershey? It's the way in which you beat me. You never lose control. Sure, you yell and scream and turn red, but way deep down, you're in perfect control of yourself. You know exactly what you're doing to me. My only question is why do you do it?"

In a quick, angry movement, he snatched up a vase, as if to throw it at her, paused, and put the vase down. "I don't know why. I love you. I always have. Isn't that enough?"

"You'd better get started on your way," she said, her voice trembling. "That's a bad storm outside. The visibility's near zero and it's a long way between here and there."

### Chapter 6

There wasn't a blasted thing on TV. Leno's smirking monologue trying to find humor in a recent Sarah Palin debacle was listless, and the artificially forced hilarity of his duty bound studio audience wasn't helping. She turned it off and felt completely alone. There was nobody to lean on, no sympathetic ear to lighten the load. Judy, whom she might have called, was by now sound asleep. Instead of being able to relax, she was reduced to pacing, the cramping increasing her worries, her brain firing off hormones in every direction. It was going to be a long night, and feeling good was not going to be a part of the action. It was clear to her the battering would never stop, no matter what she tried, no matter how she tiptoed around him. She'd changed her behavior around him a thousand times, and still it never stopped.

"My God," she said. "I don't know who I am anymore." In spite of herself, she placed the call to her son's cell phone.

"Hi Mom," Jesse Edwin said. Wherever he was, he wasn't alone, the determined background noise suggesting a bowling alley or an arcade. Since Jesse Edwin came out of rehab, he was always surrounded by clean and sober program people, building for himself an impenetrable bulwark of friends who were constantly rooting for him, supporting him, fighting for him. He'd done surprisingly well. They were his new family. She almost felt like an interloper.

"What are you doing, son?"

"Eating. After the meeting, a bunch of us decided we needed an ice-cream fix. Mom, are you loaded? Your voice sounds a little shaky. What are you high on?"

"I'm high? What makes you think that?"

"Mom, it's one o'clock in the morning. I know how it works."

"Martinis. But I'm not drunk. I wish I was."

"What's he done to you this time?"

"How's the storm on your end? They're working on the beach on my end, trying to save it. I told Hershey tonight I wasn't going back to him. I don't think he's too happy about it."

"Where are you, Mom?"

"I'm at Shutters."

"He did it again, didn't he? I'm coming over."

"I'm not feeling so well."

"What's wrong," he said.

"It's just a little tummy ache," she lied. "I think it was the cheesecake. Judy was the smart one; she didn't have any. Don't come over. It's too dangerous to drive in this weather."

"Quit lying to me, Mom. We both know the pain isn't from the cheesecake. I'll be there in an hour."

Things should have been different. Hirschfeld should have been there, stroking her hair the way he used to do. She wondered what exactly she was going to do. She imagined falling asleep, waking up in her own bed to find out the whole thing had been a bad dream.

Against her better judgment, she dialed The Dell. Hirschfeld answered after a few rings, sounding strangely out of breath.

"Why are you so out of breath?"

"I ran to get the phone."

"Liar. You never run to get the phone. What are you doing over there?"

"I told you. I'm out of breath because I ran. You caught me halfway up the stairs. I ran to the phone because I thought it might be you."

"What's that sound I'm hearing?"

"I took your call on the phone in the bathroom. I've got the Jacuzzi going."

"I know the timing of this stinks," she said.

"You're forty-nine," he said. "I'm fifty-seven. We're not the Partridge family. Did you ever think that maybe a kid is what we need? I've been doing a lot of thinking tonight."

"Do you want the baby?"

"...Yes."

"You took too long to answer. Besides, you've probably already killed it."

"Rickie, what's the point of this exercise? I sure don't want you having an abortion. I'm calling Doctor Lerner at UCLA and have her come to the hotel and examine you. Am I wrong to want you to have the baby at this late date? If for no other reason, I'd at least be leaving something behind."

"Dr. Lerner's a board certified surgeon," Rickie said. "She's not running out in this storm at your beck and call."

"She will if she values the future of the Medical Center. Are you forgetting I'm on the board for the new expansion? Not to mention being a major contributor to the place."

"Don't call her out tonight. The cramps aren't that bad. I will tell you one thing. If I'm going to have the baby, you and I both have to stop drinking."

"I am not an alcoholic," Hirschfeld said firmly.

"Okay, fine. Can you do me one favor?"

"Anything."

"Drop dead." She slammed the receiver in a laudable effort to telegraph the full weight of her anger directly through his ear into his brain. Hirschfeld did have high blood pressure and a history of angina. It was mildly conceivable that she'd killed him. Most likely, the immediate and future forecast was for Hirschfeld to continue on doing exactly as he pleased, for the rest of his life.

When will the understanding finally come? She thought. What will it take for Hershey to realize the truth about his sorry behavior?

The thought of Hirschfeld caused her abdominal pain to increase as she envisioned his future demise, which would likely occur in the form of an injury accident someplace akin to Dead Man's curve on Sunset Boulevard south of Doheny. The beginning of the end would come with a clatter and a plunging and a breaking of innocent bones in the heart of Beverly Hills. Hirschfeld, of course, would be drunk, staggering away from the wreckage unscathed and uncomprehending, his BAC soaring off the dial. His actions would trigger a grim series of sessions with hard-faced judges, angry victims and sanctimonious lawyers, who'd parade him in front of the media with a vengeance.

She needed another drink but her sober son was coming. A Coke, then, from the honor bar, with extra cherries.

A stab of pain arced spiritedly upward from the dull ache deep inside her, dropping her into a crouch. She took shallow breaths, feeling the edges of fear. Wanting to be safe and secure. Wanting to be anywhere but crouching on the floor of her suite high up within Shutters on the Beach. She stood up and slowly drew a full breath. The pain struck again, looser and faster than before, forcing her down into the crouch again. Five minutes passed. She stood up a final time and everything inside her broke into a thousand pieces, crumpling her onto the carpet as unseen hands reached deep inside, puncturing all that was good and decent within her. Rickie lay gasping, frightened by the rasping, grating sounds coming from her throat. She managed to get up on hands and knees. Horrified, she realized there was a lot of blood running down her legs and soaking the carpet. Too much blood.

The telephone seemed ten miles away, on the other side of the couch. The pain subsided and she made a move toward it. Halfway there, the pain returned and did things to her she never imagined could be done. The room flickered once and went out. Rickie left Rickie behind and floated to the ceiling and looked down at the whole scene, watching Rickie fade away before her eyes. Something was clouding her view of herself. A dark purple cloud. She touched the cloud and drew back her hand, amused by the shower of stars. There was a lady wrapped in a blue mantle staring back at her, a lady floating in the clouds, neither angry or happy, someone with a face constructed sometime before the universe began.

"My child," the lady said.

Rickie laughed. She was through fighting. In a way, she was glad it was over.

### Chapter 7

"Smog is still a problem," a raspy male voice said. "I can tell you, the air is the cleanest it's been in 50 years. Although it still feels like we're breathing sandpaper."

"I was born in Van Nuys," a smoother, younger male voice replied. "In 1970, during a Stage One smog alert. Mom told me she coughed and wheezed the entire time she was in labor."

Rickie identified the younger voice of her son, Jesse Edwin. Her eyes opened and the diffused light revealed a couple of men speaking casually together at the foot of a hospital bed. Her hospital bed, she realized with a start.

"Your mother's awake," Raspy Voice said. "I'll get the nurse."

"My son," Rickie tried to say. It came out a pathetic gurgle.

"Welcome back, Mom. Don't try to talk. It's Saturday afternoon. You've been here since about 3 A.M. I found you in your room at Shutters. You're safe now. I called Dr. Lerner. You were in surgery for an hour, and then she transferred you to this private room here at UCLA. Nobody knows where you are except Dr. Lerner, Judy, me, and my AA sponsor, Shank. Judy left awhile ago, but she'll be back tomorrow morning. Me and Shank will stay with you tonight."

"I'm dying of thirst," Rickie said, her tone hopefully conveying sufficient force to send Jesse Edwin running from the room in search of a fire hose or other source of relief for the unbearable burning dryness in her throat.

Jesse Edwin gently patted her hand, uncomprehendingly, as though she was a simple fool. Her mind attempted to plow gamely ahead to furnish her with some sort of useful conclusion to this new scenario in her life, the attempt producing only fountains of anxiety instead of the hoped for intuitive leap towards understanding and calm. A flashback rocked her mind, something the lady in the cloud said. It was important. Forgetting her thirst, she decided she must speak to Jesse Edwin of this Great Truth which was now before her. She focused on the son who stood beside her, his high cheekbones sweeping into his proud, intelligent forehead, his long black hair falling below his shoulders, his posture proud, his black eyes glittering with love and sympathy.

"I saw her," she said to him. "I saw Our Lady. She was wrapped in a purple cloud. She told me the secret of life. The secret is..."

A nurse entered the room.

"She's trying to talk," Jesse Edwin said, "but it's coming out kind of strangled."

"That's from the dryness caused by the anesthesia and the intubation. I'll get her some ice chips," the nurse said, disappearing from sight.

"You need to wet your whistle, Mom. It's okay if you feel a little fuzzy. Dr. Lerner was here earlier and told us it'll be awhile before your anesthesia completely wears off."

Loping slowly down the avenue of her dawning consciousness were several new feelings, chief of which were a growing rage accompanied by an almost unbearable frustration. The feelings took form and with that form began choking her bodily, to a degree which forced her to raise herself upward in an attempt to shake them off. She badly wanted to return to the lady in the cloud.

The man with the raspy voice returned, whom Rickie now knew to be Shank, Jesse Edwin's AA sponsor.

"Mom looks kind of wigged out," Jesse Edwin said.

"She needs a sedative or something," Shank replied. "She's waking up, beginning to figure out where she is and it's scaring her."

The nurse returned and placed a precious ice chip between Rickie's lips.

"Nurse, can you give my Mom something?" Jesse Edwin said. "We think she's freaking out."

"Dr. Lerner will be by in a few minutes," the nurse said. "We'll see what she says about administering some medication. In the meantime, why don't you hold her hand and continue to reassure her everything's going to be all right."

Rickie felt the pressure of Jesse Edwin's fingers upon her palm and, realizing the futility of struggling against the choking rage and frustration, let herself fall back, her body feeling heavy as a chunk of stone. She could not, at this point, imagine herself ever again attaining a state of calm like the one in the purple cloud and this realization brought with it an almost infinite sadness at her core. She closed her eyes and sank back behind a barrier where she could dwell, wombishly safe, in semi-darkness, while around her those with stronger ties to the world would work hard to meet what they believed to still be her need to be resurrected and returned to the clamor. That they would resurrect her, she had no doubt, upon which she would once again be expected to make herself useful in the chores, commitments and goals of those who lived without the certainty she had but recently attained, wherein she learned firsthand life on Earth indeed was short, and as such, had best be lived carefully, if at all.

### Chapter 8

"Your husband called me," Dr. Lerner said. He's been looking for you. He knows you were taken from the hotel last night in an ambulance. He wants to know if I'm attending you. I told him I didn't know where you were, but I suspect he'll be over here nosing around before too long."

"He can go rot. Just don't let him find me."

"He'll find you. He's a board member of this hospital. He'll pull rank on somebody to get the information. He's a powerful, violent man. You know he probably will never change. Rickie, you've got to keep in mind you have a right to live a life that is free of violence and abuse."

"I don't want to get Hershey in trouble. That'll only make things worse for me. I'll be like Nicole Simpson. With nobody believing me but my best friend. Go home, Doctor, you don't have to waste your Saturday night because of me."

Rickie, elevated in bed for the first time, felt a little woozy, experiencing at the same time a loss of courage when Dr. Lerner dropped in as predicted, briskly clearing Jesse Edwin and his AA sponsor Shank from the room before point blank starting in on her about the circumstances surrounding Rickie's being used as a punching bag by Hirschfeld, the end result of which nearly took her life, and did in fact claim the life of her unborn child.

"Nobody here thinks you're making it up," Lerner said. Lerner, a slim, crisp, efficient woman with a surgeon's direct demeanor, did not appear shocked or amazed by Rickie's situation. If anything, Lerner came across somewhat dry and matter-of-fact about the whole thing, as though the disposal from one's life of a battering husband was a matter no more complicated than taking out a sack of trash from the kitchen.

"You're a United States citizen, Rickie," Lerner continued. "You're entitled to be protected by law. So was your baby. Your son thinks we should notify the police. If he does, they'll be coming by later to ask you if you want to file charges. I think you should tell them yes. If you don't have the courage to do that, then at the very minimum you must find yourself a safe place. I can recommend a good shelter."

"We're not notifying the cops. Hershey has powerful lawyers. They'll tell the court I'm a foolish, hysterical female. Another thing, Hershey controls all our assets. We married five years ago, and he's kept everything in his name--the house, the cars, and the stock portfolio. All I've got to my name is a Platinum Visa. He even controls that. If I threaten him, he could well leave me penniless, at least temporarily! No, I won't be filing charges. I don't want to go to a shelter. The thought of being in a place like that with those kind of women scares me. What I probably will do is stay with my friend Judy for awhile until things blow over."

Lerner made a notation on her chart. "Finances are the least of your problem. You need to get your priorities straight. Staying alive is the first priority. You should find shelter. It's time you realized you are one of those kind of women. I'm keeping you here for a few days. I want you to get some rest and think about what I'm saying."

"Thank you Doctor. You saved my life."

"Your son's quick action saved you. We were lucky this time. Next time, we may not be. I'm recommending you work with a counselor. If you don't already have one, I'll refer you to somebody who's good. We have a woman we work with who specializes in women's issues."

"I don't need a shrink."

"You're in a crisis, and you don't even realize it. That's why you need to talk to a counselor. You have to make a decision. You have to decide whether or not you want to live or die. Why don't you simply look at working with a therapist as a way to help yourself make that decision?"

"If only it were that simple. You know, Doctor, my husband, when I first met him, was a handsome man. He was funny and charming and rich. He's a respected member of the film community. He's also a beast, capable of beating me to death. I keep thinking there must be some way to help him return to his old self."

"You need to help yourself first. There's something else you might consider. Has it ever occurred to you Hirschfeld's safety is also at stake?"

"What do you mean?"

"The man contributed to the miscarriage of your unborn child and nearly killed you. Whether you want to admit it or not, you've got a strong case of rage going down deep inside you. It's possible you might wind up out of control."

"Out of control? What are you talking about?"

"Get the big picture, Rickie. Did it never occur to you it's highly possible you might wind up killing him?"

"That could never happen. I was raised Catholic. I don't believe in killing."

Lerner sniffed and raised a doubtful brow. "I can give you the names of a number of women currently serving hard time who could prove you wrong. I'm sure we can find a good Catholic among them."

"I'm not capable of hurting anybody."

"Neither were they until the moment arose. I'm scheduling you for a walk down the hall in a few minutes. It's time to get you up and get you moving."

"Dr. Lerner! It's too soon!"

Lerner regarded her intently for a moment. "Sorry, Rickie. I appreciate your frustration, but we need to get you moving to avoid the risk of blood clots forming in your legs. For the moment, try to calm down."

"If only it were possible," Rickie replied. "If only it were."

### Chapter 9

"My name is Doctor Black," the woman said. "I'm a psychiatrist specializing in women's issues. I work with the Medical Center. Dr. Lerner calls me in whenever she runs across someone special, such as you."

Rickie, after having returned to her bed after an excruciating walk down the hall, had been interrupted while sitting alone at desultory dinnertime play with her plastic carton of Neapolitan Jell-O on the tray before her. She placed her spoon on the tray and regarded the younger woman before her. The black-eyed woman was tall, tanned and fit, dressed, not like a doctor, but rather more like a cowgirl, or cow-woman, or whatever, colorfully and comfortably outfitted in a pair of loose-fitting red Wranglers over turquoise and silver boots, topped with a soft, v-neck pink cashmere, a hint of muscularity overriding her otherwise soft femininity.

"Spare me the crap about being special. I don't need the warm-up or the pitch. I already told Doctor Lerner I don't need a shrink."

"You've been here for what," Black replied, "almost twenty four hours?"

"About that. I should be out of here by tomorrow or the next day."

"Back through the looking glass, eh? It's amazing the way we women create such illusions for ourselves, as though we can simply step beyond the fact we were beaten and left for dead by the man in our life. I often imagine Nicole Brown Simpson living under such an illusion. They say she was already knocked unconscious before he started carving. You know, of course, what the knife represented."

"Sure. It represented his prick. But my problems with Hershey are nothing like Nicky and O.J.," Rickie said. "We've never had problems in the bedroom like O.J. had with Nicole. Everybody knows Nicole left him because he couldn't get it up anymore."

"You're avoiding the subject. Your husband put you in the hospital."

"I'm in the hospital because I miscarried. It was probably to be expected, what with me trying to have a baby at my age. I resent your implication I'm somehow avoiding reality."

"It was a whole lot more than a miscarriage. Dr. Lerner said you nearly died from internal bleeding."

"I'm tired, Dr. Black. Thanks for trying to help me. You can thank Dr. Lerner for me on your way out."

"That's it, Rickie. Deny it ever happened!" Black's tone was harsh.

"I don't deserve this treatment. Dr. Black, please leave now."

Black wandered to the window, where a good sized storm was brewing, bringing an eerie, purple darkness to the cityscape. "That's true. You don't deserve mistreatment. You didn't do anything to deserve to be battered. Somehow, it happened anyway, didn't it? From what your son tells me, it isn't the first time in your life."

"You've been talking to my son?"

"Jesse Edwin tells me Hirschfeld's been abusing you for years."

"Get out!"

"Hirschfeld is looking for you. He'll doubtless locate you within the next few hours, or days. I'm sure it will be a happy occasion for him. In fact, some of the most vicious batterers become tender and affectionate when their woman has taken ill. Are you looking forward to seeing him? Looking forward to his pathetic attempts to comfort you, to shower you with attention and affection?"

Rickie flung the Jell-O at her tormentor, the sloppy bomb exploding across the center of the soft pink cardigan. Black stood, motionless, her brown eyes radiating compassion.

"Is that how it starts?" Black said. "Does he first humiliate you into a rage? Does he insult you and goad you into starting the fight first, which gives him permission to finish it?"

"Shut up ... shut up! It always starts with a stupid argument! This last time was because I erased over a tape he was saving. It was so stupid! He made me so angry I threw the tape at him! It bounced off his shoulder and then he started in on me! I couldn't make him stop! He hurt my baby! He killed my baby!"

Rickie, finding the door of her imprisoned emotions thrown open by this interchange, was swept away by her escaping feelings and soon found herself screaming and shaking and crying, her body held in check by the comforting strength of the doctor until at long last it seemed not another tear could be extracted by any means. As though in counterpoint to her performance, the storm outside broke with a loud peal of thunder and a downpour of another sort began outside her window, the calm in the room being magnified by this outward show of Mother Nature.

"I still don't feel I need counseling," Rickie finally said. "Thank you for caring. You're a nice lady."

"Awhile back, my cat Kali delivered a nice litter," Black said. "I'm looking for a home for the last one. She's the runt, but she's a handsome runt, a white and black female. She's three weeks' old."

Rickie, wiping her eye with a tissue, said, "I don't believe this. You came in here to confront me about my being a battered woman, and now, failing to sell me your services, you're trying to pawn off your runt?"

"One does what one can," Black said. "When you're trying to get rid of the runt, you simply have to ask everyone you meet."

In spite of herself, Rickie smiled. "This is crazy. I'm grinning from ear to ear and I can't seem to stop. I can't believe you tried to give away a runt!"

Black, caught up in Rickie's grin, displayed one herself from which an arc of joy leaped, infecting Rickie's spirit further, to the point the two women began to laugh wholeheartedly and without reservation, as though to erect an emotional hedge against the rainy day outside the window, and to reaffirm the goodness of all things.

"Doctor Black, I thought I'd never hear myself laugh again. I'll take the runt."

"Aha," Black replied. "Call me."

### Chapter 10

At a hair before 10 P.M., Jesse Edwin left her hospital bedside to attend a local AA meeting in Westwood, leaving Shank in his stead, the older man lounging in a chair in the corner of the room, remaining on watch presumably to guard her against unwanted oversized intruders who specifically matched the description of one Hirschfeld." There's something different about my son," Rickie said. "He's so...so glowing! He has an air of assurance that was never there before."

"He's showing a lot of guts and hustle," Shank, Jesse Edwin's AA sponsor, agreed. "He's walking on the bright side of the moon right now."

Rickie was finding Jesse Edwin's sponsor--a somewhat grizzled yet still handsome in a lanky sort of way Irishman--easy to talk to. The man sported a day's growth of white beard and his appearance was waning from tired to exhausted, an effect magnified by his coarse, whiskey voice, doubtless from his past years in the barroom when whiskey, women, and cigarettes ruled his life. The only feature on his lean sharp face which didn't seem to belong were his lips, which perched below his elfin nose with a meaty sensuality. She could not fathom the reason why he, a perfect stranger, turned out to help in her crisis and stayed gamely on the way he had. Of course, supposedly, he was there to serve as an emotional bulwark to her son. Did the man never sleep? Apparently not. Nor did he eat. He seemed to survive solely on Starbucks coffee. Even now, Shank, on his own initiative, furnished them both with a couple of top quality coffees, brought in fresh from the outside world, heavy with cream and sugar, still steaming in large paper cups.

"Jesse Edwin thinks I'm an alcoholic," she said, sipping gratefully the excellent brew. "Do you share his views?"

"Nobody can call you an alky except yourself," he replied. "You may be, or you may not be. To tell you the truth, I'm not completely sure there is any such thing as an alcoholic. Some say it's a physical disease, and some say it's psychological, or spiritual. I'm not sure myself, but I do know the program works for me. One day at a time, of course."

"I find it odd you would doubt there's such a thing as an alcoholic."

"A lot of people believe there is. Perhaps it's a mystery, and whenever we encounter life's mysteries, we have a tendency to stick a label on it to make it more comfortable."

"Shank, if you don't mind my asking, how long have you been sober?"

"Going on eleven years."

For some reason, this amount of time seemed a huge number to her, as big, perhaps, as the sum of the universe itself--a googol--which could not be comprehended.

"Eleven years? Without a single drink?"

Shank smiled. "It's hard to imagine, isn't it? I've practically forgotten what the stuff tastes like."

"You also forgot to answer my question. I asked you if you thought I was an alcoholic and you sidestepped it. I only wanted your opinion."

"You don't look like an alcoholic. Of course, there's a lot of silk-sheet drunks in this town in particular who look great right up to the end. You do appear to have many of the problems a typical alky has, meaning of course, your problem with your husband. I'm not sure I can give you my opinion. Especially since we've only barely met. I really don't know enough about you."

"You know more than you're letting on. I know for a fact Jesse Edwin must talk about me to you when he's doing his confessions, or whatever it is you people make him do."

"We don't call it a confession," Shank said. "Nobody makes us do anything. What you refer to as confessing, we call a Fourth Step. A moral inventory. A fearless self-searching for moral defects which need to be corrected. You're right. Because I heard Jesse Edwin's initial Fourth Step, I may know more about you than you'd like me to, but it hasn't hurt my opinion of you in any way."

"Tell me something he told you."

"Sorry. Can't."

"I drink mostly on weekends when my husband's with me," she said. "I don't think I'm an alcoholic. For example, I don't take a morning drink, or do a fifth of vodka a day."

"Perhaps it's time you started."

"What?"

"Just kidding. It's not how much you drink. Or when. It's more a question of why you drink, and how you feel about yourself. So I can't answer your question for you. Since you'd like my opinion, if I had to guess, I'd say it's more likely you're what we call a co-alcoholic."

"Co-alcoholic?"

"A person who lives with an alcoholic and enables them to continue their drinking. Most serious Alkies have co-alcoholics living with them so they don't have to face up to the consequences of their actions. We call people like you "anchors". Your emotional support helps slow your alky husband down on his slide to the bottom. If you left him, he'd drink more and hit the bottom sooner."

"You think I'm anchoring my husband, as you put it, from sinking all the way to the bottom?"

"I'm guessing. Maybe you're a plain old garden variety alky. You don't look like a typical alky to me. You're much too beautiful a woman. You could be a movie star. You look like a red-haired Audrey Hepburn. You've got a star's charisma. You might be what we like to call a silk-sheet drunk. You're in great physical shape. Jesse Edwin's told me how proud he is of your running ability. That means of course, you've got a nice set of wheels, which of course I find of interest, being a single man."

"Shank!"

"Sorry. Back to my opinion of whether or not you are or aren't an alky. I'm thinking you don't fit the traditional description of the street drunk most people associate with full-blown alcoholism. I mean, you live--or used to live--in Beverly Hills. That's well above the poverty line. You're not in the gutter. You've got a lot of money, so by anybody's standards, you're a stunning success. Except, of course, for the problem we mentioned."

You're much too beautiful a woman. In spite of herself, Rickie was flattered. When was the last time anybody'd said that to her?" A further thought struck her, one which did not sit well. Is my son's sponsor hitting on me? What incredibly poor taste! Hitting on me, a battered woman, as I lay here in my hospital bed! Yet for some strange reason, something inside her was responding! I must be an alcoholic, she thought. I'm feeling something for this guy in a completely inappropriate way! God help me!

"You're not so bad-looking yourself," she found herself saying, and hating herself for saying it, her need at this time to fish for further compliments and approval somehow galling her. "Although it might be because they've got me all doped up. I have to tell you, I find it repelling to be hit upon while in a hospital bed. I find it disgusting, in fact. Somehow, I don't hate you for it. No, I have to admit you look well in your Lauren suit. I won't encourage you. I won't ask what it is you do for a living, or try to find out your sign."

"We're not hitting on each other," he said. "We're bantering. I apologize. Perhaps it was my misguided attempt to try to lift your spirits. Or perhaps it's because I haven't dated in over a decade. I'm old and I live alone, so I often say or do things which are embarrassing. I'm a Pisces. As for what I do for a living? The truth is, I don't do all that much. At least not anymore. I'm what they used to call a business workout artist. That is to say, I worked freelance for troubled companies who needed advice as to how to creatively crunch their numbers in order to avoid bankruptcy or receivership. I don't do much of that anymore. Occasionally, if somebody I know in the program needs business advice, I do what I can. My real passion is speaking at regional AA meetings. My last engagement was in Seattle, where I shared my experience, strength and hope with a crowd of over five thousand screaming alkies."

Shank looked up at the ceiling and half-smiled to himself. "Man, I was good that night. There wasn't a dry eye in the house."

"Five thousand screaming alkies? I can't imagine such a thing. Your life sounds very complicated. I don't think you should call yourself old. Because if you're old, what does that make me?"

"I lied to you," he said. "That spiel about being a financial workout artist was a lot of gobbledygook. Something tells me I need to keep things between you and me on the level. The truth? I used to steal money, lots of it. Not with a gun, but with crooked bookkeeping. I worked for people with heavy mob connections. Eventually, I bailed out, but not before I became well-to-do."

"You worked for the mob? Are you a for-real Mafiosi?"

"I never took the blood oath; I was content to remain a front man. The mob isn't really easy to get into. The book has been closed in L.A. for years. The organization employs a lot of clean people to work at the legitimate end of the money pipe. Especially in regards to the movie production companies, which were my specialty. Not that it matters. I'm actually retired from the business. My last gig was under the direct supervision of the Godfather himself. That was eleven years ago."

"Eleven years ago, you quit working for the mob and got clean and sober. Do you realize you just now admitted to me you're a criminal?"

"You can count on three things from a practicing alcoholic," he said. "We lie, cheat and steal. I'm recovering. I'm no longer out practicing. The only lying, cheating and stealing I do now are in the areas of emotional honesty, and my Sponsor helps me keep that to a minimum."

"You've got a sponsor?"

"I do. He's a mean old codger, too."

"How long's he been sober?"

"The way he tells it, he sobered up shortly after getting drunk with Adam and Eve the night they got kicked out of the Garden."

"Hershey's a player in the industry," she said. "Have you ever stolen anything from any of his production companies?"

"Everybody connected with the industry is well aware of Hirschfeld's position in it," Shank said. "He's a big-fry. The big fry's control their money with an iron hand Hitler would envy. That's why they've got so dang much of the stuff. That doesn't mean they don't lie, cheat and steal. Hirschfeld hangs out in the dark shadows cast by the evil wings of the Disney empire. I was never as corrupt as Hirschfeld, or his patron saint Michael Eisner--that guy steals kids' lunch money and uses it to finance child porno movies made by the Weinstein brothers. Me, I worked mostly behind the scenes through various legal firms, you know. Working with the kind of companies nobody's ever heard of. I got my start in the early '80's working with certain aspects of Johnny Carson's portfolio."

"Johnny Carson?"

"C'mon Rickie, don't act surprised. You know how it works. There's never been a talk show host yet who didn't owe his success to the mob."

"I don't think it's my son's fault he has a problem with booze," Rickie said. "Jesse Edwin's father was full-blooded Navajo. We met at a concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I was up there for the summer taking a class at Berkeley."

"Those were the days."

"Weren't they? He was ten years older than me. I thought it was totally cool to be hanging out with a full-blooded Navajo. His name was Bobby Q. Short for Qumayousie. He was very retro, like somebody out of the early 70's. He wore his hair in two braids. He even carried a very large knife on his belt. But when we discovered I was pregnant, Bobby showed his true colors and escaped the problem by hiding out on the reservation in Arizona."

"That's too bad," Shank said.

"I found out later that Bobby had mental problems from Vietnam. He was one of the last people out of there in the 70's. A friend of his told me Bobby Q. liked to run through the mountains with no shirt on, killing Viet Cong with his knife. They called him the Montagnard Monster. He adopted Montagnard ways, even to the point of having their priests sacrifice small animals and drip the blood on his chest. He terrified the Viet Cong. They thought he was protected by an evil spirit."

"Ah," Shank said. "The days of wine and boat tail bullets. I myself came of age in a field of elephant grass in a little corner of Hades known as the Ashau Valley. Me and sixteen other guys walked into that grass and I was the only one to walk back out. If I were to put my finger exactly on it, I'd say that's where my problem with booze began. By the time I returned from the Big Asian Vacation, I was only able to function if I held a flask of scotch in one hand and a sawed off shotgun in the other, and a green hornet in my mouth. In the jungle, I used the hornets to keep me awake for a week at a time, and the scotch to mellow me out."

"It's horrible what happened over there."

"Exactly. The Vietnam war affected everybody," Shank said. "In your case, Bobby was too whacked out to assume any responsibility, and you missed out on a chance to marry the father of your son and were forced to raise your son alone. But I think you did a pretty good job."

"My son was my life. That's why I never married until I met Hershey. I know it sounds odd, but I never wanted anyone but his own natural father to raise him. After Jesse Edwin grew up and went out on his own, I was lonely, and when I met Hershey, I caved in and quit the single life. Shank, do you think Jesse Edwin could have inherited the tendency to abuse alcohol from his father?"

"Do you mean, is it a genetic predisposition? Does your son fit the stereotype of the drunken Native American? I don't think so. I don't think it's a racial thing. I think it's a mystery why some people can drink normally and some can't. The problem is, nobody knows when they take that first drink which path they'll be going down. Unfortunately, sooner or later, everybody tries alcohol. It's like playing Russian roulette. Some of us make it, some of us don't. By the way, where did you and Hirschfeld first meet?"

"You'll never believe it," she said. "We met at the intersection of Sunset and Doheny. Hershey was on his way back to The Dell after a grueling day trying to launch a new production company. He'd been drinking and was driving too fast. He ran a red light and demolished my brand new Toyota with his much heavier Rolls Corniche. I was leaving work when he nailed me. The front of my car was nearly torn from the frame. We both got off without a scratch. An angel must have been guarding us"

Outside her window, the storm clouds cleared, leaving in their wake a clean, cold, jeweled carpet of city lights spreading far to the south. Rickie shook off the memory of the day she and Hirschfeld met in order to better contemplate the man before her. Shank appeared completely at ease in the hospital room, so much so, it seemed as though she and he had been talking in this fashion for most of her life. She was almost alarmed at the comfort level she felt with him, realizing, in truth, she knew nothing about the man, except for his resume of being a self-admitted thief with mob connections. On the plus side, he was currently involved in some important way with keeping her son sober, and was here now obviously as a result of his dedication to that cause.

"So tell me," Rickie said. "Why is Jesse Edwin so sparkling? What have you done with my son?"

"He's been working hard on his Twelve Steps," Shank replied. "He just made good on his earlier commitment to himself to attend 90 meetings in 90 days."

"You didn't really answer my question."

Shank laughed, his puckish face in itself a form of anti-depressant for Rickie's doleful mood. "Your son is glowing because he's worked his Steps and had a spiritual awakening."

"Stop playing games. I don't know stairs from steps. What do you mean, he's had a spiritual awakening?"

Shank took a long slurp of his coffee and locked his gaze on hers. "It's really very simple. Jesse Edwin found God."

This statement was a bit too much for her to ponder. Idly, she recalled her visit with the Blessed Virgin and the purple cloud. "I had a spiritual awakening after I passed out in the hotel room. I learned the secret of life, but now I can't remember what it was."

"It'll come back to you when you need it most."

"Shank, you've been here for what seems like days. Do you never sleep?"

"Rarely," he said, smiling. "But I never take my boots off."

"Never?"

"Only for special occasions."

"By the way, Shank. I meant what I said earlier. In my opinion, you're not really all that old." I'm starting to like you, Rickie thought. I hate to admit it, but I really am.

The door to her room whooshed opened and Hirschfeld barged in, his hair wild, his suit rumpled, his formidable bulk sucking all the psychic space out of the air. The smell of booze, stale sweat and too much cologne poured off him, cloying the atmosphere. Rickie felt like somebody reached inside her and switched the light off. Her anger for her husband began to foam around the edges of her soul at the same time her fright meter went straight off the dial.

"Let's get you up and get your things together," Hirschfeld said. "I'm taking you back to The Dell."

### Chapter 11

"I'm tired," Shank said softly, still lounging in his chair in the corner, as though the barging in of large violent husbands into hospital rooms was an everyday occurrence in his life. "At present, I'm not exactly in a bad mood, and I'd like to keep it that way. So if I were you, my friend, I'd leave quietly right now."

Hirschfeld blinked and turned to Shank, as though seeing him for the first time. "Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm Shank. It's not important who I am. It's more important you listen to what I said. If I were you, I'd leave quietly right now."

"I didn't know you had a boyfriend," Hirschfeld said to Rickie. "It makes sense. It explains why we've been having so much trouble lately."

Rickie attempted to speak, but found she could not, her throat constricted as it was from fear.

Hirschfeld's single-minded energy had to go somewhere, deflected as it was by Shank's interjection into the flow of his mission to retrieve Rickie from the hospital bed and return her to the certain and hideous bondage he doubtless had planned. Accordingly, the big man took a menacing step towards Shank, as though to direct a jumbo portion of rage via two large clenched fists straight into Shank's weathered, unshaven face.

"You don't want to do that to me here," Shank said.

"Say what?"

"You don't want to do that to me here," Shank repeated, speaking slowly, and softly. "I know you feel like doing it, but I'm telling you, you don't want to. For your own good, I'm asking you to reconsider." Shank continued to slouch casually in the chair, as though a bored parent talking to a stubborn child. "I know who you are, Hirschfeld. I knew you'd come here. That's why I've been sitting here without sleeping for the past eighteen hours. Because I knew you'd come charging in here like this. I can't let this whole thing come to a head here in this hospital room."

"Oh but I can," Hirschfeld smiled thinly. "And I will." His bull neck tightened, his clenched knuckles turning white. Rickie had seen this posture before; it always came right before Hirschfeld exploded. She realized with a start his sudden appearance in the room caused her to sit bolt upright, the resulting strain on her abdomen the fresh cause of a dull, booming ache inside of her.

Shank reached casually into the inside pocket of his jacket as though to remove a pistol and removed what appeared instead to be an astonishing roll of greenbacks about six inches thick. "Y'know, Hirschfeld, guys like you bore the crap out of me, so over the years I've found ways to make these types of confrontations more interesting. There's fifty thousand dollars here in my hand. What I propose to you is we leave this room and enter the elevator together. When the elevator door closes, I'll drop the fifty grand on the floor. I'm betting you can't pick up the fifty grand and make it past me and leave the elevator in one piece."

Nothing stirred in the room. The two men stood staring at each other. Rickie began to weep silently. Time passed, but whether it was seconds, minutes or hours, she couldn't be certain.

"Leave the elevator in one piece," Hirschfeld finally said--a statement, not a question.

"Leave the elevator in one piece," Shank affirmed.

Suddenly Hirschfeld's focus turned inward. He slowly shook his head and unclenched his fists, as though somebody had pulled his plug. "No," he said. "No." He walked to the door, glancing back at Rickie before returning his gaze to Shank. "I'll see you later," he said.

"Yes," Shank replied.

As suddenly as he'd appeared, Hirschfeld was gone. Rickie felt she could not immediately cope with what she'd witnessed; her emotions were simply scattered over too large a space, the energy required to gather them together was beyond what she could muster. It seemed something must eventually be said to Shank, but she could think of nothing. She sank heavily back upon her pillow and closed her eyes. There was a little prickle of darkness in the back of her mind. The prickle formed itself into a black hole and she fell deep into it, falling farther and farther, until there was nothing left but rushing blackness.

### Chapter 12

"How do I feel?" Rickie said. "I feel anxious, guilty, and pessimistic, to name a few of my feelings."

"That's what I was afraid of," Judy said. "I think you should call the therapist Dr. Lerner recommended. The one you threw the Jell-O at. You should call Dr. Black."

Rickie awakened early in the morning to find Judy sitting in the chair Shank occupied the prior evening. In an attempt to put behind her the incident of the night before and also to avoid further her painful downward spiral of depression, she'd gone into action. Taking matters into her own hands, and, with Judy's able assistance, Rickie checked out of the hospital on her own recognizance, entirely against Dr. Lerner's recommendations.

Judy herself helped ease Rickie into the shotgun seat of the ancient "rusty but trusty" Plymouth Voyager and driven her wounded cargo slowly and carefully back to the tiny beach side abode, the small house with the big garden, so frustratingly close to the shore and yet without a view of anything but the utilitarian backside of Shutters hotel. On the drive over, Rickie detailed her interactions with her various and sundry visitors of the prior day and evening, which began with Dr. Lerner and included Dr. Black, and finished up with her surprise storm-trooper visit from the drunken Hirschfeld, and Shank's odd, but elegantly barbarian response to Hirschfeld's threats, which caused Hirschfeld to back down.

Rickie carefully omitted mentioning any of the feelings she'd found herself feeling for Shank, wanting instead to give the feelings an airing in the cold light of day.

The winter storm having spent itself the previous evening, and having failed to destroy the pier and beach, left in it's wake not destruction, but instead a crisp, clean, bright February's day, which inspired the two women to brew a strong pot of coffee. They soon found themselves enjoying the privacy of the heavy-hedged winter garden as they sat in the sunshine upon a cushioned bench beside a trickling fountain. Happy goldfish flitted about in the fountain's deep basin. From where they sat, they could see the gate which led onto the street.

A white, official-looking unmarked Crown Victoria pulled up outside the gate and a heavy-set woman in a blue uniform, her substantial bulk tackled with a wide leather belt hung with various leather-holstered security implements, including a sidearm of some sort, stepped out and gave a nod to Judy.

"Who's that?" Rickie said.

"Security," Judy said. "I'm having the place guarded for the duration."

"A female guard?"

"She looks tough enough to me. She's got a gun. I don't want you having to worry about Hirschfeld popping up out of nowhere like he did last night. Now don't change the subject. We were talking about you contacting the therapist. Rickie, you need to make the call."

"You can't afford to hire a guard, Judy!" Rickie's concern for her friend was real. Judy, in her job capacity as some sort of secretarial peon for the Rand Company, the world-renowned think tank to which the city of Santa Monica was host, earned certainly less than most of her neighbors, as was evidenced by the deferred maintenance on the bungalow, which was considerable.

"I've got some money saved, Rickie," Judy said simply. "You know Paul left me a little insurance money when he died."

Judy had been married to Paul, a crop-duster, and living in Fresno when his plane went down in a field of alfalfa and the crash claimed his life. Judy, after a year of mourning, upon waking one morning to find herself at the beginning of emotional recovery, and feeling within herself her childless, spouseless life (juxtaposed, as it was, in the family-oriented mosquito swept environs of Fresno County), to be much too lonely, chose to return to the family bungalow at the beach and start a new life.

"I'll find a way to pay you back," Rickie said. "Have her run the plate on my credit card. It's Hershey's money. He might as well pay to protect me from himself. Speaking of Hershey, he was supposed to send some people out to replace the window he broke. I can see by the cardboard and the duct tape nothing came of that promise."

"It's okay. You're still trying to change the subject. The important thing is to work on getting you better. I want you to call Dr. Black and schedule an appointment first thing."

"I'm drained. Burned out. A therapist needs something to work with. There's nothing left inside me to shape into anything wonderful. Hershey has beaten everything out of me. I'd only be wasting my time calling Dr. Black."

"So you're going to give up trying? You're going to become a nothing? Why does that sound an alarm in my head?"

"Judy, I'm not suicidal, if that's what's worrying you. I'm not eager to reach out and embrace life right now. The best I can envision in the near term is sitting in your garden, stoked on painkillers, watching the fish skim the flies."

Rickie didn't tell Judy the truth. Which was she felt it useless to attempt therapy. The truth is, she was resigned to her fate. She was ashamed of herself for tolerating the battering, embarrassed by her role as a victim, and she found it humiliating to talk about it even to Judy.

"Do you ever wonder how I feel?" Judy said. "I feel helpless, and a little angry. I wish I could do something besides sit and watch my best friend die a slow death by trampling beneath the split hooves of the pig from the underworld."

Rickie clenched Judy's hand. "I love you, Judy. Don't feel helpless. Without your help, I know I wouldn't have a chance of making it. The fact I can stay with you, in a place where I feel comfortable, means the world to me."

"I wish I could do more. I called Personnel and booked myself off for the week. They don't need me this week anyway; most of the braniacs in my group are attending some sort of fun-fest in Washington. Hillary's trying to enlist them to decode what she believes to be subsonic messages to her from whales or something. It's part of a promotion for her new book, It Takes a Humpback."

"You've got to stop reading The Enquirer. Besides, everybody knows she doesn't write her own stuff. She ought to name her next book, It Takes a Ghost."

"The Enquirer? I picked that one up off an internal memo from my department head. Look, Rickie, I'm not letting you out of my sight for a single minute. I'm going to do some of my famous French cooking and clean for you and see to your every need."

"Now I know I'm in trouble," Rickie said. "We both know you can't cook. Your frog legs don't taste like chicken. They taste like friggin' frogs."

Judy smiled. "We'll order in every meal, then. In fact, I'll walk down to the pier every afternoon and load up on fresh churros for our afternoon high tea."

"You know, Judy, right now I feel like I'm on one side of a brick wall too high to climb over. I've never felt so helpless, and weak. If you weren't here for me, I don't know what I'd do."

"It's not only me. Your son is here for you. Jesse Edwin loves you. He's coming over tonight after he gets off work."

"True, I have Jesse Edwin. He doesn't deserve to share in the punishment I received from Hershey. I don't want to bring my son down at the most critical time of his life. It's so unfair. He just got out of rehab and moved in to his new apartment. He's brand new on his job at the bakery. He should be getting my support and love. Instead, all he's getting are my wounds, my rage, and my misery. I hate it that I'm so weak! I should be able to solve my problems quickly, and easily!"

"It's not you who has the problem, it's your husband. I know where you're coming from. Your feelings are all over the place right now, telling you what a mess you're in, but in time your feelings will change and you'll see there's still some sunny days ahead."

Rickie drained the last of her coffee. "Jesse Edwin tells me the secret to happiness doesn't come from worrying about yourself, but instead from helping others."

Judy held Rickie's shoulders and spoke softly. "I know what Hirschfeld's done to you. Jesse Edwin's right. A life lived serving others with compassion will bring you back to life again. You can't spend your days hating Hirschfeld. Hate will use up all your energy. You've got to get some love in your life. You can start by loving your son. Maybe that will lead you to love yourself."

"You're probably right," Rickie said. "I've lived through the worst of the disaster. I feel like it's broken me. Now all that's left is to try to put the broken pieces back together. Judy, there's something I want you to do for me."

"Anything, Rickie."

"I need you to call Forest Lawn Memorial Park. I want to arrange a small memorial service."

"Rickie?"

"It's for a child. I've decided it was a girl. She would have been a sister to Jesse Edwin. I've named her Jessica Edwina. There won't be a body, and there's no death certificate. In fact, I'm sure Dr. Lerner's already disposed of the remains as though they were so much trash. I'm going to make it up to baby Jessica Edwina. It's the first broken piece of my life I'm going to mend."

"Okay, Rickie. I'll call Forest Lawn."

"I want north side, overlooking the horse stables. Order the best headstone they have. Now, go get me the phone. I'm calling Dr. Black and then I'm going to take a serious nap."

In the garden, after Judy left her, silence held sway for a moment as the universe held its breath as if in wonder at Rickie's decision to find healing. A brief moment later, the universal breath released itself again, the gentle winter's wind rustling the leaves on the plants surrounding the fountain. It stirred the splashing waters into a mesmerizing spray, the flashing rainbow pattern of which Rickie, perhaps aided by the painkillers, or perhaps by her guardian angel, found enjoyable and hypnotic. The urge to nap rushed forward and claimed her where she sat. By the time Judy returned with the phone, the serious matters of arranging memorials for non-officially recognized fetuses and the contacting of therapists were postponed, for the moment, as Rickie's tentative exhalations soon became loud snores, of which Judy, the breezes and the goldfish, and the guard standing watch, minded not a bit.

### Chapter 13

Rickie awakened from her nap in the garden to find herself ravenous. Accordingly, Judy made a refueling run up the street to the open air pedestrian mall on Third Street and returned with sufficient grub to re-energize a soccer team. The Sunday afternoon sun was weakening, having fallen behind the hotel, leaving long, cool shadows over the house and garden.

"Dr. Black's office is in Sherman Oaks at the corner of Sepulveda and Ventura," Rickie said. "She wants to see me at 9 o'clock tomorrow. Also, she reminded me I agreed to take a three week old kitten off her hands. She'll have it waiting for me in her office."

"I'll drive you over," Judy said, "but I can't put the cat in my Voyager because of my allergies."

"How will we pick up the cat?"

"We'll think of something. I hope it's accustomed to living outdoors, because that's all I can offer it here. It'll have plenty of company. The alley behind Shutters is crawling with them. We'll have to leave her in my potting shed until we make sure she's got all her shots."

"The real problem I have right now is that I need my clothes and personal effects. I can't live in the most famous beach city in the country without clothes, I a certainly cannot continue to hang out in a borrowed bathrobe. Must I go see a shrink for the first time with no lipstick or deodorant? What if she thinks I'm crazy? Judy can you go get my things? Hershey won't be there; he's going to be busy with his weekend night shooting schedule."

"I'm going over to get your things right after we finish dinner," Judy said. "I'll slip in and out and he'll never be the wiser."

Rickie, wrapped in a heavy robe and comfortably ensconced in the tiny living room, held court from the patched leather easy chair in front of the TV with the sound off, wolfing away on her second bacon cheeseburger, slurping through a straw a thick chocolate shake between bites, while half-watching.

"Judy I've been thinking. Maybe it isn't safe for you to go over to my place alone. What if Hershey comes back and finds you moving my things?"

"What if he does? What's he going to do about it? I have my pepper spray. If he gets out of line, I'll melt his eyeballs."

Rickie pondered this. An image of Hirschfeld, held at bay by Judy, seemed surreal. Hirschfeld would be in full red-faced fluster, glowering at Judy, who'd be laden with sweaters, pants, tote bags, and her small red key chain canister of pepper spray. Would the confrontation end with the two of them yelling like savages, the conversation terminated by Hirschfeld's pealing howls as he received a full-face shot of the stuff?

"It's not worth it," Rickie said. "I'll simply have to re-outfit myself some other way. Maybe we can drive over to Nordy's in the morning. I'll simply have to max out my Platinum Visa."

"This is a fine pickle. No. We're not going to Nordy's. I'm going over to get your stuff. Hirschfeld is not going to control this trip."

"I'm sorry. It's a very strange situation to find oneself in, to say the least."

"What a long, strange trip it's been," Judy sang. "I'll never understand how someone as beautiful as you could suffer at the hands of such a man as Hirschfeld. With your Audrey Hepburn good looks, you should be married to Spencer Tracy instead, having a storybook romance."

"Spencer Tracy? He couldn't tell the difference between a woman and a monkey. Do you not remember him spouting all that crap about evolution in Inherit The Wind? At least give me Rock Hudson; gay or not, I'd take him."

"As would we all." The room was growing darker, and Judy got up to turn on the lights. "Oh wow," she said, as she passed in front of the window. "There's a stretch limo at the curb. It's Jesse Edwin and Shank."

In spite of the painful effort it took to rise from her chair, Rickie got up and went to the window and was presented with the sight of Jesse Edwin supervising the retrieving of a guitar case from the trunk of a black stretch Lincoln limo, the limo driver smartly attired in white shirt and black tie, while Shank stood aft of this business, talking with the heavy-duty female security guard, removing something from his pocket and showing it to her. Rickie wondered how Shank mixed so fluidly with whoever he came into contact with. Whatever he was saying to the guard seemed to produce a certain amount of genuine friendliness from the normally professionally stoic woman.

"Jesse Edwin's sponsor, Shank, is really weird," Judy said.

"Weird doesn't describe it," Rickie said. "Weird doesn't cover people who flash fifty grand in bully's faces and threaten them with wholesale mayhem in elevators."

"I wonder exactly who he is," Judy said.

"We stayed up talking most of the night," Rickie said. "I'm still not sure."

"He's not bad-looking in a sort of wasted Marlboro man sort of way," Judy replied. "Angular, but perhaps could be made to cuddle. Apparently rich as sin. I wonder if he's available. How's my hair?"

"He's an old, burned-out alcoholic," Rickie snapped. "Don't even think about it."

"Rickie? Rickie? Don't tell me!"

"Blast you, Judy," Rickie said, fuming.

"Oh, I can't believe it. This guy spent eighteen hours with you in your hospital room. Something passed between you, didn't it?"

"I was on drugs and in extreme distress. He rescued me from Hershey. Apparently a few stray hormones were wafting around the room, that's all."

"The man looks great in the Lauren suit," Judy said, flipping on the porch light and opening the door to greet Jesse Edwin, and appraise the trailing figure of Shank, whose long-jawed face radiated with kindness. Over Shank's shoulder, Judy caught Rickie's eye and silently and exaggeratedly mouthed a large "Wow".

"We'll skip the normal entryway amenities," Judy said. "You guys don't have to gawk at my living room and tell me how attractive it is. I already know it looks hideous. I own the place free and clear. Me and the termites, that is. If the roof doesn't fall in and if you guys haven't eaten, there's a bag of burgers and steak fries in the kitchen and--" here Judy paused only a split second, quickly assessing what kind of liquid refreshments to offer two alcoholics. "There's plenty of Cokes in the fridge," she said, recovering herself.

"You got any booze?" Shank said.

"Are you kidding, or what?"

"I'm kidding. Is there coffee?"

"I'll put on a fresh pot," Judy replied, brushing herself closely past him, an action Shank made no attempt to avoid, duly noted with irritation by Rickie.

Shank and Jesse Edwin efficiently made themselves at home at the tiny kitchen table and attacked a couple of the big greasy burgers and heavy, slabby fries in a manner that suggested idle chit chat, for the moment, best be delayed. At the exact point when the last bite of the first burger had been taken, and fresh coffee poured, Rickie could stand it no longer. "What's with the limo? You guys getting married or something?"

Jesse Edwin looked up. "It's Shank's car. Shank can't drive. Can you believe it? He's the only man in L.A. who can't drive."

"It's true," Shank said, delicately dabbing at his lips with a paper napkin. "I'm probably the only person in this town who cannot operate a motor vehicle."

"Is that an alky thing?" Rickie said, and instantly regretted making the statement from the way Shank's face clouded over briefly before recovering its composure, the composure not quite at the level it had been before the statement.

"It's a personal decision I made a few years back," Shank said. "One of these days I'll tell you all about it."

Shank's darkened expression wrenched at Rickie. What was behind his decision not to drive? She tried in vain to read his mind behind the decent, intelligent face, but she could read only pain, and a sheltering of bitter thoughts.

What did you expect of him, she thought. The man's an alcoholic. God only knows why he doesn't drive. He probably T-boned a school bus or something.

Alcoholic. The word was totally inappropriate both for her inner and outer assessment of the man sitting before her. She searched for a better word and gave up. Labels were of no use here. The man ran hot and cold, as though he had an inner flaw which switched the electricity on and off. When it was on, she felt the fire. When it was off, she felt shut out, silenced. She laughed, a harsh dry sound she instantly regretted making. She was outgunned emotionally, unable to defend herself against the onslaught of confusing feelings about everything going on around her. Her son's brave new self, fortified by something he referred to as God, Shank's mercurial moods, Judy's self-sacrificing compassion was too much. She longed to return to normal, but understood normal was a place she'd probably never find again.

"We need to establish the ground rules here," Rickie said. "I want both of you men to put away the pitying stares once and for all. I had an unpleasant thing happen to me, but as you can both see, I have survived. I'm going to continue, not only to survive, but to grow stronger. Only an hour ago, I made an appointment with a shrink. I've only eaten two cheeseburgers. I've even given some thought to coming with you guys sometime to one of your little meetings. So let's quit worrying about poor little Rickie. She's going to be fine."

The words came out slightly acid, and Rickie felt weak beneath her statement of bravado, so much so, she returned to her chair, drawing her robe tightly around her. "I lied," she said. "The truth is, I'm scared and I feel like crap. I need you guys to help me not be so scared."

Jesse Edwin stood up and unpacked his guitar. It was a good one, a vintage Martin 12-string acoustic, a classic model. After a few moments spent tuning up, he began to play. And play brilliantly, his fingers pulling from the strings a series of richly-vibed arpeggios. Was it Handel? Mozart? Something he made up himself? It was music. Music with the power to invoke deeply buried dreams from the interior lives of its hearers, who left their workaday world behind to travel Jesse Edwin's crystal roadway to a higher sphere. After a time, the last chord diminished in the air and Rickie was returned to her former world, which now, in the silence, felt like a pile of cold ashes.

"I'll never forget this moment," Judy said.

"I don't know whether or not to cry or jump up and shout," Shank said. "Thanks, Jesse Edwin."

Rickie smothered her face in a tissue. "Don't anybody look at me for a moment. I'm about to turn into a complete mess."

"More coffee?" Jesse Edwin said, busying himself with pouring and serving, too modest to take any more compliments.

"Shank?" Judy said, "I've got to run an errand in Beverly Hills tonight, and I wonder if you could take me."

She's already moving in on him, Rickie thought, and checked herself. It was too absurd, and too soon, to be giving sway to those kinds of feelings.

"Sure thing," he said. "Where to?"

"Rickie's house. We need to pick up her clothes and personal items. Don't worry about Hirschfeld being there, because he probably won't be. In any event, I'm taking my pepper spray. It's the most concentrated form there is, over 15 million to 1. I sprayed it into a pot of chili one time. It ruined the whole pot. Think what it would do to Hirschfeld's face."

"I'd love to find out, but I'm glad for his sake Hirschfeld won't be there," Shank said. "Rickie, is it all right if I go with Judy?"

Good, she thought. He's keeping the tie with me. It wasn't all in my head. "Go ahead, Shank. Judy, don't forget to get my shampoo from the shower, and my entire Arden Green Tea collection from the dresser."

"Mom," Jesse Edwin said. "I've got a problem."

Rickie peeked out over her tissue. "What is it, son?"

"Maybe now's not the time," he said. "I'll wait until these guys leave."

"These guys are your family. Why not tell all of us?"

"I'm chickening out. I'll tell you later."

Shank spoke up. "Jesse Edwin hasn't been entirely straight with you, Rickie. He's told you he's been sharing an apartment in Van Nuys with a friend. The truth is, he's homeless. He's been sleeping in the basement of Our Lady of Grace church over on Ventura and Whiteoak."

"Homeless? What about your job at the bakery in Northridge?" Rickie said. "Surely you're making enough to at least rent a room."

"I don't have a job. I went there for a day, but I couldn't handle it. They had me working with all these ex-cons, scraping burnt butter off trays all morning and when it came time for my break, I left and never went back. I only told you I was working there so you wouldn't worry about me. The truth is I've been too messed up emotionally to do anything but go to meetings."

"What have you been eating?"

"The church feeds me. I've been doing a little painting for Father Larry, the Parish priest."

"Shank? With all your money, you couldn't help?"

"He has to make it on his own."

"Come here, Jesse Edwin," Rickie said. For a long time, she held on to him, saying nothing, but wanting to say everything and not knowing how to say it.

Judy spoke first. "You can check out of the church basement. You've got a home now, Jesse Edwin. Right here. For as long as you need it."

"I can't, Aunt Judy. You heard Shank. I have to make it on my own. Besides, your house is too small for the three of us. I'd only be in the way."

"You're staying here. Don't argue. You've been having a rough time. Your mother is like family to me. This is what families do. We're the safety net."

"I have a tent," Jesse Edwin said. "I can set up in your backyard, if it's all right."

"A tent?"

"I'll be okay. My sleeping bag's rated for 10 degrees below zero."

"Why not?" Judy said. "A tent in the backyard it is, then. This is the beach, after all."

"Thanks, Judy. I'll find a way to pay you back."

"You can start paying me back tomorrow. I've got lots of work for you right here."

"Anything."

"The first thing you can do tomorrow is fix this broken window. Hirschfeld was supposed to do it, but of course nothing's happening."

"When you're done with that, I've got a little job for you," Rickie interjected.

"What's that, Mom?"

"A pick up and delivery."

"Sure thing, Mom. What am I picking up?"

"It's not a what, it's really a who."

"Who?"

"A kitten in Sherman Oaks."

### Chapter 14

Sunday evening brought a quiet hush over Santa Monica as Mother and son were sitting in Judy's tiny living room sharing coffees together, Judy and Shank having departed for the finer, nobler, ex-bean fields of Beverly Hills to scavenge what they could of Rickie's necessaries.

"I'll bring the tent over tomorrow," Jesse Edwin said. "I've got it stored at a friend's place in Reseda. It's not a bad little tent. If I pitch it next to Judy's garage, behind her potting shed, it'll be out of the wind. Nobody'll even know I'm there. Shank will take me back to Our Lady of Grace tonight. I'll sleep in the basement one more time and catch the bus back here tomorrow."

"Bring me my purse, Jesse Edwin." He did so, and Rickie pulled out her Platinum Visa. "This credit card has a preferred customer limit of one hundred thousand dollars. I want you to walk down to Shutters and take this card and book yourself a room. In the morning, I want you to use this same card to go and buy yourself a new car. There'll be no more talk of tents. If they give you any static, have them call me."

"I can't do that, Mom. Shutters is way too expensive. I can't take your money like that. I haven't earned it."

"I'm not going to sit idly by and watch AA brainwashing destroy your life. Nobody makes it on their own in this rotten world. We make it by sticking together. You may have found God, but I was the one who screamed her guts out giving you birth. I'm still your mother and you'll do as I say. As of this moment, you and I are through living in humiliation. Six months' ago, your stepfather put you on the street and it nearly cost you your life. As far as I'm concerned, it's time he paid his penance for his cruel actions. He can start by putting you up in a fine hotel and buying you a car and seeing you get a decent meal three times a day. Besides, I'm going to be here at Judy's for awhile, and I want you close by. At Shutters, you'll be walking distance."

"I'll look for a job. It's time I faced up to my responsibilities."

"You'll look for no such thing. Tonight I realized the truth about you, Jesse Edwin. You're an artist. A rare talent. You'll never be able to fit into the workaday world. You're job is to play guitar and bring to others the joy you brought us tonight. Your stepfather is a man with many connections in the entertainment world. It's time he pony'd up some of those connections to give you a leg up. He's going to pay up, if I have to drag him into court to do it."

"I'm scared," he said. "There's been so many changes, lately. Last night, I wanted to go over to the house and kill Hirschfeld. If Shank hadn't been with me, I might have tried it. Shank forced me to say the Serenity Prayer about fifty times."

"You must stick close to Shank. If you let yourself get all stressed out over my problems, you might slip back."

"No. The Program works. The Big Book says, Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. I'm going to follow that path for the rest of my life."

Rickie sipped her coffee. "Jesse Edwin, you're a changed young man. I've been sitting here wondering exactly what it was that was different, and I finally identified it. You're not as angry as you used to be. Your music has changed. Last night, what you played was so beautiful, not like that heavy metal you played for all those years. For so long, I prayed you'd open up and lose your anger. Now that you have, I almost don't know what to do with you."

"I still play heavy metal," he said, smiling. "I've found a new home. It's a place where I'm accepted for who I am. I used to be so alone, so lonely. I think that's a big part of the reason why I drank so much. It helped me to kill the pain of all that loneliness. I feel like I've found my lost tribe."

"I'm still drinking," she said. "I guess I don't need to tell you that. I'd like to quit, but I don't yet have the freedom you speak of to abstain."

"It's okay, Mom. Please don't think I'm preaching about your drinking. I'm only sharing my experience, strength and hope. Right now, you're in a precarious emotional condition. Even a dangerous one. That's why Shank and I are hovering around you. Soon, you'll feel better and you'll be able to get on with rebuilding your life. Remember, you didn't create the problem. Hirschfeld did."

Rickie smiled faintly at her son's exposition of wisdom. She was exhausted. "I'll be fine, Jesse Edwin, really. I'm feeling better already seeing your improvement." Without warning, the tears gushed from her eyes, a strong searing emotion giving rise to a deep and tender grief within her.

"Mom, what is it?"

"It's nothing, son. It's nothing and everything all at once. Now go on and get out of here and be back for breakfast in the morning. In fact, have the hotel prepare breakfast for everybody and bring it over here when you come."

He left her and she was alone in the house as the surrounding city quieted down for the night. The distant roar of heavy breakers could be heard, their force still in effect from the earlier churnings of the storm. The deep grief within her continued its bittersweet vibrations. With a start, she realized the horrible truth about herself: she missed Hirschfeld. After all he'd done, after all she suffered, and she still missed him.

Dear God, it's an awfully lonely time for me. I need your help. I'm sick and caught up in something beyond my control. I still miss my husband. I want to go back to The Dell and sleep in my own bed and be surrounded by the things I love. I don't want to be dependent on the charity of friends. O Lord, I'm sorry. You know everything anyway. You know what's buried deep in my heart. God forgive me, but I'm so lonely I've even looked at another man.

The telephone rang.

"It's me, baby," Hirschfeld breathed into her ear. "I miss you. Your friends are here at The Dell picking up your things. I followed them all the way over here from Judy's. They don't know I'm watching. I won't try to stop them. I'm trying to change. I'm going with a policy of total non-interference in your life."

"Where are you spying on Shank and Judy from?"

"I'm standing right behind that big clump of pampas grass beside the garage. I can see everything from here. Although it's a little dangerous. I hear something rustling inside the clump. It might be that raccoon we've been having problems with. Hopefully it's not rabid."

"Hershey, why did you call me? What do you want?"

"To apologize for that scene in the hospital last night. That was wrong of me. I was drunk. I've stopped drinking for the moment. I decided to quit cold turkey. If I'm not an alcoholic, I'll be able to. At any rate, I'm going to get my head clear. I really love you baby. I'll do whatever it takes to be the man you need me to be."

"I'm getting ready for bed. So don't think I'm coming back tonight, or any night in the near future."

"That's okay. Rest up at Judy's for a few days. I know you're pretty upset at me. You know I'm hoping and praying you'll come back."

"Jesse Edwin's staying with me. I've put him up at Shutters. You're going to pay his hotel bill. Tomorrow he's buying himself a new car."

"Sure, baby. Hey, I'm through fighting with Jesse Edwin. He can move back in with us if he likes. It'll be like old times. No, better. With him not drinking, it'll be better. I'll try harder to be a father to him. Maybe he'll even convert me into admitting I'm an alcoholic like he is. Maybe we'll both go to meetings together, father and son. A new car, huh? Have him call Kasha over at Simonsen Mercedes and tell her I sent him."

"No. I want him to go out and do it by himself. It's time we treated him as an adult."

"Suits me."

"What if we hadn't lost the baby?" She said. "Have you ever wondered what our lives would be like? What if we hadn't suffered this tragedy? Would we have simply gone on like we were, unconscious? Is this what it took to open us up?"

"Baby, I know right now it seems like things will never be the same. Maybe it's better that way. Maybe we needed a wake-up call. Look, we can take it slow. We can have coffee brandies by the fire the way we used to do. We can chase lobsters around the living room like we did on our honeymoon. Rickie, we've got five years together. We can make it."

Rickie remembered her honeymoon night. Hirschfeld hired a catering company to bring in a box filled with fifteen live Maine lobsters, which they prepared in a huge boiling pot on the verandah of their suite in Vegas. They'd stuffed themselves with the sweet, buttery meat and huge hunks of hot sourdough bread washed down with an earthy Italian red wine. At last it was time to consummate the wedding, but as Rickie and Hirschfeld prepared to slip beneath the sheets, an overlooked lobster scuttled into view from beneath the bed. They'd chased the thing around the room for a half an hour, laughing themselves sick.

Where did that man and woman go? The couple who could find joy chasing a lobster? It seemed like a million years had passed since then.

"Never mind the lobsters. If you want to get back on my good side, you're going to have to truly accept my son into your life. I don't want empty promises. You're going to do that before we even come close to reconcilement. You're going to finance his music demo, the one you refused to do six months ago, when you put him out on the street."

"I can do better than finance a demo that nobody'll listen to," he said. "I'll start making him into a star. We'll debut his skills at some of the local clubs. I'll call Freddie Kopelsen at home tonight and have him put together a pickup band and hype it around. We'll start collecting video clips for a summer release."

"Freddie Kopelsen tried to sue you last year."

"That was last year, this is now. Freddie owes me big time for helping him re-edit the Bruce Willis picture last Christmas, which I might add was a total mess before I stepped in and saved it. Even Bruce finally admitted it stunk before I streamlined it. I'll book our son into this new studio we've been using over at Sony Pictures, where they can actually live there, and stay up all night hanging out with the other artists in the Jacuzzi and stuff while they get creative. Have Jesse Edwin call me."

"No. Jesse Edwin's not one of your suck ups who has to beg for a favor. You're going to call him."

"Fine. I'll call him. I'll contact him in his suite at Shutters."

"Hershey, I just realized what you said. You called Jesse Edwin "our son". You've never called him that before."

"You see? I can change. I truly can."

"You're a rat and I hate your guts but I hate myself more because for some sick reason, I miss you. I miss what you and I could've shared together. I don't see much fun in all this right now. Right now, I hate myself for even talking on this phone to you. I should be getting my lawyer Lauren Shane to skin you alive, but instead I've hired a shrink who's going to help me sort it all out. Hershey, when you killed my baby, you stole my life from me. I don't know what it's going to take to get it back."

"We'll get it back. Look, I've got to get off the phone or they'll hear me talking behind this bush. Judy and Shank are coming out. They're piling into the man's limo. That was a nice touch on Shank's part, by the way, the limo I mean. I checked him out. He's a sleazy crook with mob connections. He used to help Ernesto Catalano launder money through the outlying economic empire of a certain very famous late show host."

"Shank worked for Ernie the Foot?" Rickie shuddered. Ernie the Foot, Godfather of the West Side, was an L.A. icon, his life a source of constant media inquiries, well known for his bloodthirsty business dealings and love of money.

"I even heard Shank killed somebody and served a little time back in the late '80's. I don't like the way he looks at you. You've got to promise me you're not starting anything with him."

"I'm not starting anything with Shank," Rickie lied. "There's nothing between me and him. Anyway, he's retired from all that mobster stuff. He's not a crook. He's helping Jesse Edwin stay sober, which is more than I can say for you."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe he's not a crook or a player anymore," Hirschfeld agreed. "If he was up to anything now, I'd know about it. He lives big, though. I hear he's got a fancy place in Bel Air. I must say, Shank and Judy look pretty friendly tonight. Maybe she's going to find a workable romance. They'll be back at your place in a half hour. I'm heading back downtown to the night shoot. I should've been there two hours ago. We're going to fireball the tenement down by the Greyhound station on 7th Street. Maybe we'll do the city a favor and allow the flames to spread to that roach infested rat trap of a bus station while we're at it. I love you. I'll call you in the morning."

"One more thing. Fail in this and we're definitely finished."

"Anything. Name it."

"Get that crew over here and get that doggone bay window installed. No wait. That's not enough to pay for your sin of striking at Judy. I want you to put a new roof on as well."

"A new roof? Because I broke a window?"

"She's entitled to decent shelter. Hesitate again and I'll have you painting the place as well."

Hirschfeld quickly agreed. The buyback of his wife was going well, which lessened his chances of having to feel all that terrible about what he'd done, or what he was rapidly escalating into, thus making the future promising for his chances of enjoying his life exactly the way it was, without the burden of having to change it.

Rickie wrinkled her lower lip and contemplated darkly this new information. Shank killed somebody? It was all moving too fast. Rickie felt her resolve to leave Hirschfeld dissolve under the pressure of his effort to intensify the attachment between them. She made a mental note to slow down. For now, she'd simply go to bed and avoid seeing the man. Perhaps things would make more sense in the morning.

### Chapter 15

After a strong Ambien night's sleep and an even stronger Monday morning breakfast, ordered in from Shutters and delivered by an upbeat Jesse Edwin, Rickie dressed simply in loose-fitting black slacks topped off by a sensible gray sweater, at which point she set out to keep her morning session with Dr. Black.

Having been chauffeured from the beach to the Valley by Judy, the two friends made their way to the waiting room of Black's third floor office located in the bank building on the northeast corner of Ventura and Sepulveda.

Rickie was greeted by an assistant who helped her through the plethora of obligatory forms. This was followed by a warm greeting from the Doctor herself, who escorted Rickie to the inner sanctum which was light, bright, and airy. Rickie eyed with curiosity an empty gun holster on the desk.

The two women squared themselves away in comfortable armchairs on opposite sides of the coffee table. Without waiting for the doctor's preamble, Rickie launched immediately in.

"He called me a lazy, stupid bitch," Rickie said. "Right before he threw the first punch."

"That's common batterer talk," Dr. Black said.

"I've learned to step back when he does that."

Black laughed pleasantly. Rickie noticed she was a natural beauty, of obvious Native American extraction. The doctor was tall, slender and physically fit, with light makeup, no nail polish, and no earrings. Black favored bright colors--turquoise slacks and a soft, yellow cashmere top accented with a tiny golden peacock pin.

"I guess you're going to talk me into permanently ending the marriage," Rickie said. "You're going to tell me not to fall back into my habit of basking in the aftermath of Hershey's temporary charm, which he always turns on full force after he beats me."

"We may get around to all that psychological stuff eventually," Black said. "Our first task is to get Rickie into the room."

"Excuse me?"

"Whoever you are, I'm not sure, but I'm certain Rickie's not even here yet. Rickie's body is here, but the rest of her is somewhere far away. I'm going to suggest you and I wait here in this room without talking for the next hour, and see if Rickie herself is willing to pay us a visit."

With that, Black went to her desk and began fiddling with her papers.

"Dr. Black?"

"Mmm?"

"We're just going to sit here? Don't you want to hear what's going on with me?"

"No, I don't. I want to hear what's going on with Rickie. Rickie's not here. If she doesn't show up today, we'll set up another appointment for tomorrow." Annoyingly, Black began to whistle, amateurishly, the Toreador Song from Carmen.

"Dr. Black, it's me. Rickie. I'm sitting right here."

"You're not Rickie. Whoever you are, I do appreciate your coming today to cover for her in her absence. After all, I can't blame Rickie for not being here. Rickie wants to escape from her husband, and the escape process is risky and dangerous. She's terrified of leaving and terrified of staying. She knows her husband is stalking her and she knows she might be killed. She feels guilty because she's going back to him."

"Please don't talk about me as if I'm someone else."

"Whoever you are," Black said. "Give Rickie a message for me. Tell Rickie she's a beautiful woman, one worth saving, and I'm going to do everything in my power to help. Tell her we're not going to waste our time dealing with the guardian personality she's created to block us in our quest for healing."

"Dr. Black, I--"

Black shrieked fearsomely at the top of her lungs. "Rickie! Do you want to live or do you want to die? Rickie! Do you want to live or do you want to die!"

The shock from the surprise shriek hit Rickie with the force of a jet blast. She felt herself begin to burn at Black's shout, her deeply buried emotions--until now held in check--dangerously out of control, vibrating like crazy heat inside her heart and head.

She was trapped. Her entire body began to shake as a series of dark, malignant, volcanic, unknowable energies flowed up and out of her through her gasping mouth. Attempting to extinguish this psychic blaze, Rickie slumped from her chair and writhed on the floor, her body instinctively curling into a protective ball.

"Oh, God help me," she cried. "God help me! I'm too far gone! I'm too far gone! I'm going back to him! He's going to kill me! I'm going to die! I'm going to die!"

Black walked over and knelt, cradling Rickie's tortured face between her strong hands. The doctor's shining black eyes bathed Rickie's soul in their compassionate light. "Hello, Rickie. My name is Dr. Black. I'm here to help you. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

### Chapter 16

Rickie, having emerged from Dr. Black's office completely exhausted, and agonizingly sore from the prior surgical intrusions at the hands of Dr. Lerner, beseeched Judy to take her back to the beach cottage immediately, whereupon she'd fallen into a heavy sleep, awakening at the cusp of a fast-falling winter's twilight. She awoke under a soft down comforter in Judy's bed and was attracted by voices and pleasant food smells coming her way through the bedroom door from the living room. Having donned her favorite thick terry robe, she'd walked out to discover Shank, Judy, and Jesse Edwin hard at the business of demolishing a trio of heavily pepperoni'd pizzas with extra cheese, washing down the delightful mixture with iced mugs of Coke, the exception being Shank, who nursed his usual, a large Starbuck's coffee. Rickie, finding herself ravenous, set upon a hunk of pizza eagerly, wolfishly, in fact, forgetting manners for the moment. Her renewed stamina thus suitably fortified against the coming winter's night, she broached the subject of Jesse Edwin's forthcoming opportunity to profit from Hirschfeld's patronage and found herself rebuffed by the young man.

"Mom," Jesse Edwin said. "There's no way I can justify working for Hirschfeld."

"Your stepfather is going to a great deal of trouble for you," she said. "It's time you showed him you're worth it. And you're not working for him. He's turning you over to Freddy Kopelsen."

"Don't call him my stepfather," Jesse Edwin said. "I have a father, and I don't need a fake one."

Shank let out a long whistle. "I hope you're worth it," he said to Jesse Edwin.

"Worth what?"

"All the time and trouble your mother's spent on your behalf. Maybe you're right, Jesse Edwin. Maybe you're not worth the helping hand she offered you. Maybe you need to keep hanging out at meetings and hiding from the world."

"Shank!"

"Now it seems to me," Shank said, "somebody who plays the guitar as well as you would look forward to a chance to bring that talent to the front where we mere mortals can enjoy it."

"Not if it means kissing up to my step-dad. I nearly killed him the other day. Why should I suddenly feel different today?"

"Nobody's asking you to feel differently," Rickie said. "I don't care if you hate Hirschfeld. I'm sure you do. Even if you do, you ought to at least take advantage of him. Use him. Perhaps that will be your best revenge. Take advantage of the opportunity he'll give you and make it on your own from there."

"We've got churros for desert," Judy said, attempting to move the mood to a lighter plane. "I picked them up at the pier earlier today. They're warming in the oven."

"Mmmm!" Rickie said. The churros were her favorite Mexican desert, shaped as they were like the grooved, cylindrical trunk of a saguaro cactus, dusted with the sands of cinnamon, cleverly comprised of ridged, sugar-coated dough, deep fried crispy on the outside, hot and moist on the inside, the able confectionery providing to the eager eater a major league chomping experience which really kicked the taste buds into new domains.

Judy returned from the kitchen with a tray holding a plastic thermos of coffee, four coffee mugs and a napkin-lined wicker basket piled high with the toothsome stack of churros. "We're having something special. Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. It cost three hundred bucks a pound. I got it as a prize for making a money-saving suggestion at my work."

"What the heck did you suggest?" Shank said. "A new way to travel in space?"

"No. I told them if they moved the printer the secretaries share; we'd save over 15,000 minutes extra a year travel time walking to and from the darn thing."

"You should be running the company," Shank said.

"I'll settle for the coffee and not having to walk as far. I've been saving this stuff in the freezer for over a month, but now seems like exactly the right time." Stepping to a sideboard next to the window, she selected a bottle of Kahlua. "I hate to do this, especially because you guys are such big AA'ers and all, but I'm sorry ... I usually enjoy a little something in my coffee after dinner. Is the sight of me having this going to make you guys slip or need to run out to a meeting or something?"

"We want you to be yourself and be comfortable in your home, Judy," Jesse Edwin said.

Shank raised an eyebrow. "I'll try to hold off the urge to drink myself to death until I can be alone."

"Rickie?" Judy asked, proffering the Kahlua.

"Please," Rickie said gratefully, selecting a churro and nipping off the tip. "Spike the coffee. I'm sick of feeling everything I have to feel. Numb me, Judy. I refuse to feel guilty around you two holy men."

"You don't have to," Shank said. "Just be yourself. What could be simpler? Besides, it's good training for Jesse Edwin. When he begins his music career, he'll have to hang out with a lot of spineless groupies, kissy-faced schmoozers, and hacks, boozers all, who not only drink excessively, but do many other things besides which aren't recommended in the Big Book, the Good Book, or any other legal publication."

"Don't alcoholics have to avoid places where alcohol is served?"

"This is America. Where in America isn't it served? The country is floating in the stuff. Alcohol is the national beverage. We alkies don't have to stay out of the bars, or avoid certain social occasions, not if we have a legitimate reason for being there. Remember, sobriety is between an alky and his God. It's not dictated by the outside circumstances of this world. If an alky decides to drink, he can find a bottle of booze in the middle of the North Pole. If he decides not to drink, he can swim in a vat of beer and never take a sip."

Rickie took a generous gulp of the most excellent coffee and Kahlua and followed this with an even more generous mouthful of the churro, savoring the mix of sugar, cinnamon and crispy dough. "I saw my shrink today," she said. "I can't share with you what happened there in that room, but I can tell you I came away determined to make a fight of it. That's why I must insist, Jesse Edwin, that you accept Hershey's help and force him to make good on his promise to help you. Whether or not he and I ever have a future together, I think he certainly owes us a few things."

"Talk about owing you. He had your car towed away on a flatbed truck this afternoon," Jesse Edwin said. "I hope he plans to return it."

"He's going to replace the tires he ruined," Rickie said.

"Are you sure?" Judy asked. "Maybe he wanted to strand you here so he can stalk you more easily."

"That thought occurred to me."

"I'm not being completely fair," Judy said. A contractor stopped by to talk about putting in a new bay window and, get this--a brand-new roof! They're starting work tomorrow. It will be great to have the roof fixed so it doesn't leak. They're going to spray some kind of miracle sealer on it."

"The heck they are. Tell them we want real wood shakes, not some miracle age gunk that'll peel off in five years."

"Okay, Rickie. I'll tell them."

"I'm glad, Judy. Although I don't see why you don't simply sell this place. The lot alone is probably worth at least a million. You could move to Santa Barbara. I might even join you."

"You know why. This place is all I have left to remind me of my family. My father was one of the first surfers around here."

"Not to change the subject," Rickie said, "but what's important here is not what we old farts are doing, but Jesse Edwin's future. Shank, Judy already knows it, but you may not realize this. Jesse Edwin's been playing the guitar since he was two years old."

"Two years old!"

"I'm serious. As a toddler, he used to walk around our apartment, picking up anything he could find and strumming it. He even used to strum an old golf club."

"It's true," Jesse Edwin said.

"Now listen to me, Jesse Edwin," Shank said. "You're going to have to put the best face on this you can. You're going to take that call from your step dad and take advantage of whatever he can do for you."

The younger man looked helplessly around him. "Mom, how can I do it? I have to confess something. Something pretty horrible. I lost all my instruments."

"What?"

"I lost everything. That Martin 12-string I played yesterday belongs to a friend of mine in the Program."

Rickie was aghast. "Jesse Edwin, what happened to all your equipment?"

"When Hirschfeld kicked me out, I hocked some of it to support myself," he said. "Some of it disappeared right before I went into rehab. You know how it is when you live with losers. They ripped me off."

"You lost your entire collection of guitars?" Rickie looked dolefully at Judy and Shank. "My son owned a collection of more than twenty-five guitars. One of them once owned by John Cippolina, the one he used on Piece of My Heart. We lived on macaroni for years to be able to save up for each new guitar."

Jesse Edwin didn't know it, but he was crying. On his face was a dazed, confused look as his thoughts returned him to a dark past, a place peopled by demons that lurched about in smoke and unquenched flames, waving aloft his precious guitars, hooting and jeering at the broken spirited young man with the bottle of booze clutched in his fingers where a guitar should have been.

"It's okay," Rickie said. "I realized the night I nearly died none of it matters. Then I saw the lady in the purple cloud, and I learned we can't take it with us."

"It sounds like you saw the Blessed Virgin, Shank said, interested, perking up.

"Are you Catholic?" Rickie asked.

"Well," Shank said, "it was all so long ago. Are you Catholic?"

"My answer is the same as yours," Rickie said. "Judy and I went to Catholic school. But that was about it. Which is why the sight of the lady in purple surprised me."

"What do you mean?" Shank asked.

"I told you I experienced a spiritual awakening when I passed out in the hotel room. What I didn't tell you was I saw Our Lady. I can't talk about it. The truth is I can't remember most of it. I see a small piece of it once in a while inside my head. It's like a movie clip that plays without warning. I can only say all we can take with us when we leave this life is our name. It's the first thing we receive when we're born, and the only thing we take with us when we die. The only thing that matters is whether or not we're taking a good name or a bad name with us when we leave. Jesse Edwin, tomorrow, you're heading over to McCabe's and replace your guitars as best you can. Then you're going to make music and get yourself a good name among the people of this earth."

"Mom," he said. "I can't. Don't you see? I can't keep taking your money. I can never repay you."

"You are my son," she said. "Don't you get it?" She spoke slowly, mouthing carefully each word. "I ... am ... your ... mother ... you ... are ... my ... son. I gave you your life. You can never repay me anyway, so what's the difference? What you can do for me, is to start obeying me when I tell you to do something. You can start by honoring your mother."

"That's good advice," Shank said. "If every kid did what his mother told him, he'd be a millionaire by age thirty, marry the right lady and never have an unhappy day."

"What about my pride? Doesn't anybody in this room care about that?" Jesse Edwin said.

Judy sipped her coffee carefully. Rickie stared at her fingernails. A fresh winter's wind whipped up outside, shaking the tiny dwelling, enhancing the sense of connectedness for those gathered inside.

"Screw your pride," Shank said, a hint of a smile parting his lips. "That's what got you into such a mess in the first place."

"Why are warning bells ringing in my head?" Jesse Edwin said. "Two days ago, my mom nearly died. Today she asks me to get help for my music career from her wanna-be killer."

He looked at her, and in the light from Judy's faux Tiffany lamp, Rickie noted with awe the regal bearing he'd obtained out of his Navajo ancestry; the fascinating ruby glow burning like fire beneath his high cheeks, his long black hair resting on his slim shoulders. My son is beautiful.

"You should braid your hair," she said. "The way your father used to do."

He looked at her. "Okay. I'll braid it."

"Forget about Hershey," she said softly, exercising her raw intuition. "Put your anger where it belongs. Put it on me, son. I can hold it, you can't. Put the anger on me." She opened her arms to him.

Trembling, he leaned over and hugged her to him. She could almost feel his rage winding down. The tears were coming faster now, finally nourishing the taproot at the bottom of his soul. His body began to shake. As soon as it began, it was over, the young man standing up and turning away from them all, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

"Tomorrow I'll go to McCabe's. I'll take Hirschfeld's call."

"Judy, I need my pain medication," Rickie said. "For some reason, there's pain everywhere inside of me tonight."

"It's the pain of healing," Shank said. "Welcome it."

Judy left and returned with the capsules, of which Rickie took two and washed them down with the sweetened Kahlua and coffee.

"By the way, Mom," Jesse Edwin said. "I've got some news for you. Several things, actually. The first is a receipt for a new car ... you're going to kill me, but I blew thirty-five grand on a new Jeep Grand Cherokee. It's parked right outside. Am I dead?"

"No," Rickie said. "That's good. They took the credit card?"

"Without question," he said. "It was a real power trip, walking in there with the card and pointing to the best car in the showroom and saying that's the one."

"I want to see it in a moment, as soon as I feel strong enough to walk outside. You said there was something else. What is it?"

"I'm glad you're sitting down. I started a search today for my father. I used some of your money to hire an agency to find out what happened to him."

"I feel dizzy," Rickie said. "Did you say you're looking for Bobby Q?"

"I am. There's a good chance I'll find him. Although they warned me he might not still be alive."

"I'm overwhelmed. I'm sorry, son. It's simply that I've spent the past thirty years trying to keep it all carefully contained. The thought of actually seeing your father again after all this time, or even knowing what happened to him, it's almost too much for me to take in."

"There's one other thing I have for you."

"Show me."

"I'll show you when your pain meds kick in," he said. "Because you'll have to walk out back with me to see it."

Rickie frowned in puzzlement. "It?"

"Perhaps we should call it her. She's a new addition to our family. I should warn you. She's not your everyday cat."

Rickie's face grew hot and her voice trembled. "Dr. Black's cat. I completely forgot. Well I simply have to say, if these are my final days, I couldn't ask for them to be spent in any better way than to be here with you guys tonight."

"I'll drink to that," Shank said, hoisting his coffee.

"Me too," Judy said, raising her mug aloft.

Rickie's eyes caught Shank's in mid toast. He was locked on to her gaze in a way that seemed to say, you're starting to rub off on me. She broke contact, feeling the brief exchange carrying with it a quality of intimacy that shocked her, and possibly revealed things to him about herself she wasn't fully aware of, or at least ready to acknowledge.

Why am I doing this? The man will think I'm pursuing him. Suddenly, conscious of an obligation, Rickie slowly rose to her feet. "Let's get this old lady moving," she said to Jesse Edwin. "We've got a cat to greet."

"And how," he said.

### Chapter 17

The cat had no hind legs.

Rickie gazed, at first in disbelief, then in anger, as her emotional climate turned nasty. She knew of no proper response for such a surprise. Dr. Black set her up, delivered to her, on purpose, a damaged cat. Where the hind legs should have been were simple nubs. The tiny feline stirred and meowed from its position inside the cardboard box where it peered up at them.

Rickie held up a hand and backed off. "This is sure a stinko way to spend Monday night. I want to scream. I want to cry. I'm not going to do all that in front of you two guys. I'm simply not going to. What I am going to do is go back inside and fix myself a very large, very dry martini and while I'm doing that, you two can put this cat in a bag with a rock in it and take it someplace else, maybe out to the canal, I don't care very much where, simply as long as I never have to look at this thing again."

"Mom?"

His voice was challenging. "Jesse Edwin, you heard your mother!"

With some haste, the young man disobeyed his mother and chose, instead of cat disposal duty, to himself disappear, evidently too soft-hearted for the task of cat extermination and not wishing to be in the wake of further emotional blasts he felt might be forthcoming from his mother.

"Maybe if you let the matter sit overnight--" Shank began.

Rickie whirled on him. "Then everything will be all right? What do you think I've been doing! I've been going to bed every night hoping it was all going to be okay in the morning. Well, it never has been! If it hasn't been all right for the past five years, why should it be all right tomorrow?"

"You're a little nervous," Shank said, "what with the poor creature having no hind legs and all; a case of nerves is to be expected."

"I'm not nervous, I'm angry," she hissed.

Shank placed a hand--a firm one--on Rickie's shoulder and began steering her towards the damaged cat. "We need to get this done. Pick her up."

"Get your hand off me. Take that thing outside and get rid of it."

Shank let her go and reached inside the box and picked up the cat. He placed one hand around its neck and began to squeeze. "You want it dead, you got it."

"Shank!"

"Right here, right now, while we both watch." The eyes of the kitten began to bulge as its body writhed vigorously in a vain attempt to throw off the death grip. "You want it dead?"

Rickie slapped him hard across the cheek. Shank squeezed harder on the hapless feline's throat. "You want it dead?" Rickie slapped him again. "Stop it!" She screamed. "Stop it! I'll take the cat!"

"Okay," Shank said, releasing his grip and handing over the terrified kitten. She held up the thin wriggling beast, whose lungs, like tiny bellows, worked furiously to reaffirm life to the endangered furry corpus. Shank turned to leave. "Wait," Rickie said.

"What?"

"You were hideous just now. You were cruel. I could see you were enjoying yourself."

"I've been called worse. You're wrong, though. I didn't enjoy that. It was simply something that had to be done."

She stepped quickly to the man and placed a soft kiss on the reddening area of the slaps. The brief contact bridged the uncrossable gulf between them, leaving them both on the threshold of a fresher, finer grade of mortality, a vulnerability which needed reassuring in a way that would force both of them across the line into a world where the rules were as yet ill defined. Shank put a hand on the place where the kiss landed, a wounded look spreading over his features. She hadn't expected that. His eyes, when she looked fully into them, were uncertain. Suddenly she felt close to tears.

"Shank, I--" she began. There were no words for what she was feeling.

"Fine," Shank said. "Fine." His features hardened, and there was a firmness and finality to his voice. With that, he turned and was gone, leaving her alone with her cat, the new edition to the family, the creature which had, only moments before, been contemplating the end of all things. Rickie examined the head of the animal, surprised to find it of sound construction, with wide golden eyes and a mischievous black dot over a snow-white nose.

"Your name will be ... Dot," she said, her voice unsure. "No, make that Just Plain Dot." She scratched the nose of Just Plain Dot and the creature nuzzled its newfound benefactress, the helpless gesture triggering mixed feelings inside Rickie. Suddenly she wanted Shank. In two quick steps, she was outside, watching Shank enter the Limo, watching until the car disappeared down the street.

"God, I need a kiss," she said aloud. The cat meowed. "From him, not from you." There would be no kiss coming, not on this night, at least. If there were one coming on some other night, she wasn't sure she could reconcile it with all that had happened in the past forty-eight hours, and even if she could, she was entirely uncertain if she possessed the chutzpah to follow the lead where it was going. Foolish thinking. Would she even see Shank again? Perhaps not. There would be no kiss. Not tonight. Maybe never. So she settled for the next best thing. The martini. Stroking Just Plain Dot thoughtfully, she entered the house, set out a saucer of milk, and began the fixings for the large martini, confident that soon, thanks to the benevolence of a prime double-shot of vodka, she'd be on a flight to another place entirely, where the blackness of darkness reigned supreme, and feelings of wanting a kiss could be felt without damage, or the counting of costs she had no ability to pay for.

### Chapter 18

The following morning, Tuesday, at 6:30 A.M., Rickie awoke and placed the jackstraws of her jumbled consciousness into a neat pile before breaking what should have been the rule of a lifetime and phoning Hirschfeld. "Come and pick me up," she said, and hung up. Hirschfeld was there inside thirty minutes to find his wife standing on the sidewalk, wearing only her terry robe, from the big left pocket of which protruded the head of a kitten. He opened the passenger side door of the Rolls Silver Seraph and she got in. Without speaking, he followed Ocean Avenue, beside the fog-shrouded bluff, all the way to San Vicente before turning right and heading towards Sunset. The traffic was still light, with a few people out jogging down the park-like median, figures moving in the fog like spiritualized beings descended, for the moment, to enjoy a brief taste of the richer-than-heaven atmosphere of Brentwood.

"I'm not sure I'm following the script, here," he finally said.

"I can't leave you. I know a lot of women have sucked up the courage and joined support groups and worked through their issues, but I can't climb that mountain. I don't have the strength. The plain fact is, it's too late for us to change. We are what we are ... but it's not too late for our son. I simply realized this morning I'm simply too tired to change. I don't have enough faith and I don't have the courage. I can't change me and I can't change you. I've realized you are, at some point, going to kill me. I've accepted it. It's easier for me to accept it than to try and change it. The only desire I have left is to do right by my son before it's too late."

"Babe, you're talking crazy. I'll never lay an angry hand on you again. If you're tired, we'll take some time off. In fact, I was simply thinking we might pack a few things and spend a few days at the cabin."

"Don't, please. I don't need your empty promises. You're going to kill me. We simply don't know when. Until that day comes, we're going to spend our time helping our son. I simply want to make sure he comes out ahead, that my sacrifice isn't wasted. I realized last night I don't have the strength to fight you. Maybe I could have once. Not anymore. I'm simply too tired."

"Is this some kind of a trap?" Hirschfeld said. He sniffed the air suspiciously and looked well around him, as though a top level surveillance operation were in progress.

"Stop being paranoid. It doesn't become you. I'd rather we went on together as we were. It'll be better this way. At least this way, I know I'm living on borrowed time. Perhaps the gods will sense this, and throw me a few breaks. In spite of your cruelty, I still have some love left for you. At least I think it's love, in its own twisted way."

A long silence followed before Hirschfeld said, "Thank you. By the way, what's with the cat? You never liked cats before, and that one's surely the runt of the litter. Got to give it credit, though, it doesn't try to crawl all over the place."

"She has no hind legs."

"No hind legs? Ferhevvensakes!"

"I kissed Shank."

Hirschfeld sucked in a quick sharp breath. "Wow. That smarts. Okay. Okay, I deserve that one. I deserve the punishment for what happened to you. Okay. You kissed him. Is there anything else I need to know?"

"He didn't kiss me back."

Hirschfeld rubbed his forehead. "Then he's stupid. And smart. He's smart and stupid at the same time. Smart because if he'd kissed you back I'd have killed him. Stupid because you're worth the risk. Rickie, regardless of what's happened, I love you. We've had good times, you and me."

"I'm not coming back with the intention of making our marriage work again. I'm coming back because I can't see any other way out. The marriage can never truly work again, but I promise you I won't be cold to you. Even if I feel like it at first, I won't be cold. I won't try and make you grovel, or make a fool out of you, or deny you anything."

"Judy won't understand."

"She'll get over it. She predicted I'd do this. She's gotten over it before."

Arriving at the estate in Beverly Hills, the car waited until the electronic gates opened before it slid effortlessly up the steep, winding drive, past the gatehouse to the main house, the place rising up ghostly through the trees in the morning fog. Rickie surveyed The Dell before opening the car door. Hirschfeld caught her arm.

"Are you sure?"

"An hour ago, I took four painkillers. I'm as sure as I can be. What's for breakfast?"

Hirschfeld let go with a sob. His jaw clacked together a few times, but no words came out. Rickie took his hand. It was warm and damp. She thought about the night she'd simply spent, with its jumbled dreams and fitful night sweats, lying there in the darkness, looking for a way out and finding none. Hirschfeld gripped her hand tight and continued to blubber out his sorrows, which were many. She realized the sorrows needed drowning.

"Forget breakfast for now. Let's go inside and have a drink."

"A drink? This early?"

"We need to do something. We need to put some distance between yesterday and today. We need to get to a better place. A good strong drink is the best way to travel between here and there."

She looked at his face. It was pale and contrite. Together, they walked up the steps and through the front door.

Rickie stopped in the vast marble entryway and sniffed. The place was silent and air was stale, as though they'd walked into a morgue where the mortician favored cigars while he worked.

"Where's Juana? It smells like this place hasn't been cleaned for weeks."

"I gave her a couple of weeks off. Last night, she rode with me downtown to the shoot and took the Greyhound for Calexico. The place was a zoo. They were trying to cram fifteen thousand people into about three buses. I bought her two tickets so she didn't have to sit next to a drunk or a psycho. I gave the bus driver a C-note to let her sit up front where he could keep an eye on her."

"Then I'll have to have Judy stay over. I'm going to need help for the next few weeks."

"It's been awhile since we've kissed."

"Never mind that," she said. "First things first. I'm going upstairs and draw a bath and call Judy. It'll take me awhile because the stairs are nearly going to kill me. While I'm doing that, you can make us a pitcher of Bloody Mary's."

"Done," he said, heading down the hall to the bar.

"Then call the florist," she yelled, "and have them send over some flowers post haste. Something fragrant. This place smells like mouse piss. Also, call one of your flunkies and have them deliver some cat food and a litter box and a bunch of cat toys."

Rickie was back.

With a short sigh, she started slowly up the staircase, while at the same time extracting Just Plain Dot from the pocket of her robe.

"I'm glad you're only a crippled cat," she said. "I simply don't think I could bear it if you were a dog. I really don't think I could stand it if you jumped around and barked for joy."

### Chapter 19

The upstairs master suite bath had been remodeled to serve as a retreat, and it was here Rickie sought peace for her soul, the neutral color scheme surrounding the spacious whirlpool tub creating the sense, for the moment, of a true haven. She parked Just Plain Dot on a heavy terry towel beside the swirling waters and began preparations for her bath. The room, awash in natural sunlight, its overall ambiance inspired by Japanese bathhouse design, was full of colorful glycerin soaps and other delightful sources of aromatic scents which temporarily becalmed her as she buried her toes in the super thick floor mats. While waiting for the whirlpool to fill, she felt her nerves begin to steady as its heady mix of soothing oils, healing salts, and aromatic bubbles held forth the promise that, even on the coldest, rainiest day in Beverly Hills, Rickie need never feel chilled or abandoned again.

At which point her eye caught sight of an unfamiliar pair of black nylons lying on the floor under the vanity chair. She studied the nylons in disbelief, their casual shapelessness slithering into her psyche like a pair of soft, unwelcome pythons. Another woman, the pythons hissed. Her body reacted first before her mind had a chance to, throwing her heart into overdrive, her breath sucking in sharply as she vainly sought an equilibrium which would prove unobtainable.

She felt the breakdown coming and sat down before she fell down, hearing herself from far away emit a single yowl. She tried to think, couldn't, and at that instant Hirschfeld appeared in the doorway.

"I heard you scream," he said. His eyes, following her pathetic downward stare, locked on the stockings. He stepped forward to retrieve them, thought better of it, and stumbled backwards awkwardly, his face reddening under the confusing welter of emotions the tangible evidence of his adultery presented. His hand moved toward her shoulder.

"Rickie, I--"

"No," she said, spitting the word out, its echo clear above the roaring of the tub. "No. Don't talk. Don't touch."

They were both still staring at the stockings, the incriminating evidence so soft, yet so firm a wedge between them.

"You better go downstairs," she said, and he did so, leaving the room softly, carefully, as though his guilt weighed a hundred thousand pounds and to tread otherwise might possibly precipitate a collapse of the upstairs landing.

She took a deep breath and felt a strange sense of calm rising inside, displacing her initial shock. She went to the bedside table and got out the gun, the one Hirschfeld jokingly referred to as her "pea shooter", a tiny stainless steel Accu-Tek .32 caliber semi-automatic, and went downstairs.

He stood in the breakfast nook beside their pitcher of Bloody Mary's, staring out the window, drink in hand, sipping the blood-red concoction slowly through a straw. Somewhat clumsily, she thumbed back the hammer and raised the peashooter level with his chest. The metallic click of the hammer going back woke Hirschfeld from his dark reverie, bringing him fully around, his face going tight and white at the sight of the gun.

"You're dead," she said.

"Rickie--you're naked," he whispered.

### Chapter 20

"I meant to kill him," Rickie said. "He deserved it and I meant to do it."

"I know you did," Judy said.

The two ladies sat together in the cavernous living room on Rickie's big red leather couch with their coffees, watching a recent arrival of dark clouds spit rain onto the brick courtyard, awaiting the news of Hirschfeld's fate. Hirschfeld was somewhere in the bowels of the mighty UCLA Medical Center, having been transported there via emergency ambulance only a few hours before. His sudden arrival in the ER had not been occasioned by reason of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, but by reason of the heart attack he'd instantly suffered seconds after Rickie squeezed shut her eyes and emptied the five rounds from the clip of the tiny Accu-Tek in his direction. In the aftermath of the thunderous explosions, she'd opened her eyes to inspect her kill only to find Hirschfeld still standing, wreathed in an acrid cloud of gun smoke. She'd missed him entirely and instead peppered the ceiling directly above his hulking frame. A few seconds after the smoke began to clear, Hirschfeld responded to her assault, not with fists, but with a heart attack. She could still see his fingers clutching his chest, his body collapsing across the table, shattering the crystal pitcher of Bloody Mary's, in the red liquid of which he quickly became soaked as he blacked out from the pain in his chest before sliding from the table to the floor in an ignominious rag doll heap.

From somewhere inside herself, Rickie summoned the strength to contact Judy, who took charge, arranging for Hirschfeld's emergency helicopter medevac to UCLA where the wizards were presumably even now trying to beat the clock and keep him among the living.

Rickie, in a pair of old jeans, flip-flops and a paint-stained Dodger sweatshirt, sipped tentatively at her tumbler of orange juice. "Even though he won't be coming back for awhile, I can't stay here. Now that I know he's been with another woman in our bedroom. I'll never be able to sleep in that bed again, or enjoy my whirlpool tub, which no doubt the two of them enjoyed in my absence. It makes me sick to my stomach to even think about it."

"Well, that's progress, I guess," Judy replied. "At least you've quit fighting your fatal attraction to the man."

"I guess I have. When the gun was going off, I was in another world. A world of anti-gravity. Each bullet passing from the chamber took with it a piece of my rage until at the end, I had no anger left, only a feeling of weightlessness until I opened my eyes and he was still standing there. Boy, did I come back to earth quick. I've never been so scared of what he would do to me. When he collapsed, my terror was replaced, not by relief ... but by a horrendous guilt."

"Forgive yourself."

"That's impossible. I'll carry the guilt to my grave. I hate to say this, but not only did I feel guilty, I felt cheated I didn't finish him off. I completely surrendered to the act of murder, made a sort of weird peace with it. Now my window of opportunity is closed, and I don't think I'll ever have the strength to make another try at him."

"You need to take it easy. You weren't really trying to kill anybody. You were only trying to stop the pain he was putting you through. Rickie, listen to me. You've been through enough changes in the last 72 hours to kill a rhino. You're burned out. I think we should go back to my place and let you get some rest."

"The LAPD will probably charge me with attempted murder," Rickie said. "The paramedics were super suspicious of the bullet holes and ceiling plaster all over the place."

"What, are you kidding? First of all, for the police to make their case, Hirschfeld would have to press charges, and there's no way he's going to open himself up for a public airing of his sins, not if he values his big shot Hollywood image. That kind of publicity would be a real career breaker. No, he won't press charges. He'll simply pass this whole thing off to the world as a close encounter with triglycerides, and nothing more. If he even makes it off the operating table."

"He'll make it. Dr. Lerner's the best heart specialist in the country. Right now, she's having a field day with his ventricles and aortas and stuff. Besides, he's too evil to die. That's what terrifies me. When he gets better, he's going to come after me. I was weak. I should have grabbed an ice pick and shoved it in his ear while he was down. I'll never get another chance. My life is already over."

"Shut up, Rickie! We're not going to sit around waiting for the ax to fall."

"What other choice is there? The bad karma surrounding the murder attempt is going to pile up. I've crossed the line ... become a murderer ... if not in fact, at least in my heart. I wanted him dead and I did my best to put his lights out."

"That doesn't make you a murderer," Judy said. "If anything, it makes you a heroine in my book. You finally stood up to the beast. You fought back for the first time in your life."

"No, I'm a murderer. The only reason I'm not undergoing a police interrogation right this minute is because I flinched at the critical instant. I closed my eyes. I chickened out right before I squeezed the trigger. I think some part of me may even have aimed the gun high on purpose. That's why Hershey's going to ultimately destroy me. I'm still as gutless as I've always been."

"Your not gutless, you're very brave. You didn't kill him because you're better than he is. That's why I love you so. You're a beautiful person, Rickie. If he hadn't pushed you past the breaking point, you'd never have done what you did."

"Then why do I feel so guilty?"

"Because you're a woman. We feel guilty about everything, because we're taught we're responsible for making the world a better place."

Rickie stood up. "That's funny. In my own way, perhaps I was trying to make the world a better place. Without Hershey, it would have been. You know what else is making me feel guilty?"

"What?"

"Judy, it shames me to admit it, but when I was squeezing the trigger, it felt good. So good, in fact, it scares me. I'm afraid some day I'm going to want to feel it again. That's why I say I'm a murderer. When I crossed the line and pulled the trigger, it changed me forever ... something is now in my blood that wasn't there before. God help me, but it's true."

"When we get home, Rickie, I'm calling your shrink. You need to tell her what you're feeling. I am your friend, but I am out of my depth."

"Judy, what I'm feeling now is tired. I can't stay here waiting for the call to find out if Hershey lives or dies. This place is starting to close in on me. We need to get out of The Dell before I go bonkers."

"We'll go. Is there anything we need to pick up for you on the way to my place?"

"Just a tall fence," Rickie said. "A very tall fence."

### Chapter 21

They drove in silence through a Tuesday afternoon of rainy, rivering streets and gray vapor to the beach house, during which time the reality of what she had done and what she had failed to do to Hirschfeld finally began to play its doleful tune on her shattered nerves, and play the tune to such a fever pitch Rickie found herself shaking badly.

Judy pulled into the garage and as Rickie exited the Voyager, she stepped straight into the strong, welcoming arms of Shank. He'd appeared out of nowhere. For a couple of seconds it seemed to Rickie as if time were stopped. He tilted his head down in preparation for a kiss. She closed her eyes to receive his lips ... and Shank was gone! The shock of this illusory appearance and vanishing sent her reeling backwards, footloose, out of the garage and onto the sidewalk, where she gathered speed before crashing into the hedge and collapsing into a puddle.

"Rickie!" Judy's hands found hers and pulled her up.

"I saw Shank," Rickie said. "I was in his arms and then I was falling. I'm lost, Judy. I'm really lost. I'm scared. There's nothing left inside of me. I might as well be dead."

"Hold on to me. You're wet and you're shaking like a leaf. Let's get you inside."

"No. I need some time to myself. I'm going for a walk on the beach. Alone."

"You're going no such place. You're coming inside. You're in shock. You're shaking and your face is completely white."

"No," said Rickie, and with a steely strength summoned from some hidden reservoir pried Judy's fingers from her arm.

"Owww! Rickie! You're hurting me!"

"Good-bye, Judy."

Rickie began walking down Pico towards the roaring breakers, her posture oddly straightened, her head back, as if to drink in the raw energy of the storm.

Judy yelled after her into the gathering wind. "I'm calling Dr. Black!"

Across the deep expanse of sand beyond Shutters, the huge, booming waves played their symphony to the audience of one lonely middle-aged red-haired Audrey Hepburn look-alike. The rest of the entire population of Los Angeles were apparently content to remain cooped up in their dried mud and chicken wire nests so as to avoid the storm, which, with its fresh, cold air and threatening sky, inspired uneasiness in a people more accustomed to the endless sunshine which normally favored their little corner of the world.

Rickie sat at the edge of this sunless, reverse world, searching for the markers inside her which would guide her home, a futile search at best. When she finally saw the truth about herself, she stood up, kicked off her flip-flops, and began walking out to sea, the shockingly cold surf hungrily sucking at her ankles, her calves and her legs. She stepped in a hole and fell in up to her waist, the gushing water pushing her with true violence, sweeping away the polite rustlings of thought and consciousness until there was only the power of the water, which Rickie understood to be the power of God.

She felt a terrible loneliness as the backwash swept her out of the hole and further away from the shore. It would be but a moment before she was embraced in the deadly arms of the incoming breakers. It amused her a little at how easy it was going to be. A bit sloppy perhaps, in the final moments, but a sloppiness that brought with it a sweetness and a peace. She'd but to stretch out and let it happen. Suddenly, she found herself laughing at the image of herself firing away, eyes tight shut, at a terrified Hirschfeld. Laughing at her initial horror of receiving a cat with no legs. Laughing at the recent apparition of Shank appearing in Judy's garage, his full lips descending towards hers. The image of his face remained for a moment, superimposed upon the hump of a powerful dark swell rushing and steepening in her direction.

"It's about time you kissed me back," she said, plunging herself into the power and the glory around her. The last thing she remembered was the smell of her son's hair the year he'd decided to grow it long. He'd only come in from raking the leaves and she'd stopped him to brush away an entangled leaf.

Jesse Edwin's hair smelled of autumn, and smoke, and fresh air.

### Chapter 22

"You have to go back for the cat," the young girl said.

Rickie was standing beside her in a grove of cool date palms adjacent to a dense coastal jungle of some sort. In the distance, a peaceful, island-studded sea lapped contentedly on a broad sandy shore which stretched away into infinity. It was a world without borders, one where the very sun-warmed breezes carried within their caress a sense of vital purpose and dignity. Apart from the lady in the purple cloud, this young girl, wearing a shining white garment, her face framed by a mop of wild, unruly red hair, was the most beautiful youth Rickie had ever seen. That the girl occupied a high place in this special universe Rickie was certain.

"I can never consider leaving such a place," Rickie replied.

"You left Just Plain Dot on the towel next to your hot tub in your upstairs bathroom," the woman replied. "Her claws are caught in the towel. She'll die if you don't go back."

"It's too late," Rickie said. "I've already drowned myself in the surf."

"That's reversible."

"I'm not leaving this place. I've wanted to leave my old life behind ever since the night I lost my baby, Jessica Edwina. Ever since I lost her, inside of me there's been a poison, a hatred eating away at my soul. I can't get over losing the baby. When the baby died, I died with her. Because of the hatred inside of me, I tried to murder my husband. I want to be dead until I've paid for all my sins and then I want to go and live with the beautiful lady in the purple cloud."

"The sorrow of losing your baby will never leave your heart, but sooner or later, your tears will dry. Until then, you must try to open your heart, to strengthen the things that remain in your life. That's why you need to go back for the kitten."

"I can't believe it. I finally arrive in Paradise and find out my eternal happiness depends upon the rescue of a crippled kitten."

"Each living being is born with something to give. Even a crippled kitten. If you go back for the cat, you'll be committing an act of compassion. The act of compassion will balance out the rage you feel in your heart for your husband. You'll find your soul again."

"Okay," Rickie said. "I'll go back for the cat. Before I go, please tell me who you are."

The girl looked directly past her. "You know who I am."

Rickie understood at last.

"Oh dear God. I do know you. You're Jessica Edwina. The daughter I miscarried."

"Good-bye, Mother. I'll see you again beneath the altar of Our Lady."

Rickie opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out, only a hoarse rattle and a spewing of burning saltwater setting fire to her lungs.

She was back on the beach.

### Chapter 23

Upon finding herself alive at the water's edge, Rickie's next conscious action had been a slow, deliberate creeping of her bedraggled self across the sand for quite some distance before finally rising. Had Darwin been watching, he'd have been forced to abandon his theory of evolution. The ludicrous sight of her resembled at that point not so much a human being, but a singular moment in Darwinian adaptation gone very wrong. Wings failed to flap. Underpowered legs failed to propel. Gills remained gaping, wide open, gasping for air. The only possible explanation for Rickie's movement over the sands was resurrection--a Darwinian no-no.

Her eventual soaked, frozen arrival at Judy's door, accompanied by ravings about the importance of crippled cats and a recent sighting of the glorified version of the miscarried Jessica Edwina galvanized Judy into applying to this weird apparition not only a hot bath but even hotter soup.

Eventually as a result of Judy's tender mercies there appeared late in the day that Tuesday a better version of Rickie, with a warmed and reconstituted interior and exterior. Judy hustled her into the Voyager and drove straightaway to the Valley to present her to Dr. Black who she hoped would somehow likewise accomplish a similar reconstitution of Rickie's still half-drowned soul.

"A woman is beaten every twelve seconds in this country," Dr. Black said. "That's nearly 900,000 victims every year. Is it so terrible that once in awhile, a woman fights back?"

"When you put it like that, it seems like it was okay what I did," Rickie said.

Black and Rickie were sitting in the deep leather chairs in Black's office in the Valley discussing the no-win situation Rickie was in regarding Hirschfeld which led up to Rickie's failed attempt to drown herself. Rickie enthralled Black with this narrative of a suicidal effort which ended, not with death, but with a return rush of awakening consciousness and subsequent discovery of her lying in the surf like so much dead seaweed, soaked and filthy and battered.

"What led you to choose the gun?" Black queried.

"I was in a rage. I knew the gun could kill. When I emptied the gun at him, I meant to kill him. I thought I was doing it because of his betrayal with another woman, but now I've replayed it in my mind, I think it was because I couldn't stand the helplessness I was feeling. When I saw that woman's black nylons lying there on the floor in my bathroom, it was like somebody drove a stake into my heart and left me pinned to the wall alive, like an insect. That's what drove me to use a gun on my husband ... that feeling of helplessness ... it was a feeling so ugly only a good clean dose of murder could erase it."

At the end of Rickie's droll recital, Black rummaged in her desk and came up with a handful of drug samples. She poured Rickie a paper cup of water from the cooler and handed her a white ovoid pill. "I'm putting you on Xanax for the duration, until we get this thing into focus."

Rickie examined the pill. "Well, as they used to say, better living through chemistry." She popped the pill and washed it down with the icy water. "Dr. Black, why did I go back to Hershey this morning?"

"Your desire to return to your abuser is a common reaction in battered women," Black said. "Like it or not, you still feel attached to Hirschfeld, in spite of the fact he beats you. You weren't ready for the overwhelming loneliness you felt when you left him after the last beating. You got confused. It happens, Rickie. Forgive yourself and move on. You need a good meal and an old Bogart movie. Most of all, you need your friends around you. We're going to get your life back."

"I hope so," Rickie said, in a disbelieving tone.

"Rickie, how do you feel right now? Right this very minute?"

"I feel very ashamed of myself. Guilty. Very guilty, like I wish I could scrub my soul clean, but I'll never be able to."

"Why did you try to drown yourself as opposed to taking pills, or simply blowing your brains out?"

"I don't know for sure. Something came over me after I got to Judy's and I heard the surf roaring. I only knew it was time to end it."

"Do you regret still being alive?"

"I'm not alive. I'm somebody who's as good as dead. I'm only waiting for Hershey to make his next move."

"Hirschfeld's in the hospital. Not exactly in the kind of shape to be making a next move."

"There's a next move coming. I can feel it."

"Do you still want him dead?"

"Yes. Is that wrong?"

"It's honest. That's a start. By the way, I'm curious. Has the kitten been rescued?"

"Judy's gone over to The Dell save the stupid cat."

"After she does that, are you going to finish killing your husband and yourself?"

"Dr. Black, I ... I'm not sure I can answer that question. This may sound horrible, but I don't know if I'm going to kill my husband and then kill myself or not!"

Black stood up and removed her reading glasses, walking to the window. The afternoon was waning as darkness merged in from the east across the cloud-studded sky. In the distance, high up in the Sherman Oaks hills, past the clutter of rain washed high-rises, the headlamps from a thousand homebound commuters were shining like jewels in the mist. It was shaping up to be a fabulous evening in the abyss.

"If we were parked up on Mulholland, the Valley would be breathtakingly beautiful tonight," Rickie said. "Like a fairyland."

"I'm not going to place you in custody," Black said. "Technically, I should have you put under observation for the next 72 hours. My instincts tell me you came back for a reason. A woman with a reason for living, even if it's only the rescue of a crippled kitten, isn't going to kill her abusive husband or herself. Rickie, trust me; the place where you fell is also the place where you will rise again."

"This all started when I slipped and fell in my kitchen. Is that the place you mean?"

Black smiled. "If that's where you must be resurrected, that's where we'll do it."

"Hershey took my kitchen away from me the day he killed my baby there. That kitchen is lost to me now. Oh God, I'm crying! Will the tears never stop?"

"How would you feel if we took back your kitchen?"

"I don't know. The truth is I've never considered the place my home. If you get my kitchen back, if the place finally feels like home, I'll cook you something."

"Baby, by the time we're finished, you'll be cooking up a storm. I hope you have a good recipe for quail."

"Are you kidding? I have a great recipe with sage and onion stuffing! Dr. Black, you get me my kitchen back and no quail will ever be safe in Los Angeles again."

"Rickie, I work with a group of women who are sorting through some of the same issues as you are. Can you meet us tomorrow morning at 9 A.M.? We'll be in the back booth having breakfast at Du-Pars on Ventura. Do you know the place?"

"Yeh, it's the place with the great pie. I'll be there."

"Okay, Rickie, we'll see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, hold on to that thought about recapturing your kitchen and cooking me up a mess of quail."

Rickie wiped her sorrowful eyes and looked upon her mentor with something akin to hopefulness.

"It'll be the best you ever tasted."

"Don't forget the cheesecake," Black said.

### Chapter 24

"The next step in my heroic struggle has begun," Rickie said to Judy. "Dr. Black wants me to recapture my kitchen. Once that's done, we'll have a victory party and consume large amounts of quail and cheesecake."

"Recapture the kitchen," Judy stated flatly as she opened the door of the Voyager, admitting Rickie to the jump seat. They were on the third tier of the public parking structure adjacent to Black's office, wherein they were afforded a beautiful view of the formerly quake-damaged Sherman Oaks Galleria mall. Rickie found herself admiring the tenacity of the people of Los Angeles, who had reclaimed the structure from the ravages of the infamous Northridge quake. She wondered if she herself would be reclaimed in that same spirit.

"We have to recapture my kitchen because it's where I was the most severely injured," Rickie explained. "It's the site of Hershey's murder of Jessica Edwina. Emotionally, I lost ground there, conceded the space to Hershey. Dr. Black says I won't have closure until I reclaim the spot."

Judy stood outside the Voyager, staring at the silent, closed structure of the Galleria which, like they, had seen happier times. "Rickie," Judy said, "there's no nice way to say this. Just Plain Dot is dead."

"Awww."

"Her claws were caught in the terry towel. Apparently, during her struggle to free herself, she somehow tumbled into the tub and drowned."

"My God, she drowned at the same instant I did. It's almost as though we shared the same soul, only in two different bodies. Why didn't she join me in Paradise?" Rickie climbed out of the Voyager and joined Judy on the railing. Arm in arm, the two women presided over the lonely rooftop as the twilight darkness shifted uneasily to full night, transforming the landscape of the parking lot into an urban shadow box of humming halogen lamps.

"I'm sorry," Judy said.

"You know, Judy, I was telling myself right up to this very moment my star was rising, that all this bad stuff was just about over. I can see I was wrong. Way wrong. To tell you the truth, I was lying to myself. I don't know how much more I can take. What kind of a universe is it where I am returned from the dead to rescue a cat that's already dead? I feel as if the whole doggone universe is conspiring against me."

"I put her corpse in a Gelson's shopping bag and put her in your freezer. Thinking maybe we should give her a decent burial. I thought maybe we could try that place in Calabasas where Hopalong Cassidy's horse is buried."

"A decent burial for Just Plain Dot," Rickie said. "Next to Hopalong's horse. It'll be more than Jessica Edwina got. After they vacuumed me out, she probably got tossed into an incinerator by some surgery gopher. That is, if she was lucky and her stem cells weren't shipped off to the late great Christopher Reeve's German laboratory."

"Rickie, don't despair. I called Forest Lawn Memorial Park yesterday. They're setting up a memorial service for Jessica Edwina. It's tentatively scheduled for three weeks from this Friday."

"That long?"

"It could have been sooner, but we're going to have a headstone specially carved, with an angel on top and everything. It's being prepared someplace in Georgia on account of they have the best marble carvers there."

"Thank you, Judy. I couldn't have made those arrangements the way you did."

"It's what friends are for."

"This is all Hershey's fault. His sick desire to control me has led to a lot of death in the past couple of days. You know what really makes me bonkers? He's probably lying in his hospital bed right now feeling sorry for himself, telling himself what a victim he's become because of my pathetic attempt on his sorry life."

"Hirschfeld's a pig from down below. When he finally dies, the devil is going to use his carcass for a huge luau."

"I had big plans for Just Plain Dot. I was going to have somebody make me a set of tiny strap-on rear wheels for her so she could get around, only like the cat I saw on TV last month on the Amazing Animals show."

"Rickie, it's getting cold out here. We should get going."

"You go ahead, Judy. I'm not going back to the beach just yet."

"You're staying here? I don't think so. Rickie ... you're planning to jump."

Rickie laughed, the forced sounds coming from her throat falling flat against the backdrop of flowing traffic. "I'm not about to jump. I just took a Xanax and it's creating a numb space in my head. It's probably what's holding me together. I'm going to grab a cab back to Beverly Hills to pick up my car and rescue Just Plain Dot from the freezer. It's a step I have to take to start regaining control of my life."

"I'll drive you, Rickie."

"Go home, Judy. You've done enough for today. This is something I have to do by myself."

"You shouldn't go back to The Dell alone."

"Worry wart. If it gets too heavy, I won't stay, I'll only dash in to the kitchen to get my keys and then I'll be gone."

"Don't go over there, Rickie. The place feels like a haunted house."

"I have to. Don't you see? Until I can walk in there by myself, I'll never be able to move on with my life. I have to start thinking and acting for myself. I can't keep going around on automatic pilot."

"Call me the minute you get there. I'll keep my cell phone on."

"Judy?"

"Yeh?"

"I love you. You're a good friend. I'm sorry it's been such a tough assignment lately, but I promise you one thing--"

"--You don't have to promise anything to me, Rickie. I love you, too. You know that."

"No, Judy, love isn't enough. I promise you things are going to get better. I know it's true because I feel deep down inside I'm becoming a different woman than I was before."

"Okay," Judy said, climbing into the Voyager. Rickie watched as her friend slowly wound down the ramp and exited onto the street below. Whipping her cell phone from her purse, she placed a call to the cab company and leaned against the railing to await her ride. The ride appeared in record time and the cabby opened her door. Rickie settled in as they made their way down the ramp to the exit.

"Where to lady?"

"The Infernal Abyss. One way. No return."

She could see she had his complete attention.

### Chapter 25

A mile west of Doheny on Sunset, the cab approached the comfortably lit pinkness of the Beverly Hills Hotel, which suddenly seemed preferable to the Infernal Abyss. A few minutes later, she was seated with her White Russian in the Polo Lounge on the phone to Jesse Edwin. "Where are you?"

"Culver City. You can smell the ocean. We're in a rehearsal room on the back lot of Sony Studios. Hirschfeld's call to Freddy Kopelsen seems to be paying off. Freddy's people helped me put together a pickup band. They've already got us booked for a mid-week tryout at Spaceland. You'll never guess who our lead singer is."

"Tell me."

"No way. I want to surprise you. The only clue I'll give you is he's a formerly famous god of rock. He used to look like a freak. Now he looks more like an accountant, but he's still got the voice. Meeting the guy made me feel like Moses in front of the burning bush. I even took off my shoes before I shook his hand."

"Son, you may as well know Hershey is in the hospital. He had a heart attack today. I'm at the Polo Lounge having a drink in his honor."

"I'm sorry, Mom. Not for him. For you. After all you've been through with him, it doesn't seem fair for him to continue ruining your life. Listen, I'll wind up this rehearsal and meet you there."

"No, Jesse Edwin. You keep rehearsing. The real reason I called you is because Just Plain Dot died. I was going to The Dell alone to retrieve her from the freezer when I just plain chickened out. It's nothing that can't wait."

"Just a minute Mom."

In the background, she could hear the eclectic cacophony of musical instruments putting down a funky blues track, the din in question fusing nicely with some expert ethereal vocal intonations, the suspected source of which gave Rickie a slight chill.

"Mom?"

"Your lead singer is Ellard Purl," Rickie said. "I'd know that voice anywhere. What puzzles me is I thought he died of a drug overdose and was thrown overboard by Bob Wagner at one of his Catalina yacht parties."

"You've got a good ear, Mom, and a fair memory. Bobby Wagner didn't get a chance to heave him over to hide the evidence like he did Natalie Wood. He was going to, but Peter Fonda was a guest that night and got to Purl's comatose body first. Peter medevac'd Purl out in time to save him."

"You know, Jesse Edwin, I get the feeling you'll soon be going places you've never been before. Ellard Purl is still a big name with what's left of my generation. He wasn't merely a part of the Seventies, he was the Seventies."

"Mom? I braided my hair. I look merely the way my father did in those pictures."

"Now look what you've done. I'm crying like a fool."

"Hold on, Mom, there's somebody here who wants to say hello."

In spite of herself, Rickie thrilled slightly. Was she, in a matter of seconds, going to be speaking to the legendary Ellard Purl? Would this day's secrets and happenstance never end?

"Hello, Rickie," a voice which could cut gravel rasped. Not Ellard. Shank. "How are you?"

"Fine."

"You don't sound fine."

"I tried to pull off a murder this morning, after which my husband collapsed from a heart attack. Then I had a vision of you returning my kiss, after which I tried unsuccessfully to drown myself. To top it all off, poor little Just Plain Dot did manage to drown herself and is even as we speak in my freezer in Beverly Hills, frozen inside a Gelson's shopping bag. Other than that, I'm fine."

"Where are you?"

"The Polo Lounge, trying to work up the courage to go retrieve the cat."

"Thirty minutes. I'll bring a real kiss with me."

The phone went dead, leaving Rickie with a sense of the unearthly having transpired. A few hours before, she was drowning in the Santa Monica surf. Now she was sitting nursing a cocktail, waiting for a kiss to be delivered. Perhaps the universe held some promise after all.

"How goes the battle. Another drink?" the drink waiter--a forty-something man with the accent, face and manner of a young Al Pacino--queried, his face cast in a practiced flirtatiousness.

Rickie glanced at her glass. Without even realizing it, she'd somehow finished the drink. "I'll have another, but stop with the bedroom eyes. We both know I'm too old to fall for that. It's obvious you're an out of work actor hustling the old rich broads for tips."

"It's that obvious?"

"It is."

"I'm only hustling the locals."

"What makes you think I'm a local?"

"You're not looking around, craning your neck trying to spot a star."

"You're observant. Perhaps you really are an actor. Are you appearing in anything?"

"The odd commercial here and there."

"You're too gorgeous to be doing commercials."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I didn't mean to go overboard on the hustle for tips, but I recently finished an off-Broadway thing. You know how it is, I barely made minimum wage. It cost me everything to move out here. I can't even afford a car. Every night after work when I walk to the bus stop I get scoped out by the Beverly Hills PD's K-9. Now, about your drink. The same again?"

"With a little more vodka this time. Keep an eye out for a tall, skinny, crusty old gentleman. He'll be looking for me. When he gets here, don't offer him a drink. Have a pot of your best coffee brewed and waiting."

"Your husband?"

"Just a friend."

He glanced at her wedding ring. "Too bad you're married."

"Damn you," Rickie said, laughing. "You made that seem incredibly real. You accomplished something else. You showed me I can still laugh. I'll tell you what. When you bring me my drink, leave me your agent's name and number and I'll have my husband's people get in touch with you about some real work."

"Like I said, too bad you're married."

"Look, this isn't a come on. I nearly drowned today and I've decided to start being nice to people in the short time I have left on earth. Believe me, I'll have you out of this gig and working on a real movie before the week is over. Now get going on that drink before I change my mind."

"I'm sorry about the phony come on," he said. "It wasn't all phony. I'm sure you've heard this before, but you're a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn, excepting the red hair, of course. If you'd shown some interest, I would have followed through. I apologize. I just broke up with my girlfriend back in New York. She texted me and put me on her blocked calls list. I guess I've gone a little off the deep end."

"Haven't we all," Rickie said. "Haven't we all."

He departed and she looked down at her hand. With a slow deliberateness, she removed the ring. It is too bad I'm married.

### Chapter 26

"Nice dress ... shows off the freckles," Shank said, sliding across from her into the booth. Rickie mentally congratulated herself for choosing a simple emerald slip dress that accented her red hair and pale features.

"Thanks, Shank. After I nearly killed myself, I thought it might be nice to wear something besides jeans."

"You really know how to pick up a compliment. You smell incredible."

"Emeraude. I was feeling nostalgic tonight. I used to wear it when I was going with Jesse Edwin's father ... no offense. You smell pretty decent yourself."

By the time he'd arrived, Rickie was on her third White Russian and feeling no pain. Shank's dark pin stripe suit, a Lauren, perfectly pressed and accessorized with subtle but eye-catching matching gold cufflinks, tie tack, and tasteful Rolex, was slightly damp from the fresh drizzle outside. The man inside the suit, carefully scented, her best guess was Old Spice (did they still wear that stuff?), sipped gratefully from his coffee cup, the fine china in his slender-fingered smooth hands a poor substitute for the tall Starbucks paper cups he normally favored.

She noticed the silence while he sipped. Not a man to spend time on the customary chitchat.

"Talk," she said. "The silence is killing me."

They were interrupted by the server, a new one, female, with plenty of the right stuff to attract any male eye. Rickie watched Shank's face, expecting to catch him in a quick visual scan of the server's pronounced attractions. To her surprise, his eyes remained dead ahead. The server proffered menus.

"Never mind those," Shank said. "Bring me a couple of lobster tails, the big ones, with plenty of butter, and a hunk of iceberg lettuce with a gob of Thousand Island. I'd love a Gibson to go with that, but unfortunately, I'm on the wagon today."

"Do you want the Gibson, sir?"

"Nah, just keep the coffee coming ... Rickie? Rickie are you okay? You went two shades paler."

"It's nothing. I once had a bad experience with lobsters."

"Server, please cancel my order. Burn me a filet mignon instead."

"Shank! It's nothing! Miss, bring him the lobsters."

"Lobsters for the gentleman," the server said. "And what can I bring you, ma'am?"

"Coconut cream pie," Rickie replied. "A double slice drizzled with your hot cinnamon sauce. And another White Russian."

After the waitress left, Shank sidled up close to her, not bothering to say a word, taking her face in his two hands before closing his eyes and placing his lips carefully over hers. A simple kiss, direct and focused, with no awkward patting or ragged breathing. He leaned back, crossing his arms, surveying her for the result.

"I should have expected that," she said. "A charity kiss. It's what I deserve for making myself as unattractive as possible. I know I look hideous in this green rag; it makes my skin look like Martha Stewart's parchment paper. I won't push myself on you ever again, Shank, I promise. I appreciate your effort to straighten me out."

"You've got it wrong. The truth is, you scare me to death and I don't know what to do about it. I've gone for the past ten years without a woman in my life and the next thing I know, a long, leggy, red-headed, married broad is inside my head and I can't turn it off. If I kissed you the way I really want to, they'd throw us out of this joint."

"Oh Shank. Get back on your side of the booth. I have no idea why I'm feeling so open to you, but it's all wrong. In the first place, I'm a mess. I tried to shoot my husband this morning and he had a coronary. I punished myself with a suicide attempt at the beach and now I'm here trying to find out why it is I feel so safe with you beside me. Why I trust you when I know I shouldn't. Look, you may as well know Hirschfeld told me you killed somebody back in your days as a mobster front man."

"Rickie, I used to drive drunk. One night in a blackout, I killed a child. A hit and run. They sent me to Soledad for three years."

A moment passed while his statement exploded into flames, searing the psychic space between them.

"It's why I don't drink anymore, or drive a car."

"And why you haven't been with a woman."

"I'll be going," he said. "It wasn't fair of me to keep it from you. I'm sorry."

Rickie suddenly realized she was caught in a moment which would never come again, a moment where the rest of her life hung on what she would say next. She looked at the man before her and saw the truth, saw the despair behind his eyes, the ragged, fearful creature crouching inside the expensive suit. He stood up and she grabbed his sleeve with all her strength, pulling him down with such force they slid from the booth onto the floor. Her lips found his and she pressed hard until their very teeth locked together. By the time she was finished, his face was covered with her tears and they'd drawn every staring eye in the place. She released him and they stood up together to scattered applause and not a few frowns.

"It's going to be rough," she said. "We only have right now. There's no telling about tomorrow. The odds are completely against us. We both know it's wrong. If you walk away from me now, I'll understand."

The server awkwardly approached and set up the tray with the lobsters and the pie. Shank fumbled in his pocket and came up with a couple of C notes, dropping them on the tray before waving her off, tray and all, his hands shaking badly.

"You're bleeding," he said, touching her lower lip and coming away with a red-smeared fingertip.

"Shank, I need your answer."

His chest was heaving and his face flushed, his gaze inwardly focused on some distant place where his soul no doubt resided. Coming out of it, he searched her face, taking his time, oblivious to their surroundings or the passage of time. He placed his finger between his lips and tasted of her blood.

When he finally spoke, it was the in the high, sweet voice of a child. "So help me God, Rickie," he said. "I can't walk away from you."

### Chapter 27

"I can't do this," Rickie said.

They'd limo'd to The Dell whereupon Shank dismissed his car and driver in favor of Rickie's Mercedes, a Black Diamond edition Roadster, which sat in the garage on it's newly-repaired tires, ready to transport them upon supple red and black leather cushions anywhere they chose at potential speeds of up to 160 miles per hour. Beside which sat Hirschfeld's deeply polished black Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph, a vehicle which Hirschfeld bought new every year, at an untold and probably incalculable sum.

"Can you drive?" Shank asked. "You've had a few drinks."

"I'm sober," Rickie replied.

The primary and secondary modes of transport thus inspected, they'd made their way to the lost kitchen of Rickie's Beverly Hills mansion, where the frozen body of Just Plain Dot was even now lying hard-frozen somewhere within the 8.9 cubic feet of Rickie's Sub-Zero freezer. Would the cat be simply lying on the shelf, wrapped in a shopping bag from the finest supermarket in the world, or had Judy, in an instinctive move, symbolically buried the beast sans bursa in one of the freezer's four drawers?

Now Rickie and Shank stood in front of the massive, oak paneled construction containing, on the one side, fresh consumable elements, and on the other, items rendered compatible with the ice age, among which were a frozen cat. A primal urge found them holding each other closely to brace themselves emotionally for the opening of the freezer door to remove the frozen feline prior to its transport back to Judy's place.

"I can't do this, Shank."

"It's okay," Shank said. "I'll do it." He began to open the freezer. Rickie pushed the freezer door shut.

"No, Shank, you don't understand. What I mean is, I can't do us. I can't do you and me. I can't allow myself to fall into your arms for comfort. Not now, not ever again."

"Rickie? Why? What's missing, here?"

Rickie released a breath. "Look, I'm being eaten alive right now. I've obviously gone a little nuts. Yesterday morning, I tried to kill my husband. Now here I am, starting something with you. I don't even know you! You're a perfect stranger! I can't do this! This isn't the beginning of a love affair. This is merely another mistake I'm making on my personal pathway to self-destruction!"

"I understand," Shank said. "You're on the rebound. It's too much too soon. You're right. You don't know me and I don't know you. In fact, I'm sure you view me as somebody who's sick. I'm an alcoholic and I killed a kid. It's no secret about my dirty past with the boys in the fancy suits."

"I can't help thinking," Rickie said, "I've been with one sick man for the past five years, and for all I know, I'm attracted to you because in your own way you're just as sick."

Shank rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

"Oh, Shank! I didn't mean it the way it sounded!"

"You're right, Rickie. I probably am as sick as Hershey, in my own way. What kind of a man tries to pick up a married, abused woman in a hospital room? Don't you think I've wondered about it myself! I feel guilty as sin! All I know is the minute I laid eyes on you, I wanted you! Now let's get the cat and get out of here."

"No. Leave Just Plain Dot in the freezer." Rickie took his hand and led him from the kitchen through the French doors to the massive rear deck overlooking the lushly landscaped pool and outdoor spa, a mini-environ, an oasis which made one forget being surrounded by eleven million other souls. She pulled the cover off the spa and flipped a few switches. The lights came on and the spa bubbled invitingly, the steam rising into the cool, rain-misted air. Bending down, she tested the water.

"It's hot. Get in."

"What? Right now?"

"Right now. Right here." Without a further word, Rickie entered the spa fully clothed, shoes and all. "Shank, I need you to get in with me now, with all your clothes on, or leave and never come back."

"Hold on." From his jacket he extracted his wallet, his fifty-thousand dollar money roll, and a small blue plastic object the size of an electric razor.

"What's that?"

"My taser."

He got in and they sat across from each other as the waters bubbled around them, puffing up their clothing.

"That's better," she said. Now tell me why carry a taser."

"How do you think I was going to handle Hirschfeld in that elevator? I would have tased his ass before he ever got in the darn thing."

"How does a taser work?"

"There's a couple of darts attached to wires. A can of compressed air fires the two darts. When the darts hit the victim's clothing, they receive a shock wave that wipes out their nervous system. You can also use the handle by itself as a stun gun. A five-second pulse would take down King Kong."

"You were going to taser Hirschfeld in the back? That's not very sporting."

"I'm glad you think so. May I say, it's not my fault Hirschfeld wanted to fight me. I didn't ask for trouble. I don't owe him a fair fight. Not in my book. Let me tell you, I didn't make it through my tour in 'Nam by fighting fair. Why do you think I made it out of there alive? If anybody came near me, I shot them in the back."

Rickie sighed. "You're probably wondering why we're sitting in this hot tub. It's because I'm baptizing our friendship," she said. "Because if I can't be your lover, I can be your friend ... if you'll be mine. The way I see it, we're both only half-alive, like two people existing in the shadows. Yesterday I pulled a gun on my abusive husband and took my first baby steps towards freedom. I still don't have the freedom to love you, not yet. I have nothing but contempt for myself right now. I hate myself for tolerating Hershey's abuse. I lost my baby over my weakness."

"Rickie, you don't have to do this."

"I'm holding on to a dream. I'm holding on to the hope that somewhere beneath the surface of all our fears about ourselves, and our misguided affections, lies the chance to experience true love one more time before we die. I'm holding on to that, but I know so far, it's only a dream. It's not real yet."

"It could be real for both of us if we give it time. I've looked inside myself for a decade. It's not very pretty in there, but I know what's real and what isn't. My feelings for you are real."

"We've been thrown together by violence," Rickie said. "This afternoon, I almost died. A few hours ago, I pulled you down onto the floor of a public restaurant. Can't you see? I'm on some kind of crazy high. When I'm with you, it's as though I'm finally free of the terrible weight I've been under all these years. Sooner or later, I'm going to come down off this high and I don't want it to be while I'm right in the middle of doing something we'll both regret for the rest of our lives."

"Me neither," Shank admitted. "I knew we were rushing it, but whenever I'm close to you, I'm like a teenager. My brain gives way to the fire down below."

"I need time. I don't know how much time, but I know I need it. The best I can do right now is ask you to be my friend. I can't promise you anything beyond that. Even if we become friends, we may not carry it any farther. That's why I asked you to enter the spa with your clothes on, to seal a commitment to friendship. Because for you and I, we're going to have to keep our lives on the straight and narrow until I'm truly free."

"What do you mean, Rickie?"

"I mean free to be myself. Free to fall in love again."

"Oh no," Shank said. "I think I'm already in love. I feel sick at the thought of not having you in my arms anymore."

"I'm sorry. I can't entangle myself emotionally. Not yet. I need to find out what my goals and dreams are. If you really love me, you'll have to let me go."

He studied her for a second. "So that kiss back there at the Polo Lounge, I guess that's going to have to last us awhile, huh?"

"I'm afraid so."

His face went blank. He put his hands on his hips. "At least it was a great kiss."

"It was a splurge," Rickie agreed.

"If I agree to be just friends, can I have one more kiss for the road?"

"Sorry, Shank. You and I both know where one more kiss would lead."

"Friends it is, then. For as long as it takes. No matter the outcome."

"There's one condition," Rickie said.

"Anything."

"Don't promise me until you hear what it is. I want you to tell me the entire story of your life."

"Yeh, okay. I can do that. We'll have dinner tomorrow night."

"No, Shank. I mean right now."

"Right now? This very minute?"

"I've got all night."

"I ... I don't know where to even start."

"You're going to start with the night you killed that child."

That this request presented a dilemma to Shank was evident by the look on his face, which resembled what the face of a simpleton would doubtless look like when asked, upon pain of death, to adequately lay down a uniform theoretical explanation of gravity. Nonetheless, he sucked in a breath and bravely started forward on the impossible task of defining his darkest moment.

"I'd taken the day off from work and had been drinking all day with an old service buddy of mine. I was living in the Hollywood Hills at that time. We each took a pint of 151 rum and went down to the Cinerama Dome on Hollywood Boulevard to see an afternoon matinee, a re-screening of Apocalypse Now. I finished the entire fifth in the first hour of the film. I don't remember leaving the show or saying good-bye to my friend, or getting in my car, but I must have done so around seven in the evening. It was November, so the streets were already dark." He paused and looked at her helplessly. "Rickie, I can't."

"You must. Our future depends on it."

"Okay. Here goes. Rickie, the kid was two years old. They tell me she was chasing a toad in the street. I was driving fast. I didn't even know I'd run her down. I don't remember a thing, but apparently I made it home, put the car in the garage and went to bed. The next morning, after I'd slept off my drunk, I came out to my car and found the kid's dead body jammed into the grill."

"Dear God."

Shank swallowed heavily and climbed out of the spa. "If you want to hear the rest of this, I'll need to change and put on a pot of coffee."

"In the pool house," Rickie said. "There's a changing room with towels, heavy robes, toothbrushes, slippers, everything you need. We'll both change and I'll make us a fresh pot."

He leaned down at her. "I'm sorry, Rickie, but I'm not giving up on us. If this is the way our second all-nighter has to be, then so be it."

"Our second all-nighter?"

"How quickly they forget. Our first night together was the wee hours of last Saturday morning at UCLA. That's when I fell in love with you."

"You fell in love with me while I was unconscious?"

"It seems to fit my character, don't you think? Most of my memorable life-changing events have taken place while me or somebody else was blacked out."

"It's 1 a.m. We'd better get changed. Turn your back. I don't want you to see me in this wet dress. Take your time getting dressed. I'll be in the kitchen with our coffee when you come out."

He turned and entered the pool house without another word.

Rickie clambered out of the spa and stood in the chill damp air, hugging herself. As she crossed the deck and entered the house, an image of a lady in a cloud of stars crossed her mind. "Pray for me, Blessed Mother," she said.

From somewhere higher up in the hills, a coyote howled, its vocalizing striking a note within her of almost unbearable sadness. She went inside and made it up the stairs and into her own thick white terry robe before the enormous energy drain required for the events of the past twenty-four hours began to hit her hard. She went downstairs and sat down on the couch, her legs trembling. Ever since the aborted suicide attempt and her mysterious release from the Pacific breakers, she'd been operating on a manic high, trying to suck in as much life as possible. She'd made a pretty good run at being immortal, but like all good runs, it finally ran its course. The human body could take only so much.

I'll merely close my eyes for a minute. Once closed, a heavy darkness running like a river flooded her brain. She awoke covered by a blanket, the sharp late afternoon sun streaming in through the shutters. The house smelled of dust and disuse. She'd been asleep a long time. Whether for a day, or a week, she couldn't say.

"Shank? Shank? Judy? Anybody!"

There was no answer; she was alone in the house of her betrayal.

### Chapter 28

Well, not quite alone. In the corner next to the fireplace stood an angel.

It shouldn't have been there, and was in total contradiction to everything Rickie understood about reality. With its tall, pointy head and impossibly long fingers (she saw no evidence of wings, but it was covered with some sort of colorful garment and may have been hiding them), it was definitely a creature scientists would have a hard time charting, and one which inspired within her a cautious attitude.

That the creature was an important one, she was equally certain, it having an air about it of general counsels and moral absolutes.

It was alone, apparently preferring no traveling companions. From some dimly remembered catechistical teachings of long ago, she remembered the purpose of an angelic visitation, it was a messenger from God sent to deliver that message. Apparently, God did not text-message, or tweet. Accordingly, she attempted communication.

"Who are you?" she managed to say. "What do you want? Has something happened? Has my husband died?" She was off, if not to a running start, at least a crawling one.

"My name is Elodroot Plicto," the angel said. "You're husband is fine. I'm here to talk to you about your cat."

"She's in the freezer," Rickie replied.

"The cat saved your life. By her voluntary death, she opened the portal by which you were able to return from the visit with your daughter. Cats were considered divine in ancient Egypt for their ability to do this. They were sacrificed ceremonially to allow the Pharaohs' round-trip passages to heaven to consult with God."

"You smell fantastic. Like roses. Do you know everything?" Rickie asked.

"What do you think?"

"I think you do. I have a question for you. I want to know about something I saw on PBS the other night. Why do the Great Pyramids have those tiny tunnels? They're too small for anyone to crawl through, and they don't let in enough air to keep anybody alive. Why do they have them? If you answer this question intelligently, then I'll know I'm not simply dreaming."

"That's an easy question," the angel replied. "The tiny, mysterious tunnels were created for the purpose of allowing Pharaonic felines access to the royal tombs."

"A tiny tunnel is a pyramidal pet door, is that what you're saying?"

The angel nodded happily. "As long as the cat could travel freely from the outside world to the inner chamber, the portal was kept open and Pharaohs could travel to and fro between this world and the next. Other animals have also served as sacrificial portals. Especially bulls and goats, although on occasion, a pair of young pigeons or turtledoves, or once, even, in the case of Jacob's ladder, a rock performed the function--"

"Stop it!" Rickie screamed.

The angel disappeared, quickly and efficiently.

"Rickie?" Shank's voice. He was standing in the same place occupied only seconds before by the angel.

"Oh my God, Shank. What's going on?"

"You were sleeping. You've been asleep for nearly four hours. You cried out!"

"Four hours? It's only Wednesday morning? I was dreaming it was late afternoon. My sense of time is completely out of joint. I feel like I've been sleeping for a week. My body clock has been ruined by all this." She sat up on the couch. "My God, I'm soaked in sweat. I had the most horrible dream. I dreamed I'd been asleep for days. When I awoke, I saw an angel who told me Just Plain Dot saved my life by her sacrificial death. She opened some kind of portal between here and there which allowed me to return from the afterlife."

The big screen in the corner was on, the volume low. Indeed, the PBS program on Pyramids and their mysterious tiny passageways was at that moment airing, had bled into Rickie's dream world.

"You've been under quite a strain. That, plus the booze can do that to you."

"It's not the booze. It's the anxiety I've been under. I have a very uneasy feeling about this trip I'm on, Shank. Right now I'd give anything to run to my mother's arms and forget about being a grownup for awhile."

"I know the feeling well. I felt the same way earlier when you wanted to hear my life story."

"Shank, I was wrong to force your dark confession out of you. I see that now. I think it best if we simply clear out of here."

The faint crepuscular stirrings of a freshly minted never to be repeated dawn could be seen outside. Across the lawn, down the hill, Rickie spied a cat making its sinewy way slowly through the hydrangeas. She detected no open portals, or Pharaohs lurking anywhere in the vicinity. Was it merely a stupid dream, a psychic cocktail courtesy of PBS and her own disturbed id? Or could the angel have been right? Had Just Plain Dot saved her life in the manner indicated?

"How does it all work, Shank? How does it all work?"

"If I knew the answer to that one, I could die a happy man."

"I'm in a whole new world," Rickie said. "One I've thought about for years now. I planned to leave Hershey over four years ago. Since that time, I've endured more beatings and more degradation than you could ever imagine. I always believed that once I finally worked up the nerve to leave him, I'd feel safe. The heck of it is, I'm still not safe. Even though I know he's laid up in the hospital, I'm still not safe."

"You are safe, Rickie. Think about it. Angels don't visit just anybody. You're special. You got a message from God. God is telling you He knows you, knows where you are, and has taken steps to keep you safe. Apparently, He even sacrificed a cat in your honor."

"I'm not safe. Hershey will try to kill me at some point. The man is incapable of true remorse. Once I'm no longer available to him, he'll become obsessed. No, I'm not safe. He's going to kill me, one way or another."

"Rickie, say the word, and I'll take care of the situation."

"Shank? Is it so easy for you? I say the word and you get rid of Hershey?"

"Rule number one is never give anybody the first shot. Rule number two is never give anybody a clear shot. Why do you think God invented backs? Because they make the best targets."

"Shank, you've got eleven years clean and sober. Now, to my way of thinking, part of those eleven years has been spent getting to know your Higher Power, or whatever, am I right?"

"That's right."

"I don't think God would approve of you killing a man in cold blood. No, that's not the answer. That would ruin our lives forever."

"We're not killing a man. As V.I. Lenin was fond of saying, we're just squashing an insect. There's a big difference."

"This is a turning point for us, Shank. I want you to back off from this idea and never bring it up again. We have to choose the higher road. If we don't, surely we'll perish."

"Thanks, Rickie. May I add, you're being a complete pain in the rear?"

In spite of herself, Rickie laughed. "I took advantage of a dead cat to return from Heaven through a portal the cat's sacrifice created. I think I have a God-given right at this point to be a pain in the rear. It's almost 6 a.m. If I hurry, I've just enough time to catch a few more winks here on the couch before meeting my shrink for breakfast."

With that, she stretched out and pulled up the blanket. "Take my car," she said. "Take the dead cat with you. You can take them both by Judy's later today."

"You know I can't drive. I'll call my driver."

"No way! It's time you started driving again. It'll be your first step toward forgiving yourself."

"I will never do that."

"You will. Once you realize everything that happens in life isn't your fault. Dr. Black taught me that. Oddly, it's what Hirschfeld always accused me of. But not everything is our fault. Once you realize evil exists, and takes advantage of us in our weaker moments, you'll begin to forgive yourself. A long time ago, you let evil win ... but now things are different."

"Rickie, if I take your car, how will you get to your meeting?"

"I'll take the Rolls. If I'm going, I might as well go in style. Now stop making excuses. You're going to start driving again even if it kills you."

"I love you," he whispered.

"Don't ever say that again until you hear it from my lips first. Promise me."

"Okay, Rickie, I promise."

"Shank, promise me one other thing."

"Anything."

"Don't run over any cats on your way down to Judy's."

### Chapter 29

Rickie overslept and awoke at 8:30 A.M. and realized she was afraid. The house acquired a foreign, evil caste, which stirred within her feelings of grave apprehension. It was almost to the point where she could not ascend the stairs by herself and get ready for her breakfast meeting with Dr. Black's group. This left her stuck downstairs on the couch in the heavy white terry robe and short fright wig of sleep disarrayed red hair. She put through the call.

"Dr. Black's exchange."

"This is Rickie. I'm afraid to go upstairs. I can't make the meeting because I'd have to go out in my robe."

"The Doctor left a message for you. She said if you call up here making excuses, to tell you, and I quote, "You're suffering from phobophobia."

"From what?"

"Phobophobia--fear of your own fear. She said to tell you to get your sorry behind to the meeting, no ifs ands or buts."

"Message received." She'd have to attend the meeting in her robe. Oh, well. This was Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Stranger things occurred, especially in a town where designer evening gowns costing thousands of dollars often came in total fabric weights of less than five ounces. At certain cocktail parties she'd attended, where the ratio of exposed, over-processed starlet flesh to square inches of sheer fabric often approached 100 to 1, her robe would be considered overdressing.

If she dropped the hammer on the Rolls, she'd merely make the 9 A.M. start time. Gathering herself together, she grabbed the car keys, but stopped when she saw the note. It was from Shank. Scrawled in childish handwriting was a poem.

Oh! Think what a world we should have of it here, If the haters of peace, of affection, and glee, Were to fly up to Saturn's comfortless sphere, And leave earth to such spirits as you, love, and me.

"Curse you, Shank. I'm not going to fall apart and cry over this lousy poem." Her eyes brimmed and burned from the effort of not releasing a steady stream of the salty stuff, the source of which stemmed from a wild burning in her heart. Good God, you fool. You've fallen in love with the man--and at the worst possible moment in your life. The man was a poetry lover. Never in a million years would she have guessed. What other secrets would he slowly reveal, secrets hidden for a decade behind the closed door of his heart? Stuffing the poem into the pocket of her robe, she opened the connecting door to the garage. Her Mercedes was still there beside Hirschfeld's Silver Seraph. Obviously Shank chickened out on her offer to take her car on a solo drive attempt and no doubt simply called for his car and driver to continue living life on life's terms one day at a time, according to the dictates of God as Shank understood Him.

She hit the button and the garage door quietly rolled up to reveal two men standing in the driveway. At first, them being well dressed in dark blue suits and both young enough to be still in college, she figured them for Mormon missionaries or something of a similar ilk. Until she noticed the first man's boots, shiny black patent leather with pointed toes tipped in silver. Not the sort a Mormon missionary would wear. In fact, now that her perception took this twist, she realized the men looked exactly like a couple of mafia hit men. She'd reacted too slowly, they'd taken advantage of this, moving in close, violating her personal space, cutting off the possibility of retreat. The first man, shaven so close his skin shined, his breath reeking of mint, said quietly, "Mrs. Hirschfeld?"

"What do you want?"

"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. H. I'm Mr. J. This is my associate Mr. G." Mr. J. reached out almost casually and fingered lightly the lapel of her robe, his eyes casually studying her from head to toe, the eyes dead, displaying no particular interest. "We've got a message for you from Mr. Hirschfeld. He wanted us to tell you it takes two to make a marriage, but only one to break it."

Rickie understood immediately real trouble had arrived. That all of her crazy husband's smirking, boasting references to mafia hit men and his use of them were absolutely true. It seemed totally unreal, as though she were dreaming, but here they were. The two men wore the faces of hardened murderers, right down to the soul-dead expressionless pupils staring out from their diseased craniums. They'd smoothly closed in and taken complete control of her space. There had been no time to think, no time to stage a counteroffensive.

"I'll do whatever you want. Please don't hurt me." Silently, she cursed herself for her instant docility, her admitted willingness to do anything Messrs. J. and G. asked of her only seconds after they'd made contact.

Mr. J. released her lapel and slowly walked his eyes up to hers. "We're going to kill you. Not today. Mr. Hirschfeld wants you to be scared for awhile first. When we next meet, we're going to hurt you with a box cutter in the most painful way imaginable and then piss on your exposed and still beating heart while you die."

"Those were my husband's instructions?"

"Those were them. Have a nice day, Mrs. H."

It was over as quickly as it began. Rickie stood stock still until the two men disappeared down the driveway and out the gate. A long black sedan pulled up, she guessed a Crown Vic, or maybe an Impala. The blasted thing looked almost like an undercover police car. The two men got in and were gone. No roaring engines, no squealing tires, everything nice and easy.

It took her a second to realize she'd stopped breathing. And wet herself. With a huffing, primal exhalation, she restarted her circulatory system. She thought about calling the police, and then decided against it. What could they do? I've been threatened by two nicely dressed men who told me to have a nice day.

She needed to do something with the energy roaring through her body. With stoic deliberation, she went back to the kitchen and selected an ice pick. Returning to the garage, she jabbed the pick into the sidewall of each tire on Hirschfeld's Rolls. The tires hissed and groaned as the rubber slowly collapsed under the gross vehicle weight of the most technically advanced and refined Saloon motor car ever made by Rolls-Royce. Opening the driver side door, she considered an infantile impulse to scratch up the custom stainless steel veneers, choosing instead to plunge the pick into the cowhide covered seat back in the approximate place where Hirschfeld's rotten heart would be had he been sitting there. Returning to the kitchen, she opened the freezer and removed the Gelson's shopping bag which held the frozen remains of Just Plain Dot. The bag rattled in her shaking hands as her adrenalin hit the downside of its peak with a raw grinding of her insides and a feeling of needing to puke.

"That was the last straw," she said to the cat as she returned to her own car and tossed the bag into the trunk before backing out into the uncertainty of an overcast February morning.

Just Plain Dot did not reply; which in no way minimized the force of Rickie's feeling it was time to do something about Hirschfeld. What that something was, she couldn't say, but that it would involve possible elements of atrocity and barbarism, she was certain. Whether she herself would be capable of such a violent act, she was equally uncertain.

### Chapter 30

"I have only one friend, besides my son," Rickie said. "Her name is Judy. I was lucky to have her; Hershey didn't allow me any other friends. For the past five years, except for Judy, I've lived in total isolation. My only other acquaintance was our housekeeper, Juana, who speaks very little English. I might as well have been a dog in a kennel. Hershey actually kept me on a time clock. He had to know where I was at all times. My loneliness was unbearable."

Rickie arrived at Du-Par's restaurant to find Dr. Black's breakfast meeting well underway, with three other ladies besides herself halfway through assorted plates of high octane breakfast items, most notable of which were the pancakes slathered with extra blueberries and whipped cream, of which Rickie ordered a plateful. After short introductions from Black, dressed in a red power suit and three-inch red platform pumps, Rickie felt at home immediately, and wasted no time opening up to the sincere, welcoming spirits proffered by the group.

"My ex-husband was an abusive s.o.b. who used to constantly accuse me of cheating on him," Betty, a matronly woman in faded designer sweats, replied. "I remember once he slapped me at a party because he thought I was making eyes at his best friend. I probably was at that point."

"What I hated about my abusive relationship was the verbal degradation," Scotia, a tiny waif with short, wavy henna hair, volunteered. "After six months with this android, he'd nearly convinced me I was nothing more than a slut. That's part of the reason I elected to have an abortion when I became pregnant; a feeling I wasn't worthy to have a child. I finally realized after I entered therapy with Dr. Black the 'droid was the problem, not me. It took awhile to get my mind around the truth that the man who'd promised to love me forever was incapable of loving anyone or anything."

Rickie took a toothsome gobble of pancake, and sipped slowly from her thick mug of Du-Pars excellent urn-brewed coffee, grateful to be part of the forum, appreciative that, thus far, not a single remark in this no-holds-barred atmosphere was made of the fact that she'd shown up in a slightly damp robe and slippers.

"My life is in complete chaos," Rickie said. "Yesterday I tried to drown myself in front of Shutters hotel. I came back because of my responsibility to a new kitten. Would you believe right this very moment, in the trunk of my car, that kitten lies frozen inside a Gelson's shopping bag?"

"The runt is dead already?" Black asked.

Rickie nodded. "She drowned in an unfortunate turn of events. We're trying to set up a decent burial for her at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, next to Hopalong Cassidy's horse."

Black sighed, and grimaced, as if the evoked mental picture of the frozen cat connected her to something unpleasantly strange. "Rickie, as you may have guessed, this group's core value is survival. It's the starting place for us, and the place from which we ultimately hope to work our way outward to the more rewarding areas of spirit and life. These ladies are the lucky ones; so far, they've all managed to escape their tormentors. Of course you, Rickie, are merely beginning the escape process. If you're going to survive, you've got to have caring friends from outside your immediate circle. Friends who will go the distance with you. The name of our group is Women Empowered. WE for short. We'd like you to join with us, in the hopes you will allow us to help you escape from the death threat you're under."

"I may not escape. I'm not certain it's possible. Today, just before I left, Hershey sent two men to scare me, to let me know even though he's in a hospital bed, he can still control me, can still hurt me. They told me they were coming back later to finish me off. After they left, I ice-picked the tires on his Rolls."

"He's doubtless having you followed," Betty said. "Before you leave, we should check the parking lot for the watchers."

"Oh my God. I'm sure you're right. I'm afraid it's a matter of time before he gets me."

"As long as you continue to think like that, Hirschfeld is going to remain in control of your life," Black said. "When is his abuse finally going to stop?"

"That's an easy question," Rickie said. "It'll stop when I'm dead."

"I've got a better idea," Jackie--a thin, model-type with super-short champagne hair--said. "Why not stop it by having him die first?"

"Been there, done that. I fired five shots and all five missed. He had a heart attack as a result and is in the hospital even as we speak. The problem is, I've lost my nerve to try again. It's a matter of time before he finishes me. I can feel it."

"We're not going to let that happen," Black said. She reached into her sizeable purse and pulled out a whopping revolver. "Every lady present here today carries a weapon. Members of WE are trained to fight back. The first step is to get you proficient with a personal firearm. I can set you up with an arms trainer for later today." Black replaced the revolver in her purse, the gesture well-practiced, as if the gun were nothing more than a lipstick.

"I appreciate your offer to help me. I don't have the guts to shoot anybody. That's why I've lost hope, even though I'm making this pathetic last ditch effort to break free."

"Rickie," Jackie said, "What you're doing is far from pathetic. It's real. Very real. Which is why I want to encourage you to give some serious thought as to how you're going to protect yourself now that you've made your escape."

"You mean like learning how to shoot? Are you ladies some kind of paramilitary organization or something? Is that it?"

"The escape is the riskiest and most dangerous time in the relationship," Jackie said. "That's why your husband sent the goons to pay you a visit. To let you know your life is on the line. We're not paramilitary, but we are militant. We believe a woman is worth defending."

"I met a man," Rickie said. "A couple of days ago. His name is Shank. From what I know of his past, I believe Shank is a dangerous man. I think deep down, I'm encouraging a relationship with Shank hoping he'll do something about Hershey for me."

She gave the group credit. Nobody blinked.

"That won't work," Scotia piped up. "Nicole Simpson tried doing it that way. Ron Goldman was a martial arts expert. He lost his cool when he came up the walkway and saw Nicole lying there unconscious. Point being, if you need a bodyguard, hire one, don't use a boyfriend."

"I tried the boyfriend approach myself," Jackie said. "I hooked up with a cop and a police dog when I was being stalked by a maniac. In the end, it all came down to me."

"Where's your lawman friend now?"

Jackie smiled in a way Rickie wished she herself could, it was a smile free and flowing, like a headstream of happiness. "I married my cop. Perhaps you'll wind up marrying your Shank."

"You're about my size," Black said, studying her critically. "I've got a clean outfit in the car you can put on before we leave this morning. I hope you like fuchsia."

"I'll join your group," Rickie said. "I'm not ready to start carrying a gun. If I could have a chance at getting healthy again, to be free from my grief and my troubles, it would be the most wonderful thing in the world. Perhaps soon I will become a woman empowered."

"We'll drink to that," Black said, hoisting her water glass. The ladies, like an informal court, likewise followed suit, as the sequence of events in Rickie's life continued to unfold, suggesting to her perhaps there was a place in the universe where Justice rode unfettered, and was even now hastening to her aid.

### Chapter 31

She arrived at his door wearing Black's iridescent Fuchsia jogging suit which she was certain glowed in the dark. She'd called Shank as soon as her meeting with the members of WE ended and agreed to meet him at his place, which she discovered, after negotiating a storm-shrouded Mulholland Drive and a security gated, winding roadway, to be a colossal two story miniature replica of the White House, occupying its own individual hillock in the money drenched foothills which comprised Bel Air. He ushered her past a double staircase and pointed her towards the living room.

"I can supply an amusing and informative tour," Shank said. "Or we can simply sit in the living room, watch the rain and I'll watch you drink cheap wine. By the way, I really like the outfit--you look like the most beautiful inner part of some exotic flower. Orchids come to mind."

"I had neither in mind," Rickie said, "but right now a glass of cheap wine does sound nice. But what's a self-confessed alcoholic doing with wine in his home?"

"Just because I don't drink doesn't my friends can't." He headed for the kitchen.

Rickie descended a short flight to a living room which enjoyed, beyond a wall of glass, a stunning view of the San Fernando Valley. The fireplace, a brick and oak trimmed cavity big enough to roast a bear in, was in use, and like everything else in and around Tinsel town was a realistic fake, a clever arrangement of monstrous ceramic logs cleverly aflame from a dozen gas jets hidden beneath a bed of sand.

There was just one thing wrong with the setup; the spacious room was completely empty except for a couch and coffee table. In its defense, the couch was a nice one, it being of a length suitable for full stretch napping, positioned as it was facing the wall of glass, its plump cushions covered in comfortable beige brocade and festooned with a nice grouping of small, soft, brightly colored pillows.

The couch and view notwithstanding, she felt the urge to flee. Where is the rest of this man's friggin' furniture?

A few minutes later, Shank swept in with a serving tray holding a wine glass, a bottle of white zinfandel in an ice bucket, and a carafe of hot coffee accompanied by a thick white mug and a pitcher of heavy cream. The tray he set on the table without comment, serving the wine for her and pouring himself a coffee before they each took up positions on the opposite sides of the couch.

"Okay," she said. "You know I have to ask. Where's the rest of your furniture?"

"Don't have any."

"C'mon Shank. Everybody else in your neighborhood has furniture."

"Everybody else has a life. I don't have a life; therefore, I don't need furniture."

"You've been here how long?"

"Eight years. I bought this place the day I was released from Soledad."

"Where did you get that kind of money?"

Shank frowned. "I confessed last night. Don't make me do it again."

"Eight years," Rickie said, deciding to do no more prying if Shank did not want to be pried. "And still no furniture."

Shank nodded.

Rickie rubbed her temples. "Shank, I don't know if I can do this."

"You think I'm crazy."

"What am I supposed to think?"

"Rickie, what if I were to tell you that you were the first person I've ever allowed inside this house?"

"Shank, you're scaring me. I don't understand you, and I'm not sure I have the strength to even try. You've got a dark past and you're obviously rich as sin. You were responsible for the death of a child, and you've served hard time. By your own admission, you've dabbled in Mob ventures. I'm struggling with a lot of feelings right now, many of them bad, but one of which is a feeling you have somehow awakened me for the first time in years--the feeling I might be on the threshold of falling in love. It's a darned uncomfortable feeling. Because now ... seeing your house, and the way you live in it, as though it's been abandoned ... it gives me the shivers."

"Did you like the poem I gave you?"

"About how happy we'd be if we got rid of my husband by shipping him to another planet? It was beautiful. Did you write it?"

"Nah. It's an old thing by Thomas Moore. I'm a sucker for his stuff."

"It was ... beautiful. Like a dream."

"Someday when we're old, I'll recite from memory all the great ones by Robert Herrick, the famous Cavalier poet. You should hear me do Corinna's going a' Maying. It's the one with the line that says, Then while time serves and we are but decaying, come, my Corinna, come, let us go a' Maying." He fluffed the line. His sensitive lips trembled badly halfway through and the rest of it came out a croaking, choked sob. "Sorry ... I'm starting to feel again," he said, wiping his eyes. A burst of mirth issued forth. "Rickie, you're killing me!"

Someday when we're old. Would such a day ever come? She badly desired that it did. "Yes," she said. "I'm killing you with love. I'm looking forward to the day when you recite your poems to me. When that day comes, I'll want to hear every syllable. You're avoiding my question about your house, and why it is empty."

"We're both at the age where we've done all the firsts," he said. "You know, first love, first childbirth, first drink. It's only that for me, my life wobbled out of orbit. I committed a first murder of a child. It's a moment I've never been able to make any sense of. The only thing it taught me is the future is a place which can hold indescribable horrors."

Rickie suddenly understood the mystery of Shank. "I finally get this. It's so simple; I'm surprised I didn't see it before."

"Perhaps you can enlighten me."

"Shank, you're problem is, you wish you were dead. Ever since the accident where the little girl was killed, you've wished it. Being unable to work up the nerve to kill yourself, you've imposed a living death on yourself. This lonely sterile place with no furniture ...why, it's nothing more than your mausoleum. That's what's drawn us together. God. Why didn't I see it before?"

"What? What's drawn us together?"

"Shank, we both share the same desire to be dead."

He looked at her, his eyes searching deeply into her own. "Rickie, will you hold me?" She took him in her arms and he began to shake as if to cry, but finally he pulled away, his tearless eyes turned towards the mist-filled Valley below. "I've never shed a tear over that little girl. At some very profound level, I believe that makes me a monster. There should have been tears."

"It's buried too deep."

"Rickie, God can never forgive me for what I did. I've lost my soul. It would be better all around if you left now."

Rickie laughed, a dry, hollow sound, which suggested the room was low on oxygen. "Shank, it's time you woke up to what's happening here. You and I belong together. It's clear to me we're going to be inseparable from now on."

"That's impossible."

"Shank, don't you get it? We're both fighting the same war. The other side has captured our souls and we're trying to get them back. I'm never leaving you. It's all clear to me now. We were made for each other. There's one thing we have to accomplish before we tie the knot."

"Am I hearing you right, Rickie? I thought you said tie the knot."

Rickie pulled him close and put her lips to his ear. "Marry me." He stiffened, as though from an electric shock. "C'mon Shank, say something. Don't let the silence win."

He pulled back, clearing his throat. "My God, I want a drink."

"Drink me instead." At first, her lips were frail on his, but at some point in the process, the alarm bells ringing in their heads turned off and they began to float together towards the vast dark place where lost souls could be found. He found the wellsprings of her life and did indeed begin to drink heavily of her essence.

"Yes, Rickie...yes," Shank murmured. "I want you Rickie. You're the first thing I've wanted in eleven long years. The first thing."

"That's good, Shank. That's good. Now there's something I want, something I want very badly, and only you can give it to me."

He stood up, his face shining with a holy light, not unlike that of a man released from the darkest hole on earth.

"Tell me what you want, darling."

Rickie walked to the window, staring into the day outside, gloomy as a solar eclipse. "Hershey sent two hit men to see me today. They're going to kill me after I've had a chance to feel terrified for a day or so. If they get me, I want Hershey to pay for his crime, and I want you to do it."

Shank's face took on some vivid color at this remark.

"Shank? Did you hear me?"

"You're a real find, Rickie, I'll give you that. A real find. You walk into my miserable life, make me want you, and then slap on the leash. I've changed my mind about doing your killing."

"You said earlier you'd help me."

"I'll admit I got caught up in the whole thing, but then I came to my senses. I'm not buying into your revenge thing with your husband. I almost did there for awhile, but something snapped me out of it. Maybe it was my Higher Power, or maybe it was plain luck. I'm staying out of this. I've got my own problems."

"Why, Shank? Why are you excommunicating me?"

"Because to do away with your husband ... to really light that sucker up ... I'd have to get drunk."

With that, he retrieved his jacket and walked to the kitchen intercom, ordering his driver to bring around his car.

"Shank? You're leaving?"

He nodded. "I'm going to a meeting. It's where I belong."

"That's it? I ask you to kill my husband and you go to an AA meeting? When things get tough, that's what you do?"

"It's what I do. I'm not into being tough. I'd have to get drunk to do what you are asking me to do, and I'm into being sober. I've been clean for eleven years, and I'm not stopping now. You're welcome to stay here as long as you like."

"Stay here in a house with nothing but a couch in it?"

"This is our dividing line, Rickie. You can stay here in my house with the couch and nothing else in it, or you can go back to whatever's left of your life out there. You know how I feel about you, but you have to know I'm an old leopard and I won't be changing my spots anytime soon."

"I think I get it. To you, our affair is like a paint by numbers kit. If we do it by the numbers, we'll make it work, but if we go outside the lines, the whole thing will fall into chaos. You're wrong. We've got to go way outside the numbers for this thing to work."

"God, you're beautiful," he said. "I hope you're here when I get back."

"If you were smart, Shank, you'd never let me out of your sight again."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, you should invite me to your meeting."

"You won't go. Not after I refused your request."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you. I had no right."

"Rickie, I'm never going to know what to expect from you, am I?"

"Never. My capacities cannot be fathomed by a mere man such as you."

"Okay, then. Rickie, you wanna go to the meeting?"

She stepped into his arms. "He who persists, gets."

### Chapter 32

"The coffee tastes horrible here," Rickie said.

"Drink too much of the stuff and it could suck the marrow straight out of your bones," Shank replied. "More than one member here has contracted pernicious anemia from the java they serve."

"I notice you drink your share."

"Not from here. Starbuck's is my brew."

Earlier, following up on Rickie's expression of her desire to attend his AA meeting, he'd transported her down the hill from Mulholland Drive to the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Whiteoak Avenue, the juncture which sported, besides the brute physical and financial necessities of Jamba Juice and Pacific Crest Bank, the spiritually fulfilling, prominent brick structures of Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church. It was there, in the smoke-filled basement, she found herself in the company of an eclectic mix of women and men, a dozen or so of which were seated at a horseshoe arrangement of long folding tables and chairs, the focal point of which was a table headed up by a man and a woman.

"That woman is our speaker for the day, and that guy in black is the leader of the meeting," Shank explained.

Rickie snickered. "That guy's your leader? He looks like Maynard G. Krebs! Check out the black turtleneck and the goatee."

"AA has no leaders. Not in the strictest sense of the word."

"Why not?"

"Because alkies have severe authority problems. They can't be led anywhere."

Rickie continued her appraisal of the beatnik, who, judging by his dress and demeanor was the sort of individual to be found solemnly intoning arrhythmic indecipherable verses in places where everybody was stoked on too much caffeine and liberal thinking. "All the same, I think your leader is a bit left of center on the normality scale."

"What do you want? This is an AA meeting in Encino, not a stockbroker's downtown watering hole. At least the guy's alive. This isn't about chic--it's about survival."

"My name is Wayne and I'm a whole lotta alcoholic," the beatnik said. "Welcome to the noon meeting of the Encino Fellowship."

The place was unbelievably hot, the result of an overactive heating vent directly behind her. Rickie found herself falling prey to a sudden bout of near terminal claustrophobia. Normally, deep breathing would have allayed her anxieties, but a number of people were sucking down cigarettes at record breaking speeds, their elaborate exhaling of smoke fouling the air and rendering breathing of any sort nearly impossible.

"It's hot as Hell's hinges in here," she said.

"Keeps the rats out."

"Funny."

"Always be grateful for something."

"This is what's kept you sober for eleven years?"

Shank stared up at the ceiling and smiled. "Yeh. This is it."

It being noontime, a number of people dressed in work attire poked around in their brown bags, extracting and consuming lunch items, chief of which appeared to be sandwiches, and not a few candy bars. She thought of her own paper sack, containing one dead cat. Perhaps she did belong here. She'd give it another few minutes.

Wayne led the group through the Serenity Prayer, wherein, as far as Rickie could ascertain, God was petitioned to dole out a modicum of serenity to those in the group who couldn't accept the lot God ladled out to them earlier. That bit of business done, Wayne turned his attention to the next order of business, the ferreting out of newcomers in their midst. At Wayne's insistence, she introduced herself.

"I'm Rickie. Don't hang a label on me. It's just plain Rickie."

"Hi, Rickie!" Hearing her name chorused in this fashion, as it were, by a dozen strong voices, sent a chill straight up her spine. She'd never before experienced such a positive recognition, never heard her name shouted aloud.

"I'm only visiting," she hastened to add, a feeble attempt to justify herself in the eyes of her beholders. The collection of faces aimed in her direction smiled benevolently, rolling their eyes as though to a child who'd only lied about breaking into the cookie jar. Of course, she could almost hear them thinking. We know why you're really here, dear. In time, you'll admit it. Perhaps even today. You're a friggin' full-blown alcoholic!

"I think today we'll skip our Step Study and have a newcomer meeting," Wayne advised the group.

"Oh please," Rickie said. "No need to do anything special on my behalf. Go ahead and have your Step Study, whatevertheheckthatis."

As if on cue, a round of raucous laughter exploded at some hidden joke. Her embarrassment was acute."

"Is there a hole around here someplace I can crawl into?"

"Sorry, Rickie," Wayne said, "Please don't be offended. We're laughing at ourselves, really. Newcomers put us all in mind of our first meeting, when we still thought we were the center of the universe."

"Not to worry," Rickie said.

"AA is a place where self-centeredness often proves to be fatal," he continued.

"I get the picture."

Shank gave her knee a gentle squeeze under the table, which she took as a show of solidarity, enabling her to stand up to the discomforting coterie of feelings engendered by Wayne's last remark and the scope of things in general.

The lady next to Wayne, a tiny middle aged woman in a dark blue power suit, set aside her sandwich and began to speak. "My name's Arlene and I'm an alcoholic."

"Hi, Arlene!"

The woman seems proud of the fact she's a former boozer, Rickie thought. Has she sunk so low?

"Whenever I see a newcomer," Arlene continued, "I remember what it was like. Rickie's presence helps to remind me no matter how long I've been in the program, I'm no closer to a cure than the day I first walked in. I'm reminded I'm only one drink away from a drunk."

You can't possibly know what it's like for me. If you must know, I resent being used for your psychic projection of your past life. You can call that selfish, or not, whatever, it's your show.

Arlene smiled at her. "That's all I want to share."

Wayne surveyed the group. "Who else wants to share?"

A man raised his hand. "I'm Vic, an alcoholic."

"Hi, Vic!"

"Shank, look at that guy! He looks like he only crawled out of the gutter!"

"He did. About twenty years ago. He crawled in here."

"Has he bathed since?"

"Probably not. Once you kill a brain cell, it doesn't grow back."

"I remember how angry I was at my first meeting," Vic was saying. "About what it was like, I remember the time I got drunk at a party and raided the medicine cabinet looking for some downers. There were some pills in there, and I took them all and crashed on the couch. The next morning, my best friend's old lady came out and wanted to know why I ate all her birth control pills."

About a half hour into this ritual of sharing, in which stories of every description were heard concerning what it was like, Rickie's rapid metamorphosis from skepticism to angst to acceptance was finally completed by this most efficient and gentle brainwash, its mesmerizing formula of hot, stifling air, burnt coffee and wild stories effectively penetrating her soul beyond the battlefield of her emotions to a place long empty and in urgent need of filling. The vault of her soul, a long neglected room, a lonely place in need of a wild and crazy party, found a source, a fountainhead of experience, strength and hope.

"Shank, I have to tell you something."

"Yes?"

"This may sound odd, but I suddenly feel like I belong here."

"Oh my."

She knew it. She was where she belonged and was even now at the party of lost souls created by the dozen recovering alcoholics who knew her, really knew her, way deep down, in a way no others possibly could. They somehow survived similar lives of brutal and often bizarre chaos and understood fully her present craziness, her fears, her hopes. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives became unmanageable.

Her private reverie was interrupted. Wayne's voice. "Rickie? Would you like to share?"

Would she? Yes! She'd like to shout the truth from the top of the church steeple for the entire Valley to hear. She was home! She'd found her tribe! The voice that came out was slow, and fledgling, needing time yet to dry and stretch its wings before it could take flight. Nonetheless, she made the attempt to give way to the soul crying out within her.

"Well ... like I said ... I'm Rickie."

"Hi, Rickie!"

"Hi. I only want to say, it's not like I know anything for sure. At first, I was angry to be here, but after hearing your stories, I feel very connected to you guys, and that's not something I've ever felt before. When I first got here, I wanted to run, but now I feel like I could sit here all day, drinking this horrible coffee and listening. It may sound funny, but I feel safe here. So much so, I don't ever want to leave this room."

Here I am, she thought, in an overheated basement with a bunch of ex street people and beatniks, the sweat pouring down my pits. Yet there's a curious order to the process that's irresistible.

"A lot of you talked about how your lives were unmanageable. Well, I've got only about the most unmanageable life on the planet right now. My husband sent a couple of hit men to my door this morning. He did that because yesterday I tried to blow his brains out. I missed, but the bullets whizzing past his head caused him to have a heart attack and collapse into a pitcher of Bloody Mary's."

She'd grabbed their attention. "Wait, there's more. An hour ago, I asked Shank here to kill my husband. Shank showed me his sobriety was worth the world to him. He refused my request and brought me to this meeting instead."

The surrounding silence was thick; they were giving her some much needed space, something she hadn't received from anybody for quite awhile. Quietly, the seconds ticked on. She finally understood their silence. This is my admission, my First Step. It's time to admit I'm an alcoholic with an unmanageable life. That's why they're so quiet. They're waiting to hear me say it.

"Okay," she said. "There's something else I want to say. I know it's probably too soon to say it, but here goes." She paused, feeling something moving inside her chest. With a start, she realized it was her beating heart. The dad gum thing was about to burst with pride. She took a deep breath and prepared her lips and tongue to launch the syllables which would propel her into a brave, new and hopefully sober, world.

"My name is Rickie. I'm, uh, I'm ... wait, let me start over. My name is Rickie ... I'm, uh, that is, I'm an, uh--"

### Chapter 33

"I couldn't say it, Shank. Couldn't get the words out. I couldn't say

'I'm an alcoholic.'"

"People go the racetrack as much to see the horses as to gamble," he said.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning maybe you came to the meeting only to watch."

They were back in the comfortable leather and burl wood confines of the limo, making poor progress down Ventura Boulevard due to a spattering, determined rainstorm in progress, replete with overflowing curbs and gutters. The water from the surrounding mountains flooded downhill unabated, searching for a wetland slough in which to abate their torrents and nourish life. The floodwaters found instead the wasteful man-made folly of the concrete bowl of the city. The late afternoon sky was a dirty grayish yellow, imparting to the uneven mix of high-rises and strip malls an eerie, fluorescent cast. Shank put the jazz station on, Metheany's Are You Going With Me? The soulful synth provided the psychic pathway for their emotional walk.

"I've changed my mind," Shank said.

"About what?"

"About your husband. I'm going to help you."

"You're not serious."

"It's deadly serious. I know what I said earlier, but I can't let your husband's goons steal my true love away from me. Mafia goons actually kill people real dead."

"Maybe I killed myself. I never should have pulled the trigger on Hershey. Shank, I can't let you do it. Now that I understand AA better, I could never ask you to forsake your hard won sobriety. I'd rather die instead."

Shank's face shrunk. "Maybe my sobriety doesn't have to go down the tubes. I hoped I'd never have to do this, but I do have a few favors owed me from certain people from back in the day. I'm not willing to do your husband myself, but I think I might be able to get his contract on you nullified."

"Shank, you don't have to do that. Don't resurrect your past on my account."

"I'm going to see the Godfather. His name is Ernie "The Foot" Catalano. I did him a small favor once and made us both a lot of money in the bargain. He might be willing to help."

"Shank, it's not safe. I have heard of that man. I read in the Enquirer the reason he's called Ernie The Foot is because of the rumor he stomps his enemies to death with his bare feet."

"Rickie, that's no rumor. That's exactly what he does with them. He has a wine cellar in his basement where he does the deed. Although he doesn't do it himself anymore. He has a couple of younger guys who do it for him."

"Shank. Look at me. I want you to stay away from him."

"Rickie, I want you to be safe. Your husband has put out a contract on you. Whether to simply harass you or kill you, we don't know. We do know he's upped the stakes. We're no longer playing for pennies here. I think you should stay at my place tonight."

"No, Shank."

"Rickie, you shouldn't be out in public alone. You're exposed. Please stay with me."

"Shank, I have to make a new life for myself. I'm not sure my new life can include sharing your sofa yet. In fact, I must tell you no. I can't stay at your place tonight, because tonight I'm going to get drunk. By myself. No matter who's after me."

"Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is riotous."

"Quoting the bible? You?"

"When I was doing time, I started going to AA meetings in the joint. When it came time for me to work on the Higher Power thing, I started reading the Good Book. I read the entire thing, cover to cover, three times."

"The entire thing?"

"Yep. Even all that stuff about the mildew in Leviticus."

"Dear God. Please don't tell me you're a Born Again. Thus far, you've certainly hid it well."

"Get real," he said. "I was raised Catholic."

"Me too. Do you go to Mass?"

"I said raised, not scrupulous. I haven't been to Mass since the child died at my hands. I'm not anti-Catholic. My best friend is a Catholic priest. Father Larry and I play golf every other Thursday on his day off."

"I don't go to Mass, either. I haven't been for thirty years. Not since Bobby Q. drove off in his Firebird, leaving me alone in the world with Jesse Edwin."

"Are you angry at God?"

Rickie made a fist and thumped her chest. From her mouth no words came, the lips tightening in a frown. "You've ruined everything," she finally said.

"Rickie, look at me."

"I can't. I can't look at you. I can't keep going through all these emotions. I want you, and then I don't want you. If you must know, I do want to spend the night on your couch, but I want to get drunk, too. This is going to sound really nasty and horrible, but I want to get drunk with you! I can't stand all this sobriety and self-inspection!"

"Rickie!"

"I hate it that my husband is out there somewhere talking to hit men, and I have to wonder when's the next time they'll look me up. I hate it that Bobby Q. left me all those years ago! I hate it that all I've known these past five years is pain and isolation. I hate it that I lost my baby! I hate it that I didn't drown in the ocean--that I was sent back here for more punishment!"

"Rickie, I love you!"

"I told you not to say that to me! Not unless I say it to you first! It's too late!"

"Rickie!"

"Don't you get it, Shank? I hate my life! I hate it my dead cat is thawing out in the trunk of my car! I hate it that my husband's going to kill me! I hate it that I saw myself in the people at your AA meeting. I hate it that I'm probably an alcoholic! I want to be free of this world! I want to get out of this car and dance in the rain! I want to get drunk and crazy and forget everything for awhile!"

She gave him credit. He didn't flinch, or try to hold her hands or comfort her in any way. The limo pulled up to a red light. Rickie jumped out, wading through a knee-deep rushing torrent to the sidewalk and began to dance in the rain in front of Gelson's market. She threw her head back, dancing freely, arms waving over her head, the way she used to dance in the '80's in Golden Gate Park, when love, not rain was in the air, and she only had eyes for Bobby Q. The traffic light changed but the limo stubbornly remained, triggering a cacophony of horns from angry drivers of the type who were unable to appreciate a dance in the rain. Somebody grabbed her. Shank. He took her in his arms and began to waltz her down the sidewalk in slow, sweeping arcs, moving her under the canopy in front of the store, whereupon he drew her close, stroking her damp hair, neither one speaking, their descriptive powers inadequate to categorize the raw gush of emotions presently flooding their souls.

Somewhat later, after raiding a couple of large hot coffees and a bag of hazelnut cookies dipped in chocolate from Gelson's gourmet pastry counter, dipping and sipping in silence while the limo smoothly worked its way up the impossibly steep Calneva Drive to Mulholland Drive and into the driveway of his huge, empty house on the knoll overlooking the Valley, he finally said what he had to say.

"Two things, Rickie. I don't pity you. You don't have to drink over this."

"Yes. I do have to. I'm going to R.J.'s. It's where I go when I need to get drunk. Don't follow me. Good-bye, Shank."

She got out of the limo. The rain stopped, leaving the air sharp and smelling of wet sage. The night hills crackled with the croaking ricochets of happy frogs. Dark clouds shrouded the Basin, pressing down on a zillion human souls. It was not a night for the normal workings of the sunny, laid-back L.A. life. It was a night for deep imaginings and fearful turnings, a night for tears. A night for troubled hearts to stand naked before the universe and wonder why. A night for two people in love to spend together on the couch by the fireplace big enough to roast a bear in, sorting out carefully the trash and the treasures of their lives.

That was for other people. For the normies. For Rickie, it was a night to get drunk awaiting almost certain execution.

She got in her car, which she had left in his driveway earlier, and started the motor and powered down the window. He stood by her door, his lean frame beautifully silhouetted against the breathtaking carpet of Valley lights. "I wish you weren't so handsome in an ugly sort of way," she said.

"Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh."

"Shank? When I told you I saw Our Lady, you said nothing. Didn't you believe me? Don't you want to know what she looked like?"

"Sure I believe you. What's she look like?"

"Very young, but not too young. She lives in a purple cloud and rearranges entire galaxies with a wave of her hand. She told me the secret of life, but I forgot it when the paramedics brought me back."

"You never did answer my question," Shank responded. "Are you angry at God?"

"I don't feel anything for God. When Bobby Q. left me alone in the world, I buried God. I Buried Him deep."

Shank smiled. "Maybe He's trying to rise again."

"Stop trying to be funny. And laying a guilt trip on me. I'm too old and too tired for that."

"I stand admonished. God is hereby declared buried and will stay buried forever. Although not feeling anything is a form of anger, you know."

"You are such a smart-aleck."

"I have to be. If I took serious stock of myself, I'd self-destruct on the spot. Look, Rickie, for the past eleven years, I've told myself I will never feel pleasure again, only pain. Then one dark night, I saw a woman lying unconscious in a hospital bed and for some crazy reason, the door to my guts swung open and I found out I'm still alive and I can still feel, and I don't want to stop."

"It'd be far better for you to forget me, Shank."

"Far better. But impossible."

"I'm sorry my life is such a mess. You really don't need a Baggage Queen like me. You need one of those emotionally honest AA ladies. You deserve a clean and sober woman in your life."

"You're a red-haired terror, I'll give you that."

She rolled down the driveway and along the sharply curving road leading up to Mulholland, her face immobile against the confusing jumble of emotions which still churned. From her vantage point high above the San Diego Freeway, she could see it was jammed with commuter traffic. She elected to continue east on Mulholland.

I'll make my way down Benedict Canyon and approach Beverly Hills from its stinking backside. In a half hour, I'll be drinking myself blind drunk in peace and numbing the painful feelings inside me without having to answer to anybody. Once this is accomplished, a cab ride to a decent hotel, perhaps the Westwood Marquis, will complete my quest for oblivion while I wait for my executioners. I'm sorry, Shank, but it's better you don't try and save me. It's better me dead than you. I love you. I'm going to die for you. Forgive me for being drunk when I face my Maker. Forgive me.

There is a relief which comes with making a decision. She was already feeling better by the time she found herself a seat at the end of the bar.

### Chapter 34

The Happy Hour being newly launched, she'd drained the first of her half-priced scotch and ordered another when a call came through on her cell phone. The caller ID identified Dr. Black.

"Dr. Black?"

"Hi, Rickie. I'm not calling you in my capacity as your therapist; I'm calling you as your friend, and as a member of WE. After you left this morning, the ladies and I agreed we'd like to help you get through this. The way we do it is to have one of us stay close to you until the crisis has passed."

"Crisis?"

"Your escape from Hirschfeld. We consider it a crisis."

"Dr. Black, I'm at R.J.'s. I just finished my first scotch rocks, and I plan to have a great many more, so many, in fact, the bartender has been instructed to pour me into a cab headed for the Marquis as soon as my forehead hits the bar. This probably isn't the best time for Women Empowered to be watching over me."

"This is the most dangerous time," Black said. "You're making your escape from your abusing husband. The risk of severe assault, and even homicide is high. What you're forgetting is battering has a life of its own. Even as we speak, we don't know what unseen forces are at work in the background. We do know they're at work."

"I know what's at work. It's Hershey's evil brain juices, fermenting inside his overheated, diseased skull, deciding what he's going to do to me. I tried to fight back. I tried to terminate my husband with extreme prejudice. This afternoon, I tried again. I asked my friend Shank to kill Hershey. Shank wanted no part of it. The only thing he's willing to do is go to his Mafia on my behalf, which I don't want him to do--Hershey is more evil than Shank. I don't want Shank to die. So I'm going to die instead. Therefore, the only unseen force at work right now is this fresh scotch the bartender just put in front of me. I'm sorry, Dr. Black. I really want to be alone tonight."

"This is not a time to get drunk. This is a time to tread lightly and be vigilant."

"I need to get drunk. Life has gotten much too complicated."

"Your husband is going to kill you. That seems simple enough."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Black. I'm not up for a heroic struggle tonight. Besides, Hershey is in the hospital. He's going to let me live a few more days."

"Are you up for a friend? I'd like to swing by. Why don't we have a drink together? I promise we won't talk about problems."

"Please don't come by here. I really want to be alone." Call waiting beeped. "Excuse me, Dr. Black. I've got a call coming in."

"Mom?" It was Jesse Edwin.

"Hi, baby. You should hang up. Mommy's busy. She's getting drunk right now, and she's got her shrink on the other line."

"Mom, I called because I have some news for you. Very important news."

"Honey, can it wait?"

"Why are you getting drunk?"

"You know why. I'm an alcoholic. I went to a meeting with Shank today. It's obvious I'm one of you people. I couldn't get the words out. I couldn't admit it. That's why I'm getting drunk. That, plus the fact your stepfather has hired a couple of hit men. They showed up today to warn me. I'm getting drunk so I won't feel too much pain when they start in on me."

"Hit men? That son of a bitch! Mom, where are you?"

"R.J.'s. Don't come here. I want to get drunk by myself."

"Mom, you're making no sense. Nobody's going to hurt you. We won't let them. Mom, I wanted to tell you this in person, but I guess I'll have to do it over the phone. Mom, I found my father."

This statement took the long way around her brain, stopping at every major point in her emotional history.

"Jesse Edwin? Can you repeat what you just said?"

"Mom, I found my father. I found Bobby Q. Or I should say he found me after my private investigator found him. He's been living right here in L.A. all this time."

"Bobby Qumayousie? Here in L.A.?"

"He's a street person. For years, he's lived in a tunnel under Union Station. We've been together all day. He's here with me right now at Sony Studios. We both have braided hair. Mom, did you know he spent almost 2 years in Vietnam and never wore a shirt the entire time? They called him the Montagnard Monster. He used to roam the mountains naked armed with only a hunting knife. He killed hundreds of VC. That's why he ran away when he found out you were going to have me. He said he had too much blood on his hands to serve in the sacred temple of a family, to be a husband and father."

Rickie's emotions did a little back spring as she hastily drained her second scotch.

"Mom? Are you there? Look, I'm putting Bobby Q. on. He wants to say something."

With shaking fingers, Rickie switched the call back to Dr. Black. "Dr. Black? I need you. My son called. He found his father. I hung up on them both. I couldn't face it."

Nobody was listening; she was talking to dead air. Apparently, Dr. Black terminated the connection. Feverishly, she switched back to her son. "Jesse Edwin? Bobby?" Nobody there. She speed dialed Judy.

"Judy, I need you. I'm at R.J.'s. I'm drowning. Jesse Edwin found Bobby Q. I think they're coming here. Hershey has hired a couple of hit men. They quite literally scared the pee out of me this morning. I was going to let them kill me. But things have gotten complicated. I think I'm in love with Shank. Now I want to live. Meanwhile, I've gotten drunk and I feel exposed. I just now realized what a stupid fool I've been."

"I'm coming," Judy said. "Thirty minutes. Hang on."

She closed the phone and signaled for a third round, catching sight as she did so, of a tall man with a proud bearing in a Lauren suit peering over the throng through the shadows across the bar. The man's eyes connected with her own. Shank. Something was wrong. He wasn't coming over, instead signaling the bartender, who quickly poured Shank a shot.

There were no suspects in the crime which was next committed. Without a word, pausing only briefly to make unbreakable eye contact with her, Shank raised the whiskey to his lips and downed the shot. That done, he slapped the glass on the bar, received another shot from the bartender, and started moving toward her. He saddled the stool and sat staring straight forward.

"Now I remember what it tastes like," he said.

"At first I didn't recognize you," she said. "Standing there in the middle of that jostling, chatting crowd. There was something about you. You looked different."

"Everybody looks different in a bar. That's because in a bar, people can be whatever they want to be."

"Shank, you just broke your sobriety."

He nodded. "I blew off eleven years of my life. Not only that, I drove down the hill in a car by myself. I darn near spun out at that hairy bend near the bottom of Laurel Canyon." He looked at his watch. "The Godfather told me to go to hell."

"He did?"

"Those were his very words. Don't worry. I'm still going to help you. If everything goes our way, in the morning, I'll be driving out to the Valley to that big furniture warehouse on Sepulveda and ordering myself a houseful of furniture. After that, I'm going to see Father Larry and make a good confession. You see, I've never confessed my mortal sin of murdering that child. Once I'm finished confessing, I'm going to call you and take you for a drive, perhaps up the coast, to Santa Barbara or someplace, where I'll feed you a good Italian seafood dinner, after which we'll walk along the shore and I'll propose marriage in the proper manner--"

"Shank! Stop it!"

Rickie felt her higher consciousness receding, her thoughts and emotions melting into a blur. "When life is finally over, it's the important things you remember. My last memory when I was drowning in the surf was the smell of leaves in my son's hair. Shank, what are you going to do? What sin are you getting yourself drunk enough to commit? What's going to be your last memory?"

"I can't tell you that. It might make you a party to conspiracy."

"You've changed your mind. You're going to kill him after all, aren't you? You're going to kill my husband."

It was then she saw the gun butt inside his waistband. An old gun, an automatic, the handle worn shiny from constant use in a long ago war.

"Answer me. Are you going to kill my husband?"

He nodded. "I'm going to shoot him. But first I'm going to light him up like a torch."

With a smooth motion that suggested great familiarity with the practice, he tossed off his second shot and stood up. "There was no way I could drive the limo," he said. "So I rented a car. A Ford Taurus of all things. It was all they had available." With a nod and a shrug he turned and left the bar.

### Chapter 35

"I think we've probably become the people we're going to be for the rest of our lives," Judy said. "Except we'll probably grow much sadder as time goes on, you know, when people we love start to die. When you almost drowned yourself, I took time to think about what it would be like for me if you were gone, and I realized I'd never have another friend like you. Not ever."

"We'll always have each other," Rickie said. "No matter what. Even if one of us dies. I'll tell you one thing; I got a brain flash along about my third scotch rocks and I realized how much I want to live. I've decided to fight back. I'm not going to die because Hershey wants me to. I've made my escape and I intend to go right on living."

"You've abandoned your suicidal intentions?"

Rickie sighed. It seemed a lifetime ago she'd thrown herself into the surf. "I was wrong to think that way. I didn't see any way out at the time. That's over. I'm going to live. What does concern me is Shank. He's gone to do something about Hershey, and I don't know what. Shank has appointed himself my guardian angel, over my protests. I'm afraid for him. Tonight, he wasn't clearheaded. He's broken his eleven year long sobriety."

"He drank? We should call the police."

"And tell them what? My new boyfriend is drunk and looking for my husband?"

Judy was wide-eyed, upset. "It's all Hirschfeld's fault. As per usual here in O.J. Town, nobody is going to believe our story. We're only women, after all."

The room was buzzing as happy hour went ballistic with all the airline pilots and big producers putting their best moves on anything remotely feminine. From ten yards and counting, Judy and Rickie spied two men approaching.

"I'll tell them we don't dance," Judy said.

"My God, Judy. It's them."

"Who?"

"Them. The two guys Hershey hired to hurt me. They must have staked your place out and followed you here."

"Oh no, Rickie."

The men closed the gap, moving in close, surrounding the women. Mr. J., his breath still smelling strongly of mint, pushed his body hard against Rickie. His face was no longer shaved to a shine, his jaw line instead menacingly darkened with a heavy, blue-black five o'clock shadow. "Good evening, Mrs. H.," he said. His gaze flickered over Judy, staying a fraction too long on certain parts of her anatomy.

"You men have no right," Judy said.

"Tell me about it, cupcake," Mr. J. said. "I'm a good listener. In fact, I was picked for this job because of my excellent people skills. Now Mr. G., here, he's not known for his social poise. Which is why he never says anything."

"This is a public place," Judy said. "What do you expect to accomplish in a place like this? All we have to do is scream." Mr. G. pressed tightly against her. She twitched suddenly, then became very still.

"Don't move, cupcake. Not even a muscle," Mr. J. said.

"Rickie? There's something very sharp pricking me in my butt muscle. Something that feels like a needle."

"What are you doing to her?" Rickie said, her voice coming from somewhere deep inside a well.

Mr. J. put one arm tightly around Rickie and smiled. The crowd of happy hour drinkers pressing around them were oblivious to the arrival of peril in their midst. Time passed, whether it was two minutes, or twenty, Rickie couldn't be sure. "Rickie?" Mr. J. said. "You're going to finish your drink and come quietly with me. It'll be just the two of us. You're going to do that because Mr. H. here has a syringe full of fresh HIV-positive blood stuck in your friend's tail. If he proceeds with the injection, she's gonna have an infection."

"If I go with you, you'll leave Judy alone?"

"Affirmative, Mrs. H. After you and me leave, Mr. G. will withdraw the needle and leave Judy here at the bar. Judy of course will keep quiet for five minutes in order that we don't sneak up on her some dark night and do something awful to her. If she cooperates, she won't be on our list. We'll forget all about her."

"Rickie?" Judy's face was stark white, the sweat pouring down.

"It's okay, Judy. Let's do what they say."

"Let's not," a woman's voice behind them said. Rickie turned. Dr. Black, dressed to kill in a red slip dress covered with a black fox fur trimmed overcoat, in her hand a large bore revolver aimed at Mr. J.'s lower back, her move shielded by her coat in such a way that no one in the bar noticed.

"Who are you," Mr. J. said, "the black widow?"

"I won't bother telling you my name," Black said to Mr. J. "I will tell you I'm a former Marine and this is the real deal. You should know Rickie belongs to a group known as WE. That's an acronym for Women Empowered. We're a group of women who look after one another. Members of WE are hellacious, nasty women who fight back at the slightest threat. We don't wait for you to take us to your dumping ground. Now here's what's going to happen. You are going to let go of Rickie, and your friend is going to drop that syringe, or I'm going to blow a hole in your spine. Hopefully it won't kill you, just leave you paralyzed and impotent for the rest of your life. After I cap you in the spine, I'll have to deal with your friend. That's going to be quite a bit messier. If it goes to that level, who can say what might happen? I do know it'll be something massive that'll make the eleven o'clock news."

Mr. J. released Rickie. His voice went high and tight. "Mr. G.? Are you gonna hurry up and do as the lady says or what!"

Mr. G. dropped the syringe to the floor.

"You guys are undoubtedly working for the mafia," Black said. "I have no desire to start World War Three with them. I will if you force me, but if you leave now I won't shoot. I'll consider the matter finished. There will be no police. Don't do anything stupid, like waiting in the parking lot for me, or following me. I'm not afraid of either of you. If I ever see you again, I'll immediately kill you both and let God sort it all out later."

"It's your ball game, lady," Mr. J. said.

Messrs. J. and G. sidled slowly down the bar and out the front door. The nightmare was over--for the moment.

Judy slumped to the bar with a whimpering cry and began to shake badly.

"Judy," Rickie said. Black intervened. "Don't press her," she said. "Give her a moment."

"They were going to take me somewhere," Rickie said. "Some place where they could do who know what. They threatened to inject Judy with the AIDS virus. What kind of monsters could do such a thing?"

"Never mind that," Black said. "The important thing now is to get the both of you out of here to somewhere safe. I'm going to suggest we pay a visit to one of our members. Do you remember Jackie from our breakfast this morning?"

"The one who married a cop?"

"That's her. She's got a place in the Hollywood Hills with good security. They live with a retired police dog. I think we'd better put you and Judy up with her."

"Dr. Black, take Judy there and give me the address and I'll catch up with you later."

"Rickie, you can't be serious. You've got to get out of here."

"I've got a major problem. My friend Shank is going after Hershey. I've got to find him and stop him. He doesn't have another murder in him. He'll drink himself to death."

"Rickie, you're coming with us. There's to be no argument about it."

"No, Dr. Black, I can't go with you. Don't worry about me. I won't be alone."

"You're making no sense."

"I'll be taking my son's father with me," Rickie said. "I'll be taking Bobby Q. I should be safe enough with him. They didn't call him the Montagnard Monster in Vietnam for nothing. Did you know he stalked his enemies in the jungle for two years, living like a native, armed with only a hunting knife? They say he used to crawl down into those underground tunnels and go on Viet Cong mass murdering sprees. He ate monkey brains and big yellow bugs in the jungle and sacrificed animals to the Montagnard spirits in the highlands."

"Okay, Rickie. Now I understand. You've suffered a shock and you've become delusional. I'm going to give you something to calm you down. For awhile, it may be difficult for you to distinguish between your dreams and what's real. I'll be with you all the way. You are not alone."

"I'm not delusional. I'm as clear as crystal. I'm going to look for Shank and I'm taking Bobby Q. with me."

"Rickie, you're in a dream."

It felt odd to Rickie to realize she was the only person in the whole world who knew what she was talking about. She, after all, had been to Heaven a couple of times by last count. Apparently, her visits there instilled in her some form of rudimentary wisdom which was lost on others. She saw with total clarity what she needed to do. A burst of pity filled her heart for the mere mortals surrounding her. They couldn't see the grand scheme of things, couldn't fathom this present orchestration of the universe on her behalf. They couldn't see the way in which the enemy was doomed to certain defeat by this high level spiritual intervention led from above by her own daughter, Jessica Edwina and, of course, The Lady.

"Dr. Black, I'm not in a dream. I'm going to fight fire with fire. I'm going to sic Bobby Q. on the problem. It's his penance for abandoning his wife and son."

"Rickie. Listen to me carefully. You're delusional. There is no Bobby Q."

"Yes there is."

"Where is he, then?"

Rickie smiled kindly at her doctor. "That's Bobby Q. right there," she said, pointing. "That's the Montagnard Monster himself coming through the door."

### Chapter 36

Following the appropriate introduction of Bobby to Dr. Black, and upon the doctor's approval at the way he carried himself, all parties dispersed. Bobby and Rickie found themselves awkwardly together in the intimate space of her Mercedes, having dismissed Jesse Edwin for his own safety before heading west on Sunset. The renewed fury of the storm suddenly ceased in favor of a slight persistent drizzle so as to render the surrounding cityscape visible and gleaming in the city lights.

With the rapidity born of urgency, Rickie sketched in the details of her troubles with Hirschfeld, and the fact that Shank, the new man in her life, had gone in pursuit.

"We'll go to the hospital where Hirschfeld is," Rickie said. "That's where Shank is likely to be soon."

"Maybe I can talk Shank out of it," he answered.

"I have to ask you this," Rickie said. "Why did you abandon me?"

"Because I had too many demons," he said, almost whispering. "After I got back from Vietnam, I saw demons. They tormented me, saying my killing days in the jungle were too personal, that I took too much pleasure in it, and because of that I had to answer for the murder of many souls. The demons were in the form of angry monkeys, and they drove me without mercy, tearing and biting at my flesh. They would never have allowed me to be a husband and father."

"You hid all that from me. I would have helped you."

"I should have seen that," he said. "But I didn't, and I've paid for my mistake ever since. For thirty years the monkeys have followed me, forcing me to live out on the reservation and on the street."

"What about now?"

"Things are better now. One night about six months ago I stumbled into a Catholic Church in Alhambra. I noticed the monkeys wouldn't come in. I found a priest and made my confession. The demons left me. Things got better after that. I even have an address for the first time in years. When Jesse Edwin's private investigator contacted me yesterday, I took it as a sign it was time to put the past behind me and go see my son. I walked in on him while the band was rehearsing. Jesse Edwin was really rocking the place. Ellard Purl was singing. I thought I was back in the '80's at Golden Gate Park."

"You had your demons, Bobby," Rickie said. "Now I have one of my own. My husband. "She regarded the man beside her. He was dressed in faded black trousers and a sweatshirt, his long gray hair braided down to his shoulders, his body thinner than she remembered. He wore a long face weighted down from a lifetime of nightmares. On his belt was something old, and familiar. A heavy leather scabbard from which protruded the hilt of a large hunting knife.

"You still wear the knife," she said.

"Yes. And the braids."

"You'll always be my warrior, Bobby. The weather reminds me of the day we first met. It was raining that day, too. Do you remember?"

"I remember. I saw you at the concert in Golden Gate Park. You were the only one not dancing. A beautiful girl with long red hair in a yellow granny dress. I offered you a shot of cheap port wine from my boda bag."

"A crazy beginning to a love affair." Rickie could not contain herself and began to cry softly, the tears making driving difficult. She pulled over. "Bobby, I'm scared. It's bad enough my husband intends to have me killed, but he touched my friend Judy with his evil."

"He should never have placed his hands on the mother of my son," he said. "He'll have to pay for that."

"I'm sorry to drag you into this. I wish things could be different. I wish we could take some time and go back and see where we went wrong."

"Don't be scared, Little One. I'm here. What you need now is faith. I'm going to work my magic one more time for you."

Little One. His pet name for her, falling afresh on her ears after thirty years, calling forward her innocence, and the love that once was the light of her life.

"The moment you said my name," she responded, "I could feel my love for you. I never lost it. If things were different, we'd be rocking on a porch somewhere, sipping cheap wine and listening to old Ellard Purl records."

"We're too late," he said. "We can forget about going back. And I'm glad you have a new man. Even though we're going to stop him, at least he's doing the right thing."

She dried her tears and pulled into traffic. "Are you sure you don't want to spend some time together, catch up on old times?"

"Like I said, it's too late. In more ways than one. I'm dying."

"No!"

"It's some kind of rare blood disorder that only kills Indians. My grandfather died from it. I've got two, maybe three months. Not much time, but I plan to die sober."

"You're putting your affairs in order. That's why you worked up the courage to visit our son."

"When you know you're dying, it pushes past the bitterness and forces you to act. You realize you can't go back and fix everything, but you can at least say you're sorry. Rickie, I cannot tell you how sorry I am I left you the way I did. I hope it's not too late to say it. We should have had a life together. I can't make that up."

"Bobby? You are forgiven, totally and forever. We will take what's left of our life together and make the most of it."

"Rickie. We can't go back and we can't go forward. There is one favor I'd like to ask. You can say no if you like. When I die, I want Jesse Edwin to hold my right hand and you to hold my left. I think somehow God won't refuse to take me if he sees you there with me when He comes for me."

"We'll be with you when that day comes."

"Then I can die happy."

She swung the car through the winding streets bordering UCLA's southern campus, making the descent through the low foothills into a nearly deserted Westwood Village before working her way to the main entrance of UCLA Medical Center. "I'll go inside and find out what I can. Hopefully Shank isn't here yet. If he is, all bets are off."

"Do you love him?"

Rickie searched his face. "Before I answer that I want to say I never stopped loving you. A part of me will always be yours. I waited for twenty five years for you to come back. When I married Hershey, it wasn't out of love. It was because I stopped believing I'd ever see you again." She leaned across and gently kissed his weathered cheek.

"Do you love Shank?"

Rickie nodded. She got out of the car, opened the trunk, and took out a Gelson's shopping bag and walked towards the main entrance. Bobby eased himself into the driver's seat and drove off.

Something slammed her neck from behind. There was an outburst in her brain of bright white light and she toppled from the curb.

They'd come out of nowhere. As she barely hung on to consciousness, a movie began to play, a bad one. Above her, Mr. J. and Mr. G. with gloved hands hauled her to her feet, propping her upright between them, and walking her away from the Medical Center entryway and around the corner into the alley off Tiverton, where shadows aided their secrecy. They stopped beside a dumpster, which Mr. G. opened. Together, they propped her against the cold, wet metal siding.

"Out of the frying pan, Mrs. H.," Mr. J. said, "and into the fire. Or should I say into the dumpster? You should know I kept my bladder full for this event. As promised, I'm going to piss on your beating heart. Mr. G.? Will you do us the honors?"

Mr. G. held something in his hand. A box cutter.

"You're making a huge mistake," she said. Her words came out thick and swirling, the end of her sentence drowned by Mr. J.'s snickers. From behind them came a high pitched sound. Rickie would always remember it as a hooting noise, the kind of whoo-whoo an owl might make upon sighting an exposed rat. At the entrance to the alley was a man. A man with long braids down to his shoulders, a man walking towards them, moving with the grace of a panther, not in a straight line, but here and there, a man accustomed to concrete and shadows.

"No big deal," Mr. J. said. "It's some old drunk. An Indian with braids. Look at how he's weaving. He probably lives in this dumpster. Mr. G., give the old guy five bucks and tell him to get drunk someplace else. Will you look at that? Here it is, raining, and the old fool has no shirt."

### Chapter 37

"Hershey," Rickie said.

"Rickie?"

It was just the two of them, Hirschfeld startled by her sudden appearance in his private room in the wing which he had helped to fund.

"I had a vision of the mother of God the other day," she said. "I finally remembered what she said the secret of life is. The secret is love."

"Rickie, you're soaking wet. What is that? You're covered with blood! How did you get in here looking like that?"

"Your nurse's station is empty. And there was a big disturbance outside in the alley," she said. "Everybody on the main floor was too busy with that to notice me."

The private room on the third floor of the Medical Center was very still, save for the faint prattling of rain on the window. On a table within easy reach, Hirschfeld kept a cell phone, an orange vial of pills, a water bottle and a box of tissues. Hirschfeld, impressively wired and tubed and attached to a complex array of machinery, resembled something more cyborg than human. His eyes traveled hopefully to the door of his room.

"Those two men you hired to hurt me won't be coming by any time soon," she said. "On account of they're both fighting for their lives this very minute down in the Emergency Room. The one with the box cutter went down first. The other one with the full bladder tried to run for it, but he didn't make it. It happened very fast. There was a lot of blood and urine. I didn't realize how much blood could come from one human being. They say we only hold seven pints, but it looks like a lot more when it's running down the street."

"Rickie, I--"

"--I have something for you. Something you're not going to like, but something you deserve all the same." She reached her hand into the Gelson's shopping bag. Hirschfeld's eyes went wide. Her hand withdrew, clutching the stiffened corpse of Just Plain Dot.

"This is your first victim who died as a result of your evil actions," she said. "A poor, crippled cat. But its death served a high purpose. It brought me back here to bring you the punishment you deserve. Your punishment is going to be living the rest of your life knowing I've fallen in love with Shank and am living happily ever after in a big white house on a hill while you rot in your own evil juices." She placed the stiffened, somewhat foul-smelling cat on his chest, and watched the revulsion steal over his features. With trembling hands, he reached for his vial, fumbled the cap off and got a pill under his tongue before closing his eyes and breathing deeply.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said. "Because I remembered what Our Lady told me. She was a beautiful lady, with dark hair and very fine skin. She told me love is the answer."

"Rickie, he whispered. "I guess I went a little over the top after you attempted to shoot me. I've done a lot of thinking. It's like we've been in a storm and the eye is passing over us right now. Maybe it's a time of renewal. Maybe we can change."

"How's your heart?"

"Damaged," he said. "A myocardial infarction surrounding the right atrium. The muscle has suffered some loss of function. I'm on a trial medication. Dr. Lerner says I may get fair results if I'm lucky."

Rickie nodded.

"I've got to know something, Rickie. The two men I sent after you. How did you get them?"

"I can't tell you that. Let's just say their negative energy finally attracted something incredibly fast and sharp into their lives."

"They're family. The underboss will kill the man responsible."

"They can't kill someone who's already dead. But if they want to try, they're more than welcome."

"What do you mean? Rickie, you're talking crazy!"

"Hershey, I want you to know I never really loved you. I'm filing for divorce. If you're smart, you won't fight it. I think it's time you canceled the contract on my life. I'm putting everything in a letter to the police. If any harm comes to me, my lawyer will come after you. For the time being, I'm taking over The Dell. I don't want to see you there."

"Okay," he said. "Okay. You win. It's over as far as I'm concerned."

Shank stepped into the room. "It's not over as far as I'm concerned. Rickie, leave us alone."

"Shank, you're drunk. I want you to get out of here."

"Hirschfeld, do you want to die in your bed, or do you want to get up and take it like a man?" Casually, Shank reached into his pocket, coming out with his taser in one hand and his Colt Commander .45 in the other. "Sorry. There's no fifty grand prize this time."

"No," Rickie said. "We can't kill him. He's got a bad heart muscle. Love is the answer. That's what Our Lady told me. Shank, you've got to listen to me."

Shank pointed the taser. Rickie grabbed his hand. Hirschfeld's mouth fell open but no sound came out. The taser fired with a loud pop.

### Epilogue

"Good coffee," Shank said. "You brew a mean pot."

"It's part of my healing," Rickie said. "Dr. Black said I have to take back The Dell, beginning with the kitchen. I still haven't been able to go upstairs to where Just Plain Dot died, but I think I'll be ready soon."

He stood up and drained his cup. "We'd better get going. The funeral is set for eleven and it's already after nine."

"I'm not going," Rickie said. "I can't go. Not after all that's happened."

"Look," Shank said. "I know it's hard, but you have to. It's not about what you feel inside. It's about your place in society. We live in a world of rituals. No matter whether or not they offend you."

"I still feel like I killed him."

"You didn't fire the taser. I did."

"We both did," Rickie said. "Both of us had our hands on the button. It was a senseless, idiotic mess. Our Lady told me all I needed was love. I went to Hirschfeld's room to try and forgive him, and I wound up acting as executioner."

"Let's be glad we didn't kill Hirschfeld, even though we tried. He was just incredibly lucky your cat caught the darts."

"I have to admit I'm glad Hirschfeld isn't dead, but I am not proud we tased a dead cat. It was horrible the way it caused her stiff dead body to evacuate its juices like that. I'll never forget the smell."

"Hirschfeld was lucky. When his heart failed and all those monitors went off, it was amazing how fast those technicians rushed into the room. Perhaps that was God's way of closing my window of opportunity and calling off his death by large caliber bullets."

"Yeh, too bad about his second heart attack, but I think Hirschfeld got the point. Dr. Lerner said they managed to save him, but he'll never be fully recovered. He's on the list for a transplant. Until then, the best he can hope for is to live very carefully, one day at a time."

"That's the best any of us can hope for," Shank said. "At least we can be fairly certain he will never bother you again. Most likely, seeing as how he's an alky, he won't be able to stand being confined and go on a bender and finish the job himself."

"Shank, I've changed my mind. I'm going to the funeral. It's the least I can do for Just Plain Dot. I just wish I didn't feel so guilty about treating her with such indignity."

"Let's admit we've got a long way to go," Shank said. "I'm going back into the program right after the funeral. I'm also going to confession."

"Okay," Rickie said. "For me, I'm going to continue working with Dr. Black, trying to sort things out. I'm also going to start running again in a few weeks. The running will help me think things through. I'm not sure about confession, but maybe I'll try and visit AA with you."

"Don't judge yourself too harshly," Shank said. "One thing I learned in the war is once you're operating outside the envelope of our neatly sanitized little world, different rules apply."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you need to forgive yourself."

"I think I'm actually starting to," Rickie said. "After all, it was the most dangerous time of my life."

"Let's go then. It's a long drive to Calabasas. I hope I don't drive us off the freeway."

"Shank?"

"Yeh?"

"I think it's about time I started telling you I loved you."

"Does that mean I can start saying I love you back?"

"It does."

He released a slow, lazy smile. "I can hang with that," he said.

# The End

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Final Arrangements. A young successful woman is thrown for a loop when a handsome but crazy talking stranger claims she has been given to him in marriage by her deceased father.

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Retribution. An ex-special forces soldier finds revenge on his mind when the mafia kills his best friend's son. His opening salvo lands him in the middle of a hornet's nest of enemies.

