have hoped. She was feeling the heaviness in her lower nature, the goddess of fertility
reminding West with more volatility every month that time was running out. West’s
gynecologist had warned her gravely and repeatedly that troubles would begin about her
age. She, Dr. Alice Bourgeois, spoke of punishment when there were no children and
none on the way. Never underestimate biology, Dr. Bourgeois always said.
West and Raines placed an order for cheeseburgers, fries, and another round of drinks.
She wiped her face again and was getting cold. She wasn’t sure she could eat anything
else, not another fried pickle. She watched the band setting up, her attention wandering
to people at other tables. She was quiet for a long time, overhearing a couple not so far
away speaking a foreign language, maybe German. West was getting maudlin.
“You seem preoccupied,” said Raines the intuitive.
“Remember when those German tourists got whacked in Miami? What it did to the
tourist industry?” she said.
Raines, as a man, took this personally. He had seen the bodies in the
Black Widow slayings, or at least several of them. It was unthinkable to have a gun shoved against your head, your brains blown out. There was no telling what indignities
those guys had been subjected to before the fact, and how did anyone really know that
their pants hadn’t been pulled down first, that maybe they hadn’t been raped and then
spray-painted? If the killer had been wearing a condom, who was going to know? West
had said just the right thing to put Raines in a mood. Now he was totally pissed, too.
“So this is about the tourist industry,” he said, leaning across the table and gesturing.
“Forget guys being jerked out of their cars, brains blown all over, balls spray-painted
with graffiti!”
West wiped her face again and dug Advil out of her butt pack.
“It’s not graffiti. It’s a symbol.”
Raines crossed his legs, feeling endangered. The waitress set down their dinner. He
grabbed the ketchup bottle as he folded a french fry between his lips.
“It makes me sick,” he said.
“It should make everybody sick.” West could not look at food.
“Who do you think’s doing it?” He dipped a bouquet of french fries into a red puddle.
“Maybe a shim.” She was soaked in cold sweat. Her hair was wet around her face and
neck, as if she’d just been in a foot pursuit.
“Huh?” Raines glanced up at her, biting into his dripping burger.
“She-him. Woman one night, man the next, depending on the mood,” she said.
“Oh. Like you.” He reached for the dish of mayonnaise.
“Goddamn it.” West shoved her plate away.
“I must be about to start.”
Raines stopped chewing, rolling his eyes. He knew what that meant. The first twangs on
electric guitars shattered the din, and sticks beat-beat and beat-beat-beat. Cymbals
crashed and crashed as Axel snaked his foot around Jon’s ankle and thought about Brazil
for the millionth time this day.
W Packer was thinking about Brazil, too, as the editor earned Dufus out the back door,
like a small, squirming football, headed for the same Japanese maple. Dufus had to go in
the same place, get used to it, and be able to find his smells. It didn’t matter that the tree
was in the hinterlands and that it had started to rain. Packer dropped his wife’s wall-eyed dog in the same bald spot next to the same gnarled root. Packer was out of breath,
watching Dufus curtsey to the Queen.
“Why don’t you lift your leg like a man,” Packer muttered as bulging eyes watched him, speckled pink nose twitching.
“Sissy,” Packer said.
The worn-out editor’s pager had vibrated earlier this evening while he was mowing the
grass on his vacation- day. It had been Panesa, calling to tell him that the mayor had
admitted that even he wouldn’t drive downtown at night right now! Jesus living God, this
was unbelievable.
Surely the paper was well on its way to winning a Pulitzer for a series that made a
difference in society, one that changed history.
Why the hell did this wait to happen when Packer was out of the newsroom? He’d been