he loved and she tolerated. It was on South Boulevard, and it had been her experience
whenever she had dined there that she generally represented her gender alone as she
picked at her meat.
She began, as always, with baby frog legs sauteed in wine and garlic, and a Caesar salad.
The din grew louder around them in this darkly paneled room, where city fathers and
planners had met for decades, on their way to heart attacks. Seth, her husband, loved
food better than life, and was fully engaged with shrimp cocktail, hearts of lettuce with
famous blue cheese dressing, bread, butter, and a porterhouse for
two that he typically did not share. Once upon a time Seth had been an enlightened and handsome assistant to the Little Rock city manager, and he had run into Sergeant Judy
Hammer, on the capitol grounds.
There had never been any question about who was the engine driving the train in this
relationship, and this was part of the attraction. Seth liked her power. She liked his
liking it. They were married and began a family that quickly became his responsibility as
the wife soared and was called out at night, and they moved. That Hammer was her
name and not his made sense for those who knew them and gave the matter a thought.
He was soft, with a weak chin that called to mind the watery-eyed knights and bishops of
Washington portrait galleries.
“We should pick up some of this cheese spread for the house,” Seth said, laying it on
thick in candlelight.
“Seth, I worry about what you’re doing to yourself,” Hammer said, reaching for her pi not noir.
“I guess it’s port wine, but it doesn’t look like it,” he went on.
“It might have horseradish in it. Maybe cayenne pepper.”
His hobby was studying law and the stock market. His most significant setback in life
was that he had inherited money from his family, and was not obligated to work, was
gentle, and tended to be mild, nonviolent, and tired much of the time. At this stage in
life, he was so much like a spineless, spiteful woman that his wife wondered how it was
possible she should have ended up in a lesbian relationship with a man. Lord, when Seth
slipped into one of his snits, as he was in this very minute, she understood domestic
violence and felt there were cases when it was justified.
“Seth, it’s our anniversary,” she reminded him in a low voice.
“You haven’t talked to me all evening. You’ve eaten everything in this goddamn
restaurant, and won’t look at me. You want to give me a clue as to what’s wrong, for
once? So I don’t have to guess or read your mind or go to a psychic?”
Her stomach was balled up like a threatened opossum. Seth was the best diet she’d ever
been on, and could throw her into anorexia quicker than anything. In rare, quiet moments,
when Hammer walked alone on a beach or in the mountains, she knew she had not been
in love with Seth for most of their marriage. But he was her weight-bearing wall. Were
he knocked out, half her world would crash. That was his power over her, and he knew it
like any good wife. The children, for example, might take his side. This was not
possible, but Judy Hammer feared it.
“I’m not talking because I have nothing to say,” Seth reasonably replied.
“Fine.” She folded her cloth napkin, and dropped it on the table as she began searching for the waitress.
Wft Miles away, on Wilkinson Boulevard, past Bob’s Pawn Shop, trailer parks, Coyote
Joe’s and the topless Paper Doll Lounge, The Firing Line was conducting a war of its
own. Brazil was slaughtering silhouettes screeching down the lane at him. Ejected
cartridge cases sailed through the air, clinking to the floor. West’s pupil was improving
like nothing she’d ever seen. She was proud.
“Tap-tap, you’re out!” she rudely yelled, as if he were the village idiot.
“Safety on. Dump the magazine, reload, rack it! Ready position, safety off! Tap-tap!
Stop!”
This had been going on for more than an hour, and good ole boys were peering out from