Winter Moon

anyone around her. As she walked along the hospital corridors with

Heather, her footsteps were louder than those of a man twice her size,

and nurses turned to frown disapprovingly at the tock-tock-tock of her

high heels on the tile floors.

"You okay, Heth?" Gina asked as they headed for the four-story parking

garage attached to the hospital.

"Yeah."

"I mean really."

"I'll make it."

At the end of a corridor they went through a green metal door into the

parking garage. It was bare gray concrete, chilly, with low

ceilings.

A third of the fluorescent lights were broken in spite of the wire

cages that protected them, and the shadows among the cars offered

countless places of concealment.

Gina fished a small aerosol can from her purse, holding it with her

index finger on the trigger, and Heather said,"What's that?"

"Red-pepper Mace. You don't carry?"

"No."

"Where you think you're living, girl -- Disneyland?"

As they walked up a concrete ramp with cars parked on both sides,

Heather said, "Maybe I should buy some."

"Can't. The bastard politicians made it illegal. Wouldn't want to

give some poor misguided rapist a skin rash, would you? Ask Jack or

one of the guys-they can still get it for you."

Gina was driving an inexpensive blue Ford compact, but it had an alarm

system, which she disengaged from a distance with a remote-control

device on her key ring. The headlights flashed, the alarm beeped once,

and the doors unlocked.

Looking around at the shadows, they got in and immediately locked up

again.

After starting the car, Gina hesitated before putting it in gear. "You

know, Heth, you want to cry on my shoulder, my clothes are all

drip-dry."

"I'm all right. I really am."

"Sure you're not into denial?"

"He's alive, Gina. I can handle anything else."

"Forty years, Jack in a wheelchair?"

"Doesn't matter if it comes to that, as long as I have him to talk to,

hold him at night."

Gina stared hard at her for long seconds. Then: "You mean it. You

know what it's gonna be like, but you still mean it. Good. I always

figured you for one, but it's good to know I was right."

"One what?"

Popping the hand brake and shifting the Ford into reverse, Gina said,

"One tough damned bitch."

Heather laughed. "I guess that's a compliment."

"Fuckin' A, it's a compliment."

When Gina paid the parking fee at the exit booth and pulled out of the

garage, a glorious gold-and-orange sunset gilded the patchy clouds to

the west.

However, as they crossed the metropolis through lengthening shadows and

a twilight that gradually filled with blood red light, the familiar

streets and buildings were as alien as any on a distant planet. She

had lived her entire adult life in Los Angeles, but Heather Mcgarvey

felt like a stranger in a strange land.

The Brysons' two-story Spanish house was in the Valley, on the edge of

Burbank, lucky number 777 on a street lined with sycamores. The

leafless limbs of the big trees made spiky arachnid patterns against

the muddy yellow-black night sky, which was filled with too much

ambient light from the urban sprawl ever to be perfectly inky. Cars

were clustered in the driveway and street in front of 777, including

one black-and-white.

The house was filled with relatives and friends of the Brysons. A few

of the former and most of the latter were cops in uniforms or civilian

clothes.

Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians had come together in

companionship and mutual support in a way they seldom seemed capable of

associating in the larger community - any more.

Heather felt at home the moment she crossed the threshold, so much

safer than she had felt in the world outside. As she made her way

through the living room and dining room, seeking Alma, she paused to

speak briefly with old friends-and discovered that word of Jack's

improved condition was already on the grapevine.

More acutely than ever, she was aware of how completely she had come to

think of herself as part of the police family rather than as an

Angeleno or a Californian. It hadn't always been that way. But it was

difficult to maintain a spiritual allegiance to a city swimming in

drugs and pornography, shattered by gang violence, steeped in

Hollywood-style cynicism, and controlled by politicians as venal and

demagogic as they were incompetent. Destructive social forces were

fracturing the city--and the country--into clans, and even as she took

comfort in her police family, she recognized the danger of descending

into an us-against-them view of life.

Alma was in the kitchen with her sister, Faye, and two other women, all

of whom were busy at culinary tasks. Chopping vegetables, peeling

fruit, grating cheese. Alma was rolling out pie dough on a marble

slab, working at it vigorously. The kitchen was filled with the

delicious aromas of cakes baking.

When Heather touched Alma's shoulder, the woman looked up from the pie

dough, and her eyes were as blank as those of a mannequin. Then she

blinked and wiped her flour-coated hands on her apron. "Heather, you

didn't have to come--you should've stayed with Jack."