Butchers Hill

'Uh-uh. Preakness is the penultimate race. The last race is just a little stakes race, no big deal. Half the paid attendance has already left. But I've always had good luck at that race. Hit an exacta there just this year.'

'I thought you said the exacta was a sucker's bet.'

'It is.'

Jackie actually smiled, although she tried to hide it behind the rim of her glass.

'So you do have a sense of humor.'

'Who said I didn't?'

'You don't laugh at most of my jokes.'

'Did it ever occur to you that most of your jokes aren't very funny?'

Tess pretended to clutch her heart. 'What perfidy.'

'Truthfully, it's good to hear you cutting up the way you usually do. You seemed a little distracted this evening. Is everything all right? What was the deal with that guy who wanted to see you this morning?'

'I've had some…unexpected developments on another case.'

Jackie hesitated, then said as if reciting a phrase from a foreign language handbook: 'Do you want to talk about it?'

'It wouldn't be ethical. You wouldn't want me chatting about your case with another client, right? Besides, if the cops do come after me, I can't maintain I'm entitled to client-attorney privilege if I've been blabbing about the case all over town.'

'Could that really happen?'

'It's possible.'

'Could it happen any time soon?'

Tess had to laugh at Jackie's worried face. 'Don't worry, Miss Weir. I'll be here tomorrow night, ready to continue the survey of Johnson-Johnstons of North Baltimore County.'

She signaled the bartender for another round, but Jackie covered the rim of her glass. 'I have too long a drive home.'

'Not me,' Tess said. 'Did you know James M. Cain had a snowball machine and used it to make mint juleps? I bet they weren't half as good as these, though.'

Some people she knew could have talked about that single detail for hours. But Jackie's imagination wasn't engaged by long-dead writers, not even ones who knew the secrets of every hash house waitress and insurance man.

'You always want more, don't you?'

'Huh?'

'I was thinking of that photo back in your office. More juleps, more rides on the flying rabbit, more chocolate malts.'

'I did love malted milkshakes. I always asked for an extra teaspoon of malt. Poppa would give it to me, Gramma wouldn't.' Suddenly, the second julep didn't seem so delicious. Second helpings never did. 'Gee, isn't it shocking that I developed an eating disorder, what with one grandparent urging all those treats on me, and the other one always trying to take them away?'

'An eating disorder. Now that's real white-girl craziness. Anorexia?'

'No, just a little garden-variety bulimia. An occasional binge, followed by an occasional purge with the help of Ipecac. Exercise was my coping mechanism. I was running ten miles a day when I was in high school, doing endless sit-ups in my room. By the time my parents finally figured out I wasn't even on the track team, I had shin splints like you wouldn't believe.'

'Then you just stopped?'

Tess was thinking about the food they had left in her office. She had eaten quite a bit, yet there was still so much left. They had wrapped it up and put it in the refrigerator, except for the pad thai, which Jackie would take home. There was a time when even that would have been too risky. She would have thrown it away, or forced Jackie to take it. She wouldn't have trusted herself to behave responsibly around so much food.

'Overeating is like alcoholism, except that you don't have the option of going cold turkey. Everyone has to eat, right? On top of that, I have to exercise, because I'm addicted to the endorphin rush. I just brought both activities into almost-normal limits. I started rowing, which isn't as hard on the knees, and I alternate my runs with weight workouts. I also resigned myself to life as a mesomorph. Women think I should lose ten pounds, men think I'm fine the way I am.' She grinned. 'That's better than the obverse, isn't it? Unless, of course, you're a regular customer here.'

'You look fine. As I said before, white girl craziness.'

'Really? Then why did you get so upset when Willa Mott kept saying you were fat?'

Jackie made a face, as if repelled. It wasn't clear if the face was intended for Willa Mott, or the girl she used to be. 'When I got pregnant, I spent the first four months eating like crazy, thinking no one would notice I was carrying a baby, they'd just think I was fat. It wasn't the most inspired plan, I admit. By the time I accepted what was going on, there was nothing to do but carry the pregnancy to term.'

'You look so different now.' Tess was seeing the photograph again, the shapeless girl with the flash of camera caught in her myopic eyes.

'Not so different.'

'You do. It's not just the weight. It's the glasses-'

'I wear contact lenses now. You've heard of them?'

'And the hair-those two little tails sticking straight out from your head, the ends looking as if someone chewed on them.'

'Hey, not everyone can wear the same hairstyle for their entire life. As I said before, you haven't changed much. You have one of those faces that will never change. When you're fifty, people will be able to match you to that photograph. Is that something in the genes, you suppose, having a face that never changes?'

'I've never thought about it much, but I guess it is, at least on my mother's side. The Monaghans start out with these round little marshmallow faces that get sharper and frecklier every year. Not too long ago, I was walking downtown and someone I went to fourth grade with recognized me and said, ‘You haven't changed a bit.' I wasn't exactly flattered.'

'You should be,' Jackie said fervently. 'To have that kind of continuity in your life, to have people know you that way-that's a wonderful thing.'

'An interesting observation from a woman who changed her name, ran away from her family, and did everything she could, short of going to a plastic surgeon, to alter her appearance.'

Jackie said nothing, just played with her empty glass, running her fingers over the painted surface.

'Ready to go?'

'Absolutely.'

Outside, the night air was muggy, as if a storm might be near. Tess and Jackie were moving slowly up Collington Street, when a skeletal woman pushing a baby carriage approached them. Although the woman looked as if she hadn't eaten in weeks, the sleeping baby was pink-cheeked and healthy looking.

'Ladies, ladies, do you have any spare change tonight, ladies? My baby needs a prescription, and the food stamps are late this month, and the doctor says I have to start on this new medication, and my husband, he just wrote from Georgia that he can't find work-'

Jackie started to reach inside her purse, but Tess laid a hand gently on her wrist.

'We're down to living on plastic until our next pay day,' she told the woman, politely but firmly. 'Sorry.'

The woman looked at them resentfully, muttered something under her breath, and pushed the stroller forward, accosting a group of people gathered on a stoop several houses down.

'She had a baby,' Jackie said. 'She's not some druggie or alcoholic trying to get money for a fix.'

'It's not her baby and that's exactly what she is.'

'How do you know that?'

'She's famous in the neighborhood. You see, she kept coming back. Some people tried to help her, get her a place to live. They found out that she volunteers to babysit when she's hard up, then wheels the baby around, using him as a prop to get more contributions. One of the Blight's columnists wrote about her. The details give her away. Lies demand details, lots of them. People pay her to shut up as much as anything. She's one of the women who walk.'