crowd outside the courthouse.
“You all right?” I say to Eletha, but she can’t hear me over the Hightower supporters to our left.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Eletha says.
“I’m trying, El.” One of the signs is a picture of a young black teenager with smooth clear skin and a shy smile. He wears a red varsity football jacket. Hightower. The sound of the chanting resounds in my head.
At the front line of the swelling Hightower contingent is a prominent black city councilman and members of the black clergy. An older black woman standing next to one of the clergymen catches my eye; she’s heavyset but dignified in an old-fashioned cotton dress, a calm eye at the center of a media hurricane. I recognize her from TV: Hightower’s mother, Mrs. Stevens.
“Are you surprised by the amount of support that’s being shown for your son?” a TV reporter says to her, thrusting a bubble-headed microphone in front of her face.
Mrs. Stevens looks startled, then the black councilman steps closer to the microphone, obstructing her from view. “We are going to hold a round-the-clock vigil to protest the death penalty, to show that it has always been racist in this country,” the councilman says. “The Baldus study shows that African Americans are more likely to receive the death penalty than whites.”
“Push, Grace,” Eletha says.
“Okay, okay,” I say. I force my way past the man in front of me, but find myself face-to-face with Mr. Gilpin, who’s standing in my path. Even in the midst of the hubbub, his face relaxes into a smile.
“Hello there, my friend,” he says, loud enough to be heard over the din. “Is this pretty lady a friend of yours?”
A tall black man in an X baseball cap chants over his shoulder, and behind him is the TV reporter and the black councilman. Gilpin acts like none of this is happening, as if it’s a squabble over a suburban fence, not an incipient race war.
“Mr. Gilpin, this is Eletha Staples,” I say.
Eletha extends a hand reluctantly. “Hello, Mr. Gilpin.”
“Call me Bill, Eletha. You girls goin’ out to lunch?”
“We’d better go, we’re blocking the way,” I say. I edge forward, but Eletha gets jammed between one of the Hightower supporters and a TV technician.
Gilpin grabs her arm and pulls her lightly to her feet. “Are you all right?” he says.
“Get me out of here, please. I hate crowds.” She places a hand to her chest and starts breathing in and out. I’m worried she’s going to hyperventilate and Gilpin must see it too, because in one swift movement he scoops us up by the elbows and drives through the mob. He deposits us at the curb and brushes back a pomaded hank of hair. “I played football in high school,” he says.
Eletha tugs a handkerchief from the sleeve of her sweater and dabs at her forehead. “Thanks a lot.”
Gilpin’s eyes skim the crowd unhappily. “We started this, I know. But it’ll be over soon.”
Which is when it occurs to me. The politics of the new Hightower panel is all over the newspapers; Galanter and Foudy aren’t closet conservatives. Gilpin must realize that Hightower’s going to lose, and he’s about to see his daughters’ murder avenged. I wonder if Gilpin is happy that Armen was killed. Suddenly I like him less. “We’d better be going,” I say.
He nods. “Sure enough.”
“Thanks again,” Eletha says, recovering.
We cross Market Street and the chanting trails off into the noontime traffic, making me suddenly aware of Eletha’s stone silence. She chugs along the sidewalk like a locomotive and I tense up, feeling like a curtain has fallen between us: white on one side, black on the other. We come to the corner of Sixth and Chestnut and she squints up at the light. An executive takes a second look at her, then stares right at my breasts. My tension, pent up, bubbles over. “They’re a B-cup, okay?” I spit at him. “Any other questions?”
The man hurries past us, and Eletha bursts into startled laughter. “I can’t believe you said that!” she says.
“Neither can I. It felt great. Absolutely great.” I laugh, suddenly lighthearted. “I’ve been wanting to do that all my life.”
“So have I.”
I meet her eye. “Are you mad at me, girlfriend?”
She shakes her head, still smiling. “I’m getting over it.” The traffic light turns green and we cross Chestnut.
“It’s not my fault I’m white.”
She laughs again. “It’s not that. It’s that I can’t believe you’re messin’ with Gilpin. You know better than that.”
“I’m not messin’ with him. He talked to me the first day.”
“You shoulda walked away.”
“I couldn’t walk away, he’s a person.”
She holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know he’s a person, and I don’t want to know Hightower’s a person. These are names on a caption, not people. If you start thinkin’ they’re people, you won’t be able to do your job. Look what happened to Armen.”
“What?” We stop in front of Meyer’s Deli, the only place she’ll eat; Eletha’s not Jewish, but she practically keeps kosher. “What do you mean by that, about Armen?”
She looks warily at the lunchtime crowd. “Let’s talk inside, okay?”
We head into the noisy deli, with its old-time octagonal tile floor and embossed tin roof. Meyer’s is always mobbed, but the line moves quickly because everybody inhales their food; the clientele consists almost exclusively of hyperactive trial lawyers. The hostess accosts us at the door and hustles us to an orange plastic booth against the wall. Our waitress, Marlene, appears at our table from nowhere. “You havin’ the tuna fish?” she says to me, already writing down #12 on her pad.
“Only if you call me ‘honey,’” I tell her. “I want someone to call me ‘honey,’ and not just for my body.”
Eletha smiles. “Do what she says, Mar. She just attacked a man on the street.”
“Okay, honey,” Marlene says mirthlessly. She tears off the check and puts it face down, like we’re at the Ritz-Carlton. “You havin’ the whitefish on bagel, Eletha?” she says, scribbling on the order pad.
“Yes,” Eletha says.
“What’s goin’ on at the courthouse, girls?” Marlene says. She rips Eletha’s check off the pad and slaps it face down on the table. “They gonna kill that kid?”
Jesus. “We have no comment,” I say.
Marlene scowls as she slips the ballpoint into her apron pocket. “I’m sick of the whole thing anyway,” she says and vanishes.
Eletha leans forward. “So. I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said, about Armen. About him being murdered.”
“What?”
“Just accept that he’s gone, Grace. That’s hard enough. Anything else is a waste of time.”
“I don’t understand. You don’t think he was murdered?”
“I’m not so sure.”
Now I really don’t understand. “Since when? That’s not what you said yesterday.”
“I know what I said. But last night I tried to quit school, and they told me Armen paid already, in advance.”
“What are you talking about? You go to school?”
“Night school, at the community college. I got two more years left, and I’ve had it up to here.” She draws a line across her throat.
Marlene materializes with our food. “Enjoy,” she barks and takes off again.
