Surprised, Cress found herself in a waiting room outside Slovak’s office. The room practically swallowed Cress with its white plaster and its dark hardwood trim and its paintings of bucolic splendor. On her left, two enormous double-hung windows looked west, over Main Street and Cress’s car, along the shore of the lake, to the steel mills of Gary. The windows were glazed in old-fashioned wavy plate glass with tiny bubbles frozen in time, filled with air from the past, like history holding its breath. Looking through them at Portman was like looking through sheets of ice at the sunken city of Atlantis.
   To the right, a half-dozen antique wooden chairs, where jurors once sat in judgment of their peers, lined the wall beneath a large painting of ducks floating effortlessly on water. On the opposite side, another door led into Slovak’s office proper. The floor was laid in white marble, worn now but still regularly polished. Between the two doors stood a mahogany desk, to the side of which a credenza was attached at a right angle.
   The receptionist, a dumpy little thing with a tangled mat of braided red hair extensions hanging from her head, sat slouched over the credenza, staring blankly at the screen of a Dell computer and ignoring Cress. There was no one else in the room.
   Cress was missing half a day’s work to be here. She was paying Jan, Ariel’s babysitter, for a full day in spite of missing a half day’s work. Patiently, she tapped the toe of her right shoe three times on the worn marble floor. The receptionist, who didn’t look a day over twenty-one and who was, nevertheless, wearing too much old lady perfume, probably Liz Taylor’s White Diamonds, made a show of not turning to greet Cress right away.
   When the last tap had died away into stony, patient silence, the receptionist swiveled her chair around and faced Cress. She took a good long glance through the yellow-beaded curtain of fake hair at Cress’s off-the-rack suit and discount purse. Finally, she brushed the braids from in front of her lumpy face and hooked them behind her left ear. Smiling at Cress with barely concealed civility she said, “Yes?” A braided hair extension, with a big yellow bead knotted into the end, unhooked itself from her ear and swung forward, knocking against the edge of the desk with a loud tap.
   Cress felt a sudden impulse to snatch that little piece of red jump rope yarn and twist it around the plump little neck, right below the double chin, and twist and twist until she felt better about standing here being so patient. She controlled the impulse, but the word “strangulation” whispered gently through Cress’s inner ear and brought a pleasant little smile to her lips.
   “I’m Miss Martier,” Cress said in her most professional, courteous voice.
   The two young women, one sitting patiently, the other standing even more patiently, smiled at each other with quiet feminine politeness for one full second longer.
   “Yes?” the receptionist prompted sweetly. She was smiling with real pleasure now. She obviously enjoyed her job, with its Inbox and its Outbox and its little throne behind the reception desk. Even the name plate on her desk said, “Reception.” She kept her right hand near a large half-empty glass bowl of Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses that squatted next to a clear plastic cube showing off pictures of an ugly red-haired baby.
   “I’m here to see Mr. Slovak,” Cress said. The politeness in her voice was so thick and creamy she could have spread it on bread and served it, with little yellow roses and a pot of piping hot tea, on a silver platter at about ninety miles an hour straight into the face of this darling young woman.
   “Criminal Court?” the receptionist asked ever so helpfully.
   “Family Court,” Cress corrected her. She could easily have said, “Yes, Criminal Court. Murder.” Or better yet, manslaughter. It was possible. Cress was capable of murder. People always say, “I could never murder someone,” but Cress knew absolutely that she could.
   “Family Court,” the receptionist repeated. Cress considered the faint skepticism in her voice to be grossly unnecessary. The receptionist double-checked a red leatherette bound appointment book and grunted, “Uh-huh.”
   Cress knew what she meant. Single mother. As if it were any business of hers, anyway. The receptionist made an obvious point of looking at the ring finger of Cress’s left hand, resting on the strap of her purse as though she were holding onto something in order to maintain her self-control, to see if Cress was wearing a ring. She was.
   The ring was silver, handmade in the shape of a “Celtic Knot,” which Cress learned in her Cultural Studies class at Portman County Junior College was the kind of knot the Druids used to strangle bog mummies with. She wished they could have spent more time studying Druids and not wasted so much time on ridiculous African nose piercers and dumpy Navajo rug weavers.
   Cress wanted to ask this secretary, who certainly looked like something that had been swept under a rug, “Did a Cherokee Princess weave your hair extensions?” But Cress did not stoop to the level of others. She preferred to remain above them, drowning them in honey.
   The receptionist wore a ring of her own, a cheap gaudy one-carat diamond, undoubtedly flawed, that reflected the light weakly. The kind of ring bought at Kay’s Merchandise by a nineteen-year-old Lothario who got his girlfriend pregnant and then went into hock to buy a discount wedding ring and now had to borrow money from both their parents so he could finish his Automotive Tech degree at PCJC. The kind of ring Cress wouldn’t be caught dead wearing.
   The receptionist made a smart little check mark in the appointment book and pointed with her pencil to the row of old juror’s chairs lined up along the wall to Cress’s right. “Have a seat,” she said. “Over there.” Having thus placed Cress metaphorically into the Outbox of her plump little mind, she turned back to her typing. Cress noticed that the machine was old and obsolete, not at all like the nice new iMac Cress’s boss bought for her to type new apartment leases on.
   Cress perched on her chair stiffly, careful not to wrinkle her new suit, the one the little pile of red shag had glared at so enviously. She was also wearing a pair of genuine Cartier diamond earrings, borrowed from her mother that morning. “Lose one of those earrings, Young Lady,” her mother told her with theatrical menace, “and you lose an eye.”
   On her way out the door, Cress said sweetly, “What if I lose both earrings, Mommie Dearest?” Cress was twenty-three years old, with a daughter of her own, and her mother, who had no room to criticize or belittle others, still called her Young Lady and spent every waking minute trying to run her life.
   Cress took an Estee Lauder compact from her purse and touched up her makeup. Since she had Ariel, her face had never been the same. Even now, a year later, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she sometimes got the momentary impression that she was looking at someone else.
   Cress’s face was always somewhat broad and Slavic, with high cheekbones and large blue eyes, and when she smiled, her eye teeth showed a bit long and pointy. Her ears stood up a little and though they were not exactly pointed, they did, together with the rest of her features, give people the faint impression of looking at a cat. Her stepfather Dick affectionately called her Kitten.
   But now Cress’s face had grown leaner, more avid, and her eyes had sort of crystallized into blue diamonds, sharp and lucid, and they did not seem to blink as often. Her teeth showed more when she smiled, and when she was angry, her cheeks flushed a deeper red and her eyes flashed with more lightning. She had gone from being a pretty girl to a beautiful woman, but Cress could not decide if her face had gained something in the process, or lost it.
   Cress had persevered through a difficult pregnancy, and Dr Patel had put her on strict bed rest. Through it all, she had gained only twenty pounds, including the baby, which she lost easily enough afterwards. Her figure had come back nicely. But her face had definitely changed.
   Cress heard no sounds of typing, no phone talk, no shuffling of papers, only the crinkly foil rustle of a Hershey’s Kiss being unwrapped by pudgy reception fingers. She closed the compact with a snap! and said to the receptionist, “Are you going to tell him I’m here?”
   The receptionist gave her another smile and said, “It’ll just be a few minutes.” She took another kiss from the bowl.
   Cress twisted the ring around her finger a time or two. Troy gave it to her, back when they were “dating,” as he called it. He told her it was an Irish Love Knot.
   Troy. Virgo Snake. He was so difficult. Cress had been through it all with Troy—the sparks, the roses, the tug-of-war, the towering arguments, the sizzling make-up sex, the next towering argument. The “ring.” What was he thinking? What was he ever thinking? She’d been at her wit’s end with Troy more than once.
   And then she met John, Aries Dog, the Love of her Life. And then she got pregnant. And then Troy became absolutely impossible. That was before she had to get a job and drop out of Valparaiso University and take night classes at PCJC instead. Before a book called Psycho-Astrology: Stars, Sex, and Power had changed her life. Jan, Ariel’s babysitter and Cress’s best friend, gave it to her. The Book explained everything.
   For example, the Book explained that a man, on average, thinks about sex roughly three hundred times a day. When he isn’t thinking about sports, or cars, he’s thinking about sex. Cress once calculated that, as the only attractive woman working in the office of an apartment complex with two men, plus another two men doing maintenance, plus three Mexican gardeners, plus one seventeen-year-old lifeguard, she had been used as a mental sex doll an average of 2,400 times per day. All for eight dollars an hour, plus commissions. It wasn’t enough.
   And so she needed a little help. Was that a crime? WIC, Medicaid, TANF, Food Stamps—all for the baby, every penny of it. And only until she could finish school. Cress worked full time and went to school nights. Wasn’t that enough? Just because she needed a little help, a little temporary assistance, was that any reason to drag her into the prosecutor’s office and grill her like a common criminal?
   And the prosecutor was a man. Of course. What did they know about right or wrong or truth or justice or sacrifices? Men had it easy, so they thought it was easy for everyone. Cress would have loved to see Mr Slovak raise a healthy, happy baby girl and work full-time and put himself through night school and put up with Cress’s mother and deal with Troy plus John and sit in waiting rooms at the mercy of receptionists, all alone and without any help.
   Cress needed to get her thoughts under control. From her purse, she took the iPhone Troy gave her for Mother’s Day and looked through the photographs. Cress in the hospital bed, sweaty, exhausted, dark circles around her eyes. She looked like she’d just gone fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champ. Nineteen hours of labor ending in a C-section, but worth every second—Ariel was pink and perfect and hers.
   Ariel at three months, wearing that adorable little pumpkin costume with the little green stem for a hat Troy bought for her so he could take her Trick-or-Treating even though she was too little and he ended up eating all the candy. Ariel at five months, her first Christmas, under the tree, with a big red bow in her hair, chewing the ear off the Gromit doll Troy gave her. Ariel at nine months, Easter grass in her hair, chewing the ear off a chocolate bunny and sitting in the pink plastic Barbie convertible Troy insisted on buying for her even though she was still too little, wearing the bunny costume Cress’s mother made for her as part of a ridiculous attempt to compete with Troy.
   Ariel’s first birthday at Lake Monticello, Ariel riding a pony, Ariel chewing the ear off a lamb in the Petting Zoo, Ariel eating—or wearing—a waffle cone sundae, Troy’s bumblebee barrettes in her hair. Troy. His face wasn’t in any of the pictures, just the presents. Men. They thought they could own you. They thought they could buy anything with gifts.
   Cress heard a door slam in Slovak’s office. She put her things back in her purse and gathered herself together. She was ready for Slovak—she had done her homework. Mr Slovak had himself listed in Who’s Who in American Jurisprudence, and his bio came in very handy. It mentioned he was born in Michigan, near water, and graduated magna cum laude from Valparaiso University Law School. His birthday was February 9, 1965, and that made him an Aquarius Snake. As a Gemini Tiger, Cress could handle the snake part. After all, a tiger can easily tear a snake to pieces. But Aquarius is an air sign, like Gemini, and that made Cress’s task a bit trickier.
   Air signs are impossible to nail down. They slip through logic and reason like the breath slips between the teeth. Cress would have to swallow this Aquarius man whole, and right away. She would have to get on top of him and never get off. Under her breath, like a mantra, or perhaps a growl, she repeated the last line of her favorite Sylvia Plath poem, “I eat men like air.”
   Mrs Reception, her voice plump with chocolate and condescension, announced, “Mr Slovak is ready for you now.”

   Cress marched into Deputy Prosecutor Slovak’s office without hesitation. It was nearly identical to the receptionist’s little queendom, except that it reflected a higher sense of taste. The furniture, leather-bound, was made from the same kinds of exotic tropical hardwood trees that were depicted in a series of landscape paintings hung around the room. One mural-sized panorama of a primeval rain forest hung beneath an air conditioning vent on the wall behind the desk. Beneath the painting, a man was doubled over in a chair behind the desk, as if he were pulling up his socks.
   “Give me a minute!” he snapped.
   Caught off guard, Cress glanced over her shoulder to the door behind her and started to explain. “The receptionist said—” When she turned back, she recognized the man, now sitting upright, from the black BMW on the street outside. The jacket of his light gray summer weight Brooks Brothers suit hung stiffly on a hanger from a mahogany coat tree behind his desk like the desiccated, castoff skin of a snake. His white dress shirt, somehow fresh in spite of the heat and humidity outside, looked tailored to his long, narrow frame. Shirt sleeves, rolled up to the elbows, revealed sinewy, hairless forearms.
   Slovak’s head and neck, snugly ringed by a glossy red silk tie, emerged boldly from a starched white collar, and his face thrust forward from the neck like the head of a mushroom. He appeared to be sprouting from a cave sunk into a glacier of white ice. Well groomed, well dressed, and brimming with dynamism and confidence—Cress might have instinctively found him attractive.
   She was now completely knocked off balance, a condition she hated. Cress stared at Slovak, rising smoothly from his chair, with unexpected dread born out of her embarrassment. Her confidence had bolted away like a frightened kitten into the shadowy forest of the painting behind Slovak.
   Slovak forced a polite smile and extended his right hand to Cress, and she took it, automatically, without thinking. “Sorry,” he said. His long, bony fingers constricted drily around Cress’s hand, which had grown moist and clammy from the stress. He suddenly recognized Cress from the street outside and withdrew his hand.
   “Miss Martier, I presume?” Slovak said, then gestured to one of two red leather upholstered chairs facing his desk. “Have a seat.”
   Cress swept the back of her skirt underneath her thighs and sat, poised and alert, legs crossed at the ankle, leaning forward assertively, breathing evenly and deliberately, regaining her composure. She placed her purse in the other red leather chair. In this way she could dominate as much territory in the room as possible.
   A potion of musk cologne and male summer sweat crowded the space, stirred by the air conditioning that blew straight over Slovak’s head and down the front of Cress’s blouse in a way that chilled her uncomfortably.
   Slovak opened a manila file folder on his desk and muttered, “Well, then.” He turned the pages of her file deliberately. His sharp eyes darted from fact to fact, ingesting their vital contents, gaining strength in preparation. From time to time, his tongue would thoughtfully peek between his thin lips, as if sniffing the air for some unseen clue. After a minute or two, he looked at Cress with another forced smile. “Miss Martier—or, may I call you Chris?”
   “Cress,” she said. His first mistake. If Cress could get him to make three such slips, she knew she could regain the upper hand.
   “Beg pardon?”
   “Cress. My name is Cress. It’s short for Cressida,” Cress explained. “It’s from Shakespeare.” Didn’t they read Shakespeare at Valparaiso University? The kitten eyes of her confidence cautiously peeked out at her from behind a teakwood tree in the painting.
   Slovak scribbled a correction on her file and then deliberately took his time answering. “I see. Then, may I call you Cress?” He said it with just enough condescension to be obvious.
   Strike two. “Miss Martier will do, I think.” Cress and her mother had watched a lot of Katherine Hepburn movies on her mother’s Betamax. It was a sort of substitute for finishing school, which Cress’s mother had never been able to afford for her daughters.
   Slovak smiled. He was bluffing. “Miss Martier. Very good.” His agreement was an admission of weakness, of handing control to Cress, and he knew it. Now, he would try to seduce Cress into making the same surrender, into agreeing on three simple, harmless points. Troy, the master car salesman, called it “Making a habit of yes.” Then, Slovak would go for the jugular.
   “How’s Ariel?” Slovak said. “Or should I call her Miss Martier as well?”
   “Fine.” Cress continued to wear her blank, pleasant, professional face. She could almost see her confidence winking at her from the painting that loomed behind Slovak’s head. Between the two of them, they nearly had him trapped.
   Slovak nodded, and changed his face to a more natural, honest smile. “I have good news,” he said. “For both of you.” He waited for Cress to ask what good news.
   Cress’s heart leaped up in alarm instead. Good news for the prosecutor. She said nothing, only looked at him with polite curiosity. Don’t budge, her confidence seemed to be saying with another wink and a toothy grin.
   Slovak got straight to it. “When you first applied to the Indiana Department of Public Aid on behalf of yourself and your daughter, you were asked to participate in the process of locating Ariel’s father. So that he could assume his fair share of the responsibility.”
   Asked. What a joke. They practically put a noose around Cress’s neck and a leash around Ariel’s. Like Troy always said, money comes with strings attached.
   Slovak turned the page and started reading. “According to both of your sworn affidavits, Ariel’s birth was the result of a, shall we say, brief romantic encounter? With a man whose name you did not, at that time, recall.” Slovak wasn’t waiting for Cress to agree. He was simply pretending to read from his folder of facts. Like he knew anything. “Since that time, have you remembered his name?”
   Blood charged through Cress’s heart and up into her face. What was he getting at? She said, “As I stated before, I never knew his name.” Cress was finding it impossible to smile, now.
   Slovak ignored what she said. “No reminders? No bells rung? No whispers from the stars?” Slovak was keeping up the pretense of courtesy, but Cress heard exactly what he was saying: “You’re either a liar or a slut. Or both.” He was trying to trick her into admitting it, into lowering herself, into throwing herself upon his mercy.
   “If I didn’t know his name,” Cress said, “how could I remember it?”
   Again, Slovak pretended not to hear or care about Cress’s answer. He continued to read over her file while he spoke. “Never crossed paths? No second encounter? Lightning never struck twice?” He was enjoying himself. Men. Cress let her composure swallow her retorts. If he wasn’t going to listen, she wasn’t going to speak. Screw him and his arrogance. He continued to talk, his well-honed courtroom voice setting the tasteful paintings and red leather upholstery aquiver.
   Cress was having trouble visualizing her confidence now. It faded away, like a Cheshire cat, smile and all. A low hum began to throb softly in her ears. The phantom taste of chocolate kisses wrapped in tinfoil, sweet and electric on her tongue, distracted her. The air conditioning was raising goose bumps on the exposed skin of her arms and along the nape of her neck and down the front of her chest. At least the chill made her nipples erect, something that might distract Slovak. Men had their own weaknesses. Cress might as well use them to her advantage.
   Slovak finally looked up from the folder and deliberately met Cress’s gaze. Her eyes were on fire, two tigers burning in the forest of the night. Slovak leaned forward, his angular, sun-coppered head protruding into Cress’s personal space, his musky cologne making intimate, smothering contact with her senses. Cress swallowed involuntarily, and her knees trembled slightly. With a faint smirk of phony apology on his lips and a hint of false reassurance in his voice, Slovak said, “I have a surprise for you.”
   Cress had a vision, a scene in Quentin Tarantino Super Slo Motion and Gone With the Wind Technicolor. A long, crescent-shaped stainless steel blade, swift and silent as a jungle cat, sliced cleanly through Slovak’s extended neck, just below his Adam’s apple and just above the collar of his stiff white shirt. Instead of a stream of arrogant speech, a torrent of blood spouted luxuriously from the decapitated stem. The head fell, useless, to the floor, followed by the body, limp and drained of life. Cress’s spirit seemed to soar above the room, cavorting in the fountains of rich, red blood.
   Then the voice intruded once again. “—putative father.”
   “What?” Cress said. The ecstasy of her vision left her momentarily confused and she felt out of breath. Slovak was out of his chair, and had come around to the side of the desk, directly in front of her.
   “It’s a legal term,” Slovak explained, smugly. “It means something like presumed, or reputed, or alleged. Of course, a test will have to be done, to be sure.”
   Cress struggled to catch up mentally. “A test?” she muttered breathlessly. What kind of test? “You mean, a paternity test?”
   “Precisely. DNA matching,” Slovak said. Deliberately, he took a seat on the corner of the desk and put his hands on his knee, looming over Cress.
   “Who?” Cress wrestled with herself to keep the panic out of her voice. What was he talking about?
   Slovak beamed. “That’s the good news.” He reached out and patted her knee in a familiar, fatherly way. “We have a name. A name, an address, and a Social Security number.”
   We. Cress said nothing. Maybe he was bluffing. Slovak reached behind him for the file, opened it again, and read aloud. “Mister Troy Alexander, of 314 Waverly Circle, Hammond, Indiana. That’s a nice country club. My broker lives on the ninth tee.”
   A thousand thoughts flashed through Cress’s mind, none of them helpful. All the air seemed to have gone out of the room, and she felt as though she might faint. “Oh, God, not here, not in front of this man,” she prayed silently to herself.
   Slovak waited with lawyer’s patience for her to speak first. Cress’s heart pounded out the seconds. From the chaos of her thoughts, a question began to emerge, sharp and pointed as a hypodermic needle. Who told him?
   Her mother? It was just the kind of thing she’d do. Cress’s mother positively loved Troy.
   “Why can’t you be nice to him?” Adele would say. “He’s nice to you.” Nice. “He just adores Ariel. There are worse things than being loved by a man who makes good money, let me tell you, Young Lady.”
   Who else? Jan? Not her style. John? Why would he? Cress had never put any pressure on him, never given him any reason to leave, not after the first time. If nothing else, Cress learned from her mistakes. Who? Maybe it was—
   “—scheduled an appointment. Of course, you’ll have to make an appointment for Ariel yourself,” Slovak was saying, with relentless courtesy.
   Cress’s equilibrium was returning. She always landed on her feet. “Appointment?” she said. She didn’t like the sound of it.
   “Of course. The lab will need a sample of Ariel’s DNA as well.” Slovak swatted her knee playfully with the folder and straightened his posture, leaning on the corner of the desk instead of sitting on it. “Don’t look so put out. It’s completely painless. The nurse will just swab the inside of her cheek with a Q-Tip. Takes a second. For him, as well.”
   Cress needed time, time to think, to make plans. She shrugged nonchalantly. “I guess I’ll call—what was his name, again?”
   Slovak smiled once more, a smile that let Cress know he wasn’t fooled, not one bit. He said, “We’ll contact Mr. Alexander. At this point, since he’s only the putative father, I’m not supposed to tell you his address, or anything about him, really, not even his name. That just sort of slipped out.” The bastard actually winked. “You won’t tell on me, will you?”
   Cress’s plan was now most definitely thrown into the proverbial cocked hat. She needed to improvise, and fast. Mentally, Cress was light on her feet, but Slovak had her cornered at this moment. Those damned eyes of his refused to blink. In fact, they seemed to be incapable of blinking.
   Slovak leaned closer, closer, poised on the edge of the desk, waiting for Cress to answer so that he could strike. Cress struggled for control of her own voice, to keep it silent, to keep from surrendering. “Look away,” her other, inner voice told her. Her first instinct pushed her to close her eyes, to retreat into darkness, but another reflex, one more experienced, more deadly, took over instead.
   Like a trained Shaolin ninjess, Cress acted on this more highly refined impulse, a weapon granted to her sex by those gods who had denied woman a physical strength equal to man’s. Cress, like most girls, had learned that her eyes could be weapons as potent as any tooth or claw.
   Deftly, Cress lowered her eyes without closing them. By being the first to appear to break off contact, she knew she would seem to Slovak to have lost the battle of wills. He would not, at first, realize that Cress had not submitted with her eyes by lowering her gaze, but in fact had shifted the battle to another arena by transferring her attention to Slovak’s most vulnerable anatomy.
   Cress simply stared directly at the bulge in the crotch of Slovak’s tasteful gabardine slacks. She was momentarily startled at its apparent dimensions, but did not let on. Sure enough, before Slovak was even consciously aware of it, the bulge began to grow and shift itself under the wool fabric in response to her concentrated attention. Cress had practiced this trick—the Book called it The Snake Charmer—for some time and had enjoyed considerable success with it.
   It worked. Suddenly self-conscious, Slovak pivoted on his right foot and half-standing, half-slinking, retreated to the safety of his chair behind the desk. Cress noted that he was flustered and she smiled inwardly. She remembered to complete this little lesson by rewarding Slovak for this submission to her will.
   Ostensibly for his “help,” but actually for his obedience in backing down in deference to her power, Cress said, in her sweetest voice, “Thank you.”
   Slovak cleared his throat, embarrassed. “My pleasure,” he grumbled.
   Cress had no time to waste gloating. She used the precious interval to think. How to buy more time? Get him to talk. He loves the sound of his own voice, let him use it. But first, put him on the defensive. “I will not give up custody,” she said, with finality.
   Slovak the lawyer fell back on making assurances. “No one is asking you to,” he said. He spread his hands over his desk, palms up, a gesture Cress knew from her homework in Cultural Studies was supposed to be a universal sign for “no threats.” Men. They lied with their hands as fluently as with their tongues.
   “Good,” Cress said firmly. “Because I won’t do it.”
   “Why don’t we jump off that bridge when we come to it,” Slovak said, attempting to be funny.
   “Not now. Not later. Not ever.”
   Slovak sighed, then shrugged. “That would be a matter for the court to decide, not this office,” he said, wisely. “For now, let’s just focus on getting these tests out of the way, and then we can deal with the results when they come.” He leaned back in his chair as he spoke, crossing his legs casually, then folding his hands on his knee.
   Now it was Cress’s turn to sigh. “What was that name again?”
   “Troy Alexander,” Slovak said. He spoke slowly, evenly.
   Cress decided to find out if he turned himself in. “That name doesn’t sound familiar,” she said. “How do I know it’s not just some kook out to cause trouble?” Subtly, Cress shifted her weight in her chair, leaning back and crossing her right leg over her left, demurely. The motion caused the red leather of the chair to emit a small squeak.
   Slovak kept up his relaxed, jovial tone. “I don’t think that’s at all likely,” he said.
   Cress folded her hands in her lap. Her posture now approximated Slovak’s, and she carefully tried to match her own pattern of breathing to his.
   Slovak heaved another deep sigh. He spoke again, even slower and deeper than before, more relaxed. “For one thing, he and I had a detailed conversation on the matter. I found him quite convincing.”
   So. The son of a bitch did turn himself in. Cress deliberately sighed, again mimicking Slovak’s breathing and faint smile, to let him know they were on the same wavelength, that they were becoming friends. The Book called it Mirroring, or Body Hypnosis. Cress was reflecting Slovak’s behavior, his demeanor, his rhythms, in order to get him to lower his defenses.
   She said laconically, “Some men are very good liars.” Slovak was picking some lint from his pants leg just above the knee. Cress adjusted the hem of her skirt.
   “True,” Slovak agreed. He was falling under Cress’s spell. Cress decided that she might like him, after all. Distinguished, successful, well-hung, trainable—“But then,” Slovak continued, “why would any man lie his way into paying child support?”
   Cress bristled in her chair and glared at Slovak. “I don’t need child support,” she said emphatically.
   Slovak did not react to Cress’s sudden change, but remained calm, relaxed. “There’s no shame in accepting a little assistance.” His tone was pleasant, patronizing, infuriating.
   Cress saw it all clearly, now. This man was impossible, an enemy, an implacable enemy. There was nothing more to say.
   Slovak did not wait for her to say anything. He looked at his watch, and apparently deciding that this interview was concluded, retrieved a xeroxed flyer from a desk drawer and passed it to Cress.
   “At any rate,” he said, “here is the information on the lab.”
   The flyer was for a place called Genex Laboratories in Gary. They were open seven days a week. How convenient.
   “You won’t be billed for any charges,” Slovak added. Helpfully. He rose to his feet, and once more offered Cress his hand, a gesture more of finality than of hospitality.
   The blood rushed again into Cress’s face. She snatched her purse from the other chair, shoved the flyer inside, then practically leaped to her feet.
   “Thank you,” she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. Hurriedly, she smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, straightened the collar of her blouse, and turned toward the door. “I have to get back to work.”
   “Of course,” Slovak said. He hurried past her so he could open the door for her.
   Cress did not deign to look at him as she exited. Nor did Cress look at Mrs Reception as she stepped around her desk on the way to the outer door. The little monster had undoubtedly eavesdropped on the whole humiliating affair. Cress blinked back angry hot tears and snatched the door open, then hurried through. Just before she slammed the door behind her, Cress heard the receptionist, her mouth crammed full of gloating and chocolate, say to Cress’s back, “See you next week!”
   Cress stomped down the polished marble hallway to the elevator shaft and stabbed the Down button. Waiting for the elevator, she passed the time by counting off pieces of Troy’s anatomy to be nipped off, one at a time, just as soon as she saw him.
   In the elevator, going down, Cress did not see the young woman in the soiled cotton tie-dyed dress and handcuffs in the company of the muscular young deputy. She did not hear the girl’s dry, persistent cough. Cress did not see Deputy Klarowicz hold the door for her once again. She did not hear him say, “Have a nice day.”
   Descending the marble steps, Cress did not feel the morning heat claw at her body through the thin fabric of her blouse and up under her skirt. She did not smell the hayloft aroma of yesterday’s grass clippings drying in the fierce sunshine on the courthouse lawn. Cress knew only one thought. Mr Slovak, who thought himself so very smart, was going to try and tell her how to live her life, how to raise her daughter, how to choose her baby’s father. Well, she’d show him.
   Cress did see the ticket fluttering gaily beneath the left windshield wiper of her Saturn. She snatched it up and her eyes, burning more hotly than the sun, zeroed in on the smart little check mark in the box next to the words, “Improper Use of Reserved Parking Stall.” There had to be some kind of mix-up.
   Cress looked again. She had parked in the last space on the left end of the block. The five spaces to the right each had a twee little sign made of fake cast iron fixed to a silver-painted metal pole at the head of the space. Each sign said, “Reserved for Clerk of the Court,” and so on. Yes, a silver metal pole stood at the head of her parking space, but there was no pious little sign on it. Maybe it fell off, or maybe the meter maid had made a mistake.
   But just beneath her front bumper, on the concrete curb, Cress could barely make out some of the letters in “DEPUTY PROS” in faded white paint. Cress had been so distracted by her impending meeting with Slovak that she had not seen it, and again, there was no other sign. How unfair. Hadn’t she endured enough already today?
   Cress remembered her first little run-in with Slovak behind the wheel of his BMW. She saw it all, now. On his way inside, he had ordered Klarowicz to give her the ticket out of sheer spite. That’s why Slovak had taken so long getting to his office while Cress and the little red beast got acquainted—he had been too busy being an asshole.
   Cress marched right back up the steps and confronted Deputy Klarowicz. Her shoulders high and her chin firm, she extended her right arm and presented him with the ticket. Politely curious, he reached for it. “This,” Cress told him with dignity and authority, “is bullshit.”

   Half blind from her migraine, Cress sat heavily in her chair behind the desk. The height was adjusted all wrong. Cress concluded that the Moose had been unable to wedge her Xena thighs under the desk without lowering the seat. Then she just left it that way. How selfish. Cress felt like a little girl trying to sit at the grownups table at Christmas dinner.
   Cress fumbled for the adjustment lever under the right side of the chair seat, but couldn’t make it work. Streaks of ugly nail polish covered her desk. Cress couldn’t breathe for the fumes. She gave up and called Randy, the head maintenance person.
   “Uncle Randy?” Cress said helplessly. “A moose destroyed my office!” She listened, then laughed. “I’m serious. A moose!” She listened again. “I need help. Pleeaassee!” She laughed again. “Thank you. Hurry!”
   Cress hung up, then examined the message from Troy. He sounded cute on the phone. Cress could just imagine how long they talked on the phone, how quickly the talking had descended into flirting, then sunk to downright seducing.
   “Executive Sales Manager? Very impressive! You must have a huge—office!”
   “Big enough to satisfy—the customers.”
   “I know I’d love a huge—discount on a car!”
   “Do you deserve one?”
   “Tee-hee!”
How disgusting.
   Cress changed her mind and decided to call John instead. Maybe he would bring her some lunch. Then again, maybe Troy was already bringing her lunch so he could gloat. She changed her mind again, and decided to call Jan.
   “You would not believe the day I am having,” Cress said. She could hear Ariel in the background, singing along with Winnie the Pooh. “Shit! I have another call. Hold on—Valley Hills a Robert Roth—ma? Hold on a sec. Jan? Satan’s on the other line. I’ll call you back. Ma! What do you want?” Cress’s migraine was not getting any better. “How do you think it went? He was such an asshole to me. I have a migraine, what do you think?”
   The French doors opened, and Randy stepped in. He was in his late forties, not very tall, lean and wiry, with short brown hair going gray at the temples and laugh lines around his eyes. Cress liked him the instant she met him and affectionately nicknamed him Uncle Randy. He saw that Cress was on the phone and tiptoed through the kitchenette area, then around to the front of Cress’s desk. Cress looked at him with helpless eyes while her mother’s voice blared through the receiver.
   Silently, smiling with his eyes, Uncle Randy mouthed the words, “Where’s the trouble?”
   Cress stood up, pretending to listen to her mother. She gestured imploringly to the chair and to the mess on her desk. Uncle Randy gave her another smile and signaled “okay” with his fingers. He went down on one knee next to the chair. Cress stood aside and let Uncle Randy examine the adjustment lever. Her mother stopped talking long enough for Cress to get a word in edgewise.
   “No, I’m not hungry. I told you, I have a migraine.”
   Her mother never heard a word Cress said. Cress kicked off her shoes, pressed the Speakerphone button, and laid the cordless receiver in its cradle. Her mother’s voice filled the room like a brass foghorn. While she blathered on, Cress put her left foot on the chair seat and unsnapped the garter holding up her left stocking. She rolled the stocking down her leg and put it in her purse. Then she did the same with her right stocking.
   Finally, her mother got to the point. “Is Troy coming with you for dinner tonight?” she asked optimistically. That was Cress’s mother all over—she just assumed Cress and Ariel were coming home for dinner. On a Friday night. Like Cress had nothing better to do. And then to presume that Troy was automatically invited.
   Cress started unbuttoning her blouse. “He’s picking us up here when I get off,” she told her mother. Uncle Randy pretended not to watch her undressing while he adjusted something under her chair with a screwdriver.
   “Picking you up?” her mother said. She made every question sound like an accusation. “What’s wrong with your car?”
   “Nothing! Jesus. Jan’s borrowing it tonight,” Cress explained with extreme irritation. Her mother had to know everything.
   Cress whispered to Uncle Randy, “Can I borrow that screwdriver?” She made a Norman Bates stabbing motion in the air with her hand. Uncle Randy laughed. Cress unzipped her skirt.
   “Your car? What for?” her mother demanded. She could have made at least as good a prosecutor as Slovak. Maybe they could go into business together.
   Cress stepped out of her skirt. “She’s going to Mexico. She’s bringing back a load of dope and Mexicans,” Cress said. “Do you want her to bring you anything?” Cress picked up her skirt and blouse.
   Her mother said, “That’s not funny, Young Lady.”
   “Yes, it is,” Cress said brightly. She nudged Uncle Randy with her big toe. He smiled and nodded. Her mother covered the mouthpiece on her phone and shouted something loud but unintelligible to Cress’s stepfather, Dick.
   Cress stepped to the closet, took out a hanger, and hung up her suit. She unhooked her garter belt and put it in her purse with the stockings. She was dying for a swim. That morning, she put on her white Mossimo bikini instead of a bra and panties, something she did frequently so she would always be ready to jump in the pool. Cress never missed a chance to escape into the water, whether a heated swimming pool or the frigid green water of Lake Michigan.
   Her mother came back on. “Be nice to Troy, tonight.”
   “What do you want me to do? Give him a blow job in the car on the way over?” Cress said cheerfully. Uncle Randy chuckled at that one. He liked Troy about as much as Cress did.
   Her mother, of course, did not think it so funny. “Now, Young Lady, there is no need for that kind of talk.”
   “You’re right,” Cress said. Her mother hated it whenever Cress agreed with her, because Cress was always lying and her mother knew it. “Goodbye!” she said cheerfully.
   “Remember what I told you.”
   “I’m hanging up, now ma!”
   Uncle Randy sat on the chair, demonstrating that it now worked fine. He stood up, and Cress gave him a big thank-you hug and a peck on the cheek.
   Cress’s mother continued. “Now, if you—” Cress stabbed the End button on the phone. “Auuugggghhh!” she said. She pretended to pull her hair out.
   Uncle Randy smiled with patient understanding. He put his screwdriver back in his tool belt. He said, “I’ll come back with some acetone and get this gunk off your desk. What were you doing in here, anyway?” He gave her a mischievous wink.
   “Decorating a moose!” Cress said with a giggle. “For hunting season!”
   Uncle Randy laughed. “I saw her come in this morning. She’s something!” Uncle Randy was a widower with a twelve-year-old son. He never said so, but Cress had the feeling Uncle Randy was lonely.
   “You should ask her out,” Cress told him. “She looks about your age.”
   He laughed again. Cress gave him a playful shove. “She looks like a cheap date,” she said, helpfully. “Take her to Babylon. I’ll bet she’s a good dancer.”
   Uncle Randy actually blushed. He was really very sweet.
   Babylon was a dance club in Gary where Cress met John. Cress knew a nice man like Uncle Randy would never go there, but Cress thought he should.
   “I better go get the acetone,” he said, “before you get me into trouble.” He went back out the patio door.
   Cress called after him, “I’m serious! I’ll even pay for the first lap dance!” Cress could hear his warm, manly laugh. Her headache was getting a little better. She sat in her chair, adjusted it back to normal, and called Jan.
   “How is she?” Cress said.
   “She’s fine. She’s singing to the cat,” Jan said. “How are you doing?”
   “My head’s about to split in two.”
   “You’re back in the office?”
   “The Moose destroyed my desk.”
   Jan laughed. “Is she still there?” she said.
   “She left. Thank God. She went to get lunch for Bob.”
   “He’s a married man, right?” Jan’s voice became detached from the phone. “Ariel? Do you want to say hi to mommy?”
   Cress could hear Ariel’s bare feet slapping their way across the room. They must have been using the phone in the kitchen. There was a jostling noise as Jan held the phone to Ariel’s ear.
   Excited and out of breath, Ariel shouted, “Hi!” then ran off before Cress could say hi back. Cress could hear her singing in the background, a voice of pure enthusiasm. Waiting for Jan to come back on the line, Cress moved over toward the patio doors so she could look out again.
   Jan came back on. “How did it go?” she said with real concern.
   “I can’t even talk about it right now,” Cress said. Peter was stretched out on the chaise, sunny side up, catching some rays. Cress said to Jan, “Do you want to come over and swim? There’s hardly anybody in the pool right now.”
   “Absolutely,” Jan said. “I’ll just grab my suit and pack up the monster. We’ll see you in ten.”
   Jan was the perfect friend for Cress. Jan’s dead grandmother, a real life Steel Magnolia from South Carolina, left Jan a moderately sized trust fund. The trust paid for Jan’s Finance degree from Northwestern University and supported her in a reasonable manner while she built up her own Financial Planning practice back home in Valparaiso.
   Jan’s father Lionel had maintained a respectable law practice before running off to Southeast Asia with his secretary and his wife’s life savings. Naturally, the trust administrators, including Robert Roth, were more than happy to lend Jan a helping hand here and there—introducing her to potential clients, letting her plan their estates, asking her to set up their kids’ college funds, things like that. Jan was definitely on her way.
   It was Jan who introduced Cress to Robert Roth. Together, Jan and Mr Roth had encouraged Cress to stay in school, even if only at Portman County Junior College for now. Mr Roth was giving Cress a chance to learn something about the real estate business by working in his offices, and of course, the job satisfied the Indiana Department of Public Aid’s work requirements. And Cress was definitely learning. She had a healthy curiosity about the world and was never shy about asking questions, even if some did call it “sticking her nose in other people’s business.”
   As a leasing agent, Cress had shown an inborn knack for closing a deal. Mr Roth called it her killer instinct. “You’ve got it, kiddo,” he told her more than once. “That old killer instinct. Nobody gets out of here alive—that’s your motto!” He said it with a proud smile and an encouraging squeeze around her shoulders. Mr Roth was always telling Cress nice, encouraging things about herself. He made no secret of the fact that Cress’s looks were an asset in the leasing office.
   Jan was full of plans for the two of them. “We’ll be partners,” she told Cress. “The first all-woman Financial Services firm in the whole region. When we’re older, we’ll turn the business over to our daughters. It’ll be a dynasty. Jacobs, Martier, and Daughters, LLC!” That was why Cress didn’t need a husband. But try making a man like Slovak understand that.
   Jan did not have a daughter, not yet. Jan did not trust men at all. Cress reassured her all the time. “It’s a piece of cake. You don’t even have to do anything, if you don’t want to. You can just lie there watching TV.”
   Jan’s excuse usually ran along the lines of, “I can’t seem to find a man I like.”
   “What’s to like? You don’t have to like a tampon to use one.” Cress liked men. You didn’t have to trust men to like them. They did have their uses, after all.
   Jan could always think of something to worry about. “What if it’s a boy?”
   “We’ll sell it on the black market.”
   “Okay, I’m sold. Can I borrow John?”
   “Absolutely not!”
   “How about Troy?”
   “It’s your funeral.”
   Still no sign of Sandra, the other leasing agent. Cress could not stand the atmosphere in the office another second. She returned the cordless phone to its cradle, then locked the front door of the office. In case Troy did decide to drop by early, she hung a sign in the window, “Out to Lunch.”