I wondered why Cordelia, as upset as she was with me, had chosen to tangle with my Aunt Greta.

“You okay?” Elly asked.

“Me? Oh, I’m fine,” I answered.

“Rough for you.”

“Naw, it was fun to see Aunt Greta finally get a few potshots in her direction.”

“Was it? I’ve found that justice often comes only long after it’s needed,” Elly said softly.

My only reply was a bare nod.

“You okay?” Millie asked, joining us.

“No, I’m imminently suicidal,” I replied.

“Wrong question or wrong time?” Millie inquired.

“Same question. Twice,” Elly explained.

“Well, in that case, can I have your belt and any sharp objects?” Millie bantered. “Other than your tongue.”

“Yeah, keep away from that, Hutch would object.”

Millie shook her head, then in a less frivolous tone said, “I didn’t know you and Cordelia went back so far.”

“We don’t. We only met a few months ago,” I clarified.

“But you had to know before today about her father,” Millie said. “She wouldn’t have sprung that on you.”

“I’ve known for a long time,” I replied, sharper than I’d intended.

Emma put her hand on my shoulder.

“Good-bye, Michele,” she said, hugging me.

I caught sight of Cordelia over Emma’s shoulder. She’d obviously heard the last part of our conversation. Her face was somber.

“Thanks for being in my corner,” I said to Emma.

“You’re most welcome, dear. I must run. I’m late, but it was worth it.”

Emma left, then Cordelia said, “Sorry, ladies, time to get back to work.”

She quickly packed up her briefcase as Elly, Millie, and Bernie went out the door. I hung back. Cordelia started to follow them. I took a few hasty steps and caught her in the hall.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t thank me.” She kept walking.

“Don’t say that. You certainly didn’t need to tangle with Aunt Greta…not the way you feel about…”

She shrugged and started down the stairs.

“Fifteen years too late is better than never, after all,” I added, stung at her nonchalance.

She spun back to face me. “What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded. Then, not waiting for an answer, she turned away. “You are so damned infuriating,” she threw back at me as she continued down the stairs.

Grow up, Micky, I suddenly thought. You’re not the only one with problems here. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…sometimes I am capable of speaking without bothering to think first.”

“It’s okay,” she replied, giving me a wan smile. “And I’m sorry. I lost my temper at that woman…for the way she treated you.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking a tentative step to her.

“I’m sorry it came too late to do much good.”

“It did me a lot of good.”

“Even so…” She didn’t move as I took another step.

“Friends?” I asked.

“Of course.”

I put my arms around her and hugged her tightly. We held each other for a moment, then she stiffened and pulled away. Probably remembering that I was sleeping with Joanne.

“I have to get back to work,” she said. “They’re waiting for me.” She hastily turned away, grabbed her briefcase, and headed down the stairs.

I remembered the books Alex gave me. I went back to retrieve them from their windowsill, taking time to see what the forces of evil were up to. Sunstroke, it looked like. The few remaining protesters were sitting on the curb, placards at half-mast. I spent a few minutes watching them sweat. Then I headed for the cool of the clinic.

“Bern, baby, Bern,” I said, plopping myself down on the least papered edge of her desk. I dangled her car keys in front of her.

“Hey, thanks, Micky,” she said as she took them.

“Snuggled up next to a lime green Datsun,” I bantered.

“Lime green. Yucko.”

“That’s my car you’re insulting.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Bernie repented.

“But not my color choice. Feel no remorse.”

“None felt.”

She had to answer the phone. I looked at the books Alex was returning. Modern stuff, including several that I recognized as coming from lesbian publishing houses.

“Is that any good?” Bernie asked, her phone call finished.

“I don’t know. I’ve never read it. I’m merely a go-between. Besides, do I look like the kind of girl who would read this trash?”

“Most definitely. Say, Micky, what did…well…” Bernie seemed a bit embarrassed. “Do you really…? It’s none of my business.”

I was disappointed in Bernie. I didn’t think she’d chicken out.

“But can I ask anyway?” she restored my faith.

“Ask away,” I said, leaning in toward her.

“Are you…have you really slept with a woman?” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Oh, sure. Hasn’t everyone?” I replied nonchalantly. My answer flustered Bernie.

“Uh…well…no,” she responded.

“You’re young. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“But, Micky, you don’t look like…?”

“Be wary of stereotypes, Bernie, baby,” I chided.

“But…what do two,” she leaned toward me and lowered her voice even more, “women do with each other?”

I stifled my first reaction, which was to burst out laughing. You, too, were once naïve, I told myself. A very long time ago. Instead I looked at Bernie, watching the blush that slowly started in my silence. When her cheeks were a pleasing rose shade, I finally replied, “Have a hell of a lot of fun. That’s what two women do when they sleep together. If you want to find out, I could—”

A throat cleared loudly behind me.

“Bernie,” Cordelia said, “I want Mrs. Ludlow’s file.”

“Right away,” Bernie replied, jumping up to get it.

Sister Ann appeared on my other side.

“Cordelia,” she said, “Here is the final statement. I thought you might like to give it a last look before I release it.”

Cordelia took the piece of paper from Sister Ann and started reading it.

“Quite a display out in the parking lot, Ms. Knight,” Sister Ann remarked dryly to me while Cordelia read. “I did manage to convince Sister Fatima that one of you was male. Don’t ask me which one.”

“Here. Thanks. It’s fine,” Cordelia said, handing the statement back to Sister Ann. She busied herself with a file she picked off of Bernie’s desk. As soon as Sister Ann was out of earshot, she said in an undertone, “My office. Wait in there.” Then she spun away, taking the file out of Bernie’s hand without a word, and strode back down the hallway.

“To the principal’s office,” I muttered. I picked up the books Alex had given me.

Elly gave me a quizzical look as I passed her in the hallway.

“Pick up the pieces,” I acerbically commented as I let myself in Cordelia’s office. I did not like her assumption that she had a right to order me around. Even if she was paying me.

Cordelia kept me waiting half an hour.

After shutting the door, she sat down heavily, then said, “‘Scene in the parking lot’? I’d like an explanation.”

“We were putting the fear of the devil into those self-righteous bigots.”

“How?” she demanded.

“Nothing Sister Ann wouldn’t let two sixteen-year-olds do at the prom.”

“Depending on their sex,” Cordelia corrected. “So you and Joanne were in the parking lot making out.”

“Not Joanne,” I replied. “She has better sense than that.” Particularly with O’Connor lurking about.

“Who?”

“Alex,” I answered.

“Alex? That’s not funny,” she retorted icily.

“It’s not meant to be. Here, she asked me to return these books to you.” I put them on Cordelia’s desk.

She looked at the books, then at me, then back at the books.

“Was it really Alex?” she finally asked.

I nodded.

“So you’re sleeping with Joanne behind Alex’s back and Alex behind Joanne’s? Dammit, can’t you keep your pants zipped?”

I looked down at my zipper.

“It seems possible,” I retorted. I was getting annoyed at Cordelia. Whatever our relationship was, she had overstepped the bounds of it as far as I was concerned. She had no business telling me who I could or couldn’t sleep with. With the exception of herself.

We glared at each other across her desk. “Besides,” I continued, “I’m not sleeping with Alex and she knows about me and Joanne.”

“She hasn’t seen Joanne yet.”

“We talked,” I explained.

“You…I thought Joanne was going to. Couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?”

“Of course not. Mouth and pants open all the time. I saw Alex in the parking lot and I just had to yell, ‘Hey, you know I’m fucking Joanne, don’t you?’”

Cordelia’s jaw tensed. I would not win any diplomatic awards today.

“Keep your voice down,” she said in a harsh whisper. “And another thing,” she continued angrily, “keep your hands off my nineteen-year-old secretary.”

“What?”

“I heard you proposition her—”

“I was not propositioning her,” I interrupted.

“Then what were you doing?”

“Answering her questions.”

“Oh, please, how naïve do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re naïve. I think you’re being an overbearing moralist. If you weren’t a dyke, you’d be out on the picket line where you belong.”

Cordelia almost jerked out of her chair, her eyes changing to a chill blue. She sat still for a moment, before replying, biting off her words, “I prefer to consider what I’m doing and think about the consequences before I act. If that makes me an overbearing moralist, so be it. Rather that, than following my vagina wherever it leads.”

“Better than leaving it behind. Not by your standards, perhaps, but I am an adult, Joanne and Alex are adults, and we can run our lives without your interference. And I can most certainly keep my hands off nineteen-year-old virgins. I don’t need your lectures about standards. If I want to fuck Alex, and Joanne, and Bernie, and a dozen other women, it’s none of your business.”

“Haven’t you already? Certainly Joanne, Alex, and the dozen other women. Probably in the last month.”

“No, the last week. Two a night. Sundays off. That was how Alex found out. She bumped into Joanne coming out of my bedroom.”

“Does anything stop you? Don’t you have any standards.”

I tensed, furious at her arrogance. “Not a single one. There’s nothing I won’t do. Want a list?” I shot back acidly.

“I don’t care to know.”

I stood up and leaned across her desk. “Not sanitary enough for you? Below your standards? Keep your sex in cheap novels?”

“Please leave,” she said, not looking at me.

I strode around the desk, grabbed the arms of her chair, and spun her around to face me.

“Sex with women, sex with men, sometimes, I was too drunk to tell. I can’t remember half the people I’ve slept with. Hell, by the time I was nineteen, I’d probably fucked more women than you ever will. Sex for the hell of it, sex for money, you name it. Ever been tied up, Dr. James?” I shook her chair, making her look at me.

“Get out, Micky. I mean it.” She glared at me this time.

It was a command that she expected to be obeyed. She sat in her chair, staring at me, challenging me to back down. Magnificently powerful, I thought, looking into her blazing blue eyes. I resented her for it. No one had ever told her she couldn’t be strong. Or proved indelibly how shifting control and strength were. Like Bayard had for me.

Cordelia sat before me, in her assumed omnipotence.

I knelt down in front of her, then ran my hand under her skirt.

“Come on, Dr. James. You can fuck me. You hired me. Isn’t that what you really wanted?”

I started to push her skirt up with my other hand, bending my face toward her lap.

She grabbed my hair and jerked my head back.

“Stop it! I don’t buy sex.”

For a moment, we hung there, my hands on her thighs, her fingers in my hair, staring at each other across some vast distance. Then her fingers loosened in my hair, and she took my face between her hands. She pulled me to her and kissed me. It lasted only a moment, then she wrenched herself away, pushing me back and turning her chair aside. I had to catch myself with my palms to keep from falling back.

“Please leave, Micky,” she said, no longer commanding. For one brief second, she hadn’t been in control. “Please,” she repeated.