By the time he’d crossed the street, he was no longer limping. The warm sun felt good on his back and leg. At the shop’s door, with its OPEN sign dangling crookedly in its window, he hesitated.

Then he remembered what Cassie had told him: “…she needs to forgive you.”

He wasn’t sure precisely why his sister had come to that conclusion, but she was right enough often enough to give him confidence now. He opened the door and went inside. The muted little bell above his head sounded the customer alarm.

He seemed to be the only one in the shop.

Finally, alerted by the bell, Nola came in through an open door behind the counter. Her hair was pulled back, emphasizing her wide cheekbones and large dark eyes. The simple blue dress she had on wasn’t meant to be sexy, but on her it was. Something about the way her body moved beneath the loosely draped material, what was and wasn’t apparent. She was a woman with a subtle rhythm all her own. The thing about women that attracted and seduced was individual and rhythmic, Beam thought. Maybe it was a subtle synthesis of rhythms. He didn’t understand it, but he sensed it was true.

Nola didn’t look surprised to see him. “You get overheated sitting out there in your car?”

“It isn’t much cooler in here,” Beam said, aware not only of the warmth, but of the musty scent of the surrounding objects, the past.

“I’ll complain to the landlord.” She didn’t seem angry that he’d turned up again. She didn’t seem pleased. “What do you want, Beam?”

“I think we need to talk.”

“You need to talk.”

“We both do,” Beam said. “To each other.”

She rested her hand on an old black rotary phone on the counter. “I should pick up the phone, call the precinct, tell them I’m being threatened and I’m afraid.”

“You’re not being threatened and you’re not afraid.”

“But I could pick up the phone and call.”

“Go ahead.”

He waited, but she didn’t move. Didn’t look away from him. Nothing in the world was darker than the very center of her eyes. “I know you’ve asked people in the neighborhood about me, Beam. You wanted to know if I was married, if I was involved with anyone.”

“I did that, yes.”

Her hand didn’t move off the phone. “What is this we need to talk about?” she asked.

There was a good question. But the answer came to him immediately. “Harry.”

“He was my husband.”

“He was my friend.”

“Did he trust you? His friend? The cop who owned him and was bending his arm?”

“Yes. And he trusted you. He was right to trust us both. I don’t deny I wanted you. But I never moved on it. Never touched you. I was married. And you were Harry’s wife.”

“I’m still Harry’s wife.”

“Not any longer.”

“Your wife is dead now.”

The simple statement, coming from her, didn’t carry the weight and pain it might have. He was appalled, and then relieved, that he could hear it and not be pierced by grief and loneliness.

“You’re right, she’s dead,” he said. “And so is Harry.”

“You want to screw me. You want me to forgive you.”

“Yes.”

“One doesn’t necessarily follow the other.”

“I know. But we both need the same thing.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“To be free of the past without losing it.”

She continued to stare at him. He couldn’t decipher what was in her eyes.

“I’m being honest with you,” he said.

“You sure as hell are. You think I’m stuck here in some kind of cobwebby, self-imposed purgatory on earth because of what happened to Harry.”

“Yeah, I think that.

“And you think I can somehow ease the loss you feel for your wife.”

She’s right!

The knowledge, its clarity, so bluntly stated, struck Beam like a bullet.

“And you have the formula that will help us both,” she said.

“It isn’t a formula.”

“Then what is it?”

“A plea.”

“You don’t sound so sure of yourself now.”

“I’m not.”

“What I said, do I have it right, Beam?”

“As far as it goes.”

“It goes farther?”

“You know it does.”

“I know I want you to leave.”

“Question is, do you want me to come back?”

Her gaze locked with his own. “I want you to leave.”

Finally she removed her hand from the phone.

He could feel her watching as he let himself out, the bell above the door tinkling a message in a code he didn’t know.

He did know she hadn’t told him not to return, and she’d hesitated a beat before telling him again that she wanted him to leave.

A beat. An infinitesimal fraction of time.

A change in the rhythm.

Adelaide understood that publicity was the oxygen of her business. Not that she wasn’t sincere, but why not make her plight known? Why not speak for the other poor people in the same predicament as hers, being pushed around by the system? This was her opportunity, and in a way her responsibility.

Responsibility. That’s the word Barry used when finally he’d warmed to her idea, and even sort of adopted it as his own. “We average citizens can’t let ourselves be pushed around by the system,” he’d said. “Somebody has to speak up, even if it means falling on his or her sword.”

“Like a real sword?” Adelaide had asked.

“Like a book contract,” Barry told her. “And talk shows and acting jobs.”

So here she was on the steps of City Hall, with maybe a hundred people gathered beyond the dozens of TV cameras and smaller camcorders directed toward her. One of the TV people had given her a tiny mike to clip to her lapel, with a wire running down inside her blouse to a small black power pack they’d attached to her belt at the small of her back.

Adelaide looked young and beautiful in her tight jeans and her yellow blouse, tailored to emphasize her breasts and tiny waist. Her blond hair was piled high and with seeming recklessness on her head, with a few loose strands left to dangle strategically over her right cheek and left eye. Her tiny figure made even more diminutive by the solemn stone of City Hall, Adelaide looked soft and vulnerable. Adelaide looked cute.

In her right hand, she held a sheet of crumpled white paper. She raised it high and told the assembled what they already knew: it was a jury summons.

“It’s unfair!” she said in her high stage voice that would have carried even without a microphone. “I’d be eager to serve on a jury if the city could guarantee my safety. And your safety. They cannot. It’s asking citizens to perform much more than their civic duty when they’re asked to risk their lives.” She waved the summons in her tight little fist. “This isn’t a draft notice! We’re not at war. I don’t feel I should have to pay a price because the city can’t perform it’s first duty to us, its citizens, and that is to protect us!”

The crowd beyond the media had grown to almost two hundred now, and they began to cheer. Some of the cameras swiveled away from Adelaide and toward the mass of onlookers.

“I’m not a criminal,” Adelaide continued. “And I shouldn’t be asked to pay for someone else’s crime. But that’s exactly what might happen, because the police aren’t doing their job. They haven’t done it well enough so far, anyway. Maybe it is a tough job. And I’m sure they’re doing the best they can. But it isn’t my fault—it isn’t our fault—that it isn’t good enough!”

Another loud cheer. Some in the crowd began waving the ADELAIDE’S RIGHT signs that looked homemade, but that Barry had had printed up yesterday by a friend of his who had a graphics art business in the Village. ADELAIDE’S ARMY and FREE ADELAIDE signs were already printed and being held in reserve.

“I have no choice but to announce publicly that until the Justice Killer is apprehended and the city is no longer in the control of a madman—”

“You mean the mayor?” a man shouted from the crowd.

“I mean the Justice Killer.” Adelaide began waving both arms now, palms out in an appeal for a moment’s silence so she could be heard. “Until the city’s safe again, I will not obey this jury summons. I will not serve. I will not be a sacrifice.”