work. The squealing was coming from the police scanner next to the easy chair, momentarily hurting Patsy’s hearing aid. She muted the volume on the TV and turned up the scanner.
“Medic One, 1225 San Francisco Street, elderly woman with chest pains.” Patsy wrote down the call in her journal and said a quick prayer for the woman.
L ucy drove around the block a few times before she found a parking space in the dim light. It was just after 11:30 P.M., but the streets around the Cowgirl bar were still filled with cars. She sat in the front seat, prepping herself in the rearview mirror; she reapplied her lipstick, brushed her hair, and tried to do something creative with her black eyeliner, managing only to poke herself in the eye. She wiped the eyeliner away, but now it looked like she had a case of pink eye. Very attractive. Oh well, at least the red made her eyes look more blue. Accentuate the positive, right? She bent over in her seat and adjusted her breasts in her bra—a burlesque move she had been doing since she was fourteen. When she sat back up, she had cleavage.
She got out of the car and headed through a wrought-iron gate that was almost off its hinges, past a cobblestone courtyard, and into the crouching adobe building. The Cowgirl was packed. She scanned the tables for the copy editors she was supposed to meet. The adobe-brick walls were painted a sickly salmon color and covered in 1950s photos of cowgirls in short fringed skirts and red lipstick. The chandeliers were made of the antlers of deer and steers. Behind the copper-tin bar was a brass wall hanging of a naked cowgirl lounging seductively on a saddle. It made Lucy think of chafing.
The crowd was a mix of locals taking advantage of dollarbeer night, tourists in town for the ski season, and conventiongoers with their name tags still on. A woman named Lisa Smiley—if her name tag was to be believed—walked by with four beers.
Lucy stood on the bottom rung of an empty bar stool to get a look over the crowd. The French had made up a word for someone her size:
petite.
And for that she was eternally grateful. She would have hated shopping in the “lady dwarf” section at Sears.
Lucy spotted the copy editors at a table in the corner. She made her way through the crowd and was about to sit down when she realized that the
Capital Tribune
copy editors weren’t alone—they were sitting with a group of reporters from the competing
Santa Fe Times.
Hell. Damn. She looked around to make sure Del wasn’t there. He wasn’t. Thank God. The table was split in half—women on one end and men on the other. She wiggled her way down toward the men.
In grade school, some students always sat in the front of the class and some always sat in the back; she always sat with the boys. Not because she was interested in them romantically—that became an issue only after she’d hit puberty—but because women made her uncomfortable. She could never figure out the social nuances. The female social system was too complex and required a set of emotional skills that she didn’t understand. And she was never very good at “girl things”—she hated shopping for clothes—and she loved action movies. Whenever she met a woman for the first time, Lucy always felt like she was skipping steps two through four in a required dance.
Men were easier. They made sense. She was never worried whether they were smarter than she or more clever—when it came to competing with men, she knew she would always win. With women she might not be the smartest or the prettiest; she might be average. She might be blah.
She was the middle child—sandwiched between two boys, a year apart on either side. She was neither the youngest northe oldest. Stuck in limbo. To get noticed, she became the toughest, smartest, and funniest of the boys. She simply ignored the fact that she wasn’t a boy.
When Lucy was twelve, her mother took her to the Clinique counter at Macy’s to get a makeover. When Lucy
“Medic One, 1225 San Francisco Street, elderly woman with chest pains.” Patsy wrote down the call in her journal and said a quick prayer for the woman.
L ucy drove around the block a few times before she found a parking space in the dim light. It was just after 11:30 P.M., but the streets around the Cowgirl bar were still filled with cars. She sat in the front seat, prepping herself in the rearview mirror; she reapplied her lipstick, brushed her hair, and tried to do something creative with her black eyeliner, managing only to poke herself in the eye. She wiped the eyeliner away, but now it looked like she had a case of pink eye. Very attractive. Oh well, at least the red made her eyes look more blue. Accentuate the positive, right? She bent over in her seat and adjusted her breasts in her bra—a burlesque move she had been doing since she was fourteen. When she sat back up, she had cleavage.
She got out of the car and headed through a wrought-iron gate that was almost off its hinges, past a cobblestone courtyard, and into the crouching adobe building. The Cowgirl was packed. She scanned the tables for the copy editors she was supposed to meet. The adobe-brick walls were painted a sickly salmon color and covered in 1950s photos of cowgirls in short fringed skirts and red lipstick. The chandeliers were made of the antlers of deer and steers. Behind the copper-tin bar was a brass wall hanging of a naked cowgirl lounging seductively on a saddle. It made Lucy think of chafing.
The crowd was a mix of locals taking advantage of dollarbeer night, tourists in town for the ski season, and conventiongoers with their name tags still on. A woman named Lisa Smiley—if her name tag was to be believed—walked by with four beers.
Lucy stood on the bottom rung of an empty bar stool to get a look over the crowd. The French had made up a word for someone her size:
petite.
And for that she was eternally grateful. She would have hated shopping in the “lady dwarf” section at Sears.
Lucy spotted the copy editors at a table in the corner. She made her way through the crowd and was about to sit down when she realized that the
Capital Tribune
copy editors weren’t alone—they were sitting with a group of reporters from the competing
Santa Fe Times.
Hell. Damn. She looked around to make sure Del wasn’t there. He wasn’t. Thank God. The table was split in half—women on one end and men on the other. She wiggled her way down toward the men.
In grade school, some students always sat in the front of the class and some always sat in the back; she always sat with the boys. Not because she was interested in them romantically—that became an issue only after she’d hit puberty—but because women made her uncomfortable. She could never figure out the social nuances. The female social system was too complex and required a set of emotional skills that she didn’t understand. And she was never very good at “girl things”—she hated shopping for clothes—and she loved action movies. Whenever she met a woman for the first time, Lucy always felt like she was skipping steps two through four in a required dance.
Men were easier. They made sense. She was never worried whether they were smarter than she or more clever—when it came to competing with men, she knew she would always win. With women she might not be the smartest or the prettiest; she might be average. She might be blah.
She was the middle child—sandwiched between two boys, a year apart on either side. She was neither the youngest northe oldest. Stuck in limbo. To get noticed, she became the toughest, smartest, and funniest of the boys. She simply ignored the fact that she wasn’t a boy.
When Lucy was twelve, her mother took her to the Clinique counter at Macy’s to get a makeover. When Lucy
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