"Must have been a jolly castle." She wondered at this arcane expertise.
"With busy toilets. Speaking of which, I wonder where Jani could be? Oh well, she'll find us."
And so saying he casually draped an arm across Kate's shoulders, and she was so astonished she could only lean into him as they meandered downhill and joined the line for paper cups (printed with a wood-grain design) of surprisingly decent dark beer.
They found a quiet corner atop a pile of large wooden crates and sat looking at the pulsating, growing crowd of medieval merrymakers. The beer went down well as they sat in the shade on an already hot morning with the taste of dust on their tongues. Kate swallowed and gave herself over to relaxation, feeling small pockets of unrealized tension give way. It was the first alcohol she'd had since what she thought of in capitals as The Night. To drink would have been an act of cowardice, until now.
She didn't realize she had sighed until Hawkin turned to her.
"I almost didn't come," she said, as if in explanation.
"I was a little surprised to see you," he agreed.
"Some of Lee's clients are with her today. Jon Samson, as a matter of fact—one of her most devoted. Silly to call them clients, I suppose. If anything, they're the therapists, both physio- and psycho-."
"Friends, maybe."
"Friends. Yes. I don't know what I would have done without them."
"Are you coming back, Kate?" he asked abruptly.
"You know, until ten minutes ago I wasn't sure."
"And?"
"Yes. Yes, I do believe I'm coming back."
"Good." He nodded and drained his cup. "Good. How soon?"
"I'll have to arrange care for Lee." He waited. "Jon offered to move in for a while, to take over the front rooms. I'd have to get in a bed, arrange a relief schedule for him." Hawkin waited. "A few days. Four. Maybe three. Why?"
"I could use you now," he said. His fingers fiddled with the waxy rim of the cup, uncurling it, and his eyes scanned the crowd, and his face gave away nothing.
"Isn't this where you start lighting a cigarette?" she said suspiciously.
"Gave them up."
"Why do you need me now?"
"I've been given the Raven Morningstar case."
"Oh, Christ, Al, give me a break!" Ms. Morningstar had been found, very much murdered, in her hotel room in the city the week before. Ms. Morningstar had a list of enemies that would fill a small telephone book. Ms. Morningstar was one of the country's most outspoken, most eloquent, most militant, most worshipped, and most vilified radical feminist lesbians.
"You might be of considerable help."
"Oh, I can imagine. You could nail me up on the doors of the Hall of Justice and let them throw things at me while you slip out the back."
"None of them would throw things at you," he said matter-of-factly. "There is, after all, a certain amount of renown attached to a female police officer who forces her superiors to give her an extended leave in order to nurse her wounded lover, lesbian variety, and who furthermore makes noises that the departmental insurance policy should be made to include what might be termed unofficial spouses." He did look at her finally, with one eyebrow raised, to gauge her response. She stared at him, open-mouthed, for a long minute, until she felt a sensation she'd never thought to feel again. A great, round, growing balloon of laughter welled up inside her and finally burst gloriously, and she began to giggle, and laugh, more and more convulsively, until in the end she lay back on the crates and roared, tears rolling down into her hair. His growing look of alarm only made it worse, and it was some time before she could get out a coherent explanation.
"When I… that first day, in your office… you so obviously didn't want to be burdened with me—no, I understood, I was being set up in a prominent place on the case because there were kiddies involved—" She realized where they were and lowered her voice. "And any case with kiddies has to have a little lady in it, and little old Casey Martinelli was that lady, there to look cute and pat the kiddies on the head. And now"—she started to laugh again—"now I'm the department's representative to the chains-and-leather dyke brigade." She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and suddenly the laughter disintegrated and she heaved a sigh. "Ah, well, as they say: only in San Francisco."
"So when can you be there?"
"Jesus Christ, Al, you don't give up, do you? Today's Saturday. I'll be in Tuesday."
"Make it Monday."
"Nope. There's people I can't reach on the weekend— have to do it Monday morning."
"Monday afternoon, then."
"All right, damn it! Late Monday afternoon."
"I'll set a press conference for three o'clock."
"A press—you utter bastard," she swore angrily, and an instant later realized that she was cursing at the man who was still her superior officer.
He swung his face around, looked directly at her, his gray-blue eyes inches from her brown ones, and grinned roguishly.
"That's what all the girls say, my dear."
A voice came from behind them, a voice low but penetrating, the voice of a woman accustomed to public speaking.
"I go away. I stand in line for one half hour with anachronistic music in my ears for the dubious privilege of using a porta-potty disguised as an eleventh-century privy. I come back to find my escort has disappeared, and when I manage to track him down, I find him guzzling beer and staring into the eyes of another woman."
Despite the words, the voice did not sound troubled, and the face, when Kate hitched around to face it, was only amused.
Kate nodded seriously.
"You just can't get good escorts these days," she told the woman.
"My dear," shouted Hawkin happily, "this is Casey Martinelli. Kate, this is Jani Cameron."
"Kate," said Kate firmly, and held out her hand. Another, smaller hand waved up from behind the crates, thrust vaguely in Kate's direction. Kate stretched and shook that one too.
"And that's Jules," added Hawkin. He slithered down from their impromptu seat, swore at the splinters, and helped Kate get down undamaged.
"Jani is the world's foremost authority on medieval German literature, and Jules is going to be San Francisco's youngest D.A. You needn't worry about Kate, Jani," he added offhandedly. "She's a lesbian."
Kate buried her face in her cup, which was already empty, and so missed the woman's reaction, but when she looked back the child was examining her with considerable interest. Finally, with the academic air of someone discussing the historical development of the iota subscript, she spoke.
"Are you, in fact, a lesbian, or more properly speaking bisexual?" she began. "I was reading an article the other day that stated—"
There was a rapid dispersion of the party toward the food tents, with Jules and her mother in the rear in intent conversation (consisting of a firm low voice punctuated with several But Mothers) and Hawkin and Kate in front, he grinning hugely, she decidedly pink, from the beer and the sun, no doubt, but smiling gamely.
At the food tents Kate allowed herself to be steered past the Cornish pasties (beef, vegetarian, or tofu) and tempura prawns (medieval Japanese, she assumed) to the sign that advertised the dubious claims of something called "toad in the hole," It turned out to be a spicy sausage in a gummy bread surround, but when she had washed it down with another beer and followed it with strawberries in cream (poured, not whipped, and with honey, not sugar—authenticity reigned in the strawberry booth), she was content.
The three adults sat on a bench in the shade of a colorful tarpaulin while Jules stalked off to try her hand at a game suspiciously like the ancient three-cup sleight-of-hand con game. Hawkin smiled almost paternally as the child stood gazing in intense concentration at the current players, a metal-mouthed page girl amid the lords and ladies who swept up and down the avenues among the stalls of crafts, foods, and games. The three of them chatted comfortably about Tyler, festivals, minor gossip concerning the department, the development of music, and the production of beer. At the end of half an hour Kate realized that Jani was someone she could easily come to like, and furthermore she saw that Hawkin was very much in love with her. She was quiet, even aloof, in manner, but listened carefully to words and currents, and when she spoke it was precise, to the point, and, like her daughter, not always politic. She and Hawkin argued, laughed, and touched, as if old companions, and other than a twinge of pain at the thought of Lee in the mechanical bed at home, she was glad. Eventually Jani stood up, gathered her brocade skirts, and went off after her daughter, with an agreement to meet Hawkin beneath the golden banner in half an hour to watch a demonstration of sword-play.