"Are you talking to me?" the red-headed therapist asked.
"Yeah. I'm talking to you," the nun said. "What do you think you're doing, missy? Think you're playing cosmic Monopoly there?"
"Do you mean my Tarot Oracle?" the psychologist asked.
"That's right. I don't go for that kind of stuff."
"It's a therapeutic device," the young woman said. "The cards help them to talk about themselves." She turned for support to Matthews, who had been observing her. "It relaxes them."
Matthews thought her voice sounded local; her background was probably fairly humble, otherwise her family would have invested in some improving orthodontics for such a basically pretty girl.
"Maybe she's got something there," he told Sister Sophia, although he saw little point in making Brand crazier than he already was.
The lippy nun looked at Matthews for a moment and turned back to the psychologist.
"That stuff is diabolical superstition," she declared. "It stands between the soul and Higher Power." The gray cat came back through the metal door to listen like a familiar. Unchallenged, the nun grew triumphalist. "Ha! Here she is," she said, nodding toward the psychologist, "supposed to be helping these kids!" She looked up and down the visiting area as though in search of a larger audience. "Tarot cards!" she cried. "Phooey!"
An elderly prisoner with a push broom came out behind the cat.
"We're fucking entitled," the old man said.
"You just watch your language, Bobby," a passing guard told him.
The young woman blushed. "They are entitled," she said. "They're entitled to any kind of therapy. And it does not interfere with Higher Power. Insight promotes it." The psychologist was pointing at the crucifix that still stood on the edge of the altar at the near end of the room. "What if I say that's superstition?" Addressing Matthews now, she startled the cat. "I bet it's unconstitutional. I mean, where's the wall of separation?"
"Well," Sister said, outraged and gesturing at the psychologist's cards, "I better not find any of these magic doozies around the plant, because I'll get 'em lifted."
"I'm sure you can do that, Sister," the red-headed psychologist said. "You serve the county instead of the inmates. You're a snitch."
Everyone was horrified.
"Did you hear her?" Sister Sophia asked the men. "Did you hear what she called me?"
In fact, it was generally believed that Sister Sophia — though a good enough egg in her own way — had her own interpretations of the unwritten laws. And that there were certain things better left uncommitted to her discretion.
"Maybe you should apologize to Sister Sophia," the hack said. "Ya went too far there."
"Heat of argument," Matthews said.
Sister Sophia gathered up the cat and fixed them each in turn with a dreadful wounded stare. She was a person completely of the jail, and the accusation was a mortal one. Matthews wondered how well the psychologist understood this. She seemed not to have been around for very long.
Lights flashed. The amplified voice of the administration declared visitations concluded. The hack urged them out.
"Let's go home, folks."
Sister Sophia and Jackie, padding underfoot, retreated up the stone passageway.
"After thirty years!" Sister Sophia said, following the big neutered tom up the dank stone hallway. "Thirty years in this crummy joint!"
"Just a misunderstanding," Matthews said to the young woman. He extended a hand. "Pete Matthews." Her name was Amy Littlefield.
They lingered in the severe dark-wood reception room.
"You know," Matthews said, "your guy is threatening my client."
"Oh," she said. "He's always boasting. He told me the test of a tough guy was to break someone's fingers." A guilty smile appeared on her face and faded immediately. "He's trying in his way to impress me."
On Water Street, outside the jail, it was cold and cheerless. Fine hail rattled against the streetlights and the steps of the jail.
"Impressed?"
"He needs to take his antipsychotics. He doesn't belong in there. I mean," she said, "what can you do?"
"I was wondering that. I'm worried about Georgie."
"Really? Your client looks tough."
"No," Matthews explained. "No. The last time he was in there," Matthews said, "he was underage. I got him out on habeas corpus. Now he thinks I'm a miracle worker."
"Good luck," she said.
They parted ways in the gathering sleet. Matthews took the river sidewalk with his shoulder to the force of the storm off the river. He followed the embankment to the edge of the downtown mill buildings. Then he suddenly turned back and went in the direction that Amy had gone. When she heard him coming up behind her, she stopped and moved back from the sidewalk.
"What did you mean," Matthews asked, "he doesn't belong in there?"
She laughed. "What did I mean? I meant he was crazy. He should be in a hospital."
"Right."
"Did you think I was taking his side? That I thought he was a nice guy?"
"I wasn't sure. You're a social worker."
She shook her head.
He looked up and down the street and she watched. He thought she was about to ask him if he was looking for something.
"So, Amy," he said, "would you like a drink?"
She laughed in a strangely embarrassed way. The quality of her embarrassment was somehow familiar to him.
"I don't drink," she said gaily. As though the statement did not necessarily foreclose sociability.
"Well," he said, "have an Apfel-schorle!"
"I don't know what that is."
"You've fallen into the right hands," Matthews said. The young psychologist stopped in her tracks. She shielded the lenses of her glasses from the icy rain with one hand and pulled her plaid scarf over her bright hair. Little hailstones clung to the russet strands like coral clusters, not melting.
"Wait a minute," she said. "I haven't fallen into your hands."
"No," Matthews said. "Of course not." He was wondering whether she thought him too old for her. She did not seem much over thirty-five.
"Oh," she said. There was another slightly embarrassed laugh. Like the first, it made him hopeful.
"I'm not surprised you're a psychologist, Amy."
"Really?" she asked, as they hurried out of the weather. "Why?"
He had only been mocking her. Matthews's life had become so solitary he had almost stopped caring what he said, or to whom.
They went to the restaurant where, sober, Matthews had discovered Apfel-schorle, mixed apple juice and soda. The place was run by a German hippie who cooked and his American graduate-student wife. Its ambience was not at all gemütlich, but gray-black Euro-slick. The waitress was a stylish, somber German exchange student.
"Funny," Amy said when they had ordered a schorle for her and a Scotch for Matthews, "that they'd still serve such a summer drink in the winter."
Matthews agreed that it was funny.
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked her.
She cast the question off with her peculiar gaiety. Matthews tried to inspect her further without being spotted. Her red hair seemed naturaclass="underline" she had the right watery-blue eyes and freckled skin. In her strong lean face, the long-lashed, achromatic eyes looked wonderfully dramatic. Effects combined to make her seem sensitive, innocent and touchingly plain. Vulnerable.
Across the table, he indulged in some brief speculation about her character and inner life. Her facing down fatuous Sister Sophia was admirable in a way, but it was also self-righteous and overwrought. Pretty ruthless, really, calling the poor woman a snitch. And Amy herself seemed not much smarter than the nun, all fiery bread and roses, the blushing champion of free thought with her fucking wall of separation.