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Judith about it he thought she’d be delighted, all for it. She managed to act that way, despite the shock.
    If it came about, for Judith and Marion it meant the end of the double standard they were enjoying. They’d be forced to choose: be separated by a whole continent, or bring it all out into the open, declare themselves.
    They were in favor of standing up and out. However, the consequences of such a decision were numbing. Gone would be the financial security they now almost unconsciously counted on. They would have to fend for themselves. Neither ever had. And that might not be the worst of it. No court in the country would grant them custody of their daughters. What court would ever decide in favor of a lesbian mother?
    What to do?
    The most logical and likely thing, Marion suggested, was for Judith to talk Fred out of taking the new job. Then everything could remain as was.
    The dissuading campaign began.
    Judith and Marion collaborated on strategies. Judith peppered husband Fred with uncertainty regarding the Massachusetts move. For believability she acted ambivalent. Sometimes she seemed pleased with the idea, contentedly made plans in that direction — next she nourished small doubts into full-grown, adamant opposition, which was, she hoped, more impressive. Damn California, anyway! If only the weather were better she could have used that for ammunition. She did anyway, forecasted horrid slush and below-zero days in the family’s future.
    Such tactics had not brought about as much progress as hoped for. Nothing definite. Fred no longer expressed enthusiasm for the change, but Judith could tell he still wanted it. It could still go either way.
    Now in number 43 of the Holiday Inn there was Judith in the supersanitized bathroom close up to the mirror. Using a tiny, sharp-pointed brush she outlined her mouth with lipstick and then filled in straight from the tube. She blotted with a tissue that she discarded into the toilet bowl, giving attention, for some reason, to the way the tissue became nearly invisible as it became wet, while the imprint of her mouth on it became more pronounced.
    She appraised herself in the mirror. Her eyes seemed vague, she thought, a little glazed, perhaps a result of having come so many times. She doubted the look would give her away, but she blinked rapidly, trying to eliminate it. Then she gathered her makeup into its small, overcrowded, zippered cloth bag and went out to the bedroom. She expected Marion to also be dressed and ready to leave, but Marion was still nude and on the bed.
    Judith told her: “It’s after four.”
    No comment from Marion. She was front up with her legs angled over the bed’s edge. Judith understood.
    â€œWe’ll be late as it is.”
    Marion’s gaze continued upward and Judith recognized the soft covered quality of it, the want behind it. Confirmed when Marion slowly tightened in her stomach and clenched her buttocks, causing her pelvic mound to rise, requesting.
    â€œCome on,” Judith urged, not wholeheartedly.
    Marion did it again.
    Less than an hour later they were six miles from Dana Point. Marion was driving. She turned off the Coast Highway to where Judith, as usual, had left her car — in the parking area of the Seaside Supermarket. They entered the market together, ran in from the rain to buy convenient, fancy frozen things that would make it seem as though they had spent quite a lot of time and imagination preparing the evening’s dinners.

3
    Warren Stevens was cleaning one of his rifles.
    The rifle his father had given him on his sixteenth birthday two years ago. It was a Champlain and Haskins 458 Magnum with the distinctive tapered octagonal barrel. Anyone who knew firearms knew right off it cost fifteen hundred.
    Warren liked this rifle best because it had brought him recognition. He had gotten a grizzly with it — a six-hundred-fifty-pound bald-face grizzly, more scientifically known as an