Hanging Time by Leslie Glass Page A

other way, and readjusted the handbag at her feet. Once again the blouse fell open.
    Jason picked up a new black and white notebook from his desk. “What worries you?”
    “Her behavior, her moods. She’s very sick, and I have no one to help me manage her. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself, or someone else.”
    “What makes you think so?”
    “Oh, God. She’s out of control. She’s depressed, moody, violent. She’s had a problem with alcohol and drugs for years. When she drinks she’s vicious, screams at people, hits them—why are you taking notes?”
    Jason looked up. “Does it bother you?”
    Milicia frowned. “It gets in the way.”
    Jason closed the notebook. “Is there a special urgency about your sister right now?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I get the impression this has been going on for a long time. Why are you seeking professional help now?”
    Milicia bristled. “What kind of question is that?”
    “Just asking if something special has happened, a crisis?”
    “What if something really awful has happened? What do I do?”
    Jason glanced at his notebook but didn’t open it. He didn’t have to. He was trained to remember everything he saw and everything he heard. He waited for her to go on. In a second she did.
    “Do you know how hard it is on a family when there are two perfect children and then one of them starts going off? It’s like at the Olympics on the balance beam when the first back flip is straight on the mark and the next one a centimeter to the left. After that, a gymnast can’t get it back. She keeps going crooked until she falls off.”
    She was silent for a second.
    “And then the whole system comes crashing down, and nobody is left whole.”
    Jason nodded, touched by the way she said it, by the image of the child gymnast doing it right to a certain point and then faltering, failing to be “normal,” thus destroying the careful façade of the family front.
    “I know what that’s like,” he said gently.
    He looked at her with his inner eye, searching for the real person under the cloud of flaming red hair and dusky perfume, the perfect makeup and bravado. Who was really in there and what piece of music was being played?
    “Tell me,” he said to Milicia, “about falling off the balance beam.”

9
     

     
    S ometimes on very sunny afternoons spikes of light forced their way through the few clean patches in the cracked basement window. Today the light looked to Camille like white grass growing up through a cracked pavement. The floor was crunchy where fallen plaster from the ceiling and walls got walked on for many months before anybody bothered to sweep up. Bare bricks showed through everywhere, discolored and chipped.
    It was very damp down there, even in summer, and the smell of urine was getting worse now that the puppy was older. Bouck said she had to do something about the smell.
    Camille sat on the floor with her back pressed into a corner, waiting for the bright light to fade. She could hear Jamal on the other side of the wall, polishing crystal with the sonar machine. There was kind of a whine, or a hum, that she sometimes thought was human. As long as she could hear it, she felt safe.
    Jamal wasn’t supposed to come on this side of the wall. The best chandeliers were in here, hanging from the low ceiling. On very bad days Camille stayed here, too, unable even to take the puppy out. The hum stopped, and she tensed.
    He wasn’t supposed to come on this side of the wall
. Jamal smoked some kind of dope—hash or cocaine or something. And he touched her if he could get away with it. After he found out there were times she couldn’t move, he came in and touched her hair and her breasts. Now he wasn’t ever supposed to come on this side of the door.
    Bouck told Jamal he would kill him. Bouck had three guns. Camille thought he would do it. He would kill for her. No doubt about it. But Jamal didn’t care about the guns. He wanted to touch her fine hair, that pale,