One Door From Heaven

in her the misguided but innocent woman that she really was.
        The door opened, and F entered the office.
        At once Micky raised her head and opened her eyes, loath to be seen in a humbled posture.
        Offering no explanation for her absence, F returned to her desk and settled in her chair without making eye contact. She did glance at Micky's small purse as if nervously wondering whether it contained semi-automatic weapons, spare ammunition, and supplies necessary to endure a long standoff with the police.
        "What's the child's name?" F asked.
        "Leilani Klonk." Micky spelled both names-and decided not to explain that the surname had evidently been invented by the girl's deranged mother. Leilani s story was complicated enough even when condensed to the bare essentials.
        "Do you know her age?"
        "She's nine."
        "Parents' names?" '
        "She lives with her mother and stepfather. The mother calls herself 'Sinsemilla." Micky spelled it.,
        "What do you mean-'calls herself?"›
        "Well, it can't be her real name."
        "Why not?" F asked, staring at the keyboard on which her poised, fingers waited to dance.
        "It's the name of a really potent type of weed."
        F seemed baffled. "Weed?"
        "You know-pot, grass, marijuana."
        "No." F plucked a Kleenex from a box, blotted her sweat-damped neck. "No, I don't know. I wouldn't. My worst addiction is coffee."
        Feeling as though she had just been judged and convicted again, Micky strove to keep her voice calm and her response measured: "I don't do drugs. I never have." Which was true.
        "I'm not a policeman, Ms. Bellsong. You don't have to worry about me. I'm only interested in the welfare of this girl."
        For F to bring to the case a crusader's determination, she had to believe Micky, and to believe Micky, she had to feel a connection between them. At the moment, they seemed to have nothing in common except that they were women, but shared gender alone didn't generate even the most feeble current of sisterhood.
        In prison she had learned that the subject in which dissimilar women most easily found common ground was men. And with some women, sympathy could be earned most quickly when you mocked men and their pretension. So Micky said, "A lot of guys have told me dope expands your consciousness, but judging by them, it just makes you stupid."
        Finally F looked away from the computer. "Leilani must know her mother's real name."
        F's face and eyes were as unreadable as those of a mannequin. This studied vacancy and refusal to be charmed conveyed more contempt than might have been seen in the most vivid expression of disdain.
        "No," Micky said. "Leilani never heard her called anything but Sinsemilla. The woman's superstitious about names. She thinks knowing someone's true name gives you power over them."
        "She told you this herself?"
        "Leilani told me, yeah."
        "I mean the mother."
        "I've never exactly spoken to the mother."
        "Since you're here to report her for child endangerment of one kind or another, may I assume you've at least met her?"
        Quickly plugging the dam of anger that sprang a leak in response to F's rebuke, Micky said, "Met her once, yeah. She was real strange, doped to the eyeballs. But I think there's also-"
        "Do you have a last name for the mother," F asked, returning her attention to the computer, "or is it just Sinsemilla?"
        "Her married name is Maddoc. M-a-d-d-o-c."
        Flatly, absent the slightest note of accusation, F asked, "Do you have a history with her?"
        "Excuse me? History?"
        "Are you related to her, perhaps by marriage?"
        A bead of sweat slid down Micky's left temple. She blotted it with her hand. "Like I said, I just met her once."
        "Ever dated anyone she's dated, fought over a boyfriend, been involved with an ex-spouse of hers-any prior history she'd be sure to bring up when I talk to her? Because everything comes out in the open sooner or later, I assure you, Ms. Bellsong."
        The cats watched Micky, and Micky stared at F, and F appeared to be prepared to gaze forever at her computer.
        The ignorant, cruel, and stupid people to whom F had referred earlier, the rabble that motivated her to paper her walls with cat posters, now included Micky. Maybe it was the prison record that put Micky