Simmer Down

going to be to Hannah, who’d just threatened to steal Josh back. Not that he’d want her. Even so.
    “Are you still at the police station?” I asked.
    She whimpered. “Yes, and I don’t have a car and I don’t even know how to get home.”
    “All right, give me the address. And then go wait outside.”
    I vaguely recognized the address she gave me, but never having been held for questioning, I had no picture in my mind of exactly where the police station was. Josh knew nearly every single street in this city and would’ve known exactly how to get there. As he explained it, he’d been lost in every possible location while driving around looking for undiscovered markets where he could buy unusual ingredients and ethnic specialties. But there was no way I was going to call him and send him Hannah’s way. I just hoped I knew where I was going.
    Josh had told me last night that Hannah was a tough, independent woman who usually got weepy and needy only when her tears and pleas served a purpose. He had said that even he had thought she’d looked pretty shaken up after finding Oliver’s body. At a guess, Hannah had sensed his sympathy, and this morning phone call of hers was an effort to play on it.
    Although I was willing to drive into Boston to get Hannah, I was hardly going to roll out of bed in my pajamas and race downtown without making an effort to look at least semidecent. Even after a night of what I hoped had been relentless interrogation under bright lights, Hannah probably retained her neat-as-a-pin look, and I was not about to be shown up by Josh’s ex. Besides, rescuing Hannah, I told myself, was a test of social work professionalism; I was off to meet with a traumatized client and had an obligation to look professional. As it turned out, my professionalism translated into a tight shirt over a heavily padded bra, skintight pants, and tall black boots, not to mention the twenty minutes with a flatiron needed to calm down the effects of last night’s humidity on my hair. It had cooled off today, but it was still abnormally warm for December in Boston.
    I then spent six minutes staring at Ken the hermit crab in an effort to determine whether he was alive or not. There did appear to be some crab tracks in the sand, so I hoped he’d been taking midnight strolls across his cage. I changed his water dish, scooped up something gross that must be crab poop, and sprayed the tank with a water bottle. Heather had told me that misting the hermit crabs was supposed to increase their activity level, but Ken seemed as outraged by humidity as I was and stayed hidden in his shell.
    Since I couldn’t pick Hannah up in the pigsty I called a car, I spent ten minutes tossing embarrassing CDs into the glove compartment—six volumes of Now That’s What 1 Call Music , two American Idol compilations, and a few other horrors—and throwing out Dunkin’ Donuts cups and halfeaten candy canes. I displayed Josh’s CDs on the passenger seat to give the impression that I frequently drove around listening to System of a Down, Mudvayne, Drowning Pool, and Papa Roach and was quite possibly the coolest girlfriend in the entire world.
    I found Hannah outside the police station and turned up “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor,” as though it were quite possibly my most favorite song ever. I pulled up in front of Josh’s ex and cooly waved to her. She must have been looking around for Josh’s bright yellow Xterra and took no notice of me. I kept waving, and Hannah kept ignoring me. I couldn’t have been more than ten feet from her, double-parked in front of a pissed-off driver in a monstrous Durango, but Hannah stood oblivious to my increasingly wild gestures. I rolled down the window.
    “Hannah!” I yelled above the music.
    Turkey Burger Girl finally walked to my car, bent down, and peered through the window as though I were some tourist asking for directions. “Oh. Chloe, it’s you. Is Josh coming?”
    Yeah, Josh was coming, and we’d taken separate cars to pick up this fool.
    “No, he’s at work. Do you want a ride or not?”
    Hannah looked around, as if to make sure nobody saw her getting into a car with me, and reluctantly opened the door. I slowly and dramatically gathered Josh’s CDs off the seat saying, “Here, let me get these out of your way.” She showed no sign of recognizing me as the coolest girlfriend in the entire world , sat down, and promptly turned off the music. “Do you have any coffee?” she