The Axeman's Jazz

you can be—because of the anonymity tradition some of these people may balk if you say who you are. But we all know how small this town is. You may run into somebody you know, but remember, even policemen have a right to go to these things. You’re there because you’re Frank and you’re codependent, so far as anybody knows, but don’t ‘share’; keep a low profile. Remember, no one knows about the twelve-step connection except the Axeman, so there’s no reason for anyone else to suspect anything, therefore no reason for gossip to get around.”
    They began picking up their things. Cindy Lou walked over to O’Rourke and stood very close. She said, “Frank, can I ask you something? Is it women you hate, or black people?”
    O’Rourke reddened, for once apparently at a loss.

EIGHT
    SKIP HAD ASKED for Overeaters Anonymous, partly because she was intrigued and partly because she thought if she already had it, O’Rourke wouldn’t make jokes about how she ought to. He hadn’t either, but that was probably because he had a new target in Cindy Lou. His excuse for hating Skip had been that she was from Uptown, and maybe he had really thought it was true, but now it seemed more as if he simply had a chip on his shoulder where women were concerned.
    And Cindy Lou could handle him.
Delighted to have you aboard, Cindy Lou.
    She looked forward to the OA meeting—maybe it would be like Weight Watchers, which she’d already done with semi-success. She liked to be around overweight people, especially women—most women she knew in New Orleans were so damn slender. She didn’t know if it was in the genes or the result of constant secret dieting. Their tiny bones and fluttery mannerisms made her feel like an ostrich in a flock of finches.
    Skip was six feet tall and had never been thin, had thought of herself as fat for years. Green eyes and a head-turning mop of curly brown hair were all she had, according to Langdon family mythology (and Conrad had some unflattering things to say about the hair). But she’d gotten in shape before she joined the police department and now she was “Juno-esque” if you listened to Jimmy Dee. In her own opinion she could still stand to lose a few pounds—twenty, maybe.
    The meeting was in a church and she was almost late. They hadn’t started yet, but it looked as if most of the chairs were filled. Strangely, there weren’t all that many fat people here, a notable exception being the guy in the small chair in the back…. Good God! A four-hundred-pounder. On the other hand, quite a few people looked as if they were recovering away to nothing.
    Quickly she sat on the floor, more or less behind one of the chairs, devoutly wishing the person in it were fat, because the last person in the world she wanted to see was sitting across the room. Her mother. She was talking to the woman next to her, her face in profile, and Skip didn’t think she’d been spotted yet, but she would be; the group wasn’t nearly large enough to hide in.
    Her mother! It wasn’t her day.
    A woman who seemed to be the leader said her name was Leslie, she was a compulsive overeater, and it was time to begin. Then followed a complicated ritual—the reading of the steps, the traditions, a sort of welcome or statement of purpose—in all, quite a few more documents than Skip had any interest in. And there was the Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
    Skip found herself fidgeting, slightly embarrassed, hostile. She had wondered if it would be like a cult and found that it was exactly as she imagined one would be—the silly rituals, the rapt faces of the true believers, the utter lack of humor, the deep sense of purpose. Her skin crawled.
    “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to lead the meeting this week,” said Leslie, “because of something that happened to me this week. But I want to go back farther than that. I was a thin little girl, and everybody always told me how pretty I was, and then I got chubby when I was about nine or ten, and then they didn’t talk like that anymore. They said I had beautiful skin or beautiful eyes and I knew that was all they could think of to say because I wasn’t beautiful anymore.”
    Skip found it hard to imagine that Leslie ever hadn’t been beautiful. She was forty perhaps, and beautiful now, dark, with high cheekbones, not afraid