Winter Moon

the shadows, they got in and immediately locked up.again.
        After starting the car, Gina hesitated before putting it in gear. "You know, Heth, you want to cry on my shoulder, my clothes are all drip-dry."
        "I'm all right. I really am."
        "Sure you're not into denial?"
        "He's alive, Gina. I can handle anything else."
        "Forty years, Jack in a wheelchair?"
        "Doesn't matter if it comes to that, as long as I have him to talk to, hold him at night."
        Gina stared hard at her for long seconds. Then: "You mean it. You know what it's gonna be like, but you still mean it. Good. I always figured you for one, but it's good to know I was right."
        "One what?"
        Popping the hand brake and shifting the Ford into reverse, Gina said,
        "One tough damned bitch."
        Heather laughed. "I guess that's a compliment."
        "Fuckin' A, it's a compliment."
        When Gina paid the parking fee at the exit booth and pulled out of the garage, a glorious gold-and-orange sunset gilded the patchy clouds to the west.
        However, as they crossed the metropolis through lengthening shadows and a twilight that gradually filled with blood red light, the familiar streets and buildings were as alien as any on a distant planet. She had lived her entire adult life in Los Angeles, but Heather Mcgarvey felt like a stranger in a strange land.
        The Brysons' two-story Spanish house was in the Valley, on the edge of Burbank, lucky number 777 on a street lined with sycamores. The leafless limbs of the big trees made spiky arachnid patterns against the muddy yellow-black night sky, which was filled with too much ambient light from the urban sprawl ever to be perfectly inky. Cars were clustered in the driveway and street in front of 777, including one black-and-white.
        The house was filled with relatives and friends of the Brysons. A few of the former and most of the latter were cops in uniforms or civilian clothes.
        Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians had come together in companionship and mutual support in a way they seldom seemed capable of associating in the larger community - any more.
        Heather felt at home the moment she crossed the threshold, so much.safer than she had felt in the world outside. As she made her way through the living room and dining room, seeking Alma, she paused to speak briefly with old friends-and discovered that word of Jack's improved condition was already on the grapevine.
        More acutely than ever, she was aware of how completely she had come to think of herself as part of the police family rather than as an Angeleno or a Californian. It hadn't always been that way. But it was difficult to maintain a spiritual allegiance to a city swimming in drugs and pornography, shattered by gang violence, steeped in Hollywood-style cynicism, and controlled by politicians as venal and demagogic as they were incompetent. Destructive social forces were fracturing the city-and the country-into clans, and even as she took comfort in her police family, she recognized the danger of descending into an us-against-them view of life.
        Alma was in the kitchen with her sister, Faye, and two other women, all of whom were busy at culinary tasks. Chopping vegetables, peeling fruit, grating cheese. Alma was rolling out pie dough on a marble slab, working at it vigorously. The kitchen was filled with the delicious aromas of cakes baking.
        When Heather touched Alma's shoulder, the woman looked up from the pie dough, and her eyes were as blank as those of a mannequin. Then she blinked and wiped her flour-coated hands on her apron. "Heather, you didn't have to come-you should've stayed with Jack."
        They embraced, and Heather said, "I wish there was something I could do, Alma."
        "So do I, girl. So do I."
        As they leaned back from each other, Heather said, "What's all this cooking?"
        "We're going to have the funeral tomorrow afternoon. No delay. Get the hard part over with. A lot of family and friends will be by tomorrow after the services. Got to feed them."
        "Others will do this for you."
        "I'd rather help," Alma said. "What else am I going to do? Sit and think? I sure don't want to think. If I don't stay busy, keep my mind occupied, then I'm just going to go stark raving crazy. You know what I mean?"
        Heather nodded. "Yes. I know."
        "The word is," Alma said,