Less than a month before, Stephanie had been drowning in self-pity; depression had become her defining state of mind. The weeks following her work related injury had been the worst of her life. For the first time, she'd been helpless. She'd been bedridden and unable to take care of even the simplest of her needs.

Her near future had held the promise of the torture of physical therapy. Most days, she didn't want to even think about learning to walk again. Steph would have preferred to have died doing what she had become so good at. Had the incident occurred on a battlefield, a medic would have given her morphine, taken one of her dog tags, and walked away. Instead, the EMTs had scraped her onto a stretcher, and a helicopter had delivered her to the trauma unit that had somehow saved her life. No one had been more surprised than the ER surgeons, that she hadn't flatlined in the first ten minutes. She'd cursed them for each day of bedpans, sponge baths, and liquid meals that she'd endured since. At least the catheter hadn't been permanent….

The morning that Steph had been wheeled into the PT section, she'd expected to at least verbally abuse whatever demon had been assigned to torment her. Instead, she'd been met by an angel. Before her had stood a short blonde woman in a long white jacket. She carried, "a few extra pounds", and she'd been holding a clipboard, looking down and adding a note. Then she'd looked up and her emerald green eyes had captured Steph in their pools of intelligence, compassion, and perceptiveness. It was as though Connie had looked right into her soul.

Connie Stanton had been the toughest taskmaster Steph had ever met. With her gentle touch and kind words, she'd demanded that Stephanie perform a degree better than even the most optimistic of her doctors had expected. Somehow, Steph had met those challenges like the challenges she'd been meeting all her life. In a few days, she went from contemplating suicide to nearly tearing ligaments so as not to disappoint Connie. She'd abused her own damaged body worse than anyone could have forced her to. The incentive to please her therapist was stronger than any threat, or all her fear of pain and failure. She'd wanted to stand and walk again. She'd wanted to be whole again. She'd wanted it so bad she'd have sold her soul. In a way she had, because after so many years alone, she had lost her heart. She'd wanted a chance to love Connie Stanton.

As her discharge date drew nearer, Steph became more and more nervous. Her attraction to her blonde therapist was overwhelming in its intensity. Still wounded from her weeks of infirmary, Steph's natural confidence had faltered in the face of what she finally admitted was true love. Her last day as an inpatient dawned and she still hadn't made her move. In spite of six years in a job that had sent many of her peers begging for reassignment or early retirement, Stephanie had never been more of a basket case.

Somehow though, their fate would not be denied. Connie had asked Stephanie if she'd join her for dinner and a bottle of wine, to celebrate her return to the ranks of the walking. Stephanie had nearly fallen on her face, but her whole body had been held up by the lightness of her heart.

The dinner had been delicious, but it was the company that had made the meal one to remember for a lifetime. The wine had left Stephanie unsteady on her unevenly built-up orthopedic shoes, and her leg brace had felt like it weighed a ton. Connie had steadied her with an arm around her waist, though she had been a bit tipsy herself. In return, Stephanie had saved Connie when her blood sugar had plummeted while they waited over half an hour for their appetizers. Connie hadn't eaten since a small lunch eight hours before, and had been bordering on a diabetic coma. Her vision was already darkening, but Steph had frantically fed her a Twinkie from a pack she kept in her purse. Within minutes, Connie had been back to herself, the reading from her blood sugar test strip said 68, still low, but she'd guessed it had dropped to around 35 before the Twinkie. They seemed to be a match made by Aphrodite herself, except for Stephanie's smoking and Connie's asthma. However, they both realized that no relationship was without a few rocks.

A week later, as they lay together, soaked in sweat and gasping in each others' arms, Connie had taken two puffs from an inhaler and whispered breathlessly, "We're soulmates Stephie, we were meant to be together," as if that explained it all.

Stephanie Walker had grown up in a small cinderblock house in Bakersfield, California. Her tall, dark haired father was a locally cited drunk, the recipient of many citations from the sheriff. He wasn't a violent drunk; that would have taken too much energy, and entropy was his thing. Michael Walker was a happy, easy going drunk. He claimed to love children and dogs without reservation, and always seemed to have a beer in his hand. Stephanie loved him dearly. Steph's mother was obsessive-compulsive; a classical case who couldn't stop washing, and had to organize everyone's lives on a minute to minute basis. Lydia Walker was petite gone puffy, smoked constantly, and placed ashtrays all over the house. She loved everything about cats except their fur, and was given to carrying a lint roller in a pocket of her housecoat. She'd absently roll it across the upholstery while pretending to watch TV, her ice blue eyes darting around the room, trying to outguess the fall of dust motes. The Walkers had never owned a cat or a dog.

Stephanie grew up with a combination of parental traits and a dream all her own. She wanted to be the best at whatever she did, but she dreamed of leaving Bakersfield and finding a new world someday. It was her life, and Steph hated the desert, the tapped out oil fields, and the constant noise. Highway 99 bordered their side yard and the railroad tracks skimmed the back. The other side of their yard hosted a capped wellhead and a drainage canal. She was an only child and no one else lived on their block.

Stephanie stuck around long enough to graduate from Bakersfield High, as captain of the varsity cheerleaders and class president. (She was also valedictorian, of course). Despite her success, Steph was usually ridiculed by her peers. She was a tall and somewhat gangly brainy girl, with a drunk father and a psycho mom. She was poor and lived in a loud house. The Walkers had never owned a working TV or garbage disposal.

Near the end of June, Steph packed a bag, containing a carton of Camels, a six pack of Bud, and a change of clothes, and slipped out of the house. She'd gotten sick of being blamed for the cat hair, but mostly, she hated the desert. Steph walked with purpose in the summer heat, up onto the State Road 99 entrance ramp, where she stuck out her thumb. Her destiny was calling.

Within ten minutes she was headed for I-5 and San Francisco, as the passenger of a failed movie impresario out on a drinking binge. He was an aging Chinaman who squinted at her and laughingly introduced himself as Mr. Magoo. It was the safest ride she could have gotten. Though he wove from lane to lane across the highway, the hand he slid under her waistband was chaste…his passion was for transvestites, and he'd initially been fooled because she was so tall. He didn't intend to fondle her much, he simply needed contact to keep from falling over. Stephanie had thought it endearing, very much like her Dad.

They'd barely passed Route 46 to Lost Hills, before Steph was too drunk to notice the small pills Mr. Magoo would slip under his tongue. The rest of the ride passed in a blur. When they turned onto I-580 to catch I-205 heading west to San Francisco, Mr. Magoo pulled the Cadillac onto the shoulder, crawled over the seat, and fell asleep in the back. Stephanie slid behind the wheel, screamed, "Get up, yaaaaaah", and floored the boat back into traffic.

They'd made Hayward 20 minutes later, where she turned north on I-880, heading for Oakland. In Oakland, Steph became confused when I-880 became I-890 became I-24. She cut off a Lincoln University panel truck, a plumber's van, and a family of tourists, before regaining control as she passed the Market St. exit. Now that she could see the Golden Gate Bridge straight ahead, Stephanie thought she had her bearings. As they crossed the historic span, she scream-sang "Sympathy for the Devil", remembering Tom Cruise as the vampire Lestat. She'd always thought he was hot, but somehow she hadn't been overly disappointed to hear the rumors that he was gay. Her driving was marginally better than Lestat's, her voice noticeably worse than his radio.

Once in San Francisco, she'd pulled off at the Harrison St. exit, following it to 7^th street. Stephanie instinctively headed for the bay, taking 16^th St. to 3^rd, where she parked. She dragged herself over the seat, but dozed off while trying to wake up Mr. Magoo. Steph had no idea where he'd been headed. It was six hours later when she awoke, wondering where the hell she was. She was hung over, but still half-drunk. The car was roasting hot. After opening the windows, smoking a Camel, and washing out her mouth with hot Budweiser, she made a more serious attempt to roust Mr. Magoo. Steph discovered that he'd probably been dead since soon after she'd taken the wheel. She'd been sleeping with a self-embalmed corpse.

The rest of the day went by in a confusing blur. She'd lurched out of the Caddy and into the intersection of Mariposa St. and 3^rd, where she'd nearly been run over by a police car. It took hours for the authorities to sort out her story. In the end, they believed her disconnected ramble. Mr. Magoo had died of a massive coronary, despite the nitroglycerine pills he'd been eating, and he still had over five thousand dollars in his pockets. Steph had sixty-three dollars to her name. She just wasn't a believable suspect, and after all, the death was due to natural causes. Eventually they got around to asking her where she was going and why she was in San Francisco. Without thinking, Steph had blurted out that she'd come to join the police force. They'd laughed her out of the station. She was still seventeen, and couldn't apply until she was twenty.

Stephanie bummed around San Francisco for six more days, fighting off weasels, sharks, and evangelists. She'd almost run out of Camels and had four dollars left, but she'd finally turned eighteen. There was only one thing to do. She walked into the U.S. Army recruiting office on Davis St., and filled out the forms. She was a six-foot-tall girl who drank and smoked a lot, and she hated the deserts, like Bakersfield, where most of America's wars were being fought. She still had a critical mass of angst left over from home. It was either the Army or a career in porn, and she'd come to the wrong town. Despite appearances, Los Angeles was basically a desert.

After completing nine weeks of basic training, it came time for Stephanie to choose a Military Occupational Specialty…a job. When Steph looked over the catalog of offerings, she almost laughed out loud. On her form she indicated MOS-95B; military police. As a woman, almost all of the Combat Operations categories were closed to her. Being an MP would be the next best thing, and, she realized that someday, when she applied to a civilian force, she'd get a triple dose of preference. Applicant female, a veteran, and a prior law enforcement specialist. It was early September, 1989.

As she had at Bakersfield High, Stephanie excelled in her classes and training. She'd become a platoon level commander and made a short-lived switch to Camel Lights. By June of 1990, SFC Stephanie Walker had been reassigned to the 720^th MP Battalion in Ft. Hood, Texas. Among other things, Ft. Hood was the home of Gen. Patton's 2^nd Armored Division, (the "Hell on Wheels" Division), and it was basically a desert. She'd astonished her CO one night by carrying him to bed after drinking him under the table. He'd astonished her by greeting her at the door dressed as a woman. It was the first time they'd associated socially, luckily in the privacy of his residence. She didn't ask, and he didn't tell. They'd had a wonderful time flirting harmlessly. Steph realized that she enjoyed the attentions of a "woman".

Two months later, that madman, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait. I'm sure you've all heard the story. The 2^nd Armored and the 720^th MP were deployed for Operation Desert Shield; the 2^nd to raise hell, the 720^th to protect it. Stephanie had a full schedule, charged with security for a company of tanks. To the horror of the captain commanding the armored company, Steph gave each M1A1 Abrams tank a girlie name, and to their glee, her MPs referred to them by those names while communicating on their patrols. Steph would later recall that she'd spent most of her time cleaning sand out of her M16A2 assault rifle and tooling around the base in a Humvee she'd named Chrissie.

Despite the demands of her duties, Stephanie managed to engage in a few meaningless liaisons with some other female GIs. Unfortunately, they were in a desert, and Steph soon discovered that oral sex was like finding sand in the oysters, while manual stimulation held its own dangers of grit abrasion. If that wasn't bad enough, bathing wasn't as frequent as she'd have liked, and often the taste was just too much of a good thing. She ended up pissed off and frustrated, and wound up keeping increasingly to herself. Though she now hated the desert worse than ever, mostly she missed the beer.

Desert Shield gave way to Desert Storm, but mostly it was the flyboys who had the fun. The ground troops, Steph's MPs included, maintained their vigilance, growing increasingly bored. They played pranks, touch football, and dodged Scud missiles. They watched the news. Stephanie took refuge from the head-banging metal and hip-hop music so popular with the infantry, by driving off into the desert in Chrissie every chance she got. She poured her heart out to the dependable vehicle.

In the fifth week of the war, just before Valentine's Day, orders came to move west. Steph's assigned company of the 2^nd Armored became part of the VII Corps, sent to flank the Iraqi border in preparation for the ground assault. Steph and her platoon went along to direct the traffic. They drove Chrissie (and her sister Humvee, Tiffanie), herding "their" tanks and a line of trucks filled with war material. They rolled through the desert night, Stephanie demanding that the MPs in Chrissie sing "Sympathy for the Devil" with her. Ridiculous as it was, her platoon had the highest moral in the mostly bored 720^th Battalion, a fact noted by Stephie's CO.

Stephanie thought that they were finally hitting their stride, but the war was over two weeks later. Towards the end of April, she was back at Ft. Hood, Texas. She happily reasoned that if she had to endure a desert, well then, she was better off in an American desert. At least there was beer.

Every chance Steph got, she'd drag her CO off base and into the wilderness; she lugging a cooler, he dressed as a tart. It was a safe relationship with no strings attached. Usually they'd fall asleep under the stars, after drunkenly discharging small arms fire at the wildlife. Stephanie was marginally happy, but her tour of duty was coming to an end. In late June, she was honorably discharged after serving two years. Her service record was flawless, but her time in the wastelands had left her emotionally isolated, hollow, and incapable of commitment. Stephanie Walker was twenty, sick to death of deserts, and she was ready to move on.

With her savings, she bought a perfect, two-tone '56 Desoto Firedome, complete with push button automatic transmission, a first class ice chest stocked with longnecks, and two cartons of Camels. She set out for San Francisco the very afternoon of her final parade, only taking time to shuck her dress uniform for a pair of lewd cut offs and a black cire tank top. Though her CO had given her a pair of fuck-me red stiletto pumps as a going away present, Steph opted for snake skin cowboy boots and iridescent Gargoyles. She named the Desoto Brittanie.

Three days of driving brought Steph back to California. She'd crossed most of west Texas being leered at from a semi, which paced her down I-10 from San Antonio to El Paso. When she realized that he'd probably linger all the way to Tucson, she lit up the Desoto after crossing the Rio Grande. The vintage hemi engine roared and soon the speedometer read 125 mph. Long before Steph reached Deming, the semi was history. After a long third day behind the wheel, Stephanie pulled into San Diego to replenish her ice and beer. Afterwards, she luckily found a parking space with a nice view overlooking the harbor. Steph passed out in the back seat for six hours.

Morning found Stephanie red eyed, hung over, and coughing up tars and nicotine residues. She suspected that her cut offs and tank top needed laundering, but her nose wasn't reporting on the world anymore, which was probably a good thing. With a fresh beer between her thighs, she selected "drive" and headed north on I-215, desperate to avoid Los Angeles. Sometime around 9:43am, two-thirds of Steph's poor addled brain stopped working. Using only her hindbrain, she maneuvered Brittanie the Desoto on autopilot through the morning and afternoon. When she came back to her senses, the sun was already going down, and she'd taken a turnoff for SR-99. Stephanie groaned and lit a Camel. She had just driven in a two-year circle. Steph was less than ten miles from Bakersfield.

Oh what the hell, she thought, as she pulled the Desoto in front of her old cinderblock house. A train roared by thirty yards to her right and traffic whined on the highway behind her. The only thing that had changed was a mean looking mutt of a dog that growled and lunged at her, dragging a huge chain that was welded to the capped wellhead. She grabbed a couple of longnecks and walked up to the door.

Stephanie's homecoming was hardly better than the one a certain Warrior Princess had once received in Amphipolis. Her father staggered up, overjoyed to see her. He reached for the longneck Bud she held out to him and missed, firmly grabbing her breast. Her mother tried to beat her with the lint roller, then claimed she didn't know her and threatened to call the police. Steph stayed just long enough to finish a couple beers with her Dad. She discerned that he really didn't recognize her at all, and forgave him for clumsily trying to seduce her. It was gross. The dog didn't stop barking or slinging saliva the whole time. Finally she excused herself, saying that she must have stopped at the wrong house. She was only too happy to drive off in Brittanie…Bakersfield was still a desert.

She'd passed the Route 46 turnoff to Lost Hills before she realized that tears were streaming down her face. She'd been happy to leave, and if anything, her old home was even worse than she remembered it. She didn't understand. In the end, Steph decided that the beer was making her maudlin. Maybe it was time to switch to Coors.

Stephanie continued to cry as she blazed down the highway. When excessive speed didn't make her feel any better, she pulled off 99, onto SR-41 north, and drove into the miserable half-mile long town of Kettleman City. The place had accidentally sprung up amidst a field of oil wells and didn't even appear on most maps. Steph tooled down General Petroleum Ave. for a block and then turned onto Becky Pease St. At the dead end, she parked Brittanie and climbed out, sitting on the ground in the car's shadow and sobbing as she lit a Camel. She was so upset that she didn't even notice the little girl who approached her.

"Why are you crying, lady?" A soft young voice asked.

Stephanie looked up toward the voice and saw a passable Shirley Temple look-alike with violet eyes, staring down at her. The waif was wearing a cropped, powder blue baby doll tee, (with "Pornstar" emblazoned in silver script where her breasts would someday grow), and blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up, revealing scuffed Nikes. She was probably eight or nine years old and she looked as if she had been crying too. Steph's maternal instincts kicked into gear, a surge of protectiveness washing through her. The little girl was struggling to carry the largest cat that Stephanie had ever seen. If the girl weighed 50 pounds, the cat was probably pushing 30, and it dangled from the girl's arms in an undignified and boneless fashion. Amazingly, it wasn't struggling.

"Is that your cat?" Steph asked in amazement, patting the ground next to her to offer a seat. The girl chewed her lip for a moment, then decided to rest. She plopped down awkwardly, never letting go of the animal. The tabby draped itself across her, (from her chest to her calves), and preened. She nodded "yes" to Steph and then burst into tears.

"My Daddy says I can't keep him anymore and he's going to take him to the vet to be put to sleep," she declared piteously, as the cat nuzzled her and started purring loudly. "So I'm running away to the desert, cause I can't let anything bad happen to Barney," she finished.

Stephanie shook her head. "What does your Mom say to that, hon?" Steph asked with concern. She'd never had a cat of her own and her mom was a psycho.

"My Mommy loved Barney, but she died last spring, and my Daddy has been sad ever since," the girl choked out, "he loves me but he's so allergic to cats." She squeezed the cat tightly, causing it to gasp softly, but it still stayed in her arms, turning to gaze into her eyes. "He's such a good cat, and he catches mice and lizards, even a little poodle once, and he never breaks anything or makes a mess, and I've had him since I was a 5."

"Awwww, geeeez, honey," Stephanie sympathized, watching as the cat licked the crying girl's face. "He looks like a really good cat," she said honestly, still amazed that he hadn't fled from the child's grasp. "I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to him either, but you can't run away from home. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No," the girl said between sobs, "it's just me and my Daddy and Barney."

"It's just you and your Dad now?" Steph asked, flicking away the butt of her Camel. "He probably needs you, sweetheart. I'm sure he'd let Barney stay if he wasn't allergic…how bad are his allergies anyway?"

"He had to go to the hospital this morning because he fell asleep by the TV and Barney sat in his lap watching Rosie O'Donnell." Barney seemed to nod in agreement. "Daddy woke up and said he couldn't breathe, and he was turning blue, and I had to call 911. I was scared he'd die like Mommy, and I love my Daddy."

Good god, Stephanie thought, people die from respiratory failure with reactions like that. Of course he can't be around that cat. The girl's mom probably knew how to keep them apart. What a pathetic situation. There's no way she's going to be able to keep this cat, and her dad will flip out if she disappears…especially after losing his wife.

"Honey, let me give you a ride home. Your daddy will be worried sick when he realizes you're missing. If you want, I can take Barney with me…I promise to take really good care of him, and I won't let anything bad happen to him. When I was little I always wanted a cat, but my mom wouldn't let me have one because she's a psycho and couldn't deal with the cat hair."

The girl sniffled, (a slug trail of snot creeping from her nostril), but she seemed to be thinking about Steph's offer. She looked at the cat and it turned to rest its paws on her shoulders, bringing itself nose to nose with her. She hugged the cat desperately, until Stephanie imagined she could see its ribs sliding out of position, and she started crying again. It was short lived this time though. Finally she looked at Steph hopefully.

"Do you really promise to take care of him and not let anything bad happen to him, ever?" Barney the Cat was looking at Stephanie too, obviously measuring her sincerity.

" I promise," she said solemnly to both of them.

Stephanie helped the girl into Brittanie the Desoto, while Barney hopped in and draped himself over the seat back, resting his head on the girl's shoulder. She directed Steph to a small tract house with hideous vinyl siding, about six blocks away, where a distraught man was pacing in the front yard and talking into a cell phone. He watched the Desoto suspiciously, but when he saw his daughter in the front seat, he raced to the door practically in tears. There was no doubt in Steph's mind that he loved the little girl dearly. The child leapt into his arms as soon as she got out.

Eventually he talked with Steph, accepted a Bud, and tried to grope her, all the while eyeing Barney with obvious nervousness. Barney finally came to Steph's rescue, winding his way around her ankles and stretching up to his full height, putting his paws on her waist. After looking into her face, he moved to rub against the father's legs, driving the man indoors. Soon, they were blasting down the highway.

Stephanie didn't really know much about cats, but she'd noticed that Barney had only a stub of a tail. He also had oversized tufted ears, bushy jowls, and massive feet. His coat was irregularly spotted, mostly, developing tabby stripes on his face. Steph drove back onto I-5, heading for San Francisco, with a glow from having done a good deed, and a domesticated bobcat curled over the seat back, purring and chewing on her hair. She'd driven for over two hours before she realized that she'd never even learned the little girl's name.

Stephanie's return to San Francisco was much less flamboyant than her first appearance. When she crossed the Golden Gate Bridge this time, she was accompanied on "Sympathy for the Devil", by a CD player and a howling cat. She checked into the Econo Lodge on Lombard and Divisadero Sts., scoring a room the size of a walk in closet with a single bed, for $50 a night. She cranked up the air conditioner, turned on the TV, and refilled her ice chest, then searched the Yellow Pages for a laundromat, a restaurant, and a pet store.

Steph returned from dinner at Izzy's Steak House, with clean clothes, cat dishes, and a pet rabbit. Barney the Cat leapt up to hug her after sniffing the pet store box. Stephanie turned the rabbit loose and went into the bathroom to take a shower. When she came back out, Barney was lying on the bed cleaning his fur. The rabbit's bones and pelt had been haphazardly stuffed back into the box and the water dish was empty. Steph was amazed that there wasn't even the slightest trace of the bloody mess she'd resigned herself to finding on the floor. She happily patted her new cat and then collapsed into bed naked.

Sometime in the dead of night, Steph briefly roused from a weird dream of the Iraqi desert, thinking she'd heard a toilet flush. As she dropped back off to sleep, she realized that she'd neglected to purchase a litterbox. The dream recommenced with her CO, in a red sequined gown, charging into battle in the Abrams tank that they'd named Buffie. Stephanie paced him in Brittanie the Desoto, accompanied by her MP buddies. This time, the beer was flowing and they were singing "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". The Republican Guard was on the run, fleeing across the sand in hideous mid-70s Buicks.

The alarm clock splintered Stephanie's morning with the most appalling discord, leaving her furious at the interruption of a wonderfully carnal dream. She'd been in a cozy bedroll with 6^th season Gabrielle and the blonde had been on top. Barney the Cat had wormed his way under the covers and had been sprawled on her chest like a sphinx, lustily kneading her breasts. He looked as pissed off as she was.

Stephanie eventually regained her composure, and made her way to the San Francisco Central Police Station. She had taken the precaution of not going near the Potrero Station, the scene of her inebriated faux pas of two years before. Again, Steph found herself filling out application forms, submitting records and documents, taking the written, physical, and oral exams, and submitting to a medical exam.

The doctor, she recalled, looked like a Tammy Faye Baker clone, probably purchased her makeup by the pound, and touched her patient rather more than the doctors Steph had seen in the past. In fact, Stephanie thought it strange that she wasn't offered a gown. She'd had to remain naked throughout the procedure, which included an inordinately thorough pelvic exam and some amateurish photography. In particular, the excessively repeated requests to cough during the bimanual exam seemed suspicious. The doctor finally pronounced her "very healthy", and in a flustered flurry of words, recommended that Steph smoke fewer Camels and meet her for dinner. Stephanie declined, suspecting the doctor of being a transvestite. She fled back to her room at the Econo Lodge and jumped into the shower. The scrubbing that Steph performed there would have made her obsessive-compulsive mother proud.

The day went from bad to worse. Stephanie had decided to relax in the Golden Gate Nat'l Rec Area. Accompanied by Barney the Cat, Steph wandered the grounds, finally lounging on a bench and reading the Police Academy course guide. She was jerked out of her concentration by a paw scrubbing at her shin.

Barney the Cat was proudly sitting at her feet, offering the limp Chihuahua that dangled from his jaws. About forty yards away, a man in a business suit was screaming, charging towards them, red in the face, and brandishing a briefcase. Steph shook her head and flipped away the butt of her Camel. There was nothing to be gained by staying. She snatched the cadaver and jammed it into her shoulder bag, then took off towards the park gate at a dead run. In moments, Barney was frolicking alongside her.

They burst out of the park and onto Lombard St., having increased their lead substantially. After suicidally weaving through traffic, they finally entering the Econo Lodge through a service entrance in the back. Later, in their room, Steph turned on the TV and found that the story had made the news. Stephanie paced and lectured as Barney ate.

Several weeks later, after the Police Academy background check was completed, Steph took her polygraph test from a sympathetic officer who, she supposed, had read about her parents. They didn't really ask any tough questions, she realized. The psychological exam was interesting. Stephanie's claim that her cat used the toilet and hunted small stray dogs was met with skepticism. Although she was finally deemed sane, a note was made about her tendency to name things. Like the doctor, the psychologist asked Steph for a date.

"She had very little imagination and bad breath," Stephanie confided to Brittanie the Desoto, as they drove back to the apartment she'd rented in Chinatown. "Maybe I should have become a shrink," she mused, lighting a Camel, "I could meet some interesting people and I'd know what makes them tick."

"The only interesting ones are crazy, hon, and no one ever really knows what makes another person tick," Brittanie replied, her gentle voice coming from the stereo speakers, "you're better off drinking, smoking, and becoming a cop."

"Thanks, Brit," Stephanie said, gently stroking the leather on the passenger's seat, "I'm so glad you're not a bitch, like Christine in that Stephen King book."

"She was a '58 Plymouth," Brittanie pointed out with finality, as if that explained it all.

When the rainy season came, and Steph began parking Brittanie in the living room of the 3 bay garage that she rented as an apartment, shoving her couch and TV into the large bathroom. The garage had been abandoned for years before Steph searched out the owner and offered to rent it. The landlord had been ecstatic. After the address had been rezoned, (from commercial to residential), the property had been useless without renovations, and he just didn't have the money. Steph had changed the three extra toilet stalls and sink area into a lounge. She added a tub and relocated a sink. The first bay had become a living room, the third her bedroom. The second bay between them she'd divided into kitchen and dining areas, the former claimed by Barney the Cat as a killing ground. It was November of 1991, and Stephanie was 16 weeks into the 28-week training program at the Police Academy. She expected to finish in mid-February of 1992, but she couldn't be hired until she turned 21. In the meantime, Brittanie had suggested that she take additional courses while she waited for her birthday in mid-June.

Valentine's Day 1992 arrived, and Stephanie Walker graduated from the San Francisco Police Academy at the top of her class. A year before, she'd been herding tanks through the Iraqi desert in a Humvee. Barney and Brittanie had both been very supportive throughout her schooling, and Steph knew she'd have been so much lonelier without them. They celebrated Stephanie's graduation and Valentine's Day with cake, ice cream, and beer. That night, she lay in the backseat of the Desoto with Barney the Cat, crying with happiness until she fell asleep. Their friendship had forged them into a loving family; something Steph had missed all her life.

"Sometimes friendship is thicker than blood," Steph had told them gravely one afternoon, having waxed philosophical while drunk, "and you two have become my family. I really love you both."

June of 1992 arrived at last, Stephanie turned 21 and was sworn in as a San Francisco police officer. She was assigned to patrol a beat not far from her Chinatown home; a tong controlled neighborhood, free of gangs, where most of the complaints had to do with missing pets, (mostly small dogs), burglaries, and parking violations. Barney took it upon himself to help her, wandering the beat at her side and showing off by killing rats. In the hours of darkness, he delved into the underground life of the beat, ferreting out its secrets and uncovering evidence. He became a valuable informant. Steph loved the neighborhood, and the people there happily welcomed her and her cat. To them, she seemed much more sane than her predecessor, and like so many of the Asians, she smoked a lot. Slowly, she began to pick up Cantonese phrases and customs. She started taking classes in herbal medicine and Ying Jow Pai.

In her parallel world, Brittanie the Desoto made many friends too, never discriminating between limousines and delivery trucks. There were times when only the information Brittanie gathered from these otherwise silent witnesses allowed Stephanie to close a case. Her superiors couldn't understand who her informants were, or how she had such success fostering cooperative community interaction. On her beat, previously invisible suspects were collared, getaway cars failed to start, and hidden booty mysteriously turned up. Bit by bit, criminals began to avoid her beat; something strange was going on there, they said, and it couldn't be accounted for by the actions of one drunk female cop. The genetically superstitious Chinese began leaving offerings of rice, wine, and cigarettes on her doorstep. Butchers offered Barney puppies, and Brittanie always found parking spaces on the street. It was unorthodox, but Steph was just doing her job…the best she could. She was happy. She was living her dream.

For three years, Stephanie walked her beat, filled out reports, and appeared in court. Slowly but surely, her actions aroused the attention of the press and the city politicians. Her superiors were more reserved in their praise, baffled by her success, but pressure was building to elevate her from patrolwoman to detective. Citizens' groups pressured the mayor. The mayor pressured the commissioner, and the commissioner pressured Steph's precinct captain. In August of 1995, the captain called Steph in for a meeting.

Captain Martinez had exhaustively canvassed the chain of command at Central for details about Officer S. Walker. The picture that she formed was of a driven woman with an affinity for beer and Camels, who somehow managed to solve crimes on her beat, and never revealed her informants. She had never worked with a partner, and she lived in a garage. She had an oversized cat and a classic car. She'd been an MP in Desert Storm and had received glowing recommendations from her commanding officer. It was all superficial as hell. Capt. Martinez wasn't fooled. No one in the station house really knew a thing of value about Stephanie Walker, except that she tended to name things.

Steph appeared at 9:00 a.m. and Capt. Martinez casually asked about her ride over. Steph replied that, "Brittanie is fine, thanks". Capt. Martinez did a double take, then asked about Steph's cat, hoping she'd been misunderstood. "Barney the Cat is on vacation," Steph had confided hesitantly, "and will catch no rats this week, only stray puppies under three pounds." The captain had gagged. Steph had said, "Godzoontight". The captain asked Steph about her apartment. Steph had admitted that she loved playing bartender and having her own pumps, gasoline in the front yard, beer in the kitchen. She was buying drinks for herself and Brittanie by the keg, she joked, delivered monthly by the same tanker truck. She saw that her levity had gone over the captain's head. The woman was just staring at her.

There was no way in hell that Capt. Martinez was going to turn Steph loose as a detective. In the end, Stephanie was offered three choices: narcotics, the K9 squad, or the bomb disposal unit. Steph explained that she never took drugs, and Barney the Cat wouldn't stand for her fraternizing with a dog. She chose the bomb disposal unit. She'd always wanted one for her sink. Capt. Martinez shook her head and filled out the transfer orders. She was astonished that Stephanie had survived for three years on street patrol.

"She was a bit slow," Steph had confided to Brittanie on the way home, "I wonder how she ever managed to become a captain."

"Seniority or nepotism," Brittanie the Desoto had replied with certainty, "the last thing society abides is a meritocracy."

Back at home, Barney the Cat had questioned Steph's wisdom in mentioning his vacation, conveying in a glance that it was really none of the captain's business anyway.

"Of course you're right, Barney," Steph had admitted, feeling a bit embarrassed by her lapse, "but I was just trying to hold up my end of the conversation."

Barney had cocked his head and scrubbed his face with a paw. Steph inferred that he suspected the captain would be setting rats loose in the neighborhood while he was taking his vacation break.

"But she's a police captain," Stephanie had objected, though now a bit doubtfully, "and she's a very busy woman."

"Steph, hon, she could be living in her own delusional world," Brittanie had advised seriously, "for all you know, it's just a front and she's breeding thousands of rats at her house in Sausalito."

"You're right of course," Steph had finally conceded, hanging her head, "I'm sorry guys, I feel like I've let you down."

Barney the Cat had climbed into her lap and nuzzled her chin, letting her know that it was ok. "Steph, you have such a good heart, and it's not wrong to give people the benefit of the doubt. Besides, you have Brit and me to look out for you." He winked at her and she smiled.

"I'm so lucky to have friends I can trust," Stephanie had told them emotionally, "I love you both so very much." They had all felt better after a group hug.

The Chinese were sorry to see her go. The night of her last patrol, the tong sealed off the neighborhood and everyone turned out for fireworks, lion dances, and Cantonese buffet. When the fire department arrived because of the detonations, their fire engines sputtered and refused to run. Brittanie spread the word to the ladder company vehicles that everything was under control, because the police were already on the scene. The locals bought off the fire inspector and ladder captain with cartons of takeout food.

When Steph's shift ended at 2:00 a.m., the party ended as well. People cleaned up their sidewalks, and by 2:30 a.m., when the new cop made his first patrol sweep, nothing was discernable. The heads of the tong met with him on the street, and impressed on him that he had a tough act to follow, but if he could keep the rats under control, he'd get their full cooperation. He shook his head and walked off, muttering about the "crazy heathen Chinese". He was a non-smoker. A week later, crime was back at its old levels of three years before. Within two weeks, the neighborhood was desperately fighting an outbreak of rats. At Central, Capt. Martinez briefly wondered if she'd done the right thing. Citizens were beginning to complain.

Steph went back to the Police Academy. At first, she was disappointed that she wouldn't be getting a bomb disposal unit for her sink. When the particulars of the job were made clear though, Steph couldn't contain her glee. Things that went "bang" were a part of the reason that she'd "Gone Army" several years before. Stephanie applied herself completely and amazed her instructors by scoring perfect grades throughout her training. The only down side was the bomb sniffing dog.

Vito the Dog was a gooberhound, part bloodhound and part mutt. Sergeant Stephanie, (now sporting extra stripes, and drawing hazardous duty pay as well as a standard rank increase), was required to bring her "partner" home; ostensibly to bond. She knew it was a bad idea. Barney the Cat took one look at Vito and let out an unearthly squall, puffing up all his fur to appear twice his size. Vito whimpered and peed, cringing in terror. In the blink of an eye, Barney snatched him off his feet, shaking him like a rat, and accusing him of everything from being an illegal alien, to being a communist, to being a pedophile. Steph had finally separated them as Brittanie shook on her springs in hysterics. Vito was blubbering, licking his crotch, and crying piteously. It was pathetic. Steph lit a Camel.

"Well, hon, do you really want to trust him with your life?" Brittanie the Desoto asked.

"Hell no," Steph replied, shaking her head and thinking of alternatives. Yo Fat-Boy, who owned the illegal firecracker factory, had a dog with a litter of puppies. Maybe she could trade Vito for one of them and train it herself. At least they'd been born knowing the scent of gunpowder.

Stephanie didn't have the opportunity to explore the possibility of training her own dog. By the time she returned to work with Vito, he was completely ruined, intimidated to the point of disassociation, and curled in an unresponsive ball. The shocked kennel master asked what had happened. Steph had informed him that Vito wasn't a team player and didn't get along with her cat. Steph was busted from the search team and relegated to bomb removal.

She reported to the removal unit team leader, a battle scarred, chain smoking Japanese-American named Archie Shimamoto, a Viet Nam vet who walked with a limp. His office was in a Quonset hut at the furthest end of the Police Spec Ops compound, where he couldn't do any damage. Stephanie knocked on the door and heard a heavily accented voice say, "Entah Preees."

She shoved the door open against resistance, the sheet metal dragging on sagging hinges across the concrete slab floor. Too late, she saw a wire pull out of the door jam. Immediately Steph heard the click of an electronic relay, and a box on the desk in front of her began ticking. A digital counter on the top started a countdown from 100, ticking off seconds in glowing red. Wires from the box were stuck into a large blob of C4. Behind the desk sat Archie, in wrinkled black BDUs, furiously puffing on a Marlboro.

"Oooooo, yu gotta ninety second reft, hotta cheeks," he pronounced while squinting at her through Hirohito glasses, "enda then we goah boooom!" He glanced pointedly at the box and giggled.

"Very good, hon," Archie said, no trace of an accent evident. Stephanie looked at him.

"Every so often I have someone panic because the situation is too strange," Archie explained. "They run out, the bomb goes off, and I fire them…send them back to patrol or administration…whatever." He said, absently waving a hand, (he was missing two fingers), before gesturing to a battered recliner in the corner and offering, "have a seat."

It turned out that, after surviving classified duty in the corps, Archie had gone to work for Yo Fat-Boy, but an accident at the firecracker factory had left him minus several fingers. Using preferential hiring statutes, he had applied to the Police Academy as a partially disabled minority. When he proved that he could handle a handgun by holding it inverted and squeezing the trigger with his pinky, he passed the physical requirements. He had been hired easily, and eventually came to head the bomb removal team. It was fine with him. He still loved things that went "boom", and the others left him alone. They thought he was crazy, a perception he actively cultivated, so no one complained that he smoked on the premises. He offered Steph a Marlboro; she declined and lit a Camel. They found that they got along well.

Eventually, Steph and Archie socialized. He lived in a series of railroad cars, welded together and placed on blocks overlooking the bay. One car held a full bar and a karaoke machine. He kept an ostrich in the yard to chase away trespassers, and had a pig named Mattie for a pet. When Steph visited, Barney would spend long hours talking with Mattie, (whom he characterized as a brilliant lateral thinker), while Brittanie sat in rapt attention as the railroad cars described the California of the 40s and 50s. Their conversations were often interrupted by Archie and Steph, drunkenly scream-singing karaoke.

There were several evenings when Steph arrived to find that Archie had invited guests. His company invariably consisted of two late middle-aged men, who Stephanie instantly pegged as ex-military. Nam vets like Archie, she thought, judging by their age. On their first meeting, Archie introduced them as Billy Jack and Billy the Kid. He was dead serious.

"You can't ask them anything about what they did in the war," he told her, "that's all still classified in a file labeled 'Cambodia'. It's 'don't ask, don't tell', once again. You know the drill." Steph only managed to learn that Billy and Billy were in engineering.

The four became the best of friends. If Archie had been a woman, he and Steph would have soon become much more. Sometimes, Archie would pocket secondary charges from their jobs, and then Steph and Archie would drive Brittanie into the desert to picnic and explode the devices. For two years, Steph learned everything about the removal and destruction of explosive devices, from the master craftsman of the trade on the West Coast. As always, Stephanie became very good at her work. It was September of 1997.

As often happens with people who live on the fringe, it is only the hand of fate that can bring them down. It was a clear early fall night. Archie was lying in bed, looking up through his sunroof at the stars. Mattie was asleep under the front stairs, and the ostrich had its head buried in the side yard. The 271-pound iron meteorite came down smack on the 500-gallon propane tank adjacent to the railroad cars. There was nothing anyone could have done. The explosion flung the 40s era coaches off the cliff and into the bay. Nothing remained except a few pork chops, (the other white meat), and a scorched ostrich steak, (the other red meat). Stephanie was heartbroken.

"Oh Brittanie, why him?" Steph sobbed, the tears rolling down her cheeks as they drove home after the memorial service. "He was my only human friend."

"Sweetheart, there's no reason for things like that," Brittanie the Desoto softly replied, "and we all know what a fucked up place the world is." Brit would miss her friends too.

"I know, Brit, I know," Steph had agreed as she pulled off the highway, "I don't feel too good." She barely made it out the door before losing her lunch. "It could have been us."

Barney the Cat looked at Steph as she stood shivering and spitting to clear her mouth. He glanced at Brittanie, whispering that maybe they should get rid of the gasoline pump in the front yard. Ever the pragmatist, he'd snatched the ostrich steak and dragged it into the bushes…neither he nor Mattie the Pig had appreciated the ostrich's elitist disposition. She had been a meal waiting to happen. Barney had found that she tasted like puppy.

The Bills had been present at Archie's memorial ceremony. It had been military standard. Just before Archie's empty show coffin was laid into the grave, Billy Jack stepped forward and draped it with a unit banner. It was one that Stephanie had never seen, and later she discovered, one that she could find no record of. On a field of red, below the gold emblem of the corps, and superimposed over the flaming bomb that denoted ordinance, there was a small rendition of the atom. There was no unit number.

"Keep in touch, hot stuff," Billy the Kid whispered to her, before the Bills left the service in their black Humvee. It would be years before Stephanie saw them again.

Steph became head of the bomb removal team, a small distinction since she was the only member. She was 26, and the heiress to the knowledge Archie had spent twenty-eight years learning. Within the San Francisco Police Dept., she was regarded as an outcast, almost a pariah. No one was interested in her job, and joining her would have been recognized as a punishment; it was a departmental backwater, far off the path of career advancement. Steph was regarded as a madwoman, for it was known by now that she talked to her cat and her car. She was also a stunning beauty, with a slender powerful body, ice blue eyes, and raven hair that showed reddish highlights. Her tall, slim figure hid a steely strength. For over five years, Stephanie had advanced in her study of Ying Jow Pai, (Eagle Claw Art), achieving a rank of Minh Kup, (5^th grade), and soon she would test for the equivalent of a first-degree black belt. She could squeeze a full can of beer hard enough to blow the pop-top open.

Stephanie continued to rely on the love of Barney and Brittanie, and she loved her little family with all her heart. The loss of her friend, Archie, had left her even more withdrawn from human company than ever before. If anything, she had come to be fatalistic about close relationships with people. They led to pain and disappointment. It was predictable, and the norm was illustrated by her disenfranchisement by the rest of the police force. Steph was willing to forego the possibility of finding love beyond what she had, for she'd learned that such attempts ended in pain and loss. When she saw loving couples, she told herself that such a relationship would forever be beyond her reach. Her happiness would never come from the love of another person. Already isolated by her years in the deserts, she was now in real danger of retreating to the safety of her oasis, and never again venturing across the hostile sands in hope of reaching anything better. Instead, she worked.

In March of 2000, Steph's little family celebrated Barney the Cat's 14^th birthday. Down in her subconscious, Steph must have been noticing that he hadn't been moving quite as quickly in the mornings, hadn't been quite as aggressive with the rats, and hadn't been eating quite as much as when they'd met. The changes were almost unnoticeable because they happened so slowly, and consciously, she didn't really recognize them for what they were. There was just a tickling sense of foreboding below the threshold of her awareness that left her unsettled. In truth, she'd been more worried about some rust spots that had appeared on Brittanie's rocker panels. Brit had spent decades in the dry heat of Texas, and the damp salty air of San Francisco was slowly eating away at her sheet metal. The clock was ticking. Steph was aging too; in June, she would turn 29.

Somewhere along the way, bomb disposal had gained a kind of glamour. Maybe it was the movies or TV action shows. Maybe it was that the young were searching for ever more extreme tests of their self-worth. Steph had taken over in 1997, after Archie's death. In the two years they'd worked together, no one had even tried to join them. In 1998 she'd had two potential members apply to the bomb disposal team. One panicked and the other passed. In 1999, four people tried to join. Three passed the test when confronted by the mad woman with the bomb on her desk, who sat and talked to her cat as the timer counted off the 100 seconds. In the first half of 2000, three applied and one passed. By her 29^th birthday, Stephanie had a team of five working for her. She drilled and tested them unmercifully, instructing them in every trick she'd learned. She had never understood that Archie Shimamoto, her mentor, had been the recognized dean of his profession, or that her own record was exemplary. Steph figured that it was simple; if you fucked up in her line of work, you died.

A week after her birthday, Stephanie was jerked awake by her pager. The dispatcher told her that a bomb had exploded in a shopping center in Oakland, and the mayor's office had received a demand for sixteen million dollars before 10:00 am, when a second mall would explode. They had only determined which shopping center was endangered in the last few minutes. Within a quarter-hour, Steph was heading for the Golden Gate Bridge, her strobes and siren clearing the way. Police had closed the bridge to traffic. Brittanie's aging hemi engine pushed them to 110 mph, weaving past other emergency vehicles. Her team was converging on a second shopping center, the evacuation already in progress. It was already 9:20 am.

When she arrived at Piedmont and MacArthur, the search team had already completed their sweep. Three known devices had been found in widely separated locations, probably timed to detonate simultaneously. The loss of life could have been staggering. The property damage would be in the tens of millions of dollars. The first device had been a warning, going off at 7:00 a.m. in the nearly empty International Marketplace just off Embarcadero. The demand for money hadn't been sent until 8:30 a.m., shortening the response time and insuring that a full crowd was endangered. It was now known that the second threat was unquestionably for real.

At 9:30 a.m., the evacuation was complete, and Steph mobilized her team. She sent in two of her people to each of the bomb sites, while she took the third site alone. The sixth team member, the least experienced, waited outside in their specially equipped truck, ready to respond to their call to extract the devices from the premises. The team members donned their work clothes; hazardous materials suits, layered with puncture resistant Kevlar and fire resistant Nomex. They immediately started sweating. Stephanie shouldered her equipment bag and stepped onto her scooter. She'd instituted the use of children's scooters to hasten their response time when indoors, figuring that skateboards were unnecessarily hazardous. Though Capt. Martinez had shaken her head in disbelief, the tactic had proven itself valuable, saving transport time in offices and parks alike.

Stephanie approached the front of the Sears department store and leapt off her scooter, jogging inside, and heading for the entrance to the sporting goods stockroom where the search team had found a device. She spotted the red flag marking the device with little difficulty, and quickly saw the device itself; a locked tool chest, marked by a red beanbag the search team had left lying next to it. The box was big, and Steph knew that bombs were made as small as possible, the better to be transported and set in place undetected. A hand grenade was a perfect example. The toolbox was close to the size of a small microwave oven. There was no point in attempting containment before working. Steph carried nothing that would significantly increase her odds of survival if she fucked up with a charge as large as what she expected she was looking at.

Steph set up a video camera to record her progress. Next, she attached a microphone to the toolbox with a suction cup, and started a tape recorder. After adjusting her headphones, she pulled on a Kevlar/Nomex hood with a polycarbonate/acrylic visor that matched the silvery hazardous materials suit she wore. She could hear the faint ticking of an electronic timer, probably made from a battery operated clock; a cheap piece of work, she thought.

The toolbox sported a combination padlock, and Steph attached her microphone to it, preparing to pick the lock. A padlock as cheap as the one she saw was there for a reason, and it wasn't expected to stop anyone. It was only present to distract them into lowering their guard. Before she started, Stephanie spoke softly into her headset, communicating with the two other teams.

Across the empty mall, two teams responded affirmative. A mercury switch would complete an electrical circuit and detonate the charge if the liquid metal inside its glass capsule moved enough to submerge a pair of contacts. It could happen if the toolboxes were lifted, rocked, or when the lid tilted as it opened. The circuit could have been activated by a time delay, allowing the bomber to close and lock the lid.

Once the padlocks were removed, Stephanie's people would edge the lid up 1/8" and insert an endoscopic camera with a fiber optic light source, to check for the booby trap that Steph suspected. This was an unavoidable hazard, and the most dangerous part of the job. Depending on what they found, they'd improvise a solution. At least a mercury switch was distinctive, with an easily recognized appearance. It would be a simple thing to spot. Steph really, really wanted to light up a Camel.

Steph had set to work, listening as the plates inside the padlock spun and finally lined up, allowing the lock to open. She removed the padlock from the hasp and carefully raised the lid, wedging a special rubber shim into the opening. She took the endoscopic camera and inserted it into the toolbox, the built in diode lighting the interior. Steph watched a 5" monitor as she moved the camera, examining the inside compartment. She saw the charge, about 25 pounds of plasticized high yield explosive. She saw the timer; a clock, battery pack, wire bundle, and the detonator cap. She saw the wires running to the alternate circuit for the booby trap. Following the wires, Stephanie tilted the camera up and saw the mercury switch, pop-riveted directly below the handle in the center of the lid. The liquid metal was 1/4" from completing the circuit.

Stephanie slipped a rubber wedge into the gap, raising the lid until the mercury was barely 1/16" from contacting the second electrode, and gaining precious added workspace. The opening between the lid and the body of the toolbox was now about 3/8". Into the gap she slid a special pair of titanium forceps. The ceramic-coated tips had a cutting edge like a toenail clipper, the fulcrum held a force multiplying gearset. Non-conductive and razor sharp, the forceps could cut up to a 8 gauge solid core wire, or a 1/8" steel braid cable. Stephanie carefully placed the tips around the wires to the mercury switch and applied force. The cut wires fell away, disabling the booby trap. She extracted the forceps and lifted the lid open wide. There were no surprises; the camera had shown her the full picture.

As she had on her first day in Archie's office, Steph examined the bomb. Sure enough, whoever had created it had exhausted their ingenuity on the booby trap. The detonation circuit was simple; no feedback loop, no interrupt sensor, no hidden button cell. A 9-volt battery powered everything. Steph lifted the battery pack and removed the battery. The clock stopped. It was 9:49 a.m. 11 minutes remained, and to Stephanie, it was a huge margin of safety.

"Prepare to retrieve the device," Steph announced into her headset, "Sears sporting goods stockroom. I need a wheel dolly. The device is deactivated."

Within four minutes, her words were repeated by her other two teams, the last at 9:53 am. Stephanie had pulled the blastproof Nomex hood off her head, relishing the rush of the air conditioning that cooled the sweat from her skin and hair. She gazed directly at the video camera and happily announced, "That's all folks!" She lit a Camel.

Somehow, the press got a hold of her videotape. It showed a beautiful woman, sweating in a Kevlar/Nomex HAZMAT suit, deactivating a bomb and saving the public with only minutes to spare. It was way too good a visual for the media to pass up. By 5:10 p.m., Stephanie Walker was a hero. By 5:30 p.m., a contract had been placed on her life.

When the news aired, Steph was the lead story, and Barney the Cat demanded that she sit and view SF Bay Watch, the TV news show, for the 10:00 p.m. repeat. Stephanie was horrified. She'd wondered what the vans with the big antennae were doing outside the garage, but she'd been reading and napping, and hadn't even ventured outside. Now, Steph could see a crowd of reporters, cameramen, and gawkers on the sidewalk in the dark, overflowing into the street. What would her neighbors think, Steph wondered, especially the quiet Chinese and the reclusive Mr. Mussolini, the aging son of a deposed Italian politician? In any case, she knew she could never leave her apartment again.

Around 11:00 p.m., the tong came to the rescue of their old friend. First, a street sweeper barreled down the curb, scattering the crowd and tearing up the wires the reporters had strung across the pavement. As the media types scurried to recover, an aging step van lurched in front of the garage and the rear doors opened, falling off their rusted hinges. Thousands of rats poured out into the shrieking crowd. Steph watched the action in amazement, while Barney the Cat sat, mesmerized and conflicted by the hordes of vermin. It gave him the creeps and stirred his killer instincts at the same time. Brittanie sat in the living room garage bay, rocking in hysterics on her springs. She alone knew what had been arranged, having personally made the phone calls. The tong finally set up ultrasonic pest repellers, driving the rats east, into the financial district. By 12:30 a.m., the neighborhood was quiet and back to normal.

They were resourceful people who had adapted to their strange new country, though it was so different from their home across the sea, and they took care of their own. Unfortunately, no one had noticed the two men in their silver Cadillac, who had watched the entire affair, and whose interest in Steph's apartment had nothing to do with getting a story. For the next two weeks they watched Stephanie's comings and goings, building up a schedule of her activities. They could have completed their research in a couple days, but she was highly unpredictable, and they didn't know how much to believe the stories they'd heard about her. In the end, they could have spent two years and still not predicted Steph's movements accurately. One thing they were sure of though, was that the gasoline pump in the front yard would come in handy.

In many ways, it was a day like any other. At 7:00 a.m. Stephanie smacked the alarm clock and Barney the Cat batted it onto the floor. Steph grudgingly rose and went into the dining room and spent a half-hour warming up and running through a couple of Eagle Claw forms; Lin Kuen, (the Connected Fist), and Fuk Fu Kuen, (Controlling the Tiger). She held the equivalent of a second-degree black belt now, and helped her Sifu as a part time instructor. Afterwards, she showered, donned her black BDUs, and headed out the door to work. It was only a twelve-minute walk to the Spec Ops compound at Central, and she often walked rather than drove. By 8:15 a.m., Steph was in her office making coffee.

Back at the apartment, Brittanie was chatting on the car phone and Barney the Cat was stretching on the couch. Neither noticed the pair of men in suits who crossed the sidewalk and tampered with the gasoline pump in the front yard. Neither noticed the box they left on the gas meter, attached with magnets, or the wires leading from it to a small backpack wrapped in duct tape.

At 11:30 a.m., Steph and two of her colleagues went to the Hing Lung Pan Asian Restaurant, on Broadway, for lunch. Usually she walked home and ate with her family. Barney the Cat was probably returning from his morning rounds of rousting rats, and Brittanie the Desoto would have been glued to the TV, watching the Discovery Channel. Mr. Mussolini recalled that he saw Barney at the dining room window around 11:45 a.m., when he was returning from the self-service hand laundry, and the TV was turned up loud enough to be heard on the sidewalk. Everything seemed normal.

At noon, Steph and her team members were just digging into their curried lo mien lunch specials, when they heard the blast. It was powerful enough to rattle their empty soup bowls from a dozen blocks away. Steph's heart skipped a beat, and she was stricken with a certainty of disaster. She felt as if she'd been shot. On the basis of her instincts, she threw down a twenty and dashed out the door, headed for home. Her teammates followed, but neither of them came close to catching up with her.

All the way, Stephanie had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she ran. It got worse when she was three blocks from home and her pager went off. She ignored it. She could already hear sirens and see smoke billowing into the air up ahead. She knew, just knew that something horrible had happened at home, and tears were already pouring down her cheeks as she rounded the corner onto her street. There was a crowd gathering up and down the block, and the buildings opposite her garage were lit with flickering yellow and orange, by a conflagration far beyond anything the aging structures could have created alone. Accelerants…Steph knew there had to be accelerants present for the fire to burn so fierce and so fast.

She didn't even have to reach the garage to know it was fully involved. There was a flaming pit that encompassed what had been her front yard, the front of the garage, and the sidewalk too. A powerful lateral jet of fire was rolling out of a pipe where the gas meter had been. The gasoline pump was nowhere to be seen. She couldn't get within 35 yards, not within four doors of her home for the heat, and thick black smoke was roiling up into the sky. In her heart of hearts, she could almost hear the terror of her family; Barney and Brittanie, helplessly burning to death in the ruins, though she knew they must have died almost instantly. She saw that the roof had already collapsed. Stephanie's legs couldn't hold her up and she sank, first to her knees, then crumpling down flat, until she lay sobbing in the street. Brave, loyal Barney and sweet, loving Brittanie; the only ones she'd ever loved who had stuck with her. Her beloved family was gone, and she was more alone than she'd ever been. She was back in the desert and her oasis had dried up.

The garage had mostly burned to the ground before the fire department even arrived. The firemen worked mostly to contain the blaze and stop it from spreading. It was almost 7:00 p.m. before they left, and there was nothing for Steph to do, nothing to salvage, absolutely nothing. Stephanie found parts of Brittanie's frame rails in the wreckage, melted and twisted almost beyond recognition. Nothing was ever found of Barney.

Stephanie took a leave of absence from the department. Mostly, she wished that she'd been home for lunch that day, and died with her beloved friends. She went to the cliffs where Archie's railroad coaches had once sat, remembering the nights they'd all spent together. She'd been surprised that he'd left her the land in his will. The surf and the rocks far below had never looked more inviting. But Steph didn't jump, and she didn't pull the trigger of the handgun that she'd held against her temple one night as she cried and drank. She didn't purposely botch a job and blow herself up. Somehow, Steph survived.

Eventually, Stephanie took to walking the used car lots. For weeks she searched, hoping to hear the whisper of a voice among the vehicles parked side by side in endless rows. She was desperate to find a new confidant, but the hulks remained silent. Steph probably walked past every used car for sale in the city of San Francisco, but in the end, she could only accept that Brittanie the Desoto had been one of a kind. She had been the gift of providence, a wise and loving companion for a lonely soul; Brit had been the best friend or older sister that Stephanie had never had. Finally, with a heavy heart, she gave up and leased a BMW. Steph never even considered the dealership showrooms or the idea of buying a new car.

The idea of replacing Barney the Cat was ludicrous to Steph. She never even tried to find another like him. In Barney, she had stumbled on a friend who reflected the hand of the divine. Of all the animals Stephanie had ever met, not a one had communicated with her in any supernatural fashion. Even Mattie the Pig had been mute to her. Housecats, bred through thousands of generations to domesticity, were a pale shadow of their wild bobcat cousins. Though they impressed many people with a sense of self-awareness and apparent empathy, they worked mainly on instinct, and an almost cynical ability to manipulate humans for their own comfort. Barney had embraced his wildness and killer instincts, and yet, having been raised in a loving human home, he had attained a civility and clarity about the world that exceeded what most humans could claim. He was without their pretensions, but endowed with their intelligence.

The land that Archie Shimamoto had passed on to Steph in his will was prime real estate. Had it not been in Archie's family since the first decade of the 20^th century, it would have been either part of Stinson State Beach or the Golden Gate Rec Area. Archie's father had fought in court for three years to reclaim it, after the family had returned from Manzanar in 1946. The land encompassed ten acres, situated in a picturesque locale, on the cliffs south of Sausalito, overlooking San Francisco Bay. On foggy nights, it seemed that a ghostly carpet stretched from the yard, out to Oakland and Berkeley, with only the towers of the Golden Gate piercing the slowly rolling vapors in between. On sunny days, Alcatraz and Angel Islands lay like miniatures in a perfect model landscape, unreal and gemlike, purified by the distance as they floated in the blue-green water below. East Rd. ran behind the property to the west, while to the east, Steph could watch the ferry lines threading their lanes, crisscrossing the bay. In late September of 2000, Steph hired an architect and began to build a new home.

There had been two more attempts on her life in the weeks after her garage apartment blew up and burned. Someone shot at her from a rooftop, as she walked a used car lot in Richmond, on a gusty afternoon. The slug slammed into the hood of a Buick right next to her, just as she'd passed out of sight behind the building. Steph never even noticed; she was lurching drunk and still half-dazed by her loss. A week later, someone in a blue Ford van tried to run her down on a street in Daly City. Steph saw the van coming at her and slipped aside. She'd been in no mood for the shit. As it passed a hair's breadth away, she'd flung a longneck bottle through the driver's side window and pulled her autopistol, dropping into a Weaver stance and discharging two rounds. The driver had almost lost control, scrubbing a guardrail for ten yards. He'd actually accelerated away from her and never stopped. Steph didn't give it a second thought. The incident was indicative of a newfound coldness in Steph. She had no one to love, and no one loved her. There was no outlet for the natural warmth in her heart, and her looses had made her grim.

In all the years she'd been in San Francisco, Stephanie had never taken a real vacation. Now, without a home or any family ties, she took part of her accumulated vacation time and went to Hong Kong. Every five years, the home chapter of the tong in Steph's old neighborhood sponsored a kumite, a full contact martial arts tournament. Steph entered it, representing her art, her kwoon, and her Sifu.

She fought six contests, and the Chinese had never seen any woman fight with her rage or inspiration. It seemed to them as though a demon had come from the west, heartless, merciless, and thirsting for blood. Using techniques drawn from the Lin Kuen and Fuk Fu Kuen forms, Steph defeated every woman she faced, intimidating them, forcing errors, paralyzing nerves, and finally dislocating joints. When she faced the male champion for the overall title, she didn't win, but she didn't lose either. They fought to a draw, neither able to continue. After five long minutes, Steph had suffered a broken right leg. She had a minor concussion and three broken ribs. Her opponent would never speak again, and it would be a year before the joint damage she'd inflicted would allow him to walk. She'd employed techniques from Jui Lao Tong, (the drunken eagle form), to crush nerves and bone. Stephanie came home as the joint overall champion, a first for a woman, and only the second time a westerner had won.

Steph returned to work after a month's absence, still with a cast on her leg. She continued drilling and teaching her team, and when the cast came off three weeks later, she resumed deactivating bombs.

In Sausalito, Steph's new house was under construction, rising fast above a poured concrete pedestal that housed a windowless three-car garage. Above that sat a reinforced concrete bunker, sheathed in weathered cedar and encircled by a redwood deck whose eastern side was cantilevered out over the cliff face. Floor to ceiling windows graced each wall, but they were _" Herculite, the same bulletproof material used in the cockpits of older USAF fighters. Satellite dishes and solar panels adorned the roof, and a sub-basement housed a room filled with batteries and a generator. The fuel oil tank was stainless steel wrapped in graphite fiber, and it was buried deep in reinforced concrete, 25 yards from the house. There was no gas hookup or meter. Steph had paid for the inclusion of several alarm systems, and after the contractors were done, she would personally install some illegal countermeasures of her own. She spent most of the money she'd saved since her tour in the U.S. Army, but never again would someone threaten her home. In the meantime, Steph lived anonymously in a trailer, her bunk bed hiding a growing cache of military munitions and firearms. It was mid-December, 2000.

Stephanie was celebrating a dismal Christmas 2000, alone in her trailer. She spent much of the day drinking and cleaning her weapons, loading magazines, checking detonators and charges. Finally, at about 5:00 p.m., when others were enjoying the aromas of Christmas dinners nearly ready in their ovens, Steph grabbed the keys to her BMW and went for a drive. The trailer had progressed from cozy to claustrophobic, and she was saturated with loneliness and discontent.

She intended to drive south on SR-101, to the Fish and Game Reserve, where she could lose herself wandering in the marsh, drinking, smoking Camels, and screaming unheard. Eventually, she'd cross the bay on SR-84 and head back north, making a large circle through Freemont and San Lorenzo, on I-880, blatantly abusing the speed limit. Steph figured that sometime around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m., she'd navigate the BMW back across the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco. Maybe she'd drive past the burned out garage, maybe not.

Around 5:30 p.m., Stephanie passed the airport and turned off the highway onto Marsh Rd. She followed it to the dead end, where she parked. The oily channel leading to the bay was less than 100 yards ahead and she could smell the stale petrol and rotting vegetation. She got out, with her handgun, a full longneck, and her pack of Camels, and walked, her hiking boots squishing in the soggy soil as she headed down to the water. It was mostly quiet, with a breeze whistling through the marsh grass and worn out tires, that muffled the traffic noise from SR-84 nearby. An occasional jetliner passed overhead.

Steph found a discarded refrigerator, half buried in the muck, and she took a seat, lighting a Camel and gazing across the water. Distant lights winked in Jarvis Landing and Newark, while the Coyote Hills Park formed a dark mass on a hillside. It was a melancholy scene, and it suited her mood. To her right, the lights of cars moved across the SR-84 bridge…a bridge without a name, Stephanie thought sadly. That bridge had been around for decades and it obviously knew the score.

Steph believed things like that should have names. People named their pets and boats. They named their children. She'd named her car and they'd thought she was crazy because she talked to it. Her cat, too. Yet they'd never figured out how she'd solved so many crimes on her beat all those years ago. They'd never identified her informants or learned where her information had come from. They would never have believed that Brittanie the Desoto had learned more, talking to the vehicles on the streets, than a dozen detectives could have learned by questioning the neighbors. They would never have believed that Barney the Cat had found the locations of counterband, stolen goods, hideouts, and hidden weapons. He'd prowled the dark alleys and rooftops, spying out the haunts and doings of nocturnal criminals; listening and reporting on their plots with a glee that bordered on mania. It had been a variation on his natural hunting instinct, a part of his catness.

Stephanie sat in the speckled dark of that holy night, draining her Bud and thinking how much happier she'd have been to still be a patrol officer walking her beat. The esteem of her neighbors and the warmth of her home and family had made her life sweet. Steph cared nothing for being a hero. She sat drunkenly remembering her beloved family, tears trickling down her face, the handgun pressed against her temple. A hundred yards behind her, the men who had followed her from the trailer blew up her BMW. Amazingly, she didn't shoot herself in the head by reflex.

The blast and the gout of flame shooting into the sky made her snap. She would later recall that what followed felt unreal, almost dreamlike. Steph leapt from her seat and flew back down the trail in the dark, slipping in the mud and tripping on partially buried refuse. When she saw the silver Cadillac starting up, she opened fire, still running toward it as fast as she could. Thirteen rounds from the 9mm Glock slammed into the hood, grille, and windshield, and the car stopped. Steph dropped the spent magazine, slammed a fresh one in, and kept coming. When she reached the Caddy, she ripped open the driver's door and emptied the second magazine into the two occupants. As the sounds of the gunfire died away in the marsh, Steph stood drunkenly gasping, trying to catch her breath.

"That'll teach 'em," the nameless bridge's whisper tickled her ears on the breeze.

Stephanie managed to drive the Cadillac, with its grisly occupants, into the channel, where it mostly sank beneath the oily wash. It had been hissing, and the smell of antifreeze steam clung to her clothing. On the way back, she briefly regarded the burned out wreck of her leased BMW, before starting to walk back down Marsh Rd. to SR-101. It would be a long walk home, several hours at least, she figured, but it would give her time to think.

When she got back to SR-101, Stephanie stuck out her thumb as she had on that June afternoon in Bakersfield, eleven years ago. She presented herself to the Christmas traffic as a drunken woman, her legs covered in mud, carrying a handgun and a pack of Camels…even in California, it was almost an hour before anyone stopped.

"Thanks for the ride," Steph said as she slid into the idling car. She set the Glock in her lap and pulled the door shut. The car was so small that the roof had barely reached her waist. It was a bright red, with a black roof, and a diminutive tire at each corner.

"'Sup, wahine? Frisco go?" The woman driving weighed at least three hundred pounds, and the steering wheel was jammed into where her lap would have been. She looked very happy to meet Steph; just happy in general it seemed, to be out driving on Christmas night. "Mele kalikimaka!"

"Uh, okay," Steph agreed, not really sure what had been said. To make conversation, she asked, "Where ya from?"

"Lihue, Kauai," she told Stephanie as she squinted out the windshield into the dark.

"Turn on your headlights," Steph instructed nervously, as the car wove across the centerline toward an approaching truck. The hulking carcass of a large dead animal lay in their lane, flashing by in the darkness outside Steph's window.

"It's in Hawaii," the woman elaborated with a fluttering gesture, momentarily taking her hands off the wheel. The engine tone rose as the car accelerated, swerving back into their own lane, then the headlights came on. Steph could have sworn the woman hadn't touched any of the knobs on the dash.

"Oh, okay," Steph said, finally understanding now. The woman was a Hawaiian, maybe even a kumu hula. "Yeah, I'm going to San Francisco. My car just exploded."

"Whatta shame," the woman said sympathetically, toning down her island pidgin, "needing wheels now, wahine?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Steph realized for the first time. The little red car dodged around a pothole, though the woman was obliviously steering straight ahead. Stephanie raised an eyebrow. "What kind of a car is this?"

"Mini Cooper."

At 9:05 a.m. on December 26^th, 2000, Stephanie Walker pulled her replacement BMW into the parking lot of Great Britain Import Motorcars, at Howard St. and Van Ness. She had dressed in a Navy blazer and slacks, with a pale blue silk blouse that matched her eyes. Steph hadn't started drinking yet that morning, so she carried a Nissan Stainless Road Carafe filled with Vanilla Hazelnut Hi-Test. The salesman saw her coming, noted the BMW and the suit, figured executive, and began calculating his percentage on a Jaguar. He nearly regurgitated his Eggs Benedict and Double Sputum Latte when she asked about the Mini Coopers. He was stuttering, and she looked past him into the showroom. There they sat, on the far side of the Land Rover; three Mini Coopers, small and gemlike, shining in the tungsten spotlights, red, yellow, and British racing green. Stephanie walked towards them as if entranced, leaving the salesman behind. In truth, he was glad to see her go. The Minis tended to sell themselves to those with an affinity for them, and all he had to do was wait to fill out the paperwork.

Steph circled the cars, noticing immediately that the yellow one seemed to tilt slightly on its tires to watch her. The red and green seemed a bit colder to her; not unfriendly, but simply more reserved. Finally, she stood in front of yellow, looking closely at the front end and grille. The little car seemed to be looking up at her with its headlights, the grille seeming to smile. Stephanie liked it already. She moved to the driver's side and opened the door, relishing the scent of new upholstery and fresh paint. Though limited on interior space, it felt inviting, sorta cozy, and the seat looked comfy to Steph. She ducked down through the door and sat, stretching her legs and settling them on the pedals. She grasped the wheel, tried the placement of the shifter, stared at the gauges. She turned on the radio.

It was amazing. The little car had six-speaker surround sound and a CD player rested beneath the tuner. It played her a jaunty show tune from a Broadway musical that Steph couldn't remember the name of…maybe it was the one named for a western state, she absently thought. Stephanie pulled the door closed to see how much of the outside noise disappeared, and again she was surprised. She could hear nothing of the outside world at all.

"Wow, it sounds really nice in here," Steph remarked to herself, "I'm impressed."

"Thank ye, luv," a lilting, youngish voice whispered to her around the words of the music, "always so nice to be appreciated, it is." The car's pleasant accent was musical.

A smile spread across Steph's face. "I'm Stephanie," she offered, "Stephanie Walker. What's your name, dear?"

"Oh, beg yer pardon, miss. Forgive my boldness for this self-introduction," the yellow car replied somewhat formally, "Lizzie Cooper here, and a pleasure it is, Ms. Walker."

"The pleasure's all mine, Lizzie," Steph answered, and it was true. "I'm kinda informal, mostly, and I want to be your friend."

"I'd be likin that, Stephanie," Lizzie said, and Steph could hear the smile in her words, "I'd so love to feel the open road, the sun and the breeze, even the rain, just motoring through the countryside, don't ya know?"

"Absolutely," Steph agreed, "just let me talk to that salesman, and we'll be on our way."

"That would be Nigel, it would," Lizzie offered with just a touch of pique, "nice enough chap, if a bit superficial. Spends most of his time brown nosing the Jaguar roadster."

"All done, hon," Steph happily told the little car as they drove off the lot, "how do you like the little present I got from Nigel for you?"

"Oh Stephanie, you know how every girl loves new shoes. Thank you so very much."

Lizzie's genuine gratitude warmed Stephanie's heart. In the end, Steph also bought her a pair of fog lights and vanity plates with her name on them.

As they rode through the city that morning, Stephanie found herself becoming uncharacteristically chatty. She had a new friend, and she hadn't been so happy in weeks. On the way home, Lizzie became so very excited at the description of the cliff house with its built-in garage. She had a sweet and bubbly disposition, and she expressed an endearingly childlike wonder with life. The little car also had a backbone and nerves of steel, and she never shied away from the challenges that would later come her way. Lizzie was always thankful to Steph for taking such loving care of her, and she always tried as hard as she could to make Stephanie happy. She accomplished her mission by just being herself. Stephanie came to love her dearly.

Because Steph's new house was mostly poured reinforced concrete, and because the interior was a mostly open design, the house was finished by May 1^st, of 2001. Steph was sick to death of living in a trailer, and Lizzie couldn't wait to move into their new digs. By early June, all the alarms, traps, and furnishings were completed. Steph had the oil tanks filled, and she charged up the solar batteries. At night, lamps shone through the great windows, making Steph's home appear like a lighthouse beacon above the bay.

Steph spent most of her evenings downstairs in the garage with Lizzie, watching DVD movies on the flat screen plasma TV she'd set up there. Lizzie Cooper adored t