45
My foot gave out on the way to the kitchen before I’d finished my first glass of wine.
“These wee women can’t hold their liquor,” Richard said, a hand on Angela’s shoulder.
“Not exactly,” I said, and lifted my foot. At the sight of my swollen, bad-guy-kicking ankle, Angela gave me the seat of honor―Richard’s recliner―where I could ice my foot and be waited upon as was appropriate for, as she put it, “a feminist hero.” A former English professor, she discoursed convincingly and at length on the subject of my triumph of “subverting the dominant male paradigm” of women as lousy drivers.
Once she’d beaten them into submission, Richard and Mike carried on with stories of the road, of trials and witness interviews and prison visits (often ending with Richard’s roar: “And that’s why we cal
