LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS
Shelagh Donovan stood in the middle of a bare white room sucking smoke from an unfiltered cigarette and exhaling it in hard puffs. In her right hand she held a pair of dice. Cool light filtered in through trees and two-foot thick walls to illuminate worn floorboards painted an incongruous blue.
The minimalist effect of the place wasn’t exactly intentional she thought. But you can’t fill an apartment out of a suitcase. And most of what was available locally was hideous. She had finally settled on a futon, a tape player, a few kitchen utensils, and, in reaction to Southwest kitsch and in honor of one new friend, a sepia-toned Japanese ink drawing of a goshawk enwrapped in an almost s****l tangle with a white egret.
She continued to pace, shaking the dice. She wa
