She sighed again. "All my life I've had this feeling of shapelessness," she began.

Mark's mouth said, "Oh, baby, don't talk that way, you're beautiful," before he could stop it. Flash and Traveler hooted and twirled noisemakers. Even Moonchild winced.

Kimberly ignored him. "It's like I've always been searching for landmarks to define myself by: jocks, radicals." A smile. "You."

She smoothed her hair back and let her head drop toward one shoulder. "Does any of this make any sense?" Mark made earnest noises. She smiled and shook her head.

"After we split I spent a few years in heavy therapy. I guess you knew about that, huh? Then one day I decided it was time to try something new, just completely different from anything I'd done before. I did the furthest-out thing I could think of set out to become a by-God businesswoman, a real hard-charging lady entrepreneur. Entrepreneuse. Whatever. Is that strange, or what?"

She laughed. "And I did, Mark, I did it. I do it. Racquetball and power lunches. I even have a muscular male bimbo for a secretary, even if he is gay. You can't imagine what this is costing me in lost time, aside from dear St. John's astronomical fees."

Mark looked away and felt selfish for reflexively thinking of what all this was costing him, and not at all in terms of money.

"Then I met Cornelius. He's really a wonderful man."

"I'm sure you'd like him if you got to know him. Only you and he are… worlds apart."

She poured them both more wine. "Domestic little creature, aren't I? I'm starting to have the horrible suspicion that no matter how liberated I think I am, my gut notion's Norman Rockwell. You know, all those Saturday Evening Post covers when we were kids-don't make faces like that, I know it's silly. But I want to capture that feed."

She leaned toward him. He ached to stroke her hair. "Anything you want is fine. I want you to be happy." She smiled at him, sidelong. "You really mean that, don't you? In spite of what's going on."

He wanted to say-well, everything. But the words tried to come so fast they jammed tight in his throat. She brought her face close to his. Her mass of hair shadowed both their faces.

"Remember that guy I went with in high school? The big guy, blond, captain of the football team?"

Mark winced at long-remembered pain. "Yeah."

She laughed softly. "About three weeks after he broke your nose, he broke mine." She set the jelly glass down beside the futon and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Funny how things turn out sometimes, huh?"

His lips were numb and stinging all at once, as if somebody had punched him in the mouth. She slipped her hand behind his head, drew his face to hers. Almost he hung back. Then their mouths touched again, and her tongue slid between his lips, teased across his teeth. He grabbed her like a drowning man and clung, with his hands, his lips, his soul.

In her sleep, in her room, Sprout cried out.

They were both on their feet at once. Mark just beat Kimberly through the door of his microscopic bedroom. Lying on her own lumpy mattress, Sprout murmured to herself, hugged her Pooh-bear closer to herself, and rolled over and back deeper into sleep. Mark and Kimberly watched her for a moment, not speaking, barely breathing. Kimberly disengaged, went and sat on the futon. Mark practically melted beside her, reaching for her. She was tense, unyielding.

"I'm sorry," she said without looking at him. "It won't work. Don't you see? I've tried this. I can't go back."

"But we can be together I'd do anything for you-for Sprout. We can be, like, a family again."

She glanced at him over her shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with tears. "Oh, Mark. It can't be. You're too much the free spirit. "

"What's wrong with freedom?"

"Responsibility took its place."

"But I can be what you wannl I'll do anything for you. I can help give you shape, if that's what you need." Smiling sadly, she shook her head. She stood up, faced him, took his face in her hands. "Oh, Mark," she said, and kissed him lightly but chastely on the lips, "I do love you. But really, it's all you can do to get up feet-first in the morning."

She was gone. Mark lurched to his feet, but her Reeboks were already doing a muted Ginger Baker number down the stairs. He hung there in the door frame, heart pounding. He could feel it especially in the scrotum; his belly and inner thighs ached and trembled with frustrated tension.

He had almost forgotten what the blue balls felt like. This shit, JJ Flash said, has got to stop.

"Dr. Pretorius, what do you mean by appearing in my court like this?"

"You mean this, your honor?" He gestured at his right leg. The immaculately tailored trousers ended at the knee. The limb below was black and green and wanted like a frog's. Yellow pus oozed from a dozen lesions. Judge Conover's nose wrinkled at the smell.

"This is my wild card. It makes me a joker-except the condition is spreading upward by degrees, and when it reaches my torso, it will kill me. So I suppose it also qualifies as a Black Queen, albeit slow"

"It's disgusting. Do you intend to make mockery of this court?"

"I intend to display only what exists, your honor. Be it the physical disfigurement of a joker or the emotional and mental disfigurement of bigots who would condemn people for having drawn a wild card."

"I am tempted to find you in contempt."

"You can't make it stick," he said affably. "Jokers may not be enjoined from public display of their traits, unless these conflict with indecent-exposure laws. That's state and federal law; would you like citations?"

Her cheeks pinched her nose. "No. I know the law" He turned to Kimberly, who sat in the box as if she'd just been carved from a block of ice.

"Mrs. Gooding, you've been to court before to get custody of Sprout. What happened the first time?" Anger flared in her eyes. He let himself show a slight smile. Good Elizabeth Taylor. Before her John Belushi days, of course.

"You know perfectly well what happened," she said crisply.

"Please tell the court anyway." He let her see him glance toward the press-packed courtroom. He and Mark had awakened to headlines screaming TRIPS CUSTODY CASE LAWYER EQUATES ACES, DRUG LORDS and ACE POWERS KILL, ATTORNEY SAYS. He wanted her and Latham to know he intended to share the joy.

There was also an article that said President Bush, after specifically pledging not to do so during his campaign, was considering calling for a revival of the old Ace Registration Acts. Didn't have anything to do with this, of course. Just another sign of the times.

She folded her hands before her. "I was under an enormous amount of stress at the time. There was our daughter's condition, and marriage to Mark was not precisely easy on me."

Touche, he thought, not that it'll do you any good. "So what happened?"

"I broke down on the stand."

"Went to pieces is more like it, wouldn't you say?" Her mouth tightened to a razor cut. "I was ill at the time. I'm not ashamed of that, why should I be? I've had treatment."

"Indeed. And how else have circumstances changed from that time?"

"Well-" She glanced at Mark, who as usual was gazing at her like a blond basset pup. "My life has become much more stable. I've found a career, and a marvelous husband."

"So you would say that you can offer a far more stable home environment to Sprout than you could before?" She looked at him, surprised and wary. "Why, yes." He expected Latham to object right then, on GPs, just to break the rhythm of questioning even or maybe especially if he didn't know where it was headed. You aren't infallible after all, are you, motherfucker?

"So you are saying that now you are a suitable parent because you're richer? What you're saying, then, is that rich people make better parents than poor ones?"