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chaser of melancholy. At the front of the room, a trio of elderly white men seemed to be playing “St. Louis Blues” over and over again. She shook her head at them with detached superiority and went on drinking.
    She was not alone for long. A young man spotted her, a medical intern who had been on the prowl all night. He stood at the bar, a scotch in his hand, and ran his eyes over her. Michelle had now unbuttoned the top of her blue blouse. Her navy skirt ended high on her thighs. The intern knew his business and sensed her mood. He detached himself at once from the bar’s brass railing and sharked his way toward her across the nearly empty room.
    His name was Clarence Hagen. He was handsome in a pretty way, with a lot of coiffed hair and a rakish smile that said: Sure I’m full of shit but ain’t I cute? He sat at Michelle’s table, bought her drinks and disparaged the flaccid-faced clientele until Michelle let loose. Then, expertly, healternately knit his brows with interest and reeled back in his chair at the clarity of her concepts. Encouraged, the drunken girl unleashed the flood of her wisdom, explained the culture of a continent to him in the comfortable, eager, machine-gun patter of her lost college days. Oh, Michelle knew he was a son-of-a-bitch. She was smart enough for that. But she thought that knowing gave her the upper hand. She felt cynical and sophisticated and devil-may-care, powerful in her freedom as she toyed with the man. She felt much better than she had since Alan had killed her sidebar, that was for certain.
    She and Hagen left the club together, his arm around her shoulders, her hip rubbing comfortably against his thigh. They got into their separate cars and headed out to University City, where Hagen lived. Michelle tagged after his Trans Am in her Datsun. She had to fight to keep the wheel steady and to keep her eyes open as she drove. After about twenty minutes, they parked in front of the three-story mock Tudor that the intern shared with two other young medical men. Young Clarence escorted Michelle inside.
    And there, he fucked her, pistonlike, quickly, in a bedroom downstairs. Michelle was so drunk by then that she started to fade even while he was still pumping away. She wafted to the ocean bed of her own mind and lay there with some other man on some future day when life would be simple and she would be loved. After a while, she noticed that Clarence, finished, was snoring on top of her. She struggled out from under him and curled up at the edge of the bed, as far from him as she could. She told herself that she still felt cynical and sophisticated and devil-may-care and that Alan Mann could go to hell and so there. She told herself that this was Life; then she passed out.
    And that was how the reporter for the
St. Louis News
spent the night before her death row interview with Frank Beachum.
    *   *   *
    Around six-thirty the following morning—just as Beachum was awaking from his dream—Michelle forced her crusted eyelids apart and wished, as Beachum wished, that she was in any other place. She recoiled from the sleeping Hagen as if he were a slug and stumbled, naked, into the bathroom, to piss and wash her face. She leaned over the toilet for a while, thinking she might vomit. When she didn’t, she stood up trembling violently. She was not a crier, but now she had to force herself not to cry.
    Hagen awoke as she was dressing. He sat up in bed, his head in his hands. Michelle buttoned herself up quickly. She could not think of anything he could say to her that wouldn’t make her want to kill him.
    “You want some coffee?” he mumbled.
    “Just shut up,” she said.
    “Hey!” he said. “What did I do?” As she walked out, he muttered a curse after her and waved good riddance. Then he dropped back onto the sheets with his arms wide, and his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
    Michelle walked out through the kitchen where Clarence’s roommates greeted her with a pair of