Mountains of Dawn

"Mind if I join you?" she asked.

"No, I'd be happy to have the company. Pretty quiet right now," Judith replied.

"Tuesday's usually pretty slow," Tanya said. She crumbled a cracker into her soup bowl. "You're a cop, aren't you? I mean, a police officer?"

"Yes, but I'm on leave right now."

"What brought you here?"

"Quiet. Peace. Lack of stress, I guess." Judith sighed.

"Oh, I just recognized you! It's been driving me crazy. I knew I'd seen you before." Tanya grinned. "You won last year's 'Guns for Fun' competition."

Judith frowned. "Yes. I love target shooting. I get a lot of opportunities to practice that, in my job. Some of them are the wrong kind of practice, though." She turned from Tanya. "I would rather have the kind of shooting experience that goes with winning contests." She glanced back, smiled. "I won the last four years-two firsts, two silver medals."

Tanya remembered her whistle of admiration.

Judith told her, over a period of several lunches, of her discomfort in her job as a police officer.

"I hate to hurt people," Judith said, her dark eyes filling. "I do what I have to do, but I don't like it."

And Tanya listened. She knew from experience the more she listened, the less she had to reveal about herself. No one need know how different she was; no one need feel pity for her. She forced Tanya into the background and refused to deal with her, while bringing out the other person's inner self.

Tanya leaned back and glanced at a framed picture hung on Judith's living room wall. She smiled as she remembered the picture's creation.

"I did it while you bragged about that awful idea of prying into the sacred inner thoughts of people, while trying to discover the criminal inclinations we all make a supreme effort to hide," Tanya had said, laughing.

Judith had pontificated on the subject of psychological profiles as a means to predict criminal behavior. "Nobody has to suffer because of crime, if we are able to prevent it," she said. Her eyes had the intent look of a zealot, her jaw set and determined.

Tanya, seated on the high stool behind the cashier's desk at the Gallery, had nodded, encouraged her rant. She stared at Judith for seconds at a time, then glanced down.

"Okay," Judith said. "What are you up to?" She stood on tip toe to see over the counter. "Let's see." She walked around the desk and stood beside Tanya.