irst of all, Billie Hannah's a professional critic, which ranks her up there with serial killers and dead baby eaters. And what's with the two first names? The woman is a cow with bad teeth and body odor, and if there's a god, she's suffering from an itchy yeast infection as I sit here on the bus reading her column. She uses words like maladroit, clumsy, off the mark, and tells her readers my work is as cuddly as the latest round of anti-abortion propaganda. She can offer only two words for the gallery-goer. Don't go.

If I had it in me, I'd kill her.

The bus is filled with a handful of losers from my part of town heading north on Oak Lawn, zigzagging our way up to Hannah's hamlet in Highland Park. I've no idea what I'll do when I get there. I'd briefly thought of stuffing her critique, pages C2 and the continuation on C18, down her throat; but she's a goddamn elephant, as I said, and I might get trampled in the process.

I've got on your standard breaking-and-entering getup: black leotard body suit with matching black leather jacket that comes to my belly button. Black bra. Likewise the panties. I carry a black shoulder pack that never leaves my side. My watch says one a.m. If I get caught, I can always say I'm heading to a late-night aerobics class.

It turns out the house is easy to find if you're a jungle commuter or a mountain climber, but for a city girl like me it's not so easy. From Preston, where the bus drops me and a shaggy-haired college type who I hope isn't following me, I hike Beverly to Drexler and go left, in the dark and all uphill, clear to Mockingbird and back down again, and finally find it tucked in behind some trees away from the road on Stratford. No mailbox I can see, and I interpolate the address from the houses on each side, also without mailboxes.

The drive is faux-earth and must have cost a fortune to get the feel of a real dirt drive. I lumber up the path toward the house and now that I'm here, I feel stupid. I came because I was mad, but now I'm more wired than angry. For the briefest moment, I consider stalking into the first all-night Baskin-Robbins I can find, where I'll demand a fat scoop of Rocky Road from a narrow-eyed Pakistani with marginal verbal skills and call it a night.

The house is one of those semi-rustic, mini-mansions Dallasites are so fond of. Designed to look exploded or deconstructed or just plain queer for the sake of queerness. None of the lights are on in what I take to be the back of the house, which faces the street.

I sneak around to the front and see a light at the far end of a curved wall. Skulking to the window, I display all the grace of an earthmover and bang my shin on a garden gnome, a fat little guy with a red pointy hat. The window is high, so I pile some bricks from the flowerbed into a step. I peek inside a bedroom and see Billie Fatso herself and Mr. Fatso having an argument. Billie's seated on the edge of the bed dressed in a puke-green sweat-suit top and panties, her fleshy legs squishing out in all directions, her eyes on the wall of mirrors, shouting and pointing at Mister's reflection. He's still in a pressed dark suit, his tie not quite long enough to cover the hump of his belly.

Billie's worked up, her face blotchy, pacing back and forth in front of the mirror. She says, “I've wasted enough time! That's it. I mean it!”

Mister's got the casual tone of a man who knows a casual tone will drive his wife mad. He says, “What's wrong with wasting time?”

“That's a liberating concept,” she says.

“If people didn't need to waste time,” he says, “we'd be out of a job. You especially.”

“You have the gall to ridicule my career?”

“You write a hate column,” he says, “for wannabe intellectuals who are too lazy to go out and look for themselves. The more venom you spew the higher your readership.”

She says, “What, so now you're an avatar of the Populist conscience?” This triggers a new level of anger and Mister tells her just one more. One more word that sounds like it came out of her column and he'll smash her face.

“This coming from the self-proclaimed—”

And bam , he hits her in the jaw. She bounces off the mirrored wall and drops to the floor like a drunken whale. He reaches out to give her a hand up. Stupidly, she takes it and when she's upright, he slugs her again. This time hard, in the stomach and she lands face down with a clomp.

He saunters over to the walk-in closet and stands in front of the belt rack. Says something about the one he got for Christmas. You know, with that hideous buckle. The ugly one he said he loved. Billie's lying in the crease where the floor meets the wall not saying a word. She watches her husband stroll back her way with the Christmas belt. He raises the leather and spanks her across the legs. He catches himself in the mirror and likes what he sees, like a cowboy swinging a lasso. Then another, and another. She doesn't make a peep until he starts in with the buckle.

* * *

Now that I'm here, all I want is to run and as much as I despise Billie Hannah, this ain't right. I look around, spy the gnome with the pointy hat and grab hold of the hat. He's not nearly as heavy as I'd expected, but heavy enough, and I wing him through the bedroom window. And haul ass. Almost immediately, the outdoor lights go on and a dog starts to yelp. I trip over another lawn ornament—a stubborn little concrete angel—and land face down. At first, I don't move a muscle, laying there in pine-scented mulch, thinking, stupidly, that I can't be seen as long as I stay still. I freak when I hear the front door open. I pick myself up and aim for the road.

Within what seems like seconds, Mister is clamped onto me with chubby hands and stinky sweat so foul I nearly vomit. His face is pulsing like an exposed heart. He drags me inside the house to take a good look at me. Makes me stand in the middle of the living room while he pours himself a Crown Royal, neat. The living room is enormous and clinical, done up in shades of white.

Mister is panting like a worn-out dog. “Let me catch my breath before I call the cops.”

“I can call while you drink.”

He passes behind me and brushes a hand against my ass, says, “Anxious to get to your cell?”

“Your wife might need a doctor. And the police might wanna know how she got that way.”

He downs another drink and tells me that little trick I pulled could have killed someone. Attempted murder, seems like to him.

I say, “You want to dial, or should I?”