Free Bitch Slap by Michael Craft Page A

then froze. “ Gill? ” she asked. “Gill Dermody ?” Without hesitation, she lifted her right hand. I presumed she was offering a handshake, but I was dead wrong. No, Glee raised her hand higher, stretching her arm behind her for a moment, then hauled off and smacked Gillian in the face with a fierce, stinging bitch slap.
    Gillian, Neil, and I watched in slack-jawed silence as Glee turned and marched out of the room, continuing through the foyer.
    Her heels snapped at the stone floor.
    I swear I saw sparks.

Chapter Six
    N eil and I struggled for words as Gillian Reece watched Glee Savage’s steamy exit. “I can’t begin to apologize … ,” said one of us. “I can’t imagine what got into her … ,” said the other.
    â€œWell,” said Gillian, lifting her fingers to the hot, red welt on her cheek, “at least the interview was mercifully brief.”
    Her calm reaction to Glee’s assault struck me as entirely out of character. I would not have been surprised had she torn after Glee, tackled her in front of the house, and thrown her to the ground, rolling toward the street in a maelstrom of thrashing limbs and torn hair. Instead, her stolid attitude suggested she had found Glee’s outburst unremarkable.
    I asked her, “What was that all about?”
    â€œWho knows?” Gillian shrugged. “No telling with that woman.”
    With a note of understatement, Neil said, “I gather you two have met before.”
    â€œWe knew each other in college.” She paused before adding a self-evident afterthought. “We didn’t get along.”
    Gillian made it clear she had nothing more to say, so Neil and I extended our apologies, then left.
    Returning to my car, we speculated as to the root of the enmity we had witnessed, but we could come up with nothing that would motivate the attack, especially from Glee, whose behavior had been consistently
ladylike and cheery during the entire four years I had worked with her. I told Neil, “Gillian doesn’t seem willing to enlighten us, but I bet Glee will.”
    â€œIs she in trouble?” asked Neil. “I mean, at the office?”
    Good question. “I want to hear what she has to say first.”
    Â 
    I didn’t think it would be productive to confront Glee with my questions right away—better to let her calm down. So I drove Neil downtown, dropped him at his office, and decided to explore the lead Esmond Reece had given me regarding Tamra Thaine’s makeover of a compound that lay just beyond the city line.
    Heading west on First Avenue (the Reece house was on the other end of town), I followed the main street as it narrowed, then curved, becoming a county highway. A few frosty nights had left their mark on the rural landscape, turning fields golden and treetops crimson. A blue, cool sky arched overhead with such pristine clarity, it was easy to imagine Dumont as the center of a benevolent universe.
    But something was brewing, at least in the cosmic sense, and I wasn’t sure what. My quiet, routine day had now been marred by several sour notes—all of them tracing back to Gillian Reece. Was I at last getting a peek at the real woman? Had my unflinching support of the merger with Quatro Press been premature?
    These thoughts were nipped as a sign came into view on the left side of the road. The rustic placard of weathered, silvery barn boards announced with letters fashioned from twisted twigs, DUMONT INSTITUTE OF EASTERN STUDIES. I couldn’t help musing that the name produced an unfortunate acronym.
    Still, it was infinitely more welcoming, at least to my eye, than the sign that had previously hung there, heralding A CHILD’S GARDEN, an unassuming name for a crackpot New Age day school. Shortly after my move to Dumont, I’d had some vicious run-ins with the school’s founder, a lesbian feminist named Miriam Westerman. Though I harbor no ill will for