Caught Dead in Philadelphia (20 page)

“All the same,” I said, “I need a minute or two to collapse. Cry. Disintegrate.” Which I did, more or less, and he held me, making low, soft sounds of Southern comfort until I was calm again.

“Come with me,” he said then. “I have to take care of some things, but I don't want to leave you.”

“You don't have to. You don't have to leave me. You don't have to stop her. She'll take care of it herself.”

“How can you be sure?”

“She told me. She won't face the shame. She has a gun. Dear God, this is so ugly. Every piece of it, even now, her last face-saving.”

The local police arrived before the guard's call summoned them. The echoes of the premature dismantling of the Main Line Charities Carnival had reached them. They left in pursuit of the decrepit gray Mercedes.

I became aware of two silent people nearby. Sissie, in her scarlet dress but without her wig, looked stunned. “Mother Cole?” she repeated several times to herself. She looked at Hayden. “I thought that…” Then she decided to let it go, and she stood, shaking her head.

Hayden said nothing. Perhaps his mother had been right. Perhaps he never would say anything, but his ashen face spoke volumes. I turned away from both of them.

“Can you talk about it now?” C.K. asked, and I nodded. I explained to him, then again to Beth and Sam, and then to a local policeman, what had just happened. By the third retelling, I got the thing down to a size where I could handle it. There were even parts I could laugh at.

* * *

“So now you have a story for your twilight years,” Mackenzie said as we got into his car later. “I can just see you with your great-grandchildren. ‘Hey, Granny,' they'll say, ‘tell us again how you stopped the crazy lady from shooting you.'”

“And I'll say, ‘Kiddies, sometimes it pays to have no class.'”

“They never taught us about disarming somebody by bein' uppity,” Mackenzie said.

“There are lots of things you didn't learn at the police academy, Coriolanus. How lucky for you, then, to be in the company of one of the world's finest teachers. And I do private tutoring, at home. I'm alive, and you're alive, and there's still enough weekend left in which to celebrate the fact of life.”