“That same court order says you can’t own a gun.”
“The gun,” he said, “was behind the counter at the Vietnamese restaurant in the food court, and I asked for it. It was Mr. Nguyen’s gun. And the cops are keeping that part out of the news, not to protect me but to protect him. He’s here on a visa, and owning that gun could get him in hot water with immigration. But go ahead. Make a fuss. Force the police to deport a guy who gave me the weapon I needed to stop a mass shooting. What a hero you’ll be. I want to talk to my wife.” He had thought this lie through carefully and felt it was beyond Frances’s limited powers to assault.
And he was right—she didn’t even try. Instead she went for the easier attack. “She’s not your wife anymore.”
“She is until I see the divorce papers.”
Frances inhaled. He could picture her perfectly, the slits of her nostrils narrowing at the end of that long, bent nose of hers. She had Holly’s features, subtly distorted so that she was utterly lacking any of Holly’s beauty. Holly had a soft, pliant mouth and eyes that shimmered with emotion and an innate desire to please. Frances’s eyes were dull and tired, and she had deep creases bracketing her lips. Holly hugged easily. No one would want a hug from Frances; the steely points of her hard little tits would probably leave bruises.
“Maybe you think you can use this somehow to get them back,” Frances said. “But it’s not happening. She’s not coming back, and neither is he. Not after what you did to them.”
“What I did today,” he told her, “is save lives. What I did today is shoot a madwoman before she could go on a killing spree.”
“You’ll have to shoot another madwoman before you get anywhere near either of them. Because you’d have to kill me to take them away.”
“Well,” he said to her, “that would definitely be a bonus, wouldn’t it?”
He hung up.
He didn’t expect her to call back, but the phone shuddered in his hand a moment later, before he even had time to let go of the receiver. Frances couldn’t stand letting someone else have the last word.
“Why don’t you rest your tongue,” he said, “for eating pussy later?”
There was an awkward silence on the other end of the line. Then a young man said, “Mr. Kellaway? My name is Stanley Roth, I’m a producer with Telling Stories, on NBC? Wow, it has not been easy to get your number. This is Randall Kellaway, yes?”
It took him a moment to recalibrate. “I watch your show. You did that one about the watermelons full of meth in Orange County.”
“Yes. Yes we did. Definitely our greatest claim to fame. Meth Watermelon is also the name of our office softball team. We beat the guys from 20/20 to win our league last summer, and I’m hoping to beat them again—in this weekend’s ratings. I’m sure they’re trying to get in touch with you to invite you on their show and talk about what happened today. I would be a very happy man if I were fortunate enough to get to you first.”
Stanley Roth spoke in such an exuberant flurry that Kellaway needed to go back over it in his head to figure out the guy was making an offer.
“You want me to come on your show?”
“Yes, sir, we do. To tell your story. The story of the good man with the gun. You’re Clint Eastwood, only for real.”
“Clint Eastwood is real. Isn’t he?”
“Yeah, well . . . yeah. But he gets paid to pretend to be what you actually are: someone who knows how to fight back. People feel so powerless most of the time, so overwhelmed by the forces lined up against them. They need these stories like they need food and drink. Stories about people who made the best, bravest choices when it would’ve been easier to fold, and who made a fucking difference. I hope you’ll excuse my language, sir, but I get really amped up about this stuff.”
“Would I have to go to New York?”
“No, you’d do it from there. We can get a local studio and tape the interview remotely. If it helps to nudge you in the right direction, I should add that Chief Jay Rickles has already agreed to talk with us as well and would join you in front of the camera. That guy loves you. I think he wants to adopt you. Or marry you to one of his daughters. Or maybe marry you himself. He talks about you in exactly the same awestruck way my son talks about Batman.”
“Maybe you ought to stick with him. He seems like he knows what he’s doing when he talks to the press. I’m not a public speaker. I’ve never been on TV.”
“You don’t have to be a public speaker. You just have to be yourself. Nothing to it, as long as you don’t think about the three million people watching and hanging on your every word. Which has still got to be less scary than running into a shop where a woman is killing people indiscriminately.”
“It wasn’t scary. There wasn’t time to be scared. I just ducked down and got moving.”
“Perfect. Oh, my God. That’s perfect. Get ready to duck again, because women are going to be throwing their panties at you.”
“I’m married,” he said with a certain edge. “And I have a little boy. An amazing six-year-old.”
There was a respectful pause. Then Stan said, “Did you think you’d ever see him again?”
“Not really,” Kellaway said. “But I’m still here. I’m still here, and I’m never going to let him go.”
They were another twenty minutes on the line, doing what Stan called the “pre-interview” and the producer filling him in on what the on-air discussion would be like. They would record on the afternoon of the tenth and air it that evening. “If you snooze, it ain’t news,” Stan said several times. Stan gave him some advice for looking good on camera, but it all washed over Kellaway without registering. When he hung up, the only thing he could remember was Stan’s forceful directive not to eat blackberries, because the seeds would get between his teeth and make him look like a guy who never flossed.
Once again the phone rang almost as soon as he hung up. He thought it would be Stan again, calling with some last urgent, overlooked piece of trivia. Or maybe it would be someone from ABC or NBC, hoping to book an interview for one of their shows.
But it wasn’t Stan at all, and it wasn’t CNN, and it wasn’t Frances. It was Jim Hirst. The call was grainy with hiss, and his voice sounded far away, as if he were calling from the other side of the world, or maybe the other side of the moon.
“Look who got famous today,” Jim said, and issued a dry, hacking cough.
“More like look who got lucky,” Kellaway replied. “I figured if someone was going to blow my head off, it would be over in the suck, not here at the mall.”
“Yeah, well, sounds like some crazy bitch shopped for trouble at the wrong place today. Got more’n she paid for, huh?” He coughed again. Kellaway thought he was a little drunk.
“You having some of that scotch I gave you?” Kellaway asked.