High Five

'Shit,' he said, 'close the door, you big oaf.'

'What are you doing?'

'I'm doing lookout for your grandma. What do you think I'm doing?'

At the other end of the room, Grandma had the lid up on Larry Lipinski. She was standing one foot on a folding chair, one foot on the edge of the casket, and she was taking pictures with a disposable camera.

'Grandma!'

'Boy,' she said, 'this guy don't look so good.'

'Get down!'

'I gotta finish this roll out. I hate when there's pictures left over.'

I ran down the aisle between the folding chairs. 'You can't do this!'

'I can now that I got this chair. I was only getting the side of his face before. And that wasn't working good, on account of there's a lot of his head missing.'

'Stop taking pictures this instant and get down!'

'Last picture!' Grandma said, climbing off the chair, dropping the camera into her purse. 'I got some beauts.'

'Close the lid! Close the lid!'

Crash!

'Didn't realize it was so heavy,' Grandma said.

I moved the chair back against the wall. I scrutinized the casket to make sure everything looked okay. And then I took Grandma by the hand. 'Let's get out of here.'

The door was wrenched open before we got to it, and Stiva gave me a startled look. 'What are you doing in here? I thought you were leaving the building.'

'I couldn't find Grandma,' I said. 'And um—'

'She came in here to rescue me,' Grandma said, hanging on to me, making her way to the door. 'I was paying my respects when the alarm went off, and everybody stampeded out of here. And somebody knocked me over, and I couldn't get up. The midget was in here with me, but it would have taken two of them to do the job. If it wasn't for my granddaughter coming to get me I'd have burned to a cinder.'

'Little person!' Randy Briggs said. 'How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not a midget.'

'Well, you sure do look like a midget,' Grandma said. She sniffed the air. 'Do I smell smoke?'

'No,' Stiva said. 'It looks like a false alarm. Are you all right?'

'I think so,' Grandma said. 'And it's a lucky thing, too, because I got fragile bones on account of I'm so old.' Grandma glanced over at me. 'Imagine that, a false alarm.'

Imagine that. Unh. Mental head slap.

There were two fire trucks in the street when we left. Mourners were outside, shivering in the drizzle, kept in place by curiosity and the fact that their coats were inside. A police car was angled at the curb.

'You didn't set that alarm off, did you?' I asked Grandma Mazur.

'Who, me?'

*    *    *    *    *

 MY MOTHER WAS waiting at the door when we got back to the house. 'I heard the sirens,' she said. 'Are you all right?'

'Sure we're all right,' Grandma said. 'Can't you see we're all right?'

'Mrs. Ciak got a call from her daughter, who told her there was a fire at Stiva's.'

'No fire,' Grandma said. 'It was one of them false alarms.'

My mother's mouth had turned grim.

Grandma shook the rain off her coat and hung it in the closet. 'Ordinarily I guess I might feel bad that the fire department had to go out for nothing, but I noticed Bucky Moyer was driving. And you know how Bucky loves to drive that big truck.'

Actually this was true about Bucky. In fact, he'd been suspected on more than one occasion for setting off a false alarm himself just so he could take the truck out.

'I have to go,' I said. 'I have a lot to do tomorrow.'

'Wait,' my mother said, 'let me give you some chicken.'

*    *    *    *    *

 GRANDMA CALLED AT eight. 'I got a beauty parlor appointment this morning,' she said. 'I thought maybe you could give me a ride, and on the way we could drop the you-know-what off.'

'The film?'

'Yeah.'

'When is your appointment?'