IT WAS NOON when we got to Quaker Bridge Mall. I bought my shoulder bag, and then Lulu and I tested out some perfume. We were on the upper level, walking toward the escalators on our way to leave for the lot, and a familiar shape loomed in front of me.
“You!” Martin Paulson said. “What is it with you? I can’t get away from you.”
“Don’t start with me,” I said. “I’m not happy with you.”
“Gee, that’s too bad. I almost really care. What are you doing here today? Looking for somebody new to brutalize?”
“I didn’t brutalize you.”
“You knocked me down.”
“You
“I told you I have a bad sense of balance.”
“Look, just get out of my way. I’m not going to stand here and argue with you.”
“Yeah, you heard her,” Lula said. “Get out of her way.”
Paulson turned to better see Lula, and apparently he was caught off guard by what he saw, because he lost his balance and fell backward, down the escalator. There were a couple people in front of him, and he knocked them over like bowling pins. They all landed in a heap on the floor.
Lula and I scrambled down the escalator to the pile of bodies.
Paulson seemed to be the only one who was hurt. “My leg’s broken,” he said. “I bet you anything my leg’s broken. I keep telling you, I have a problem with equilibrium. Nobody ever listens to me.”
“There’s probably a good reason why no one listens to you,” Lula said. “You look like a big bag of wind, if you ask me.”
“It’s all your fault,” Paulson said. “You scared the hell out of me. They should get the fashion police out after you. And what’s with the yellow hair? You look like Harpo Marx.”
“Hunh,” Lula said. “I’m outta here. I’m not standing here getting insulted. I got to get back to work anyway.”
We were in the car at the exit to the parking lot, and Lula stopped short. “Hold on. Do I have my shopping bags in the backseat?”
I turned and looked. “No.”
“Damn! I must have dropped them when that sack of monkey doodie pushed me.”
“No problem. Pull up to the door, and I’ll run in and get them.”
Lula drove to the entrance, and I retraced our steps, back to the middle of the mall. I had to walk past Paulson to get to the escalator. The EMTs had him on a stretcher and were getting ready to wheel him out. I took the escalator to the second level and found the shopping bags laying on the floor by the bench, right where Lula had left them. Thirty minutes later, we were back at the office, and Lula had her bags spread out on the couch. “Uh-oh,” she said. “We got one too many bags. You see this here big brown bag?
It’s not mine.”
“It was on the floor with the other bags,” I said.
“Oh boy,” Lula said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I don’t even want to look in that bag. I got a bad feeling about that bag.”
“You were right about the bad feeling,” I said, looking into the bag. “There are a pair of pants in here that could only belong to Paulson. Plus a couple shirts. Oh crap, there’s a box all wrapped up in happy birthday kid’s wrapping paper.”
“My suggestion is you throw that bag in the Dumpster, and you go wash your hands,”
Lula said.
“I can’t do that. The guy just broke his leg. And there’s a kid’s birthday present in here.”
