From the floor the fat one said, “Aw, lady, it was only a freaking pie.”
“Shut up,” she said. “Shut your foul, stupid mouth now. You grunting ass. I will do everything I can to put you in jail for this.”
I said, “Linda, could you call the buttons for us?”
She nodded and went over to the telephone behind the counter.
Rachel turned and looked at the five customers and two clerks in a small semicircle looking uncomfortable.
“What are you people looking at?” she said. “Go about your business. Go on. Move.”
They began to drift away. All five customers went out. The two clerks went back to arranging books on a display table downstairs.
“I think this autographing is over,” Rachel said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but the cops are coming. You gotta wait for them. They get grouchy as hell when you call them and screw.”
Linda Smith hung up the phone. “They’ll be right along,” she said.
And they were—a prowl car with two cops in uniform. They wanted to see my license and my gun permit, and they shook down both the assault suspects routinely and thoroughly. I didn’t bother to tell them I’d already done it; they’d have done it again anyway.
“You want to prefer assault charges against these two, lady?” one of the prowlies said.
“My name is Rachel Wallace. And I certainly do.”
“Okay, Rachel,” the cop said. There was a fine network of red veins in each cheek. “We’ll take them in. Sergeant’s gonna like this one, Jerry. Assault with a pie.”
They herded the two young men toward the door. The fat one said, “Geez, lady, it was just a freaking pie.”
Rachel leaned toward him a little and said to him very carefully, “Eat a shit sandwich.”
We drove back to the Ritz in silence. The traffic wasn’t heavy yet, and Linda Smith didn’t have to concentrate on driving as much as she did. As we went over the Mass. Ave. Bridge I looked at the way the rain dimpled the surface of the river. The sweep of the Charles from the bridge down toward the basin was very fine from the Mass. Ave. Bridge—much better when you walked across it, but okay from a car. The red-brick city on Beacon Hill, the original one, was prominent from here, capped by the gold dome of the Bulfinch State House. The high-rises of the modern city were all around it, but from here they didn’t dominate. It was like looking back through the rain to the way it was, and maybe should have been.
Linda Smith turned off Mass. Ave. and onto Commonwealth. “You don’t think I should have preferred* charges,” Rachel said to me.
“Not my business to think about that,” I said.
“But you disapprove.”
I shrugged. “Tends to clog up the court system.”
“Was I to let them walk away after insulting and degrading me?”
“I could have kicked each one in the fanny,” I said.
“That’s your solution to everything,” she said, and looked out the window.
“No, but it’s a solution to some things. You want them punished. What do you think will happen to them. A night in jail and a fifty dollar fine, maybe. To get that done will involve two prowl-car cops, a desk sergeant, a judge, a prosecutor, a public defender, and probably more. It will cost the state about two thousand dollars, and you’ll probably have to spend the morning in court and so will the two arresting officers. I could have made them sorry a lot sooner for free.”
She continued to stare out the window.
“And,” I said, “it was only a freaking pie, lady.”
She looked at me and almost smiled. “You were very quick,” she said.
“I didn’t know it was going to be a pie.”
“Would you have shot him?” she said. She wasn’t looking out the window now; she stared straight at me.
“If I had to. I almost did before I saw it was a pie.”
“What kind of a man would do that?”
“Throw a pie at someone?”
“No,” she said. “Shoot someone.”
“You asked me that before,” I said. “I don’t have a better answer this time except to say, Isn’t it good you’ve got one? At the rate we’re going, you’ll be attacked by a horde of chauvinist cameldrivers before the week is out.”
“You sound as if it were my fault. It is not. I do not cause trouble—I am beset by it because of my views.”
Linda Smith pulled the car onto Arlington Street and into the open space in front of the Ritz. I said, “Stay in the
