We said goodbye and he drove off as I went into the school and signed in at the office before heading downstairs to Laura’s classroom. When I got there, all the overhead lights were off, and I realized it was naptime. I opened the door and quietly maneuvered my way among the mats on the floor over to the table where Laura sat grading some papers. She looked up and smiled at me and motioned for me to join her in the small office next to the classroom. When we got there, she left the door open so she’d be able to see and hear her students. Then, in a soft voice, she said, “You’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine,” I told her.
“Good,” she said. “That’s what young Officer Jeter said when he showed up here late this morning. He said some of the Links had come calling at your place earlier, and nothing had happened, but Dennis, whom he called Detective Wilcox, wanted me to have a little company until you got here.”
“How was Todd with the kids?” I asked.
She smiled.
“He was great. Samuel asked him if he was the jolly black giant. The children loved him, and he seemed to have a good time with them, too, although I don’t think he was prepared for the constant energy level in the room. When we put the mats down for naptime, I think if I’d put four or five of them together for him, he could have gone right out himself.”
Then Laura looked at her watch and said, “Time to get them ready for our end-of-the-day activities. You game?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “And if you’ve got time, how about I follow you home and take you out to dinner?”
“Of course,” she said. Then, with that little-girl smile she gets sometimes, she added, “That’ll give me some time to think of some way to thank you for your part in watching over me today.”
I pondered several possible interpretations of that idea while I walked back into the classroom and half-lifted the first kid off his mat.
* * *
A couple of hours later, we were sitting in one of the large booths at the American Café at Monroeville Mall. They make a beef in puff pastry dish that’s as close to Beef Wellington as you can get in Pittsburgh these days, so I always order it when we go there. The chef even leaves the mushrooms off if you ask, which I do. Add a baked potato and salad, and I’m a happy boy. Laura ordered the Hawaiian Chicken Pasta and a small house salad with peanut vinaigrette dressing on the side. I’m not sure why she even bothers ordering the dressing, since she usually consumes, at most, just a few molecules of the stuff. I think she likes the way it looks next to the salad.
“So I’m asking the same question Dennis asked,” Laura said. “Do you think T-Man and his friends will be back?”
I finished off a mouthful of my baked potato and took a sip of Diet Coke.
“I doubt it,” I said.
“Even that Rodney, the one with the gun?”
“Rodney’s big and dumb and nasty,” I said, “but Anthony was right when he told me that Rodney mostly does whatever T-Man tells him to do. Rodney doesn’t act on his own, and T-Man, to use a term that was popular back when I was teaching, was just acting out when he decided to pay me a visit. He’s been getting a lot of grief from Asaan Witherspoon, and maybe even from some of his own gang members, about a truce between the Links and the Gates. Coming over to my place was probably a reaction to that grief, a way for him to reestablish some semblance of control.”
“But from what you’ve told me,” said Laura, “that’s not exactly what happened. I mean, didn’t you pretty much chase T-Man and the others away?”
“Not from his perspective. He’ll be able to say that he stood up to me and my gun and walked away unharmed.”
Laura thought about that for a minute.
“But what if he had told Rodney to shoot you?”
“The short answer is that I would have shot T-Man and then shot Rodney. The others, I’m pretty sure, would have taken off by then.”
I reached over and put my hand on hers.
“But I had a pretty good read on the situation, Laura. T-Man’s too much in love with himself and his power to risk losing everything in that kind of confrontation, especially when he sees a way out that involves making himself look good.”
She gave my hand a squeeze and said, “I think we’ve had this discussion before, and I believe I told you at that time that I wasn’t going to stop worrying about you.”
“Yes, you did,” I agreed.
She smiled then.
“So I’m a woman of my word.”
I smiled back.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
* * *
Later, when we got back to Laura’s apartment, she led me down the hall to her bedroom, where it took us about sixty seconds to shed our clothes and climb into her bed together.
She nuzzled my cheek and said, “Now, about that thank-you for watching over me earlier today.”
“Actually,” I said, “Denny’s the one who deserves your thanks. He called the sergeant and got a squad car dispatched to your school.”
She raised up a little on her side. The sheet was still covering her breasts, but just barely, and there was a little gleam in her eyes now.
“Why, Jeremy, are you suggesting we call Dennis and invite him over, so I can thank him . . .” and she glanced down at her bosom . . . “in person?”
“No, no,” I said. “In fact, I think the appropriate thing for you to do here would be to write Denny a nice little note, sometime tomorrow, on one of those girlie notecards. He’d like that. Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow.”
As if she hadn’t heard me at all, Laura said, “You’re right. I was forgetting the squad car and that
