Marcia Talley - Occasion of Revenge

We hurried back the way we had come, across Market Space and down Randall Street to the Academy, following a string of revelers through Gate One, several wearing hats made of recycled computer parts. A woman dressed as a parlor maid raced by with ice skates slung over her shoulder. “She’s going to the ice rink,” I panted. “Let’s try there.”

At Dahlgren Hall the public session was still in progress, and DKGB and the Kremlin Crew had settled down into a reggae groove. We took the steps to the second level of the Victorian-era building two at a time and made a quick circuit of the balcony, scanning the faces in the crowd as well as those skating down below. As I leaned over the railing, I half expected to see Dante and Chloe watching from the sidelines while Emily performed mohawks, crossovers, spirals, and simple jumps on the ice-as a faculty kid she’d taken lessons at Dahlgren and had gotten pretty darn good before giving it all up during her Dungeons and Dragons phase. We waved halfheartedly to a few friendly faces, but no one we were related to.

“C’mon, Hannah.” Paul grasped my upper arm and tugged on it gently. “Let’s get over to Halsey in case they make the game.”

I tagged along behind him, still scanning the faces in the crowd. At the field house, we stood outside for a while letting the fans flow around us as they arrived for the basketball game, but there was no sign of Dante and Emily.

Inside, the field house was packed. I wrinkled my nose at the odor of commingled sweat and old tennis shoes.

“Ma’am?”

The door attendant seemed to be addressing me. “Yes?”

“Your shoes.”

I stared down at my feet uncomprehendingly. The peacock blue T-straps seemed perfectly fine to me. “What about my shoes?”

“You can’t wear heels on the floor in there.”

“Oh?” I was too exhausted to argue. I slipped off my shoes and stuffed them toe first into the pockets of my coat, one on each side. “OK, now?”

“Sir?”

Paul sighed, slipped out of his Corfams, tied the laces together, and slung the shoes over his shoulder. Satisfied, the attendant waved us through into…

Cacophony!

The ja-bung, ja-bung, ja-bung of the ball being dribbled down the court. The thrump of it hitting the backboard. The whoosh as it streaked through the net. The sqweep of athletic shoes on the polished floor. Add the shriek of the whistles and the cries of the crowd ricocheting off the hard walls and high, rounded ceiling, and I wanted to cram my fingers in my ears.

Paul scanned one side of the field house and I took the other. I tried to take in every face, but with so many people in the audience, it was impossible. I looked at Paul and shook my head. Maybe he’d been wrong about Dante attending the game, and I’d been right, but this was hardly the time to say I told you so , not with my family in possible danger.

I located a uniformed security guard and explained that someone might be showing up to make trouble. I begged him to be on the lookout for a woman matching Virginia’s description. White hair like Barbara Bush, I said. She’s distraught, I said, and unbalanced. The guard nodded. I could practically hear him thinking: If there’s any nut here, I must be looking at her . “I’ll keep my eyes open.” One thumb hitched in his pants pocket, he was watching the game, not my face. “Anybody looks like that comes through, I’ll let you know.”

I didn’t know how it was possible, but the noise in the arena intensified. Wearing bright purple uniforms emblazoned with red W ’s and gold stars, the Harlem Wizards streamed onto the court and began their antics to the delighted shrieks of the crowd. While buzzers and whistles assaulted my ears, Paul slipped his arm around me and pulled me close. “I’m sure it’s a false alarm, Hannah, aren’t you?”

“But LouElla seemed so sure!”

“Like the smallpox?”

“I see your point.” We must have appeared to the outside world like a comfortably married, middle-aged couple, standing around looking for front-row seats.

Suddenly Paul’s arm tightened around me. “Look! There she is!”

“Who? Virginia? LouElla?” My eyes vibrated in their sockets as I struggled to look everywhere at once.

“Virginia! Over by the doors!” I followed the long line of Paul’s arm as he pointed across the court. So many people were to-ing and fro-ing near the entrances in a vibrant, colorful patchwork of winter outerwear that I missed her at first. And then it was as if a spotlight had been turned on: Virginia stood there, arms plastered to her sides, solid as a tree, her familiar white head shimmering in the blaze of lights.

I took a step forward and watched, petrified, as Virginia’s arm rose like a turnstile until it extended from her body at a ninety-degree angle. In her hand was a gun. She pointed the weapon toward a spot in the bleachers, straight at Emily, who was sitting next to her husband, bouncing little Chloe on her lap. In that split second, I realized I had been looking for Dante’s Santa cap, but he wasn’t wearing it. It lay across his knees and was no longer blinking. Dante was cheering for the players as they thundered down the court toward the basket.

I shouted “Look out!” but my cry was drowned by the screech of a referee’s whistle.

What’s wrong with these idiots? Can’t they see what’s going on?

Without hesitation, Paul and I dashed onto the floor and raced down the middle of the court toward a herd of basketball players stampeding in our direction. Emily turned toward me, her eyes wide. Dante stood, his hands aloft, frozen in mid-cheer. The crowd around him stood, too, roaring with approval, thinking we were part of the show-Mr. and Mrs. America vs. the Harlem Wizards. Someone started to chant “Go, go, go, go…” and then the rhythmic clapping began.

“Look out!” I screamed again as the Wizards streamed by us on both sides. “She’s got a gun!”

The crowd went wild-“ Go, go, go, go! ”

I raced toward Virginia, my lungs exploding, waving my arms wildly over my head. “A gun! A gun!”

Suddenly the mood of the crowd changed. The clapping became sporadic as first one section of the audience and then another realized something other than basketball must be going on. Heads turned this way and that in puzzlement and confusion. On the court, the Wizards froze. First a player, poised with the ball in one hand, about to wrist-flip an effortless basket. Then his teammates. Then a referee, arms extended, whistle dangling from his lips, who, thank God, called a time out. Screeeeeeeeeee!

I focused on Virginia. Someone had turned down the volume on the crowd, and in the muffled chaos she turned her head lazily toward me. But the arm holding the gun remained steady. I imagined her finger bearing down slowly, slowly, on the trigger and willed every molecule of adrenaline I possessed into the muscles propelling my legs.

All at once, an object hurtled out of the shadow of the bleachers and launched itself at Virginia in a streak of purple fury. A broad shoulder caught Virginia just below the knees in an NFL-style tackle that sent her sprawling. Virginia’s right arm shot skyward; the gun, gray-black and ugly, spun away, sliding across the polished floor and coming to rest against the athletic shoe of an astonished Wizard. “Gotcha!” exclaimed LouElla. In a single, practiced move, she twisted Virginia’s arm behind her back and rolled her over so that the other woman’s cheek lay squashed against the floor. By the time I reached her side, LouElla was sitting on the small of Virginia’s back, pinning her down.

“Thank you, thank you!” I drew in a ragged breath.

“Are you all right?” Paul extended his hand to LouElla, offering to help her to her feet, but she shook her head.