George Higgins - A change of gravity

This must be the year I get rich."

"Then when Andy's eighty-eight, he sends his happy tidings, not by phone, by letter. He's getting' married. He's fallen in love with this forty-year-old broad "Elaine the fair," Lennie calls her who comes in every day and does his cookin' and his cleaning. Lennie thinks she probably performs other services of a more personal nature that a lonesome old bachelor'd enjoy, "like makin' sure he gets his cookies every now and then." Lennie's still very bitter. The letter said they were gonna get married that spring, asked Lehnie to be his best man.

That day Lennie looked like someone dropped an anvil on his head, and that's exactly how he looked today."

The judge had stood up at 10:43 and hurriedly retreated from the bench into his office, moving clumsily but quickly, making quite a bit of noise and plainly not caring that he did so, as though he had been suddenly awakened from a sound sleep by a strong smell of smoke and discovered the building on fire around him.

"By then it seemed like a good ten, eleven minutes've gone by after we first heard the shot," Merrion said. "I know it couldn't possibly've been that long, really, probably less'n a minute, but it seemed like a lot longer. We'd just been suspended by that sound, like a thunderclap so close the lightning had to've hit your house, right beside it anyway. It froze you. Everything just stopped, including time. My thinking did, anyway; I went into a trance; sittin' there totally stunned. Lennie came back to life first.

"By then I was facin' the courtroom. I'd been talkin' to him when the gun went off. That made me turn around. Now I hear this second sound behind me. I turn around again. It was Lennie, jumpin' out his chair, hightailing it off the bench. They must teach you that in Judge School. "A gun goes off in your courtroom, fuck everybody else; save your own ass first. Run like hell and find yourself a place where you can hide until it's over." No hero medal for Lennie.

"When he jumped up the chair banged on the Lucite pad it rolls around on. Everyone inna courtroom starts duckin' down. "Another shot" hadn't done that with the first bang; they didn't have the time. Lennie woke me up. "Hey, maybe I should get outta here. There could be more shooting anna next one might hit me." But I didn't; I just stood there. I was frozen.

"Then time started up again. It was like I hadda catch up on what'd gone on right in front of me. "Let's see now I was looking at him when the gun went off so my back was to the lobby doors. I turned around and this woman came flying through them, hit the floor, ka-boom."

Merrion clapped his hands. "Like that. She was lucky that was all the distance her husband got when he picked her up and threw her as we later find out he did after she shot him. Pissed him off somewhat, I guess. He'd gotten another foot or so on her, gone to a little more club, say, a seven iron, no question she would've banged her head on the end of one of those solid oak benches. Would've at least knocked her out, given all of us more time to figure out what she had in her hand and what we should do about it. Because as it was I didn't realize at first what it was.

"Then I think: "My God, that woman's got a gun. That's afuckin gun, her hand. She could shoot someone. That must be the sound I just heard."

"They never could fool you, Amby," Hilliard said, digging into a large mound of chicken salad on a bed of lettuce, flanked by three small bunches of fat tawny grapes. Merrion had sent his steak back as over-cooked and was waiting for a plate of chicken salad.

"Not a chance," Merrion said. "I know what's go in' on, 'specially when I've got my eyes open and it's happening right in front of me. So I grab the phone on the desk and punch in 0, and, wonder of wonders, someone was actually there, and picked up, on the other end of the line.

"Inna courthouse, this is astonishing, much more unusal'n having someone shoot a gun off. But there she was; Corinne was on the case. I could hear her breathing. I couldn't believe it. She must've also been in a state of suspended animation. That's the only way, account for her being there and picking up and breathing loud enough for me to hear her. The switchboard's right there inna cubicle right off the main foyer; shot must've been even louder — she may even've seen the shot fired. But I'm givin' her the news just the same, I am makin' it official; I say "Corinne, calla cops up in here quick, annie EMTs too.

Got a shootin on our hands here."

"And she said: "Huh7. Who is this?" Like she's gonna hafta think about this; decide whether she oughta do it. Not someone in authority, she wont. I say: "Never mind who it is, Kreen, this's Amby." I'm not making any more sense'n absolutely necessary either. "Calla fuckin' cops annie EMTs, for Christ sake. You wanna just do that for me?" And I guess she decides I am okay. She said, "All right, I'll do that right now."

"Then I put the phone down and it dawns on me we gotta whole buncha cops right inna courtroom. I see one of the locals, some case onna list, is usin' his handheld radio. It's not close to lunch yet, so I assume he's not orderin' pizza from Domino's; he's callinah station to tell 'em what happened. So I didn't need to get Corinne involved in this at all. That's when I realized I'd been in some kind of funk.

Just standin' there, lookin' stupid, and the woman on the floor with the gun starts rollin' over now, on her right side. She's checking to see if she's hurt. Had all the wind knocked out of her, most likely, but now she's startin' to think about possibly getting up on her feet.

Still got the gun in her hand, so if getting' off another shot or two is something she'd like to do now, that is a viable option. Assuming it's still got some bullets in it, but one shot's all we've heard so the chances are it has all the equipment she needs.

"At this point I notice two Statics who're also most likely also in for cases have come to their senses. Prolly only a few seconds've gone by since Sheila came flyin' in the courtroom, just seemed like a year or two. The two Statics're sittin' onna left inna row ah chairs just inside the railing. Now they're outta their chairs, bustin' their way through the people inna room. And they land on her like a big pair of bears and take the gun away from her. Those guys knew what they were doing. One of them held his gun on her, stomped on her right wrist on the floor so she couldn't move it, and the other one bent over and pried the gun out of it.

"You can see that I am finding it very hard to do serious thinking at this point, even though as a general rule I'm not bad at it. But I'm gradually getting' the hang of it back. I first see her start scrabblin' around onna floor, I don't like the looks of it. I know there is some reason why I do not want this woman getting up from off the floor with that pistol in her hand. Now I'm figuring it out. She may be a perfectly nice lady, neighbors all speak well of her; but she also may decide to shoot me, and I don't want that to happen. I am now very clear on that.

"What I'm not clear on yet is what I should do so that wont happen. And I know that if you're not an expert, trained to handle the kind of dangerous situation you're in, you shouldn't do anything. Otherwise you're liable to do more harm'n good. Everybody knows that. Moving an accident victim: they've been tellin' us since grade school that unless you're an expert, never move an injured person 'less you gotta: if you don't he'll burn to death, or there'll be an explosion that'll blow him all to bits. You move him when you don't hafta and you paralyze his back. He will sue your sorry ass to Jerusalem, and you'll wish you'd stood back and watched the fucking bastard die. Maybe tossed a match or something. So, knowing that, I just stood there, deer-in-the-headlights."