Chris Grabenstein - Mad Mouse

It could have been worse.

Katie's feeling better. She sits up in her bed, pillows propped behind her back. I brought along a take-out box of Labor Day barbecue for her. Ribs. Baked beans. Cole slaw. Corn bread. But she doesn't eat any of it. I don't blame her. I can't eat tonight, either.

The doctors aren't sure yet if the sniper bullet did any permanent damage to Katie's spinal cord. They do know she'll be in a wheelchair for a while. That's cool with me. I can handle wheelchairs. Just ask Jimmy.

Katie tells us how she listened to some of the concert on a radio her nurse friend smuggled into the room.

“And then the power went out on the bandstand. That was weird.”

“Totally.” Jess agrees.

So does Becca. “Extremely random.”

“You'd think they would have made proper arrangements prior to the event,” adds Olivia.

Power outages. This is the kind of stuff you talk about when the important stuff you should be talking about is still too raw. It's like the weather. You can talk about it without thinking about what you did ten years back when you were a kid learning how to be cool. August 28, 1996. Oak Beach. The end of summer. The Marshmallow Crew. We have our memories. The mad mouse has his.

“You ready?” Katie asks, looking at me with her sweet green eyes, still a little fuzzy from all the drugs being pumped into her veins. “Tomorrow's the big day.”

I feel like saying, Today was big enough. Instead, I say, “Yeah.”

Katie smiles.

“That's right!” Becca tries to perk up the room. “Tomorrow, you can officially fix all my parking tickets!”

“Nah, he'll be too busy,” says Jess. “Officially eating doughnuts. Hanging out at the Qwick Pick.”

I snuffle a laugh. So does Olivia. But the mood in the room? It's not exactly elevated. A week ago? We would have immediately launched into a round-robin debate, riffing on the relative merits of Krispy Kreme versus Dunkin’ Donuts, glazed versus cake. Today, we all just get real quiet again. We listen to the air conditioner humming under the window and think.

Mook. Wheezer. Weese.

Natalia Shevlyakova Weese quit firing her machine gun when those paintballs splattered in her eyes. She couldn't see so she kicked and screamed, but she didn't squeeze her trigger anymore. Her hands were busy, pounding the sides of the cargo carrier while she yelled something about “fucking American assholes.”

That's when Ceepak put down the paintball rifle, pulled out his pistol, and steadied his firing stance in the open door of the Pepsi truck. I moved to the passenger side of the minivan, near the latch for the cargo carrier.

“On me,” he said. Army talk. Meant to wait for his command.

He held his pistol with both hands in front of him. Aimed it down at the Thule luggage tube.

“Go,” he said.

I popped open the snap, flung up the lid like I was flipping open a coffin.

“Freeze!” Ceepak yelled, jutting his pistol forward and down, ready to fire if Natalia made one wrong move.

She didn't.

She put her hands behind her head. It was over. Guess Russians are realists. Fatalistic. Must be those long, cold winters.

The first thing I noticed when I raised that lid was the stench. The trapped heat had made quite a stew in there. Gunpowder, B.O., hot urine. Seems Natalia had been locked inside her secret sauna for quite some time.

I also noticed that she had a machine gun instead of an M-24 sniper rifle. It was one of those long-muzzled jobs with a belt of pointy-tipped bullets feeding into its side. The belt was very long. If Natalia had opened fire, if Ceepak hadn't blocked her with the Pepsi truck, Saltwater Tammy's son wouldn't have been the only one mowed down. Natalia would have sprayed the whole boardwalk, might've broken that other Russian lady's record for outdoor sniping casualties.

We cuffed her and hauled her to the house. After we locked her up, we went up front to report in with the desk sergeant. He had a radio playing. WAVY. Their news update featured a short interview with Chief Baines.

The reporter asked the chief about the “slight commotion” he had heard in the parking lot earlier.

“Teenagers playing with firecrackers,” Baines replied, his voice strong and confident again. “Another unfortunate consequence of-”

Ceepak and I finished for him: “underage drinking!”

Then, Ceepak laughed. A bigger laugh than I've ever heard him laugh before, like he was letting loose all the pressure that had built up over the past few days, letting it out in one incredible, rib-splitting rumble.

When he was done, he took a deep breath and turned to me. Shook my hand.

“You did good out there today, Danny.”

“Thank you.”

“Real good.”

Tuesday morning. The day after Labor Day. My first day as a full-time cop.

I head to the house, figuring there are official papers to sign, W-2s to fill out, orientation videos to watch.

Instead, Chief Baines sees me, calls me into his office.

“Officer Boyle?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You did a fantastic job yesterday.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Take today off. You earned it.”

He salutes. I salute. That's that. My first day on the job? It's a day off.

I leave the chief's office, head up to the front desk.

“Have you seen Ceepak?” I ask Gus.

“He's off. Make-good for working the holiday.”

“Oh. Right.”

I check my watch. 8:15 A.M. I guess I could head home, take a nap. Katie's still at the hospital, so I could …

“I hear he has a date,” Gus says.

“Ceepak?”

“Meeting a young lady friend for breakfast.”

“Really?”

This could be fun.

“Where?”

“The Pig's Commitment. Best scrapple in town.”

Now that Gus mentions everybody's favorite breakfast meat, I realize I'm kind of hungry.

I head out the door.

Rita Lapczynski, the pretty thirtysomething waitress from Morgan's Surf and Turf, is sitting by herself in a booth sipping coffee from a curve-handled mug.

Great. Their first date and Ceepak stands her up. My man has much to learn. Perhaps I can teach him. I have more experience in modern dating etiquette. Might be the one area where I'm the Zen master and he can be Grasshopper.

“Hello, Danny,” Rita says when I walk to her table. “Have you eaten yet?”

“No.”

“Sit down then.”

“You all alone?”

“I sure am.” She sounds chipper. Happy about it. “Sit down.”

“Okay.”

“Have you ever had the blueberry pancakes here?” she asks.

“Sure. You ought to try them. The blueberries are baked into the batter, not just, you know, clumped on top.”

This is kind of awkward. It's like I'm on a date with Ceepak's date.

“I know,” Rita says. “That's what I had.”

“Oh. You already ate?”

“We finished a while ago.”

“You and T. J.?”

“And John.”

“Ceepak?”

She laughs. “Does everybody call him by his last name?”

“Most everybody.”

“Ceepak,” she says it out loud, trying it on for size. “I just hope he doesn't start calling me Lapczynski. Doesn't have the same ring. Lapczynski.”

“No,” I laugh. “Guess not.”

Rita looks rested this morning. Her eyes don't seem so sad or weary.

“Is Ceepak still here?” I ask.

“Mmm-hmm.” She gestures over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “Out back. You should go say hey.”

“Yeah.”

I stand up.

“You want me to order those pancakes for you when the waitress comes by?”

“That'd be great. But please-no scrapple.”

“You don't know what you're missing,” she jokes.

“Yes, I do.”