Mr. Murder

enormously to her thirst for drama.
        Emily shook her head. "Not Mrs. Sanchez. She's nice."
        "Nice people go berserk."
        "Do not."
        "Do too."
        Emily folded her arms on her chest. "Name one."
        "Mrs. Sanchez," Charlotte said.
        "Besides Mrs. Sanchez."
        "Jack Nicholson."
        "Who's he?"
        "You know, the actor. In Batman he was the Joker, and he was totally massively berserk."
        "So maybe he's always totally massively berserk."
        "No, sometimes he's nice, like in that movie with Shirley Mac Line, he was an astronaut, and Shirley's daughter got real sick and they found out she had cancer, she died, and Jack was just so sweet and nice."
        "Besides, this isn't Mrs. Sanchez's day," Emily said.
        "What?"
        "She only comes on Thursdays."
        "Really, Em, if she went berserk, she wouldn't know what day it was,"
        Charlotte countered, pleased with her response, which made such perfect sense. "Maybe she's loose from a looney-tune asylum, goes around getting housekeeping jobs, then sometimes when she's berserk she kills the family, roasts them, and eats them for dinner."
        "You're weird," Emily said.
        "No, listen," Charlotte insisted in an urgent whisper, "like Hannibal Lecter."
        "Hannibal the Cannibal!" Emily gasped.
        Neither of them had been allowed to see the movie which Emily insisted on calling The Sirens of the Lambs-because Mom and Daddy didn't think they were old enough, but they'd heard about it from other kids in school who'd seen it on video a billion times.
        Charlotte could tell that Emily was no longer so sure about Mrs.
        Sanchez. After all, Hannibal the Cannibal had been a doctor who went humongously berserk and bit off people's noses and stuff, so the idea of a berserk cannibal cleaning lady suddenly made a lot of sense.
        Mr. Delorio came into the family room to part the drapes over the sliding glass doors and study the backyard, which was pretty much revealed by the patio lights. In his right hand he held a gun. He had not been carrying a gun before.
        Letting the drapes fall back into place, turning away from the glass doors, he smiled at Charlotte and Emily. "You kids okay?"
        "Yes, sir," Charlotte said. "This is a great show."
        "You need anything?"
        "No thanks, sir," Emily said. "We just want to watch the show."
        "It's a great show," Charlotte repeated.
        As Mr. Delorio left the room, both Charlotte and Emily turned to watch him until he was out of sight.
        "Why's he have a gun?" Emily wondered.
        "Protecting us. And you know what that means? Mrs. Sanchez must still be alive and on the loose, looking for someone to eat."
        "But what if Mr. Delorio goes berserk next? He's got a gun, we could never get away from him."
        "Be serious," Charlotte said, but then she realized a physical education teacher was just as likely to go berserk as any cleaning lady.
        "Listen, Em, you know what to do if he goes berserk?"
        "Call nine-one-one."
        "You won't have time for that, silly. So what you'll have to do is, you'll have to kick him in the nuts."
        Emily frowned. "Huh?"
        "Don't you remember the movie Saturday?" Charlotte asked.
        Mom had been upset enough about the movie to complain to the theater manager. She'd wanted to know how the picture could have received a PG rating with the language and violence in it, and the manager had said it was PG-13, which was very different.
        One of the things that bothered Mom was a scene where the good guy got away from the bad guy by kicking him hard between the legs. Later, when someone asked the good guy what the bad guy wanted, the good guy said,
        "I don't know what he wanted, but what he needed was a good kick in the nuts."
        Charlotte had sensed, at once, that the line annoyed her mother.
        Later, she could have asked for an explanation, and her mother would have given her one. Mom and Daddy believed in answering all of a child's questions honestly. But sometimes, it was more exciting to try to learn the answer on her own, because then it was something she knew that they didn't know she knew.
        At home, she'd checked the dictionary to see if there was any definition of "nuts" that would explain what the good guy had done to the bad guy and also explain why her