Rough Trade

him to the ground without knowing where the gun was. Whether consciously or by blind instinct, Chrissy managed to shove the lead pipe along the seat so that it fell out with a clang and rolled toward me along the driveway.
    The rest happened quickly, actions taken without thinking and only processed later. I remembered the cold of the asphalt beneath my knees, how small rocks dug into my skin, the way the front of the Jester’s vest was stiff with dried ketchup that was suddenly mixed with blood as I took the pipe and hit him across the face with it.
     
    The aftermath of crisis is a fertile ground for farce. Chrissy wrestled with her air bag like a character in a cartoon, desperate to be free of the car and to reassure herself that the baby was all right. As she raced into the house I shouted at her to put the phone back on the hook and telephone the police. The Jester lay crumpled and unconscious at my feet, now rendered pathetic and ridiculous. The gun lay beside him on the driveway. I gave it a tentative kick with my foot to make sure that it was out of reach should he come to and was appalled to discover that it was a toy.
    I paced the driveway, still tasting the adrenaline in my throat and unable to be still. After a while my injuries began to declare themselves and I realized that I was getting cold. Chrissy came out and brought me a jacket, reporting that the baby was only now just beginning to wake up from her nap, having thankfully slept through all the excitement. Time passed and the Jester started to stir, so Chrissy and I dragged him back into the house and trussed him up using a roll of duct tape that she took from a drawer in the kitchen.
    Police or no police, the baby needed to be fed, so Chrissy stepped over the now squirming body of the Jester to get her bottle from the refrigerator and warm it in a pan on the stove. I found a bag of frozen peas, which I applied to the nasty bump that was developing at the back of my head. The peas had defrosted and the baby’d been fed, burped, and diapered before the police finally deigned to show up.
    They were two beefy officers in starched uniform shirts and wearing wedding bands. One of them had a thick mustache I suspected of being perpetually wet on the bottom from his lower lip. The other had a weight lifter’s build and a blond crewcut that taken together made him look like a poster child for the master race.
    They were so completely unapologetic about the delay that I was immediately convinced that it had been deliberate. Obviously the mayor was not the only city employee who was out to punish the Rendells. A week ago the police would have raced to Chrissy’s house if she’d called to say her kitten was up a tree. Today it took forty-five minutes, a call that there was an armed intruder in the house, and even then when they finally arrived, they were barely able to conceal their contempt.
    “Nice place you’ve got here,” said the one with the mustache, looking around. His name tag said Grubb. His partner’s name was Schumacher. “Bet you had to sell a lot of football tickets to pay for it,” he said, swaggering up to Chrissy and peering over her shoulder into the house.
    “So,” said Schumacher, casually plucking a toothpick from his breast pocket and inserting it into the corner of his mouth. “I understand you claim to be having some sort of problem.”
    “A deranged fan broke into the house and held us at gunpoint,” reported Chrissy.
    “Now why would a Monarchs fan want to come to this house?” demanded Schumacher insolently from beneath his crewcut.
    “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I suggested.
    “You mean he’s here?”
    “Tied up in the kitchen.”
    “Well then, he couldn’t have been particularly dangerous if all it took was two women to overpower him,” his partner observed condescendingly.
    “You’d better believe I’m tough enough to cause you plenty of trouble if you don’t knock it off and start doing your job,” I snapped, mentally drafting my complaint against the Milwaukee Police Department. Deutsch wasn’t the only person who could file a lawsuit in this town.
    Grubb walked up to me until he was so close that his chest brushed against mine and I could feel his nightstick against my thigh. I never realized how much easier it was to act tough when you were wearing a badge and carrying a gun.
    “What’s your name?” he asked, stretching himself up to his full height in order to better look down at