The Sourdough Wars

and I wouldn’t be, but if I did that, I’d be giving up a part of myself, wouldn’t I?”
    Chris said, “People say they go to shrinks to find lost parts of themselves.”
    “Listen to Little Miss Schoolmarm. I don’t know how Peter could stand you. I like what I am, do you understand that? I like being famous and making thousands of dollars for lectures and having everybody coming up afterward and acting like I’m some kind of guru or something. I love it. That’s fulfillment, ladies. Don’t let anybody kid you.”
    “So why do you need to run a bakery?”
    “Fame and money are the best things I’ve had so far, but they aren’t enough. Fulfillment and peace aren’t the same thing. The bakery would give me peace—exorcise my childhood demons. That’s what I need instead of some tweed-wearing shrink.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “If you exorcise your demons, won’t you be giving up part of yourself? The evil chauffeurs you like so much?”
    “Maybe. But I’ll do it my way.”
    “It won’t work, Anita. Once you get it, it still won’t be enough. You’ll be just as empty as you are right now.”
    “Shut up! Give me that paper.”
    She took a step forward and I stepped backward. “You’ve got too much sense to shoot us. This is your house—how are you going to explain how we came to be dead on the broadloom?”
    “That’s my problem. Give it to me, dammit.”
    “No.” I stepped backward again and she took another step forward. Chris now had a clear path to the door, and she took it. She was out of the room before Anita could whirl around. When she finally turned, I attacked from behind—throwing my arms around her in what I believed to be a viselike, arm-paralyzing grip. She whapped me with one of the supposedly paralyzed arms, and, stunned, I fell backward, still holding on to her with one hand.
    She whipped around to face me, and then we were both on the floor, struggling like two galoots in a western, rolling over and over, me trying to get the gun and she holding on to it, never getting it into shooting position. We knocked the fire screen away and rolled closer to the fireplace.
    “Hold it, Anita,” said Chris. I was on the bottom, but I could see her standing in the doorway, pointing Sally’s gun. “Drop the gun,” she said. Anita dropped it.
    “Now get up.”
    Anita shifted her weight off my body, and then Chris yelled, “Roll, Rebecca. Your hair’s on fire!”
    I smelled it just as she said it. I rolled, and as I did, I could see flame at the ends of my pageboy. I caught the hair in my hand and mashed it into the rug, rolling over on it, hoping I wasn’t just burning up the back of my neck. I didn’t feel anything, but I guess I was still on fire, because suddenly Chris fell on top of me, smothering the flames with a pillow. The smell was vile.
    Anita recovered her balance and dived for the gun she’d dropped. Chris’s knee came up just as I sat up, hoping to get in Anita’s way. Bone crunched against bone—Chris’s kneecap and my jaw—and I lay back down rather hard.
    There was nothing to do but shoot, so Chris did. Or, rather, she tried to. She hadn’t taken the safety off Sally’s gun, or maybe it wasn’t even loaded—I couldn’t tell at the time. All I know is there was a very anticlimatic little click. And then Anita jumped on both of us again and all three of us were rolling.
    My hip landed on something hard, and then it was under the small of my back, digging in and nearly killing me. “Ow,” I yelped, and reached down to grab it. It was the gun, of course, and if I hadn’t yelled, I would have been the first one under my back, but I’d alerted the enemy and her hand got there first. She pulled at it, and I rolled off the gun toward her, hoping to knock her off-balance, but the gun went off. I stopped in midroll. The bullet had only gone through one of Anita’s nice walls, but the noise had frozen Chris as well as me. That gave Anita the split second she needed. She was in control again, the gun pointed at both of us.
    She got up warily, first on one knee, watching us like a mongoose watching two cobras. “Stay where you are,” she said, and sat on the edge of her desk, catching her breath. We stayed.
    “Rebecca,” she said at last. “Don’t bother giving me that paper. Pick it up and throw it in the fire.”
    The paper was crumpled on the floor. I didn’t move. The gun went off again and I could have sworn I felt the bullet