The Sourdough Wars

sight of Chris and me stopped him cold.
    She was just stumbling out of the Volvo, crying and shaking as if she were the one with malaria, and my composure was slipping, too. I wasn’t yet at the crying stage, but my voice was a mouse squeak. Also, we were both bruised and, in one case, hair-singed.
    I pointed down the ravine and squeaked something about an ambulance, though I didn’t really imagine there’d be much left of Anita. The guy looked panicked. He was one of those slick, full-mustached dudes you meet at parties who say they’re “in real estate,” which is Marin code for “Back off. I’m a coke dealer.”
    “Where’s the gun?” this one said, and I remembered he must have seen Anita shooting at us.
    “I don’t know,” I squeaked. “Anita fell down the hill.” I gestured aimlessly in the general direction but couldn’t think of a single other word to say. I fell into Chris’s arms, leaving the slick dude staring after Anita.
    He stared for eight or nine millennia, give or take, before he finally said, “I think I see her. My house is just up the road. I’ll lead and you follow.”
    “I… no.” What I meant was that I couldn’t have driven if he’d pointed another gun at my head, but I couldn’t say it.
    He seemed to take the situation in. “Okay, give me your key.”
    “It’s in the car.”
    He got the Volvo out of the way, and then we got into the Mercedes and drove about another two hundred yards. His house was much like Anita’s, except he had tan couches instead of shrimp ones. Everyone in San Anselmo must have the same decorator.
    Chris and I sank into the couches, numb, staring into space, while he made phone calls and poured brandy. When we could hear the reassuring sound of sirens and had help on the way to our bloodstreams, our host said, “I’m Michael Watt. Do you want to call anybody?”
    I did. I wanted Rob, but I didn’t want the working Rob, with a photographer in tow and his mind on getting a story. So I shook my head. Chris didn’t answer at all. She seemed to be in mild shock.
    But pretty soon feeling returned to our fingertips and brain cells, and cops came in to get our stories, and I did bestir myself to call Rob. I didn’t ask him to join us; I just told him what had happened and said I was going to spend the night at Chris’s. Then I called Mickey and told her to call Mom and Dad—I didn’t have the strength.
    I didn’t want to see or be with anyone but Chris that night—I think this is often the way with people who’ve been through a disaster together. But I couldn’t drive to her house.
    We ended up checking into a motel. We could have gone to my parents’ house, which was near enough, but on the other hand, we couldn’t have. Not in our condition.
    Before I sank into my rented bed, I made one more phone call—to Rob, who was still at the
Chronicle
, still batting out his story, to let him know where we were, and to find out something. I had to know if Anita was dead. Miraculously, she wasn’t. But she had a broken neck and wasn’t expected to live.
    She did live, though, and is currently awaiting trial for the murder of Sally Devereaux. She is paralyzed from the neck down and will have to stand trial in a wheelchair. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I hope she will be spared her evil chauffeurs the next time around.
    Rob, of course, was furious that we didn’t take him with us to Anita’s, brushing aside our explanation that we felt the presence of a reporter might have been inhibiting. I expect he’ll forgive me sometime in the next century or so.
    My mom wrung her hands and cried, but my dad just hugged me, which was what I needed.
    Mickey took everything in stride, and Kruzick confined his remarks to my new hairstyle. My workaday pageboy, gutted by fire, had to be exchanged for a do that he said would have looked good on John Travolta. For about a week after I got it, he discoed around the office every time I came in.
    Tony Tosi arrived at my office one day with a giant gift box from I. Magnin. It proved to contain a black gabardine suit, which I exchanged for one that cost half as much plus a new rose-colored one for spring. I bought a frilly pink blouse to go with the rose one, hoping it would distract from the Saturday Night Fever look. Tony didn’t bring up the matter of the starter, but he looked at me so wistfully I said I’d think about it before turning him in.
    In fact, I discussed it with Chris. “Have you