“‘Take It Away, Horace.’ And it will be read by its author, Mary Alice Crane of Birmingham, Alabama.” Peggy Wright held up her hand dramatically and Sister swept onto the stage and to the podium. Peggy hung around for a moment or so as if there were some “absolutely best” she had forgotten to add, but a look from Sister sent her scurrying from the stage.

“I didn’t know Mary Alice was calling her story ‘Take It Away, Horace,’” Frances said while everyone was clapping. Whether the applause was for Peggy’s retreat or for Sister’s story being selected wasn’t clear. Probably both.

“She looks good, doesn’t she?” I whispered. And she did. The spotlight revealed a presence, a six-foot-tall, pink-haired woman in her sixties with 250 pounds packed into a green silk dress with supernovas exploding on it. If she was nervous, it didn’t show. She opened her manuscript, looked at the audience that immediately quit its rustling, put on her reading glasses and gave the best damn reading I’ve ever heard. The audience laughed so hard at poor Horace with his job from hell that she had to pause several times. But she handled that easily, sensing the right time to continue. When she finished, she and the wheelchair repo man got a standing ovation.

“She’s great!” Haley said, applauding enthusiastically.

“Great!” Frances concurred.

And she was, so good there were tears in my eyes that I realized were for the underlying sadness of the story. What a terribly thin line between comedy and tragedy. And Sister had walked that line with a perfect touch of black comedy. Damn, I was proud of her.

When everyone had settled down, Peggy Wright came back onstage and introduced Major Bissell. “Our own Lieutenant Major Bissell of the Florida Marine Patrol.” The crowd, warmed by Mary Alice’s performance, gave Major Bissell a good round of applause.

He looked pale, but if we hadn’t known he’d spent an hour or so in the bathroom, we probably wouldn’t have noticed. He had chosen to wear his uniform, and with his round face and thinning hair, the spotlight made him look eerily like a child in a man’s body, a looming child-man. He read slowly and in a sibilant monotone, probably because of nervousness, but it suited the material perfectly. For Major Bissell’s story was told from the point of view of a serial killer who drives the beach road at night, looking into the houses and condos, choosing potential victims, watching them for days, circling ever closer until he can stand it no more and strikes. There were many of us in the audience who realized his story was based on fact and that the killer had never been caught.