She marched to her Cadillac and snatched the summons off the windshield. She violently wadded it in his face and stuffed it down the front of his neatly pressed uniform shirt, knocking loose his clip-on tie.

“Now you’ve done it,” Rhoad indignantly told her.

She flipped him a double bird.

“You’re under arrest!” he exclaimed.

Traffic slowed, people ready for a good fight on an otherwise meaningless Wednesday morning.

“Stuff it up your ass!” Passman screamed.

“Go, girlfriend!” a woman called out from her Acura.

Rhoad fumbled with the handcuffs on the back of his Sam Browne belt as Passman yelled more obscenities, her blood sugar dipping lower into its dark crevice of irrationality and violence as an audience gathered and encouraged her.

Rhoad grabbed Passman’s wrists. She kicked him in both shins and spat. He sputtered, wrenching her left arm behind her back as her right fist knuckle-punched him in the neck. Rhoad had not handcuffed anyone in many years, and steel cracked against Passman’s wrist bone as he snapped and missed. Passman howled in pain as he jerked and smacked and steel jaws finally locked around her wrist and bit hard.

“Do it! Do it!” someone yelled from a black Corvette.

Passman’s free hand grabbed Rhoad between his legs and twisted.

25

RUBY SINK’S ONE-year-old grandniece, Loraine, was running a fever and had kept her mother awake all night.

“Poor baby,” Miss Sink said over the phone. “Are you rocking her? Did you give her a baby aspirin?”

“Yes, yes,” Miss Sink’s niece, Frances, said. “I don’t know what else to do. If I miss another day of work, well, there’re plenty of people out there wanting my job.”

Miss Sink could hear Loraine squalling and imagined the child’s bright red face. Day care was out of the question. Miss Sink simply would not allow the sick child to stay with strangers, nor did she want Loraine to pass on whatever she had to others.

“I’ll be pleased as punch to keep her while you’re at work,” Miss Sink said. “And I bet you’re frantically trying to get ready even as we speak.”

“Yes,” Frances said in despair. “I haven’t even showered yet.”

“I’m on my way right now,” Miss Sink said. “I’ll pick up Loraine and we’ll have a grand day.”

“And if her fever doesn’t break you’ll call Dr. Samson? Just to make sure she’s all right?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Ruby.”

“I was going to get out anyway at some point,” Miss Sink said. “I’ve got only two dollars in my billfold and I owe the yard man and probably half of everybody else in this town.”

“You always say that, Aunt Ruby. The most broken record I ever heard. Mother said you were the richest poor person she ever knew.”

Miss Sink was saddened by the thought of her dead sister. Miss Sink had no one left except Frances and Loraine. Her spirit settled in that low place she could not tolerate.