Marjory is next to arrive, and she grins at me. I feel lighter than air again. I remember what Emmy said, but I cannot believe it when I see Marjory. Maybe tonight I will ask her to go to dinner with me. Don has not come. I suppose he is still angry with Tom and Lucia for not acting like friends. It makes me sad that they are not all still friends; I hope they do not get angry with me and quit being friends with me.
I am fencing with Dave when I hear a noise from the street and then a squeal of tires moving fast. I ignore it and do not change my attack, but Dave stops and I hit him too hard in the chest.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says. “That sounded close; did you hear it?”
“I heard something,” I say. I am trying to replay the sounds, thump-crash-tinkle-tinkle-squeal-roar, and think what it could be. Someone dropped a bowl out of their car?
“Maybe we’d better check,” Dave says.
Several of the others have gotten up to look. I follow the group to the front yard. In the light from the streetlight on the corner I can see a glitter on the pavement.
“It’s your car, Lou,” Susan says. “The windshield.”
I feel cold.
“Your tires last week… what day was that, Lou?”
“Thursday,” I say. My voice shakes a little and sounds harsh.
“Thursday. And now this…” Tom looks at the others, and they look back. I can tell that they are thinking something together, but I do not know what it is. Tom shakes his head. “I guess we’ll have to call the police. I hate to break up the practice, but—”
“I’ll drive you home, Lou,” Marjory says. She has come up behind me; I jump when I hear her voice.
Tom calls the police because, he says, it happened in front of his house. He hands the phone to me after a few minutes, and a bored voice asks my name, my address, my phone number, the license number of the car. I can hear noise in the background on the other end, and people are talking in the living room; it is hard to understand what the voice is saying. I am glad it is just routine questions; I can figure those out.
Then the voice asks something else, and the words tangle together and I cannot figure it out. “I’m sorry…” I say.
The voice is louder, the words more separated. Tom shushes the people in the living room. This time I understand.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” the voice asks.
“No,” I say. “But someone slashed my tires last week.”
“Oh?” Now it sounds interested. “Did you report that?”
Yes, I say.
“Do you remember who the investigating officer was?”
“I have a card; just a minute—” I put the phone down and get out my wallet. The card is still there. I read off the name, Malcolm Stacy, and the case number.
“He’s not in now; I’ll put this report on his desk. Now… are there any witnesses?”
“I heard it,” I say, “but I didn’t see it. We were in the backyard.”
“Too bad. Well, we’ll send someone out, but it’ll be a while. Just stay there.”
By the time the patrol car arrives, it is almost 10:00 P.M.; everyone is sitting around the living room tired of waiting. I feel guilty, even though it is not my fault. I did not break my own windshield or tell the police to tell people to stay. The police officer is a woman named Isaka, short and dark and very brisk. I think she thinks this is too small a reason to call the police.
She looks at my car and the other cars and street and sighs. “Well, someone broke your windshield, and someone slashed your tires a few days ago, so I’d say it’s your problem, Mr. Arrendale. You must’ve really pissed someone off, and you probably know who it is, if you’ll just think. How are you getting along at work?”
“Fine,” I say, without really thinking. Tom shifts his weight. “I have a new boss, but I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would break a windshield or cut tires.” I cannot imagine that he would, even though he gets angry.”
“Oh?” she says, making a note.
“He was angry when I was late for work after my tires were slashed,” I say. “I do not think he would break my windshield. He might fire me.”
She looks at me but says nothing more to me. She is looking now at Tom. “You were having a party?”
“A fencing club practice night,” he says.
I see the police officer’s neck tense. “Fencing? Like with weapons?”
“It’s a sport,” Tom says. I can hear the tension in his voice, too. “We had a tournament week before last; there’s another coming up in a few weeks.”
“Anyone ever get hurt?”
“Not here. We have strict safety rules.”
“Are the same people here every week?”
“Usually. People do miss a practice now and then.”
“And this week?”
“Well, Larry’s not here — he’s in Chicago on business. And I guess Don.”
“Any problems with the neighbors? Complaints about noise or anything of that sort?”
“No.” Tom runs his hand through his hair. “We get along with the neighbors; it’s a nice neighborhood. Not usually any vandalism, either.”
“But Mr. Arrendale has had two episodes of vandalism against his car in less than a week… That’s pretty significant.” She waits; no one says anything. Finally she shrugs and goes on.
“It’s like this. If the car was headed east, on the right-hand side of the road, the driver would have had to stop, get out, break the glass, run around his own car, get in, and drive off. There’s no way to break the glass while in the driver’s seat of a car going the same way your car was parked, not without a projectile weapon — and even then the angles are bad. If the car was headed west, though, the driver could reach across with something — a bat, say — or lob a rock through the windshield while still in motion. And then be gone before anyone got out to the front yard.”
“I see,” I say. Now that she has said it, I can visualize the approach, the attack, the escape. But why?
“You have to have some idea who’s upset with you,” the police officer says. She sounds angry with me.
“It does not matter how angry you are with someone; it is not all right to break things,” I say. I am thinking, but the only person I know who has been angry with me about going fencing is Emmy. Emmy does not have a car; I do not think she knows where Tom and Lucia live. I do not think Emmy would break windshields anyway. She might come inside and talk too loud and say something rude to Marjory, but she would not break anything.
“That’s true,” the officer says. “It’s not all right, but people do it anyway. Who is angry with you?”
If I tell her about Emmy, she will make trouble for Emmy and Emmy will make trouble for me. I am sure it is not Emmy. “I don’t know,” I say. I feel a stirring behind, me, almost a pressure. I think it is Tom, but I am not sure.
“Would it be all right, Officer, if the others left now?” Tom asks.
“Oh, sure. Nobody saw anything; nobody heard anything; well, you heard something, but you didn’t see anything — did anyone?”
A murmur of “no” and “not me” and “if I had only moved faster,” and the others trickle away to their cars. Marjory and Tom and Lucia stay.
“If you’re the target, and it appears you are, then whoever it is knew you would be here tonight. How many people know you come here on Wednesdays?”
Emmy does not know what night I go fencing. Mr. Crenshaw does not know I do fencing at all.
“Everyone who fences here,” Tom answers for me. “Maybe some of those from the last tournament — it was Lou’s first. Do people at your job know, Lou?”
“I don’t talk about it much,” I say. I do not explain why. “I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t remember telling anyone where the class is. I might have.”
“Well, we’re going to have to find out, Mr. Arrendale,” the officer says. “This kind of thing can escalate to physical harm. You be careful now.” She hands me a card with her name and number on it. “Call me, or Stacy, if you think of anything.”