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“No,” Joey said, and she heard the screen door to the diner slap shut on his end of the phone. “No cops. I’m comin’ over.”
“What do you mean, no cops? I?—”
The dognapper stirred.
“Wait a minute.” Agnes put the phone on the counter and held the frying pan at the ready, hands shaking, as she craned her neck to look closer at the dognapper.
Young, just a teenager. Short. Skinny. Limp, dirty dark hair. Stupid, because if he’d had any brains, he’d have grabbed Rhett when he went out for his nightly pee. And now that he was unconscious, pretty harmless looking. She probably outweighed him by thirty pounds.
As she calmed down, she could hear Dr. Garvin’s voice in her head.
How are you feeling right now, Agnes?
Well, Dr. Garvin, I am feeling a little angry that this punk broke into the house with a gun and threatened my dog.
And how are you handling that anger, Agnes? I never touched him, I swear. The boy opened his eyes.
“Don’t move.” Agnes held up her pan. “I’ve called the police,” she lied. “They’re coming for you. My dog is vicious, and you don’t want to cross me, either, especially with a frying pan; you have no idea what I can do with a frying pan.” She took a deep breath, and the kid glared at her, and she looked closer at his face, and winced at the lurid welts of singed skin where the raspberry had stuck. “That’s gotta hurt. Not that I care.”
He worked his battered jaw, and she held the frying pan higher as a threat.
“So, tell me, you little creep,” Agnes said, “why were you trying to kill my dog?”
“I weren’t tryin’ to kill the dog,” the boy said, outraged. “I wouldn’t kill no dog.”
“The gun, Creepoid,” Agnes said. “You pointed a gun at him.”
“I was just gonna take him,” the boy said. “There weren’t no call to get mean. I weren’t gonna hurt him. I wouldn’t hurt nobody.” He touched the sauce on his face and winced.
“No, you just broke into this house to terrorize me with a gun,” Agnes said. “That’s not hurting nobody, that’s victimizing me. Do I look like a victim to you? Huh? You wouldn’t have tried this crap on Brenda, would you?”
He frowned up at her, the raspberry sauce crinkling on his face. “Who’s Brenda?”
“Everybody knows who Brenda is,” Agnes snapped.
She took a deep shuddering breath and reached for the phone again, and he rolled to his feet and lunged for her. She yelped and smacked him hard on the head with her pan, and he staggered, and then she hit him again, harder this time, just to make sure, and he fell back onto the floor, blood seeping down the side of his face, and lay still. She felt a qualm about that, but not much, because it was self-defense. Brenda would be proud of her, he’d broken into her house and she’d defended it, he’d scared the hell out of her and?—
Violence is not the answer, Agnes.
That depends on the question, Dr. Garvin.
—and she was not out of control, she was not angry, she was calm, she was shaking, but she was perfectly fine, and anyway it was a nonstick pan, not cast iron, so she was fairly certain she hadn’t done any permanent damage.
Fingers crossed, anyway.
Beside him, Rhett collapsed, overcome by the number of cupcakes still on the floor.
“I hate you,” she said to the unconscious boy. Then she picked up her phone and said, “Joey?”
“Don’t do anything, Agnes,” Joey yelled, the sounds of traffic in the background. “I’m on Route 17. I’m almost there.”
“That’s good,” Agnes said, realizing her voice was shaking, too. “He’s just a kid, Joey. He said he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody?—”
The kid lunged to his feet, and Agnes screamed again and dropped the phone to swing the pan again, but this time he was ready for her, ducking under her arm and butting her in the stomach so that she said, “Oof!” and fell backward against the counter. He tried to backhand her, and she swung the pan again and hit him in the head, and then she couldn’t stop, she hit him over and over, and he yelled, “Stop it!” and grabbed for her while she swung at him, driving him back toward the hall door, screaming, “Get out, get out, get out of this house, get out of this house!” as he lurched back, and stepped in Rhett’s water dish and fell back against the wall and then through it, screaming.
Agnes froze, the frying pan raised over her head as he disappeared, and then the wall was solid again, and she heard a thud, and the screaming stopped, cut off.
She stood there with the pan over her head for a moment,
