Kill All the Lawyers

Twenty-Four

It was dark, but the moon was three-quarters full-the waning gibbous, Bobby knew-so the yard was illuminated. Myron Goldberg spent a fortune on outdoor lighting, so the house was lit up, too. Bobby heard a whirring sound, followed by a whoosh. Below him, sprinkler heads popped out of the lawn like those aliens in War of the Worlds. A second later, water shot out, the spray chilling his bare legs. A dozen feet above the ground, Bobby was wedged into the crevice between the trunk and a gnarly limb of a mango tree.

Maria's mango tree. Bobby could smell the peachy aroma of the fruit, still green and hard. A wasp sat on one of the mangoes, antennae wiggling. Could the wasp smell it, too? It annoyed Bobby that he didn't know if wasps had a sense of smell.

Maria. Where are you?

While he waited, Bobby whispered to himself the names of the shrubs and flowers surrounding the Goldberg home. Even their gardener wouldn't know the real name of the honeysuckle with the flowers that looked like purple trumpets.

Lonicera sempervirens!

Then there was the bougainvillea vine with flowers so red, if you crushed them, the liquid would look like wine.

Maria! Where are you?

The wind picked up, rustling leaves. Bobby shivered and felt goose bumps on his legs.

If a goose gets cold, does he say to his mate: "Hey, take a gander at my people bumps"?

It was nearly midnight. Any minute now. The Goldberg house was dark except for the outdoor lighting that cast an eerie glow over the tree and the shrubs.

"When the clock strikes twelve, be there."

That was what Maria had said. As if he would be late. He'd been in the tree for at least an hour, and his butt hurt from the way he was wedged against the trunk.

"Should I throw pebbles against the window?"

"Totally old school, Bobby. At midnight, call but don't say who it is. Just say, 'Dance for me.' "

"What if your parents hear the ring?"

"I'll have the phone on vibrate, and I'll keep it between my thighs."

"Wow."

The conversation had pretty much left him breathless. Now he rehearsed his line several times, trying to lower his voice into a manly baritone, emphasizing the word 'dance' a few times, then the word 'me.'

"Dance for me." Definitely hit the "me."

The hottest hottie in the sixth grade was going to dance for him. She hadn't said "naked," but he had his hopes.

It seemed fair, Bobby thought. He had taught Maria how to divide decimals by whole numbers and how to change fractions into decimals. She had asked him if the quotient becomes larger or smaller as the dividend becomes a greater multiple of ten.

Duh.

He checked the time in the cell phone window. Oh, jeez, 12:03. He speed-dialed her number, listened to the brrring, heard her whisper, "What do you want?"

"Dance for me!" His voice cracking, but he got it out.

A light flicked on in the second-story window. Maria's bedroom. Bobby could make out a lamp near the window, probably on Maria's desk. A moment later, the light took on a reddish glow as Maria draped a red cloth over the lampshade. Ooh. This was gonna be good.

She stood in front of the window, her silhouette tinged reddish-black from the lamp, and she started dancing, moving her thin arms overhead in a motion that made Bobby think of someone drowning. If there was music on, he couldn't hear it. She slipped out of her top and turned sideways, her boobies the size of eggs.

Bobby heard his breathing grow deeper, and suddenly he wasn't cold anymore. He shifted his position between the trunk and the limb because of the tightness in his pants. But then new thoughts emerged, intruding thoughts, flowing like a river, breeching the dike his mind had erected.

That cloth over the lampshade. Is it cotton or polyester? What is its flammable rating?

And the lightbulb. He hoped it wasn't a halogen. Those babies throw off 250 degrees Celsius, which he calculated in about three seconds to be 482 degrees Fahrenheit.

Maria slithered out of her shorts, and judging from the angle of her elbow, her hand seemed to be in her crotch, but Bobby couldn't concentrate. He was certain that, any moment, the cloth would burst into flame. The curtains, the bedcovers, the wallpaper- everything would be ablaze. Would Maria even have time to run from the room? Was their A/C hooked up to natural gas? If so, he was sure it was leaking. The house was about to become a fiery inferno, and it was all his fault. In the window, Maria writhed from side to side and swiveled her hips. But in Bobby's mind, all he could see was an orange fireball exploding, tearing the house apart at the beams, incinerating Maria, her mother, and her father.

And that was when he screamed as loud as he could, "Fire! Fire! Fire!"