As she came out of the kitchen into the dining room she saw one of the Squirrel People on the other side of the room and something grabbed her ankle. As she tried to steady herself, something caught her other ankle and she fell forward, losing the handset as she went.
“Audrey?” Charlie’s voice over the phone.
“No, I’m okay,” she said. “Tripped. Just a second—”
Audrey twisted her head and saw one of the Squirrel People with a duck’s face and especially nimble paws pick up the handset and click it off. Then they were on her, all over her, the sound of duct tape ripping, tension around her ankles, tiny claws raking her, pulling her hands behind her back.
Mrs. Korjev led them up Stockton Street and into Chinatown, clearing the way through the crush of shoppers like a blocking-back, Sophie right behind her, and Mrs. Ling bringing up the rear, the wheels on her cart squeaking like distressed mice. At Jackson Street, Mrs. Korjev moved toward a luscious display of pears at the corner market, whose trays of fruit and vegetables ran along the sidewalk and around the corner for another quarter block on either side. Mrs. Ling went in low, did a quick hand-sweep that threw a competing grandmother off balance, and snagged the perfect pear before her opponent could do anything about it. Doing tai chi every morning in Washington Square Park to Motown songs with a hundred other oldsters might seem a waste of time at first glance, but when those slow, repetitive moves were cranked up to marketing intensity, only the grandma with the strongest kung fu would emerge with the perfect pear. Eat dragon dung, loser. Mrs. Ling dropped the pear into her cart and moved on to some bok choy of superior crispness.
Meanwhile Mrs. Korjev was quarrying carrots from a display, holding up one after another for Sophie’s consideration.
“No,” said Sophie.
“This one?”
“No, not big enough.”
The market owner stood at his scale, watching the systematic destruction of his carefully arranged carrot display with muted alarm, one eye twitching slightly.
“You want broccoli?” asked Mrs. Korjev.
“Is there orange broccoli?” Sophie asked.
“Green broccoli is good for you, make you strong, like bear.”
“But it’s not vegan.”
“We put on Cheez Whiz, make vegan for you.”
“Okay, broccoli,” said Sophie.
Sophie moved behind Mrs. Korjev, skipped around the corner, and yipped like a trod-upon Chihuahua.
“Hey, Shy Dookie.”
Instead of finding a new crowd of shoppers, Sophie stepped into a cleared space, a bubble of quiet, and in it stood the man in yellow.
“That’s not my name,” said Sophie.
“That’s my name for you,” said Lemon.
“Eat shit and die!” Sophie shouted.
Mrs. Korjev came around the corner like a mother bear, spotted Lemon, put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder.
“Sophie, is not nice to say. What you say to gentleman?”
“Pleeeeeease,” Sophie said, grinning at Lemon, unafraid.
“Know something, Shy Dookie, you ain’t the Big D no more. You ain’t shit.”
“You better be careful,” Sophie said.
Perplexed, Mrs. Korjev started to pull Sophie away. “You are nasty man,” she said to Lemon. “She is little girl, she not know better. You—you should know better.”
“Yeah?” said Lemon. He held out his hand to Mrs. Korjev, fingers spread, then closed it in front of her, like a starfish closing over a mollusk. Mrs. Korjev gasped, and collapsed on the spot. Sophie screamed, leaned on the fallen matron’s shoulder, and screamed some more. The crowd closed around them, their cell phones beeping for 911.
Sophie looked up to see the man in yellow strolling away. She made the same hand-closing gesture at him that he had just made to Mrs. Korjev. He looked back and said, “You got nothin’, Shy Dookie.” Despite the commotion and her own screaming, Sophie heard him as if his lips were pressed against her ear.