“I think so,” Grandma said. “And it's a lucky thing, too, because I got fragile bones on account of I'm so old.” Grandma glanced over at me. “Imagine that, a false alarm.”
Imagine that. Unh. Mental head slap.
There were two fire trucks in the street when we left. Mourners were outside, shivering in the drizzle, kept in place by curiosity and the fact that their coats were inside. A police car was angled at the curb.
“You didn't set that alarm off, did you?” I asked Grandma Mazur.
“Who, me?”
MY MOTHER WAS waiting at the door when we got back to the house. “I heard the sirens,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Sure we're all right,” Grandma said. “Can't you see we're all right?”
“Mrs. Ciak got a call from her daughter, who told her there was a fire at Stiva's.”
“No fire,” Grandma said. “It was one of them false alarms.”
My mother's mouth had turned grim.
Grandma shook the rain off her coat and hung it in the closet. “Ordinarily I guess I might feel bad that the fire department had to go out for nothing, but I noticed Bucky Moyer was driving. And you know how Bucky loves to drive that big truck.”
Actually this was true about Bucky. In fact, he'd been suspected on more than one occasion for setting off a false alarm himself just so he could take the truck out.
“I have to go,” I said. “I have a lot to do tomorrow.”
“Wait,” my mother said, “let me give you some chicken.”
GRANDMA CALLED AT eight. “I got a beauty parlor appointment this morning,” she said. “I thought maybe you could give me a ride, and on the way we could drop the you-?know-?what off.”
“The film?”
“Yeah.”
“When is your appointment?”
“Nine.”
WE STOPPED AT the photo store first. “Do that one-?hour thing,” Grandma said, handing me the film.
“That costs a fortune.”
“I got a coupon,” Grandma said. “They give them to us seniors on account of we haven't got a lot of time to waste. We have to wait too long to get our pictures back, and we could be dead.”
After I deposited Grandma at the hair salon I drove to the office. Lula was on the Naugahyde couch, drinking coffee, reading her horoscope. Connie was at her desk, eating a bagel. And Vinnie was nowhere in sight.
Lula put the paper down as soon as she spied me walking through the door. “I want to know all about it. Everything. I want details.”
“Not much to tell,” I said. “I chickened out and didn't wear the dress.”
“What? Say that again?”
“It's sort of complicated.”
“So you're telling me you didn't get any this weekend.”
“Yeah.”
“Girl, that's a sad-?ass state of affairs.”