Irresistible Impulse by Robert K. Tanenbaum

said Tranh. “You are a good customer.”
    The school called Marlene’s office shortly before noon, and the answering service forwarded the call to her beeper. Edie Wooten showed her to a phone and went into the music room to play some Mozart to improve her mood. She had entered only a minute or so into that sunlit, ordered world when she heard Marlene shrieking from the other room. She put down her bow and went to see what the commotion was about. She found Marlene in the act of slamming down the phone. Her face was dead white, including the lips, which had formed a rigid line beneath flaring nostrils. Bolts shot from her eyes. She looked like a Medusa on a Renaissance medallion.
    “Is something wrong?” Edie asked.
    Marlene seemed to look through her. Then she took a long breath and said, “No. Actually, yes. A domestic thing. In any case, I have to go. I’ll be in touch. Work on that list of contacts. And don’t worry!”
    Then she was gone.
    Outside the building, Marlene did not wait for the doorman to whistle down a cab, but ran out into Park and waylaid one in full motion. It screamed off, with Marlene flapping twenties in the driver’s face.
    From his vantage across the broad avenue, the Music Lover watched Marlene leave. He knew who she was and what she was doing in Edith Wooten’s building. He was much vexed. Whistling the opening theme from Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in B-flat, he got into his car and drove off to the south .
    Lucy finished her soup and brought the empty bowl to the counter. She sat on a stool while several customers came and picked up cartoned take-out orders of noodles. When the place was empty again, Tranh lit a cigarette and regarded his guest solemnly. He said, “Now we must decide what to do. The school must by now have found you are missing. They will call your mother. Can you imagine what she will think?”
    “Oh, don’t remind me!” Lucy cried in English, and then explained, “Tranh sinsàang , my mother is a—I can’t think of the word in Gwóngdùngwá —she is a guard against evil people, so perhaps one of these may try to hurt her, or me. So she warns me to be careful. She will think that one of these has taken me.” Tears began again, and Tranh handed her a clean wipe rag. Then he placed a quarter before her on the counter and indicated the pay phone on the wall.
    “Take this and call your mother right away, and let her know you are safe.”
    Lucy hesitated. “Oh, but she’ll be so angry.”
    “Yes, afterward, but first she will be very happy. There is nothing worse than losing a child. What made you do this wicked thing?”
    “I told you, sir. I failed at my lesson and was afraid of disgrace.”
    “You failed? So? Did this not make you work all the harder so that you would not fail?”
    Lucy hung her head. Tranh said, “Listen to me. You are a clever girl, and things come easy for you. Therefore, when you need to work hard, you don’t know how. Thus you disgrace your family by failing, and disgrace your teacher by running away. But you owe everything to your family. Without a family you are a ghost person, nothing! Understand? Rather than disgrace them you must study until blood pours from your eyes. Go, call your mother, now!”
    Marlene’s knees gave way when she burst into her office and Sym said, “Lucy called.”
    “Oh, Jesus, thank you!” Marlene gasped and flopped onto the couch. “Where is she?”
    Sym told her. Five minutes later, Marlene was walking through the door of the noodle shop, thunder breaking around her brow. Lucy was sitting at a table sipping a Coke. Marlene nodded to Tranh and then sat down opposite her daughter.
    “Well?”
    “Guilty,” said Lucy, “with an explanation.”
    “I’ll hear it.”
    Lucy explained about long division and Mrs. Lawrence and the shame and what followed. Marlene lit a cigarette. Tranh brought her a grande crème . “Well,” she said, “guilty with an explanation is a plea on a misdemeanor, like