Tempted by Trouble by Eric Jerome Dickey Page B

with reluctance, while Jackie answered Rick’s phone in the same manner.
    In a nervous tone Sammy’s wife asked, “Is he there?”
    “No.” I paused and searched for words. “And he won’t be coming back here.”
    “Not tonight?”
    “Not ever.”
    “Oh, God.”
    “I’m sorry for your loss. My condolences to you and your family.”
    Grief filled her voice. I heard Sammy’s kids laughing and playing in the background. The news of a bank robbery gone south wouldn’t reach their local news. She’d had no idea that she was a widow.
    Nothing else to say, I hung up Sammy’s phone.
    Jackie finished talking to Rick’s wife about the same time.
    I asked, “Rick’s wife knows?”
    She ran her fingers through her hair and whispered, “She knows something is wrong. Rick was supposed to call her ten hours ago. He’s never late. I told her to not make any dinner plans because it might be twenty years before she talks to him again.”
    “Does your blood always run cold or do you keep it on ice?”
    She broke Rick’s phone in half. I did the same with Sammy’s cellular.
    She went to the kitchen and poured another glass of vodka.
    Then the early-morning bank robbery at Wells Fargo hit the news. It was a thirty-second report. The security guard was former military. They showed his grieving wife and let her talk about how her husband had served in Afghanistan and left there after three tours of duty only to return home and struggle to find a job, and end up gunned down his first week working at the bank in Baldwin Hills. Half the cash had made it out of the parking lot in the hands and pockets of the opportunistic. The anchor said one of the robbers was on life support.
    Jackie stared at the driver’s license photo of Sammy Luis Sanchez that was being broadcast on KTLA. It was a chilling confirmation of Sammy’s horrible death.
    I’d fallen into a trance watching the report. Rick hadn’t been identified. They had no idea who the second man was.
    Then I heard something that I never expected to hear. Laughter. There was a soft chortle. It sounded distant, but it was inside this room. I looked at Jackie and her right palm was over her mouth, muffling what sounded like misplaced amusement. What I saw disturbed me because I’d seen that wide-eyed look on the face of many people who’d lost their jobs. Her eyes were wide open. She was shaking her head and she wasn’t blinking. That laughter wasn’t the kind of hilarity that came at the end of a joke, but the kind of laughter that came at inappropriate moments, the laughter of pain and disbelief, the frightening kind that ballooned and turned hysterical and sounded like the opening bell to the release of the madness within. All day she had held everything in. Now, while we were in this space and away from the rest of the world, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
    She laughed and laughed and laughed. And when the laughter had moved beyond maniacal, it became so deep that she lost her breath. Jackie inhaled so deeply it looked as if she were suffocating, as if she were drowning in sorrow, and when she threw her head back and gulped air, when she could exhale and inhale, the laughter was gone, replaced by a series of curt screams that shattered any residual echo from the laughter, the screams icy and hot all at once, each scream reverberating and sending chills up and down my spine, that shrill the eruption of the inner volcano, the releases of pent-up denial and disbelief. She doubled over and when I went toward her, she moved away from me, stumbled into the kitchen, and picked up a plate. She threw the plate against the wall, and before the last bits of the plate had settled, she was grabbing everything in sight, began throwing glasses and knives and spoons before she turned over all of the food on the kitchen counter, threw things until there was nothing else to throw, and when that was not enough, she fought to breathe again, then went down on her knees, collapsed on