And zap.
Now she's feet away from the breaker box. Then, unfortunately, she moves out of view.
But it's clear where she is. And she'll be reaching for the handle now...
Yes!
Anticlimactic. But I see it's worked perfectly.
When she completed the circuit with her body the main line shorted out, extinguishing all the electricity to the house--the upstairs and basement and front door lights went dark.
I imagine I heard a growling buzz but that would have to be in my mind's ear. I'm too far away for that.
Goodbye, Rose.
Rising and hurrying away.
A block down this pleasant street I hear sirens. Getting louder. Curious. Are they coming here? Could it be they're en route to me?
Has Red figured something out? That I was about to visit the wrath of Edison upon Momma?
No, impossible. It's just a coincidence.
I can't help but be delighted with the handiwork. Have you learned your lesson, Detective Red? I am not someone to bully.
What a day, what a day.
He was so looking forward to getting home.
Dr. Nathan Eagan eased the big sedan through traffic in Brooklyn, Henry Street in the Heights. Not too congested. Good. He stretched, heard a joint pop. The fifty-seven-year-old surgeon was tired. He'd been in operating suites for six hours today. Two gallbladders. One appendectomy. A couple of others. Didn't need to. But the kid with the scalpel needed some help. Some medicine was about diagnostics and referrals and business. Some was about slicing open the human body.
That young resident wasn't that sort.
Nathan Eagan was.
Exhausted. But more or less content. He felt good, he felt purged. Nobody scrubbed and buffed as much as doctors, surgeons especially. You ended your shift--and it was a shift, just like an assembly-line worker's--you ended your shift with the hottest of hot showers. The most astringent of soaps. Your body tingling, a humming sound in your ear from the fierce stream.
The memory of the bile and blood washed away, he was now in his husband-and-parent frame of mind. Enjoying the pleasant drive through a pleasant part of the city he loved. Soon he'd see his wife and, later tonight, his daughter and his first grandchild. A boy named Jasper.
Hm. Jasper.
Not his first choice when his daughter told him. "Jasper, really? Interesting."
But then, seeing the wrinkled little blob before him and touching his tiny, tiny fingers and toes and delighting in the perplexed infant grin, he decided any name was wonderful. Balthazar, Federico, Aslan. Sue. It didn't matter. Heaven was here on earth and he remembered at that moment, eye-to-eye with his grandson, why he had taken the Hippocratic oath. Because life is precious, life is astonishing. Life is worth devoting yours to.
Eagan clicked on satellite radio and hit a preselect button, one of the NPR channels, and began listening to Terry Gross's wonderful show.
"This is Fresh Air..."
Which was when his car went insane.
Without warning, the engine began to scream, as if he'd floored the accelerator; the cruise control light blinked on spontaneously--his hands hadn't been anywhere near the switch!--and the system must've been instructing the engine to accelerate to a hundred!
"Jesus, no!"
The tachometer redlined and the car surged forward, tires smoking, rear end wobbling like a drag racer's.
Eagan cried out in panic as he wove into the oncoming traffic and, at the moment, empty lane. The vehicle hit fifty, sixty--his head bouncing back against the rest, his eyes unfocused. He slammed his foot on the brake but the engine surge was so unrelenting that the car slowed hardly at all.