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“We’re canceled tonight.”
“What?”
“Anonymous caller says that if you speak, an outfit called DOOM—Defense Of Our Mothers—is going to storm the building with automatic weapons and grenades. Caller said mass casualties will result.”
Kate doesn’t so much climb out of the pool as erupt from it. Holly holds out a towel, which Kate ignores. “They’re shutting us down over a fuckingswatcall?”
“The callIgot came from the Chief of Police himse—”
“I don’t care if it came from the Pope of Rome! Killing my date over a goddam anonymous call? Trying to shut me up?” Kate whirls on Holly. “Can they do it?”
“They can. Public safety issue.”
“But if they can do it here, they can do it anywhere! You see that, right? Some dingdong makes one call and that’s all it takes to muzzle me? Bullshit!Bull… SHIT!”
Holly says, “When is your press conference?”
Corrie answers. “Four.”
“Make that point,” Holly says. “Suggest the police are capitulating to—”
“Suggest it? I’ll come right out and say it!”
Of course you will, Holly thinks. And she knows Kate is almost certainly right; there may be doom, but there is no DOOM. Someright-to-lifer made the swat call, or a Mom for Liberty, or a congregant at one of Jerome’s nutball churches. Of course it could also have been some high school kid doing it for yucks.
Holly speaks low and patiently, as she does with distraught clients, but doesn’t know if it will do any good. Kate isn’t distraught; she’s boiling. “My point is you have to protect the rest of your tour. This can even work in your favor.”
Also in mine, because the more police protection you get, the easier my job becomes.
Although going forward, she knows, the police will be more interested in protecting the people who come to see Kate speak than Kate herself. On the drive from Chicago, Holly has decided—reluctantly—that she will be continuing with Kate to the bitter end. Both her father and her Uncle Henry used to tell her that you don’t quit a job until the job is done.
Now Kate says, “Will it make any difference if I call the Chief? Tell him I’ll make his police force look bad, cowardly, at my presser?”
“The press has already been informed,” Corrie replies. “Chief Troendle told me that right away. He said if there was going to be a mass shooting, it wasn’t going to be in his town.”
Kate walks back and forth, bare feet leaving tracks that disappear behind her. Holly has never felt any sexual attraction to women, but she can still admire that trim, well-kept body. It doesn’t hurt that Kate is once more throwing off psychic sparks.
“Tomorrow is a travel day, right?”
“Yes,” Corrie says. “We’re going to Buckeye City. You’re speaking at the Mingo on Friday. Stepping over Sista Bessie’s band equipment to do it.”
“Got it, got it, but today we’re in Toledo. Is there a park where I can hold a rally tonight?”
“You’d need a permit from Parks and Rec,” Holly says, “or whatever they call it in this town. Which you won’t get.”
“So basically you’re saying Toledo fucked me at the drive-thru.” Back and forth Kate goes, hands locked together at the small of her back. She reminds Holly of Captain Bligh striding the foredeck ofH.M.S. Bounty. “Suppose we hold a rally anyway.”
Corrie’s expression says she already knows, but doesn’t want to be the one to say it.
“You could try,” Holly says, “but you might find yourself arrested and stuck here long enough to frack up the rest of your tour. Especially if someonedidget hurt. My advice would be—”
Kate waves her away. “I know your advice. Yeah-yeah-yeah, blah-blah-blah, write off tonight, protect the rest of the tour.” She paces, head down, long thighs dripping. “I hate letting those cocksucking motherfuckers win, but you’re probably right.”
“Lemons into lemonade,” Holly ventures, and braces herself for a McKay tirade. It doesn’t come. Kate is deep in her own head.
“Okay, here’s my line: The cops are giving in to one anonymous swat-caller as an excuse to abridge my First Amendment rights. Exceptabridgeis too fancy. I’ll say they want an excuse to flush my First Amendment rights down the shitter.”
Holly begins, “I think—”