Elaine has started to move away. Without knowing, she has taken several steps back; she is drifting close to the edge, the yellow tape.
At the front of the crowd, Elaine sees Joan with Catherine Montgomery-their expressions frighten Elaine.
Daniel arrives with Willy. He ducks under the tape. "Mom?"
Elaine pulls him to her. Daniel's arms stay flat at his sides; it's the middle of the afternoon, they're in public, strangers are watching. Elaine squeezes him tight. "I hope I'm not a horrible mother," she says. "I may act distracted, but I do care-I care enormously. I care about the two of you so much that it's almost unbearable-do you know that?"
"I heard Nate's got a gun," Daniel says. "I heard he made a bomb."
"No one knows," Elaine says.
An ambulance pulls up and parks across the street. At a certain point it becomes hard to pretend that nothing is going on.
"Did you see all the people, Joan and Catherine? And Mrs. Hansen should be home from the dentist soon," she tells him.
The school bell rings, pealing, screaming, slamming off the walls of the empty building like an alarm. It scares the hell out of everyone.
"School's out," Daniel says.
"Excuse me," Paul says to the top cop. "Excuse me, I'm wondering if you could get this whole show to back up a bit. This is one of those games that kids play, and it's gotten a little out of hand. He's probably too embarrassed to come out. He's probably nervous as hell. You're making it hard to walk away. Could you ask them, could you ask everyone to take it back?"
Paul runs pathetically from person to person, begging them all to do something, urging them, imploring them.
"Patience is the key," the cop says. "There's nothing to be gained from rushing people to places they don't want to go."
"I just want it fixed," Elaine says.
The newscaster goes out live. "A disturbed little boy, a desperate cry for attention. A mother stands outside a school, pleading with her child. A hostage crisis."
"Can you shut up? Just shut up? You're making it worse. This is a private moment, and you're turning it into snack food," Paul shouts at the reporter.
"Understandably very agitated, the father of the boy that's being held hostage." The reporter speaks in a hushed whisper. "Two nine-year-olds in an afternoon showdown."
The heat continues to build. A thick breeze blows back the leaves, sweeping Elaine's hair off her face.
Jennifer has slipped in and is standing next to Daniel. Mrs. Hansen arrives with a wad of cotton still stuck in her cheek. "I came as soon as I heard."
Inside the classroom there is a dull thud, like the bang of a bass drum, a flash that catches the eyes outside. The cops duck behind parked cars, they draw their weapons, they aim and brace, ready to fire.
Inside the room there is a spray of sparks, a fountain of light, cascading colors.
"Fireworks," Elaine says, looking through the binoculars. "Fireworks," she says, remembering the time when the boys were with Paul's mother in Florida and Elaine and Paul stayed home and smoked crack. Elaine had the sensation of being a fountain, the fountain in front of the Plaza hotel. She was a Roman candle, a ball of light, a fantastic flame.
"Hold your fire," the top cop calls.
There are more small explosions-firecrackers snapping, a
couple of loud cherry-bomb bangs. And then there is a flood of yellow smoke. A sulfurous eruption, a urine-yellow cloud billowing, swelling, rising. Nate has opened the windows and tossed out smoke bombs. A diversionary tactic. When the smoke clears, the venetian blinds have been dropped and drawn.
The breeze shakes the blinds, they rattle-slithering snake.
For the moment, Elaine is only a witness. "There's smoke," she says. "Smoke isn't good."
"He's got asthma," Paul tells the top cop. "He can't breathe smoke."
The cops are too busy to listen. They are suiting up, putting on bulletproof vests, gas masks, riot gear.
Elaine looks out at the crowd.
Pat is there now, huddled with Joan and Catherine. "What can I do?" Pat mimes.
Elaine shakes her head-nothing. There's nothing she can do.
"This is exactly what I was saying," Paul tells the cops. "You'll scare them. You're scaring me. Right now, you and your men are frightening me. You're dealing with a nine-year-old, not some Middle Eastern mastermind. This is out of control."
"You can't guess what they're carrying," the cop says, tightening the strap of his vest.
"It's true, Gerald has all kinds of strange catalogs," Susan says.
"Remember the boy on Long Island who brought anthrax to school?"
"We have extra vests. If you want to put one on, you'll be covered if he fires out."
"He's not going to shoot us," Paul says.
Susan puts on a vest.
"This is not a movie," the secretary says, hiding behind her car.
"I don't care," Elaine says, refusing.
If Elaine were home, this would be one of those moments, time to do something different. She would step out of the house, she would stand on the steps, breathing.
A white truck pulls in. The back door opens, and men in high- tech uniforms pile out, carrying ropes and rifles.
"Is that the SWAT team?" Paul asks. As each new thing happens, the craziness compounds.
The top cop huddles with the SWAT team and the Bomb Squad, consulting the principal's diagram. "I want to close this situation down as quickly and quietly as I can." He makes his plan and then turns to Paul, Elaine, Susan-the parents. "We're going to send a little robot in. He's remote-control-operated, outfitted with a camera and a microphone so we can talk to the boys. He's unarmed. It's both an investigatory procedure and a negotiation tool."
"Does he have hands? Can he carry something?"
"Like what, a note?" the cop asks.
"Sammy's puffer," Elaine says, reaching into her purse, pulling out the spare, and handing it to the cop.
She watches them unload the robot from the back of the Bomb Squad station wagon. They set up a bank of four video monitors and walk the robot up and down the parking lot, testing the system. Before he goes in, the cop puts the puffer in the robot's claw.
One of the guys from the Bomb Squad, suited up like a scuba diver, waddles up the school steps carrying the robot in front of him as if it's a toddler.
He opens the front door and puts the robot down inside the school.
"Video up," the cop says, and four monitors fill with a robot's- eye view of cinder-block walls and bulletin boards. The picture is grainy, hard to define; the images look as though they're being transmitted from thousands of miles away, sent home from the moon.
The robot scans right and left.
"Let's go." Someone gives the signal, and the operator sends the robot forward.
"Take the first left and go down the hall," the cop whis- pers-high tension.
Elaine stares at the video feed; she fixates on the robot's claw, clutching Sammy's medicine.
In a gesture meant to be comforting, Paul reaches for Elaine's arm. He touches her-she shudders. "You frightened me," she says.
"Sorry."
Suddenly, the monitors go to what looks like a close-up of tile, a linoleum zoom.
"What happened?"
"Dunno," the operator says.
Two men from the SWAT team and the Bomb Squad guy go up the steps and into the school. A helmeted head appears on the monitors in extreme close-up. "The robot fell down," someone whispers into the microphone. "He tripped." The report booms out of the speakers, spilling across the parking lot.
The robot is set upright and is once again on his way. As the robot gets closer to the classroom, the cop starts to sing; a synthesized sound, like bad karaoke, comes out of the robot's speaker. A melange of Simon Garfunkel. "And here's to you, Mrs.."