Prime Cut by Diane Mott Davidson

was two feet from Tom, Fuller staggered.
     
     
"You're incompetent, Schulz," Fuller crowed once he'd recovered. "How many times have we gone over this?"
     
     
"Are you saying I can't do my job?" Tom replied, undeterred.
     
     
Fuller hunched his shoulders, as if he were gathering himself into a cannonball. "I'm saying what I've said lots of times before, that I'm your boss. You just don't seem to be able to accept it. Maybe it's time you did." Tom glared at him.
     
     
"Stop, please stop," I cried. I looked frantically down at the first car. The Windows were up. The motor was running. There was no way the other cops would hear me if I called for them to come intervene. "There's no reason to - "
     
     
"Shut up!" Fuller barked at me. I I'd heard about their arguments before: Tom had told me how vicious and unreasonable Fuller could be. But, I'd never witnessed one of their conflicts. And this one was getting out of control. God forbid that Fuller would lay a finger on Tom. If Fuller were that foolish, my husband would manhandle him so quickly that Fuller would wish he'd bypassed law enforcement altogether.
     
     
"Fuller," said Tom, "get into your car. Get the hell away from this crime scene."
     
     
"You are intent on ruining this case for me!" Fuller's indignant voice howled. His hands were clenched into tight fists.
     
     
"No," I whispered. "Don't - "
     
     
"Aren't you?" Fuller cried, lunging toward Tom.
     
     
Without thinking, I jumped between them.
     
     
"No!"
     
     
But Tom's warning came too late. I lost my balance. Andy Fuller and I slammed against my van, then hit the ground. Beneath me, Andy Fuller struggled weakly. "Help," he gasped. "I've been assaulted!"
     
     
"Goldy, Goldy, oh, Goldy," Tom murmured as he gently lifted me off the assistant district attorney. "What have you done?"
     
     
I don't remember much from our trip home. Just leave, Fuller had told us, red-faced and indignant. Watching from their car, the other cops had seen Fuller come at Tom first, had seen me stupidly try to intervene. Still, Tom was very angry. With me.
     
     
"Don't you think I can take care of myself, Goldy? Don't you think I've spent enough time in police work to sidestep some five-foot-tall creep? What on earth were you thinking?"
     
     
"I wasn't thinking anything," I answered honestly. "Tom, I'm really sorry. I just - "
     
     
"Why didn't you get in the van, the way I told you?" I pressed the handkerchief into my oozing palm and didn't respond. After all, what could I say?
     
     
When we arrived at our house, bedraggled, tense, and silent, we found Arch on the phone with his friend Todd Druckman. The two fourteen-year-olds were avidly discussing telephone encryption: whether they needed it, how much it would cost, whether girls would be able to decode their conversations. Still short for his age, Arch was dressed in an oversized burgundy T -shirt and sweatpants. He shook the straight brown hair off his forehead. "It would be worth it if you thought a girl was tapping your phone," he observed. "You know how those girls in our class can be."
     
     
I washed my hand and bandaged it, then asked Arch to hang up. He pushed his smeared tortoiseshell glasses up his freckled nose and sighed. To Todd, he said, "Later."
     
     
Ordinarily, our family has heart-to-heart conversations in our kitchen. But in the rosy light of early evening, the plastic-draped hole where the window had once been gave the space the discomfiting feel of an abandoned stage set. The kitchen was no longer the heart of our home, thanks to the late Gerald Eliot. Since we weren't able to retrieve the leftovers from Cameron Burr's guest house - the cops were going through it - Tom and I set the living room coffee table with bowls of cheese, cold chicken, sliced hard rolls, romaine leaves, chutney, and mayonnaise.
     
     
"Julian called," Arch announced morosely. "He didn't sound very good. I guess he's not coming." My son threw himself down on