(The ride to Teson Hall)

Doctor Macaluso fastened his seat belt and began jotting some notes on the back of a folded paper as Shannon O'Brien weaved her car out the hospital parking lot. She asked him if he wouldn't mind reaching for her compact. It was in a small zippered bag on the back seat. Complying, although with some gymnastics as the shoulder strap tangled his rustic tweed jacket, he mumbled, "Two causes."

Of course she bit. "Two causes of what?"

"Dead bodies in vehicles with bright red lips. Carbon monoxide poisoning and lipstick while driving."

"OK, smarty, you do my lips while I drive!"

"Why don't we just wait here a minute while I jot my notes and you spackle your mouth?"

Beaming, "You can't do it," she wiggled her head playfully.

"Your lipstick? Sure I can. Tulie showed.."

"No. You can't tweak me. Today, I'm immune. Damn. I can't believe we pulled this off! Marcus, think of it!" Shannon was bubbling with expectant enthusiasm. "For all we know, we could rewrite the constitution! Once the legal mechanism sees what's been going on.. well .. who knows?" Marcus just shook his head. Who ever paid the most bribes, he claimed, is the one who knows.

She pulled the car over, stopped, clipped her compact shut, did a careful inward lipstick lip rolling maneuver in the mirror, then landed her best backward hurled right elbow bash into Macaluso's left shoulder. "You want another?" As he feigned a mortal wound, she taunted him with her fist and told him to tie that moody beast of his to a tree and leave it behind. "I am so up for this! And you don't fool me, not for a second." Poking him with her finger, "You are too." Shannon was once again at her car as if she were Achilles' charioteer.

"Slow it down. I am?"

"Yes you are mister cagey. Look at you. Writing notes, huh? Think I didn't notice? And by the way, I called John - You did call Mina, right? This meeting could go late. - and John was ecstatic."

"Yes, I called Mina."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What did she say?" They were now passing quickly out of home turf and onto the main roads.

"You mean, after telling her about the two of us enlisting a major law school to help us topple lords of industry, thus waking up a sleeping jurisprudence system, and in the process, getting a constitutional amendment enacted?" He held his scribbled notes out where she could quickly scan them without losing her view of the road. "Mina said, that if I could, bring home two quarts of milk, one stick of butter, and a bag of shelled walnuts. Umm, then there was the thing about the card - I forget now - get a Hallmark card for signing a new constitutional amendment into law or was it a birthday card? It was one of those. I'd better get one of each."

"She did NOT say that! Milk and nuts..."

"Fraid so. She's no fool."

Shannon shot a juicy tongue pflsssst, but in a minute began humming. After a few rhapsodic failed attempts to liven up her passenger, she finally asked, "You don't even want to know what John said?"

"I figured you'd tell me, no matter what. OK. What'd he say?"

Shannon told him to stuff it, acting as if the God of Hosts couldn't draw that information from her. But her feigned resolve melted in the unchallenged silence, enthusiasm spilling like a kicked bucket. Normally, about medical issues or day to day tasks, she was very structured. Now, her eagerness had her bouncing all over what John said today, what John ever said whenever it was he said it, and things John would have said or might have said, given the opportunity. She wasn't being as totally irrelevant as it would seem to an outsider. She knew this man and his so called inner beast and needed the perception of both. He could sense fine print on a gnat's wing. She had to keep the moody and visceral half of Marcus Macaluso at bay. Distract him with historical fluff. He was both a sucker and a sponge for history, as was her husband John, though John's interests were much more focused.

Shannon blurted into a total vacuum, that Bernadette Devlin had been given the key to New York City. Did he know that? Doctor smarty pants? No he didn't. Hah. When? John knows. Somewhere around Hughey Newton's time. When was that? She was scanning her memory for dates with associations such as what dress did she wear to meet Devlin when John took her. It was the one with the silver trim, so... Anyway, did he also know that Devlin turned right around and gave that city key to Hughy Newton? Did he? Huh? No. Pissed off a whole bunch of folks, which reminded her, Betty didn't come to work yesterday because her hair dresser turned her hair yellow. Nothing to do with a sister dying. Betty doesn't have a sister. John said Malcolm's book was a big seller in Belfast. Didn't know that, huh? "Got your knees ready?" She teased that everybody was looking forward to mocking out the doctor's knees again this year. His knees were, she taunted, after all, the biggest ticket draw. Shannon was referring to General Washington's Celtic Ball, assuming that she and John and Marcus and Mina would make a foursome again as they did every year. Would Marcus rent the same kilt? He looked very masculine in a blue based hunting tartan, Shannon laughed to his devilish smirk. He snipped, "Oughta be a toga."

"Sorry, no togas at the ball. It's either minute men thingies or kilts." So why were French or Spanish uniforms out? After all, he insisted, it was the French and Spanish who turned up the heat on the English which, in turn, forced the English to let up on repressing the Irish who they needed for troops in other colonial theaters. Shannon countered, poo. Irish sentiment was squarely with the colonies. After all, the British oppression-of the-month club had served up the so called penal laws, and other dictums which made even a newspaper editorial discussion on the subject of self rule a crime of treason punishable by death. Speech was illegal. Certain subjects of discussion were criminal. Verbalized thought made criminal? Well hell, she reasoned, why talk when you can shoot? Same risk. Oh, and did he know that the Irish were the first people to recognize the United States of America as a free and independent nation? Did he, huh? Mister deep history trivia maven. Didn't know that. The revolution was still underway and by no means settled. Irish were the first. Numero uno.

The doctor thanked God that General Washington was not brought up Irish, posturing himself to avoid another elbow bash. Meaning what? Well, how many truces have the Irish had? Did anybody keep score over the last eight hundred years? To what? Work out differences? Northern Ireland could use a few Sicilians. That's what they could use. That's what he thought. Maybe old George was really Giorgio. Giorgio Tonnellate Che Lavano. And anyway , why do the Irish keep worshiping their loser leaders who have this need to make truces? The only words of interest to George would be that the British had left. He'd grant no peace until they were out. Overthrown. Gone. Left. Vanished. Departed. No. No let up, no truces, no pauses for negotiation or reconciliation for more promises to be broken. Got something to say? Then haul ass out and mail it from England. According to Marcus, that's what a Sicilian would do. That's what George Kick Ass Washington did, expressing his sentiments in bullets on Christmas Eve. The English got his message. This boy's serious. No. No pauses.

Shannon got him. Ahhh, yes there was. There was one brief pause. How could he forget? The Ball. Duh. General Washington's Celtic Ball, called by General Washington himself on St. Patrick's day to honor the Celts who in so many regiments outnumbered home born men. It was a thank you for Irish recognition. The Second Pennsylvania Brigade under Colonel Johnson was nearly pure Irish and attended in full regalia. They were not alone.

"No togas, then?" he laughed.

"Hey, you wops got'cher own parties. Besides, there were no Roman troops at Bunker Hill."

"Sure about that?"

"Well, no, but ..."

"Octagons."

"What?"

"We usually stop for them. Especially red."

"Where?"

"Back there, where that squad car with the flashing lights just came from. He must know you. He's waving greetings."

Well maybe Doctor Macaluso couldn't tweak her, but an unexpected encounter with this branch of the law sure did. Shannon was shaking and spilling her purse raking for her identification while exclaiming how sorry she was about not seeing the stop sign. Was there a bush there? She would never break the law. Never. Not knowingly. But a loud "Hah!" from Marcus Macaluso cut that spiel short. The hah was appended by, "And this from the woman who travels with known terrorists?"

"Marcus!! What are you.."

"This is the same woman who supports IRA snipers and rhyming killers? You, the one who calls the RUC police - pigs?.."

"I NEVER.. But they.. they're not.."

"Who bet me she could get to the law school faster by just running all the lights?"

"MARCUS! YOU BASTARD! WHAT.. WHY.. WHAT..."

But the police officer, having stepped back ducking down to get a better take on the pair, had already broken in, "OK, ma'am, step out and place your hands on car." She fumbled her ID onto the pavement and had to pick it up while spread.

"Marcus, I'm going to.."

"I suggest you hold that ma'am. You have the right..." as he began his recitation, he took her driver's licence handed by her backward.

"Oh my God!"

"..to be silent. .."

"Oh my God!"

"You have the right .."

"Oh my God!.."

He paused. "..to kick that butt head in there in the teeth. Hi Doc! Hello, Mrs. O'Brien. Don't you recognize me?"

Marcus was, however, yelling out his passenger side window to book her as the officer was lifting his cap to give Shannon's a better look at his face. She was still shaking. "Am I under arrest?" Her lip was quavering.

"No. God no," the officer replied as Macaluso was now loudly asking how Tony was. "He's a new child. Thanks to you two," the policeman smiled shaking his head in affirmation. Shannon who normally never forgot a child's name was reading from the officer's name tag to pull it together, Tony + Longo, Anthony Longo?

"Anthony?" She apologized, nearly. "I didn't um, Anthony, um, Mister Longo, officer Longo, officer Anthony's father, I didn't see the sign. I'm sorry."

Officer Longo saw that this had gone a wee too far. He grasped her by the shoulders, "You are not arrested. You will not get a ticket. But you will be killed or crippled by running stop signs. I need you for my son. Don't do that any more. Cabeesh?"

Marcus was calling out to her to tell him that wop thing about Bunker Hill. Officer Longo did laughingly admit that she was riding with punishment enough as Macaluso was urging her to reveal all she knew about Irish terrorists.

She restarted the car. "Don't I know it." Then turning to him, "How - did - you - know?"

"Jesus, Shannon, that walk of his. How could you miss it? Oh, don't forget to remind me, later, about the milk and stuff."

"Oh God. Give me peace."

This brush with the law, which had left her still shaking, did cause her to reflect on how things could go when law is not friendly and people lack voice. Her long silence was disturbed only by a nearly whispered rhetorical question asking what people do when wrongfully accused. "Marcus, just think of all those people tossed into jails because they represent something unpopular. Can you imagine? That's got to do damage to the mind."

"No. I can't imagine, not totally. It's got to feel like being helpless before a bully, or being raped - something like that. I guess it can go many ways. Some fold and others explode. Maybe it depends on how alone you really are. Stop sign."

"Yup. Thanks. See it. I wonder what Gaffy would have been like today if he and his Caitlyn had never been jailed."

"Probably have forty kids and be supporting them as a sheep flipper."

"What's a sheep flipper?"

Marcus just grunted noise that goes with, "Made it up. What ever it is sheep need doing. What do I know about sheep?"

"Not to be one. That's for sure."

They both smiled and quieted into their respective inner thoughts.