How We Harbored a Fugitive

The date: Thursday, February 23, 2006.

The time: 1:24 pm.

The place: The Fobcave.

Master Fob hears a knock at the door. Annoyed to be disturbed while writing an important email, he goes into the living room and opens the front door. No one is there. He turns around to see a caucasian lady (curly blonde hair, 5'6", approximately 200 lbs., wearing a dress) waving through the kitchen window. He opens the back door and the suspect (heretofore referred to as "Angie," mainly because that's her name) enters the Fobcave.

"Can I use your phone?" she asks. "My phone isn't working and I need to call someone."

"Okay," Master Fob says as she brushes past him.

Angie pauses at the phone, then looks at Master Fob and Foxy J. "Can I use your bathroom first? Sorry, I really have to go."

"Um. Okay."

Angie rushes into the bathroom.

Master Fob and Foxy J exchange funny looks. "That's weird," Foxy says.

Master Fob heads back into the bedroom to get back to that important email, but pauses when he hears Angie talking in the bathroom. Wasn't her phone not working?

"The judge couldn't see me today," she says, "so I need you to come get me." The toilet flushes and Angie emerges from the bathroom. "What's your address?" she asks Foxy. Foxy tells her and she repeats to her cell phone, "Fob East Cave North." She hangs up and asks, "Is it all right if I wait inside?" She points to her sandals. "My feet are freezing outside."

"How long will this be?" Master Fob says, not wanting to be rude but not anxious to let a stranger hang around in his home. "The library's right across the street."

"It'll just be a couple minutes," Angie insists. "Thanks." She picks up her cell phone, dials, and tells the mystery person on the other side to pick her up in the parking lot behind the apartment building.

Master Fob, concluding that this lady is strange so he doesn't want to talk to her while she waits, but that she is not a threat, heads back into the bedroom while Foxy continues baking a cake in the kitchen. Master Fob wonders if he should stay in the living room to protect his wife, but takes comfort in the facts that (a) Angie has no purse to conceal any weapons and (b) in the bedroom he can hear everything going on and have the cordless phone on hand to dail 9-1-1 at any point.

"Your couches are nice," Master Fob hears Angie tell Foxy. "I like them."

Master Fob keeps his eyes on the phone, trying to imagine the worst that could happen in the time it takes him to call the police and for them to get here from the police station on the other side of the library across the street. He wants Angie to go away. He wonders if he should insist she wait for her friends at the library.

"Hey," Angie says, apparently to her cell phone, "are you almost here? These nice people are letting me wait in their house." A pause. "Thanks for letting me wait here," Angie says, now apparently speaking to Foxy J. "I'm sorry. I was in such a rush this morning and I was running around, trying to catch my mother-in-law before she went somewhere or other." A pause. "You know, I think I will wait at the library. Thanks."

"You can go out the front door," Foxy says. "The library is right there."

"No, I, uh, dropped something in back. Something fell out of my pocket."

The door shuts and Master Fob goes back out to the living room. He watches out the window for Angie to come around to the front and cross the street to the library, but she never does. He looks out the back window, but doesn't see Angie there either. "Did you see which way she went?"

"No," Foxy says. "That was weird."

"Yeah," Master Fob says. He locks both doors. He continues looking out the windows to see where Angie went, and to see if any strange vehicles pull up and unload scary-looking mercenaries with knives or rocket launchers. Instead, he sees a county sheriff's car pull into the driveway, turn around in the back parking lot, and leave. Over the next several minutes he notices several police cars wandering around. "This is weird."

An old red Pontiac carrying a white-trashy-looking man and woman pulls up in front of the Fobcave. The man and the woman stare into the Fobcave. Master Fob and Foxy J stare back. The car pulls away, goes up and down Cave North street, then pulls up in front of the Fobcave again. The man gets out and approaches. He knocks on the door.

Master Fob opens the window next to the door. "Yes?"

"Hey," the man says, "is Angie here?" (This is wher Master Fob learns her name is Angie.)

"No, but I think she was. She left a few minutes ago. I don't know where she went." Master Fob tries to read the license plate on the old red Pontiac as it pulls away.

At Foxy J's suggestion, Master Fob calls police dispatch. "Um, I live across the street from the City Center, and I just had this lady come and ask to use my phone and my bathroom."

"What was she wearing?"

"A dress. I think her name was Angie."

"Is she still there?"

"No."

"Which way did she go?"

"I don't know. She went out our back door, which faces north."

"Yeah, we're looking for her. Hold on a sec." Hold. "Yeah, she just ran out of the court and we're trying to find her. A police officer might come ask you about her."

BOOM!!! Master Fob and Foxy J are thrown to the floor as the front wall of the Fobcave is blown to pieces. Angie stands over the rubble, holding a rocket launcher on her shoulder. "Call the police on me, will you? I just needed to use the bathroom! Eat rocket, scumbuckets!" She points the rocket launcher at Master Fob's face and pulls the trigger.

--

Okay, that last paragraph never happened. I just realized that this story is rather anti-climactic and probably not worth the time it's taken to tell. We didn't see Angie again, and the police never even came to talk to us.