The morning after the rumble, I awoke at dawn’s beginning.  Lucky was still asleep in her room.  Outside it, two men were playing Go. Another man sat facing the door with a pistol in easy reach.  I wandered over to the window.  

It was still dark.  A murky slate sky drizzled into the Thames.  I could see Big Ben in the distance.  

I watched and thought.  In another hour Lucky got up.  I heard her shower.  When she limped out of her room, she was wearing a thick, white terrycloth robe.  She set her 1911 on a coffee table.  She did the same with her PPQ.  After disassembling them, she cleaned them with CLP.  She had two bore snakes on the table and used these to clean the barrels since the 1911 shoots .45 and the PPQ 9MM 

Another hour passed.  Lucky relaxed listening to Bach Partitas.  Three new guys showed up to replace the three I met first thing in the morning.  One took a seat facing the door.  I noticed he also used a mirror to check the window.  The other two guys didn’t bother to start a new game of Go. They flipped a coin.  The winner chose the side he wished to take over.  When they played, I noticed the one not moving kept his eye on the window.  I noticed they had two QBZ 191s, Chinese assault rifles, leaning on the wall next to them.  Lucky’s SA80A2 was nowhere in sight. She had only her pistols.  Once they were clean, she put in their mags, and chambered them.  

“Expecting company,” I asked?

“Nah, but a wise woman always prepares for unannounced guests.

“You know, I’ve been wondering how you know Fielding.”

“Fielding and I have known each other since I was little in a San Antonio barrio.”

Lucky told me how lucky I was to know Fielding.  Lucky said it took a bravo cat to take on Constance.  “Whatever you think of Constance, sweetie, know this truth: she is a great Warrior.  Did you watch her last night?  Magnificent!  She led the counterattack.  She came into the open with only her Python and the thin, night air as her shields.  She has style.  She is a great, great warrior.” 

I must have looked sceptical.

“Look, darling, we all are travelling on the great River of Life.  We the living have yet to find the staircase from the life river.  One day we will.  You, I, everybody will travel the River of Life until we find the staircase.  And when we find it, we stream up its stairs to the infinite sky.  It is but a respite for the warriors.  We will return in rain and dust to travel the River of Life again. Everything is stardust and water.   Warriors must return to guard Life itself.”

I felt I had to ask why the warriors don’t unite.

“Because, silly goose, warriors don’t know whose right side is right.  We just play our dealt hand.  Neither Achilles nor Hector knew whose side was right. Aikido teaches there is always a uke and a tori, and these forever rotate. Warriors are creating right and wrong.  We must believe we achieve right when time ends. Until then, true victory is self-victory.”

I was stupefied to discover Lucky the Marxist is a mystic.   

Lucky stared at me.  “Mark my words, darling.  Constance is not the only great warrior.  Fielding, Fielding Grey, is a great warrior.  She came alone to the fight.  That is a mark of the warrior.”

I actually doubted Fielding would agree.  About a week or so later, I connected via Skype to her.  She answered.  I could tell she was pissed.  

“Crocky, you won’t believe what brain-damaged Roberta and mike have done.  They let Wolverine drop Constance off chez moi to convalesce from her stabbing.  Any person with a lick of common sense would have drowned her at the first opportunity in our hot tub.  Instead, we’re taking deliveries from Straub’s of tenderloin and such to keep her chubby.

“For the sake of peace, we all can be glad she didn’t see that I cut her.  I’m still blaming Bart.  If Bart had come to Reading with me, the two of us would have been sure to slice her into itty-bitty pieces.”

I asked if she had meant to save Lucky. 

“Who’s Lucky?  I wanted to put death’s grip on Constance.  What a Badger Witch!”  

“But why were you there?”  Again, I had to ask.  Curious minds want to know.

“You fancy yourself a bit psychic.  Listen up, sonny.  I’m not a bit psychic.  I am psychic.  I felt the disturbance in the force.  I felt it centered in Reading.   I knew you and that the China woman was headed to Reading to kill foes before you two clowns knew.  If you saw Wait Until Dark, you’d know I have the insight of Mr Roat. You’re amateurs.  I knew you two were off to kill before either of you did.  

But let me say this.  That Chinese bird can fight. It was a bad hand for her to get butt shot by Constance.  It pleased me to stab Constance for her.  However, now I have buyer’s remorse.  Wounded Constance is now waddling about my house.  If Bart and I do the right thing and kill her here, Roberta and mike will carry on as if it is some sort of grievous sin.  Big deal. A dead badge.  Who cares?

“What’s the use of a sacrament of penance if we can’t get a grievous sin forgiven from time to time?  And that gang of hoodlums in the Rolls that rescued their tough slut, I can’t wait to put claws into them.”
Being an old hand at reading Fielding, I knew I had to get off Skype before she jacked herself up any more than she already was.  I could tell Bart was in a bad mood too.  As Fielding carried on, I saw Bart jump into the air just before I hung up.  She snagged a finch in flight.  If you ask me, you’d think evolution would have eliminated low fliers like those eons ago.

I figure everything has an upside.  One bonus of the Reading Rumple was a marvellous jeremiad by Lord Caligula.  Nobody gets to hear an unrestrained yellow peril speech nowadays.  After starting his hate speech with assurances that nobody respected Chinese cultural achievement more than he did, his Lordship also promised that he would never believe Red China or the Chinese government in Formosa had an official role.  He stressed assurances of his good will towards the Chinese people.   He pointed his finger at fictitious rogue Chinese, a collection of evildoers, who had launched a thwarted attack on the headquarters of Munitions Galore.

Soon his Lordship was thundering that the criminal Tong, a gang that had too long enjoyed the forbearance of Scotland Yard and MI5.  He tossed gruesome photos and videos of the Reading Rumble about the chamber.  He bragged that Munitions Galore Guards had stopped the attack on their HQ, albeit with great loss of life, and prevented any defence secrets from being purloined by these monsters.  

Once his Lordship’s speech turned from a spree of denunciations of Chinese felons living in some of England’s luxury hotels, he began to praise Constance Lawless.  “Let us be thankful that Ms Lawless answered the call when criminal packs of Chinese rabble were on the verge of seizing state secrets entrusted to Munitions Galore. In defence of England, Ms Lawless had gathered a platoon of guards to launch a crushing counterattack.  She has now, for her personal safety, obtained shelter in the United States to convalesce. If we live in a just and grateful country, I demand that Ms Lawless receive a George Cross.”   He had made his ask.

The best was yet to come.  Another Lord mentioned that Ms Lawless was not a British Citizen, and hence ineligible for that medal.   Lord Caligula exploded inveighing against any bounder hiding his malice behind so-called legal requirements.  To his Lordship, if Ms Lawless needs to be “Christened a citizen by our Queen, so be it.”  He had become so angry his face had gone scarlet.  He was flogging a desk in the chamber with his riding crops as he called it by the objecting Lord’s name.  Needless to say, the Fleet Street crowd adored his Lordship’s flamboyance.  So, I gather, did the public.  I thought the act was better than any I’d seen from President Trump.