"That could have been very serious, Larry. You understand that?"
"Serious?" I said. "It would have been a bloody disaster. The zombie could have eaten one of our clients!"
"Now, Anita, no reason to frighten the boy."
I stood up. "Yes, there is."
Bert frowned at me. "If you hadn't been late, he wouldn't have tried to raise the last zombie."
"No, Bert. You are not making this all my fault. You sent him out on his first night alone. Alone, Bert."
"And he handled himself well," Bert said.
I fought the urge to scream, because it wouldn't help. "Bert, he's a twenty-year-old college student. This is a freaking seminar for him. If you get him killed, it's gonna look sorta bad."
"May I say something?" Larry asked.
I said, "No."
Bert said, "Certainly."
"I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."
I wanted to argue that, but looking into his true-blue eyes I couldn't say it. He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.
"How old were you when you started working for me?" Bert said.
"What?"
"How old were you?"
"Twenty-one; I'd just graduated college."
"When will you turn twenty-one, Larry?" Bert asked.
"March."
"See, Anita, he's just a few months younger. He's the same age you were."
"That was different."
"Why?" Bert said.
I couldn't put it into words. Larry still had all his grandparents. He'd never seen death and violence up close and personal. I had. He was an innocent, and I hadn't been innocent for years. But how to explain that to Bert without hurting Larry's feelings? No twenty-year-old man likes to hear that a woman knows more about the world than he does. Some cultural fables die hard.
"You sent me out with Manny, not alone."
"He was supposed to go out with you, but you had police business to handle."
"That's not fair, Bert, and you know it."
He shrugged. "If you'd been doing your job, he wouldn't have been alone."
"There've been two murders. What am I supposed to do? Say sorry, folks, I've got to babysit a new animator. Sorry about the murders."
"Nobody has to babysit me," Larry said.
We both ignored him.