By 8:15, the raffle had wound down, and Pauline handed the microphone back to Derek so he could close out the self-defense portion of the evening. This was supposed to be simple. A few closing remarks, a thank you to the crowd. A reminder about the membership pamphlets on the table. That was the plan anyway. “Before we wrap up,” Derek said, his voice carrying easily through the speakers. “I want to talk to you all about something important. Something a lot of people don’t like to think about.” The room quieted the way rooms do when someone changes their tone on purpose.
“Statistics,” Derek continued, “show that seniors are targeted more than any other group for home invasions, purse snatchings, con artists at the door. You’ve all seen the news. You all know somebody who’s been through it.” Heads nodded around the room. It wasn’t wrong. Exactly. It was true, dressed up to serve a purpose. “The sad truth,” Derek said, lowering his voice just enough to make people lean in, “is that most people in this room, if something happened tonight walking to your car, wouldn’t know what to do, and by the time you learned, it would already be too late.” A few people shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Ruth Palmer’s hands tightened around her purse strap.
“That’s not meant to scare you,” Derek said, though it clearly was. “It’s meant to motivate you because for the price of a few dinners out, you could have real training. Training that could save your life.” His assistant Cory moved through the crowd with a stack of pamphlets, placing them gently on empty seats, on laps, in the hands of anyone who made eye contact. “Six month full program, half off tonight only,” Derek said. “Because I believe every person in this room deserves to feel safe. That’s not a sales pitch. That’s a promise.” It was in fact exactly a sales pitch.
Frank Dunlap, still in the front row, flipped through the pamphlet with a furrowed brow, doing the math in his head the way a retired accountant does with everything. Two hundred forty dollars for six months, discounted from four hundred eighty. Automatic renewal unless canceled in writing thirty days prior. Cancellation fee seventy-five dollars. He didn’t say anything. Not yet. But he tucked the pamphlet into his jacket pocket with a small frown. The kind of frown that meant he’d be reading the fine print more closely later.