“You hear me, Pickett?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Todd said wearily.
“That’s all you’re good for: lizard food. Lizard! Food!” The blows were coming faster and harder now. It was only a matter of time before Todd hit him back, and they both knew it. Knew it and wanted it. No more innuendo; no more lawyers; just fisticuffs in the mud.
“All right,” Todd said, bitch-slapping Eppstadt for the fun of it. “I get it.” He struck him again, harder. “You want to fight?” A third blow, harder still, which split Eppstadt’s lip. Blood ran from his mouth.
And then suddenly the two of them were at it, not exchanging clean neat blows the way they did in the movies but knotted up together in a jumble of gouges and kicks; years of anger and competition emptying in few chaotic seconds. They could not have chosen a less perfect place or time to settle a personal score if they’d looked a lifetime, but this wasn’t about making sensible decisions. This was about bringing the other sonofabitch down. As it was they both went down, having wrestled their way into muddy terrain. Their feet slid from under them and down they went, locked together, like two boys.
Tammy saw them fall.
“Oh no,” she said, half to herself. “Not here. Don’t do it here.”
“I wouldn’t go any closer if I were you,” Brahms advised her.
“Well you’re not me,” Tammy said, and without waiting for any further response she pressed on over the uneven ground towards the two men in the mud. There were sounds of birds overhead, and she glanced up at the sky as she walked towards the men. It was spectacularly beautiful, and for a moment her thoughts were entirely claimed by the piled cumulus and the partially-blinded sun. The darkness of the heavens between the clouds was profound enough that the brightest of the stars could be seen, set in velvet grey.
When she looked back at Todd and Eppstadt, they were virtually indistinguishable from one another physically — both liberally coated in mud. But it was still dear which one was Eppstadt. He was letting out a virtually seamless monologue about Todd. The general sense of which was that Todd was a vapid, over-paid, talentless sonofabitch. Furthermore, when all this insanity was over he, Eppstadt, was going to make certain that everybody knew that Todd had caused the death of a number of innocent people with his arrogance.
As Tammy got closer to the fight it became evident to Tammy that this wasn’t going to end quickly or easily. Neither man was going to be talked down from their fury; it had escalated too far. She could only hope they exhausted each other quickly, before they attracted unwanted attention.
There seemed little hope of that. Though they’d fought to their feet again, it was becoming harder and harder for either man to land a solid blow in this slippery environment. Finally Eppstadt swung wide and went down in the mud, falling heavily He struggled to get up, the heels of his hands sliding in the mud, but before he could succeed, Todd clambered on top of him, and straddled him, his hands at the man’s throat. There was no fight left in Eppstadt. All he could do was gasp and shake his head.
“You fuckhead,” Todd said. “None of this would have happened … if you … had made my fucking movie.”
Eppstadt had by now recovered enough energy to speak. “I wouldn’t put you in a movie if my fucking life depended on it.”
At which point, Tammy made her presence known. “Todd?”
It was Eppstadt who looked up first. “Oh Jesus,” he said. “I wondered when you were going to show your fat ass.”
Tammy wasn’t in the mood for long speeches. “Leave the shithead in the mud, Todd,” she said, “and let’s just get out of here.”
Todd grinned through his mask of mud; the megawatt smile. “It would be my pleasure.”
He got to his feet and stepped away. Eppstadt pulled his rather ungainly bulk to his knees. He had lost one of his choice Italian shoes in the melee, and now began to search for it. In fact, it had been flung wide of mud, close to where Tammy was standing.