“Rotten bugger,” Guy said, making his mystic passes. He was like a Crusader preparing to go into battle. If, that was, you could imagine a Crusader in a rice-caked tux. “Kill you like I did your nasty barking dog.”
“I don’t have a dog,” I said. “I can’t have a dog. It’s in the lease.”
I think it was the only thing I said to him during the whole nightmare, and I’m not entirely sure I did say it out loud. It might only have been a thought. Behind him, I could see the chef struggling to his feet. He had one hand wrapped around the handle of the kitchen’s big refrigerator and the other clapped to his bloodstained tunic, which was torn open across the swelling of his stomach in a big purple grin.
He was doing his best to hold his plumbing in, but it was a battle he was losing. One loop of intestines, shiny and bruise-colored, already hung out, resting against his left side like some awful watch-chain.
Guy feinted at me with his knife. I countered by shoving the mop-bucket at him, and he drew back. I pulled it to me again and stood there with my hands wrapped around the wooden mop-handle, ready to shove the bucket at him if he moved. My own hand was throbbing and I could feel sweat trickling down my cheeks like hot oil. Behind Guy, the cook had managed to get all the way up. Slowly, like an invalid in early recovery from a serious operation, he started working his way down the aisle toward Gimpel the Fool. I wished him well.
“Undo those bolts,” I said to Diane.
“What?”
“The bolts on the door. Undo them.”
“I can’t move,” she said. She was crying so hard I could barely understand her. “You’re crushing me.”
I moved forward a little to give her room. Guy bared his teeth at me. Mock-jabbed with the knife, then pulled it back, grinning his nervous, snarly little grin as I rolled the bucket at him again on its squeaky casters.
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“Bug-infested stinkpot,” he said. He sounded like a man discussing the Mets’ chances in the forthcoming campaign. “Let’s see you play your radio this loud now, stinkpot. It gives you a change in your thinking, doesn’t it? Boink! ”
He jabbed. I rolled. But this time he didn’t pull back as far, and I realized he was nerving himself up. He meant to go for it, and soon.
I could feel Diane’s breasts brush against my back as she gasped for breath. I’d given her room, but she hadn’t turned around to work the bolts. She was just standing there.
“Open the door,” I told her, speaking out of the side of my mouth like a prison con. “Pull the goddam bolts, Diane.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t, I don’t have any strength in my hands. Make him stop, Steven, don’t stand there talking with him, make him stop. ”
She was driving me insane. I really thought she was. “You turn around and pull those bolts, Diane, or I’ll just stand aside and let—”
“EEEEEEEEE!” he screamed, and charged, waving and stabbing with the knife.
I slammed the mop-bucket forward with all the force I could muster, and swept his legs out from under him. He howled and brought the knife down in a long, desperate stroke. Any closer and it would have torn off the tip of my nose. Then he landed spraddled awkwardly on wide-spread knees, with his face just above the mop-squeezing gadget hung on the side of the bucket. Perfect! I drove the mophead into the nape of his neck. The strings draggled down over the shoulders of his black jacket like a witch-wig. His face slammed into the squeegee. I bent, grabbed the handle with my free hand, and clamped it shut. Guy shrieked with pain, the sound muffled by the mop.
“PULL THOSE BOLTS!” I screamed at Diane. “PULL THOSE
BOLTS, YOU USELESS BITCH! PULL—”
Thud! Something hard and pointed slammed into my left buttock. I staggered forward with a yell—more surprise than pain, I think, although it did hurt. I went to one knee and lost my hold on the squeegee handle. Guy pulled back, slipping out from under the 341
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stringy head of the mop at the same time, breathing so loudly he sounded almost as if he were barking. It hadn’t slowed him down much, though; he lashed out at me with the knife as soon as he was clear of the bucket. I pulled back, feeling the breeze as the blade cut the air beside my cheek.
It was only as I scrambled up that I realized what had happened, what she had done. I snatched a quick glance over my shoulder at her. She stared back defiantly, her back pressed against the door. A crazy thought came to me: she wanted me to get killed. Had perhaps even planned it, the whole thing. Found herself a crazy maître d’
and—
Her eyes widened. “Look out!”
I turned back just in time to see him lunging at me. The sides of his face were bright red, except for the big white spots made by the drain-holes in the squeegee. I rammed the mophead at him, aiming for the throat and getting his chest instead. I stopped his charge and actually knocked him backward a step. What happened then was only luck. He slipped in water from the overturned bucket and went down hard, slamming his head on the tiles. Not thinking and just vaguely aware that I was screaming, I snatched up the skillet of mushrooms from the stove and brought it down on his upturned face as hard as I could. There was a muffled thump, followed by a horrible (but mercifully brief) hissing sound as the skin of his cheeks and forehead boiled.
I turned, shoved Diane aside, and drew the bolts holding the door shut. I opened the door and sunlight hit me like a hammer. And the smell of the air. I can’t remember air ever smelling better, not even when I was a kid, and it was the first day of summer vacation.
I grabbed Diane’s arm and pulled her out into a narrow alley lined with padlocked trash-bins. At the far end of this narrow stone slit, like a vision of heaven, was Fifty-third Street with traffic going heedlessly back and forth. I looked over my shoulder and through the open kitchen door. Guy lay on his back with carbonized mushrooms circling his head like an existential diadem. The skillet had slid off to one side, revealing a face that was red and swelling with 342
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blisters. One of his eyes was open, but it looked unseeingly up at the fluorescent lights. Behind him, the kitchen was empty. There was a pool of blood on the floor and bloody handprints on the white enamel front of the walk-in fridge, but both the chef and Gimpel the Fool were gone.
I slammed the door shut and pointed down the alley. “Go on.”
She didn’t move, only looked at me.
I shoved her lightly on her left shoulder. “Go!”
She raised a hand like a traffic-cop, shook her head, then pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you touch me.”
“What’ll you do? Sic your lawyer on me? I think he’s dead, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you patronize me like that. Don’t you dare. And don’t touch me, Steven, I’m warning you.”
The kitchen door burst open. Moving, not thinking but just moving, I slammed it shut again. I heard a muffled cry—whether anger or pain I didn’t know and didn’t care—just before it clicked shut. I leaned my back against it and braced my feet. “Do you want to stand here and discuss it?” I asked her. “He’s still pretty lively, by the sound.”
He hit the door again. I rocked with it, then slammed it shut. I waited for him to try again, but he didn’t.
Diane gave me a long look, glarey and uncertain, and then started walking up the alleyway with her head down and her hair hanging at the sides of her neck. I stood with my back against the door until she got about three quarters of the way to the street, then stood away from it, watching it warily. No one came out, but I decided that wasn’t going to guarantee any peace of mind. I dragged one of the trash-bins in front of the door, then set off after Diane, jogging.
When I got to the mouth of the alley, she wasn’t there anymore. I looked right, toward Madison, and didn’t see her. I looked left and there she was, wandering slowly across Fifty-third on a diagonal, her head still down and her hair still hanging like curtains at the sides of her face. No one paid any attention to her; the people in front of the Gotham Café were gawking through the plate-glass windows like 343