imagined, but he was dangerous. He’d already proved that.
Sure, dangerous to pregnant women.
But that was no way to think. If he let old Lee-Lee get up on his feet, this would be a
whole new ball game. He could feel Dykstra trying to come back, wanting to discuss this and perhaps a few other points. Hardin pushed him away. This was not the time
or place for a college English instructor.
“Now, what am I going to do with you?” he asked, the question one of honest
perplexity.
“Don’t hurt me,” the man on the ground said. He was wearing glasses. That had been
a major surprise. No way had either Hardin or Dykstra seen this man wearing glasses.
“Don’t hurt me, mister.”
“I got an idea.” Dykstra would have said I have an idea. “Take your glasses off and put them beside you.”
“Why—”
“Save the lip, just do it.”
Lee, who was wearing faded Levi’s and a Western-style shirt (now pulled out in the
back and hanging over his butt), started to take off his wire-rimmed glasses with his
right hand.
“No, do it with your other one.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me questions. Just do it. Take ’em off with your left hand.”
Lee took off the queerly delicate spectacles and put them on the pavement. Hardin
immediately stepped on them with the heel of one boot. There was a little snapping
sound and the delicious grind of glass.
“Why’d you do that?” Lee cried.
“Why do you think? Have you got a gun or anything?”
“No! Jesus, no!”
And Hardin believed him. If there’d been one, it would have been a gator gun in the
PT Cruiser’s trunk. But he didn’t think even that was likely. Standing outside the
women’s room, Dykstra had been imagining some big hulk of a construction worker.
This guy looked like an accountant who worked out three times a week at Gold’s
Gym.
“I think I’ll walk back to my car now,” Hardin said. “Turn off the alarm and drive
away.”
“Yeah. Yeah, why don’t you do th—”
Hardin put a warning foot on the man’s butt again, this time rocking it back and forth
a little more roughly.
“Why don’t you just shut up? What did you think you were doing in there anyway?”
“Teaching her a fucking les—”
Hardin kicked him in the hip almost as hard as he could, pulling the blow a little bit at the last second. But only a little. Lee cried out in pain and fear. Hardin was dismayed
at what he’d just done and how he’d done it, absolutely without thought. What
dismayed him even more was that he wanted to do it again, and harder. He liked that
cry of pain and fear, could do with hearing it again.
So how far was he from Shithouse Lee, lying out here with the shadow of the
entryway running up his back on a crisp black diagonal? Not very, it seemed. But so
what? It was a tiresome question, a movie-of-the-week question. A much more
interesting one occurred to him. This question was how hard he could kick old Lee-
Lee in the left ear without sacrificing accuracy for force. Square in the ear, ka-pow.
He also wondered what kind of a sound it would make. A satisfying one, would be his
guess. Of course he might kill the man doing that, but how much loss to the world
would that be? And who would ever know? Ellen? Fuck her.
“You better shut up, my friend,” Hardin said. “That would be your best course of
action right about now. Just shut up. And when the state trooper gets here, you tell him whatever the fuck you want.”
“Why don’t you go? Just go and leave me alone. You broke my glasses, isn’t that
enough?”
“No,” Hardin said truthfully. He thought a second. “You know what?”
Lee didn’t ask him what.
“I’m going to walk slow to my car. You come on and come after me if you want.
We’ll do it face-to-face.”
“Yeah, right!” Lee laughed tearfully. “I can’t see shit without my glasses!”
Hardin pushed his own up on his nose. He didn’t have to pee anymore. What a weird