Mr. Sturner adjusted the blind man's sunglasses so that they covered his eyes again. Then Mr. Sturner and the P.E. teacher helped the blind man up the center aisle. The blind man moved his feet, but they weren't helping. The other men were dragging him.
"Let's get him to the nurse's office," Mr. Sturner said. Then he looked around at the staring, murmuring children and their teachers. "Everybody back to class! There's been an accident!"
When the three men reached the center doors beside Jimmy, the principal and the P.E. teacher jostled to get through the one open door. While they jostled, the blind man pulled a hand free and reached out, grasping air.
"My cane," he said. His voice was slurred. Jimmy could see his tongue. It looked chewed. "I need my cane."
Mr. Stumer ran to get the cane. The blind man and the P.E. teacher waited. The murmur in the auditorium began to subside as teachers told their classes to be quiet or else.
Jimmy stepped away from the pillar and went to the blind man. He could feel the P.E. teacher staring at him, but he didn't care. He was looking through the blind man's sunglasses. Now that they had fallen once, he knew what was behind them.
He touched the blind man's clenched hand, and it opened. Jimmy reached into his pocket and pulled out the ball of brown tape. It was covered with pocket lint. But its points were still sharp.
"Jesus says hi," Jimmy said, and pressed the ball into the blind man's soft palm.
He returned to the pillar. The P.E. teacher was still staring at him.
The blind man trembled. His hand closed over the ball of tape and formed a fist. His mouth opened wide, as if he were about to yell, or scream. Then it closed without making a sound. The blind man opened his fist, but the ball of tape didn't fall. It was stuck.
Mr. Sturner returned with the cane then, and he and the P.E. teacher took the blind man away. The teachers began telling their classes to stand up. Jimmy slipped out before they started up the aisles.
The hall was empty. The blind man was gone. Jimmy pushed his inside-out pocket back inside and headed for Mrs. Porter's classroom. He stopped at the boys' rest room on the way. This time, he really had to go.
VICTIM NUMBER FOUR
The amps thundered, and a white strobe froze the jumping bodies with each flash. The club was a roofed-over alley with walls of spray-painted brick. It was like dancing in a pizza oven. Blackburn liked the place. His ears throbbed. The girl he was dancing with kept bumping into him. He liked that too. She laughed every time she did it. He couldn't hear her over the roar of the band, but he could see her teeth and eyes flash with the strobe. She was happy. He would have to find out her name.
The band played on a plywood stage at the back of the alley. They weren't good, but they were loud. Two electric guitars, bass, and a mismatched drum kit. The beat was fast, the feedback painful. Disco, Blackburn had discovered, was anathema in Austin. That was fine with him. He had tried on one of those white suits with the black polyester shirts a few months ago, and his chest and back had broken out in boils. Tonight he was wearing jeans and a LET'S GET SMALL T-shirt. The girl he was dancing with was dressed as he was, except that her T-shirt depicted a Harley-Davidson eagle. He didn't think she was wearing a bra. He couldn't tell for sure, because her long hair kept flying around and hiding her chest.
The band called itself the Dead Gilmores. Their leader, a short-haired guitar player in black jeans and a tuxedo jacket, had introduced them. Every word after that had been unintelligible, dissolved in amplification. Blackburn rather enjoyed that. He thought that any band that believed its lyrics were crucial was kidding itself. Kids out on Saturday night wanted to drink, dance, yell "Wooooooo!" and have sex with somebody. They didn't want to hear a bad poet bare the angst in his tortured and immature soul. They could go to college for that shit.
The Dead Gilmores ended whatever song they were playing-all of their songs sounded alike-with an apocalyptic crash, and then their leader announced that they were taking a ten-minute break. The house lights, six yellow bulbs suspended from the corrugated-tin ceiling, came on. The crowd applauded and yelled "Wooooooo!" Blackburn's ears ached. The crowd was almost as loud as the band. The girl he had been dancing with bumped against him and laughed.
He leaned down and yelled into her hair. Did she want a beer? She raised her eyebrows and nodded. In the improved light, he saw that she had a lot of pimples. Her face gleamed with oil and sweat. She was gorgeous.
The bar was being mobbed, so Blackburn told the girl that she should wait while he plunged into the maelstrom. He used those words. The girl laughed. Blackburn was pretty sure that he had it made.
He struggled through the crowd, turning one way and then another to slip past the clumping bodies. It took awhile. When he came up against the particle-board bar, he found himself standing next to the Dead Gilmores' leader. The musician gave him a sidelong look and nodded. Blackburn nodded back. The musician wasn't wearing a shirt under his tuxedo jacket, and his pale stomach moved in and out as he breathed. His skin was streaked with sweat tracks. The hollows under his eyes were blackened with what looked like charcoal. It was running down his cheeks.
"How's it goin'?" the musician shouted.
"Okay," Blackburn shouted back. "You in line?"
The musician nodded. "Bartender's slow."
Blackburn nodded back again, then glanced around at the crowd. He could feel that the musician was watching him. He tried to ignore it. But the bartender was taking a long time, and the musician kept on looking at Blackburn. Blackburn gave up and returned the stare.
"That chick you were dancing with," the musician said. His eyes didn't blink.
"What about her?" Blackburn asked.
"I fucked her."
Blackburn said nothing.
"I fucked her yesterday," the musician said. "You can have her tonight, though. Got my eye on the one in the pink." He jerked his head to the left.
Blackburn looked. Several people away, a blond girl in a pink halter top was listening to a scrawny boy in denim. She looked bored.
"Looks like she's with someone," Blackburn said.
The musician glanced at the boy in denim. "No contest." He looked back at Blackburn. "No matter who. You. My drummer. The best-looking guy in here. Wouldn't matter. She'd leave with me."
Blackburn wished that the bartender would hurry the hell up. He liked the Dead Gilmores just fine, but their leader was going to sour him on the whole band in about two seconds.
"Know why?" the musician asked.
Blackburn said nothing.
"It's because of my eyes," the musician said. "The music gets them interested, but then it's my eyes. I'm not bragging. This is just what they tell me, man. There's something about my eyes. Something about the way I look at them. Some kind of hypnotic light in there, you know? That's what they say."
Blackburn looked hard at the musician's eyes. The irises were pale blue, and wet. The pupils were like small black olives. The whites were oiled plastic. The capillaries were so red that they stood out in relief.
"They just look stoned to me," Blackburn said.
The musician sneered. "See your chick? She's looking over here right now. She's looking at me. She's trying to see my eyes."
Blackburn didn't turn to look for the girl. He stayed focused on the musician's eyes. They weren't anything special. Fiber and jelly.
"Yeah, you're afraid to look," the musician said. "You don't want to see. Better learn to play guitar, man. Your eyes ain't got it. Most don't. That's why guys are always ripping me off for shit. My last bass player stole my amp. Same old story. I was cool, he was a dork, and his girlfriend wanted me. So he stole my shit and took off. But I fucked his chick before they left."