He caught the fragmentary race of reflected lamplight along the moving blade of the knife; saw it but did not register it, all he knew was the target and the weight of the kosh swinging from his hand, swinging down toward that dark narrow weaving skull... And he heard the enormous bellow that thundered from his own chest, the bestial cry of berserk assault...
...And the kid with the knife was falling back in panic, dodging, arms whipping up over his head; wheeling, scrabbling, getting his balance, digging in his toes — running....
The savage downswing found no target and Paul stayed his hand before the roll of coins could smash his own knee but it made him lose his balance and he broke his fall with a palm — got one knee under him and knelt there watching the kid who wasn’t more than half his size or weight, the kid running away up the street, flitting into an alley, instantly absorbed into the city as if he hadn’t been there at all.
The street was empty and he got to his feet but it hit him then, the reaction, and he began to shake so badly he had to reach for the railing of a brown-stone’s front steps. He hung on to it and pivoted on his hands, collapsing in a circle until he was seated on the third step from the bottom. Hot flushes and chills prickled his flesh, his vision spun, and a surge of uncontainable exultation lifted his voice to a high call of joy:
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
11
Trying to conceal the fact that he was breathing hard he gave the doorman an idiot grin and crossed the lobby on drunken legs and stood in the elevator until its doors closed; he slid to the floor and sat there until they opened, crawled out and let himself into the apartment with vomit pain convulsing his stomach. Leaned over the kitchen sink and catted up everything.
He rinsed his mouth and threw up again and rinsed again. Hung in the sink with painful dry heaves until it subsided. Sweating, scalp prickling, he made it to the living room couch and lay down weak and wet. Felt himself pass out.
...When the grinding of the garbage trucks awakened him, his first thought was I wasn’t nearly that drunk. Then he remembered it all.
But he hadn’t slept as well in weeks: when he looked at the time it was half-past eight. It couldn’t have been much later than eleven when he’d come home. There was no hangover; he hadn’t felt this well since — he couldn’t remember when.
In the subway he got out of his seat to give it to an old woman; he smiled at her look of surprise. When he left the Express at Times Square and stood on the Shuttle platform waiting for the crosstown train he realized he was still smiling and he wiped it off his face with an effort; it was occurring to him that he was experiencing all the symptoms of a sexual release and that worried him.
All morning in the office he tried to keep his attention on the figures and notes in front of him but last night kept getting in the way. Why hadn’t he called the police? Well, he hadn’t really seen the kid’s face, he probably wouldn’t know it if he saw him again; and anyhow judging by experience the cops wouldn’t accomplish a damned thing and he’d only have to waste hours telling the story half a dozen times, signing statements, looking through mug-shots. A waste of my time and theirs.
But that wasn’t really it; those were rationalizations and he knew that much.
Rationalizations for what?
He still didn’t have the answer when Dundee came in and took him to lunch at the Pen and Pencil.
“Christ, you’re eating like you haven’t seen a square meal in a month.”
“Just getting my appetite back,” Paul said.
“Well, that’s a good thing. Or maybe it isn’t. You’ve lost some weight — it looks good on you. Wish I could. I’ve spent the last two years on cottage cheese lunches and no potatoes. Haven’t dropped a pound. You’re lucky — you’re just about ready to have your clothes taken in.”
He hadn’t even noticed.
Dundee said, “I guess this Amercon deal’s put you back on your feed, hey? That’s a good break, getting that thing tossed your way. I kind of envy you.”
It made him feel guilty because by now he ought to be on top of the case, he ought to have every figure and fact on the tip of his tongue; he felt like a schoolboy who’d daydreamed his way through his homework.
That afternoon he made a great effort to buckle down to it. But when he left the office he realized how little of it had penetrated. His mind was too crowded to admit digits and decimals; they simply didn’t matter enough any more.
Now damn it, straighten up. It’s your job you’re risking.
He had a hamburger in Squire’s coffee shop on the corner and afterward he still felt hungry but he didn’t order dessert. He kept remembering Dundee’s compliments. He walked home and weighed himself and discovered he was down to 175 for the first time in ten years. The skin hung a little loose on his face and belly but he could feel his ribs. He decided to join a health club and start doing daily workouts in a gym — there was one in the Shelton Hotel a few blocks up from the office, three or four of the accountants went there every day. You’ve got to be in shape.
In shape for what?
He thumbed through the Post and his eyes paused on an ad for a karate school and that put everything together; he said aloud, “You’re nuts,” and threw the newspaper across the room. But ten minutes later he found he was thinking about going back to that same bar on Broadway and he was now alert enough to realize why: it wasn’t the bar he was thinking of, it was the walk home.
It brought him bolt upright in the chair. He wanted that kid to try it again.
He got up and began to pace back and forth through the apartment. “Now take — take it easy. For God’s sake don’t get carried away.”
He had started talking to himself sometime in the past week or two; he realized he was going to have to watch that or one day he’d catch himself doing it on the street. At least he began to feel he understood the people you saw doing it on the sidewalks — walking along by themselves having loud animated arguments with imaginary companions, complete with gestures and positive emphatic answers to questions no one in earshot had asked. You passed them all the time and you edged away from them and refused to meet their eyes. But now he was beginning to know them.
“Easy,” he muttered again. He knew he was getting as filled up with inflated bravado as that kid had been last night. One accidental victory and he had become as smug as an armed guard in a prison for the blind.
You were lucky. That kid was scared. Most of them aren’t scared. Most of them are killers. And he remembered the rage that had flooded his tissues, overcoming every inhibition: if he’d pulled that on a veteran street mugger he’d have been dead now, or in an emergency ward bleeding from sixteen slices.
He’d had twenty-four hours of euphoria; it was time to be realistic. It wasn’t his courage that had saved him; it wasn’t even the poor weapon, the roll of quarters; it was luck, the kid’s fear. Maybe it had been the kid’s first attempt.
But what if it had been a hardened thug? Or a pack of them?
His toe caught the discarded Post and he bent to pick it up and take it to the wastebasket. The ad for the karate school returned to mind, and the resolve to take up gym workouts. That’s no answer, he thought. It took years to develop hand-to-hand skills; he’d heard enough cocktail party chitchat to know that much. Two, three years and you might be good enough to earn yourself a black belt or whatever they called it. But what good was that against a killer with a gun, or six kids with knives?