Marlene glanced at one of the beer clocks. “No, she thinks you’re a schmuck and a pest. She hates you.”
He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to break us up?”
“I don’t know, Robbie,” she replied lightly, “maybe because I’m obsessed with you. Maybe I want you for my very own.” She paused and then said, very carefully, “Forget her! Come to me, my darling! Only I love you as you deserve.”
It took several seconds for it to register. Marlene thought he hadn’t gotten the point and was about to say something further, as a result of which her guard was down when Pruitt snarled and lunged at her across the table.
He grabbed the front of her sweater with his left hand and swung a roundhouse right that landed on the side of her jaw, not a solid blow because of the clumsy angle, but hard enough to make her see red. The table went over, as did her chair. Pruitt was yelling something. He was on top of her on the beer-stinking floor, his left hand on her throat now, and his right crashing down on her mouth, this time a solid hit. She tasted blood. She tried to claw his eyes, but he knocked her hands away and struck her again as she turned her head, landing a good one on her ear. Sound vanished into ringing. His knee pressed into her chest; her breath failed and she saw his rage-distorted face begin to gray out.
Then she heard, through the ringing, a sharp crack, a sound like a bat hitting a ball or a book falling off a table. Instantly, his weight was gone. She coughed and gasped and rolled onto her side, trying to get the air flowing again and her vision working. Blood was flowing down her chin in a steady stream. She caught a pool of it in her cupped palm and wiped it off on her white sweater, and then she pressed the satin hem of the sweater tightly against her mouth
As the ringing faded she became aware of a grunting, shuffling noise, punctuated with meaty thuds. She struggled to a sitting position and looked around the barroom. A tableau: the patrons and the bartender frozen in place, their expressions ranging from avid to dull; at stage center Harry Bello calmly breaking Rob Pruitt to pieces with a short length of lead-loaded one-inch pipe wrapped in neoprene. Pruitt was on his knees, held up by Harry’s hand on his collar. Marlene saw at once that Pruitt’s jaw was out of line and his right wrist hung at a bad angle. As she watched, Harry’s pipe swung out in a short, precise arc and cracked his client’s collarbone. She watched him for a moment, both horrified and awed. Harry wasn’t even breathing hard. He was beating a man to death with the same effortless skill that Fred Astaire used when he began the Beguine.
“Enough, Harry,” she croaked. She rose to her feet, trailing drops of blood and put a restraining hand on his arm. “Enough,” she said again, louder.
He looked at her and said, “Are you okay?”
She said, “Yeah, it’s just a cut lip. It looks worse than it feels. You better make the calls.”
Harry nodded and let go of Pruitt’s collar. The man collapsed at her feet like a sack of golf balls. Harry cuffed him to the bar rail and went off to phone. Marlene sat down. One of the whores gave her a damp cloth. Marlene smiled thanks at her and dabbed at the dried blood. She checked the beer clock and looked at the door expectantly. Right on schedule, in walked Carrie Lanin.
After the cops and the ambulance and the emergency room and swearing out the multiple complaints against Pruitt, it was two-thirty before Marlene walked into the loft. They’d cleaned up her face and put a few stitches into her mouth, but she was turning interesting colors. Her lip looked like a raw Italian sausage, her outfit like a butcher’s apron.
Unfortunately, Karp had dozed off in front of the TV, and was awakened by her return.
“Jesus Christ, Marlene…!”
“I don’t want to hear about it, not tonight,” she said, moving past him toward the bedroom. He followed close behind.
“Wait! What the hell …?”
“I’m okay, I’m not badly hurt, I’ve been to the emergency room …”
“But what happened?”
She stripped off the gory angora and blouse and tossed them into a corner. “It was Pruitt. I went to meet Carrie, he followed her, we went into a bar, he followed us in and he jumped me.”
Marlene was stripping off her filthy skirt as she uttered this whopper, the official tale she had concocted and sworn to, and had her back to Karp, so she did not observe the expression on his face as he took it in. She would have been dismayed to have seen it.
“And …?” he said.
She slipped into a robe and turned to face him. “And what? Harry was backing me up and he arrested Pruitt. He’s in jail now. Look, it hurts when I talk, and I want to take a hot bath-can the interrogation wait?”
“No, it can’t,” said Karp, blocking the door. “Let me understand this. This guy comes strolling into a bar where you and his girlfriend are sitting and just cracks you in the face? And your tame cop is just standing by waiting to arrest him? Do I have this right? Why did he hit you?”
“Why?” cried Marlene on a rising note. “Because he’s a nut, that’s why. He thinks I’m standing in the way of true love. We were just talking and-”
“Oh, horseshit, Marlene! You set this up. You concocted a trap for this bozo to generate an assault charge and a probation violation. And you’re going to go to court and swear to a pack of lies to put him away, aren’t you?”
Karp’s voice had risen to a shout, and Marlene unconsciously retreated a step.
“He belongs in a cell,” she snarled through clenched teeth. “What do you want? For me to wait until he kidnaps her, or rapes her, or murders her? He’s a stalker, for Christ’s sake!”
“Right, and who’re you?” Karp yelled. “God almighty? Deciding who gets put away, who’s the unacceptable risk?”
“Oh, you know, I can’t stand you when you get this self-righteous attitude. Like you never cut a corner in your life to nail some scumbag.”
He stared at her and she at him for a long moment. Then he said, slowly and carefully, “You don’t fucking understand, do you? There’s a difference, Marlene. I cut corners, you’re a felon.”
The word hung in the air like sewer gas. Karp turned and left the bedroom. She heard his heavy steps and the slam of the little guest room door.
SEVEN
Karp was gone by the time Marlene awakened the next morning, which she did not at all mind. She looked blearily at the clock and uttered a small shriek of alarm. Fifteen minutes to get ready and off to school. She sat up quickly and let out another shriek, of pain this time. It felt as though the flesh were being wrenched from her face with a dull spatula. In the bathroom she took one look at the Technicolor glory of her face and completed the rest of her toilette with her eye averted.
Lucy gave no trouble about being jammed by brute force into her clothes and eating her breakfast (banana and bran muffin to go) as she did not want to rile the angry and hideous stranger who had mysteriously replaced her mom during the night.
“Aren’t we picking up Miranda?” the child asked meekly, when it had become clear that they were heading directly for P.S. 1.
“No, we’re not. Miranda can get to school by herself.”
“What about the bad man?”
“The bad man is in jail,” Marlene replied in a tone that did not encourage further questions.
After the drop-off, Marlene shopped briefly on Grand Street and went back home. There she found the message light on her answering machine blinking, which she ignored, and also discovered that she had been traipsing through her neighborhood with her sweatshirt on inside out and the fly of her jeans gaping. She cursed and tore her clothes off and threw on a black sweatsuit, the right way, and then allowed herself a good, heaving, mucousy cry.
In the midst of this the phone rang.
“What?” Marlene shouted into the receiver.