"I need to talk to you," he said.
"All right," said Ramse, excusing himself from the legless man. "What's the trouble?"
"Jesus," said Kline. "What kind of party is this?"
"It's Gous' party," said Ramse. "His three. Where's your drink? Do you need another drink?"
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Isn't it obvious?" said Ramse. He looked at Kline, eyes wide, then shook his head. "I forget you don't know us very well," he said. "It's an amputation party."
"An amputation party."
"Like a coming out," said Ramse. "Gous is giving up two fingers. He's gathered his friends around him for the occasion. He's going from a one to a three."
"Jesus," said Kline. "I have to leave."
Kline tried to make for the door but Ramse was pressing his forearm to Kline's chest. "You can't leave," hissed Ramse, "not now that you've come. It'd break Gous' heart."
"But," said Kline. "I don't believe in any of this. I can't stay here."
"It's not that you don't believe," said Ramse. "It's just that you don't have the call yet."
"No," said Kline. "It's that I don't believe."
"I don't care what you believe," said Ramse. "Just do this for Gous. He admires you. What has he ever done to you to deserve this?"
"What has he ever done to deserve losing his fingers?"
"He doesn't see it that way," said Ramse. "He's had the call. This for him is an act of faith. You don't have to believe in it, but you can still respect him."
"I have to go," said Kline, pushing against his arm.
"No," said Ramse. "Please, just for Gous. Have compassion. Please."
By the time the amputation took place, Kline had had a few drinks, had drunk enough in fact that he had trouble making his eyes focus. To see reasonably well, he had to cover one eye with his stump.
Eventually Ramse coaxed the drink out of his hand, goaded him now through the open partition and into the half-room beyond. He stood on the edge of the lit circle, swaying slightly, Ramse beside him, Ramse's forearm tucked under his arm. In the center was the doctor, his mask up now. He had stripped the cloth off the small metal cart to reveal an array of tools that seemed half to be medical instruments, half to be from the knife block of a gourmet chef. Jesus, Kline thought.
Gous came into the circle, smiling, while the tuxedo-dressed gentlemen clapped gently. Two gentlemen were called forward as witnesses, each of them placing a stump under one of Gous' arms. He leaned over the large table, placed his hand on it, palm up. The doctor took a hypodermic off the table and slid its needle into Kline's hand. His fingers twitched. Or rather Gous' fingers, Kline realized; it was not his own hand, he could not start to think of it as his own hand. The four of them-the doctor, Gous, the two witnesses-stood as if in tableau, motionless in a way that Kline found unbearable, only the doctor moving from time to time to regard his watch. At last he took a metal probe from the small metal cart and pushed at the hand.
Gous watched him, then nodded slightly. The two witnesses braced themselves behind him. The doctor switched on a cauterizer. After a moment, Kline could smell the way it oxidized the air. The doctor let his fingers run over the instruments, then took up the cauterizer with one hand. What looked like a stylized and carefully balanced cleaver was in the other. He approached the table, lined the cleaver along the line Gous had drawn on his hand, and then raised it, brought it swiftly down.
Kline saw Gous' eyelids flutter, then the rest of his body faltered and was supported and caught by the witnesses behind him. All around, the men began to clap quietly, and blood began to spurt from the wound. Kline closed his eyes, felt himself begin to lean to one side, but Ramse caught him, held him upright. He could hear the buzz of the cauterizer and a moment later began to smell burning flesh.
"Hey," whispered Ramse. "Are you all right?" All around them, men were beginning to move.
"Just a little drunk," said Kline, opening his eyes. Gous was there before him, having his hand bandaged.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" asked Ramse. "Gous certainly didn't think so. Not so bad, eh?"
"I don't know," Kline said. "I want to go home."
"The night's still young," said Ramse. "We're only getting started."
The rest of the night was a blur to him. At some point he lost his tuxedo jacket; at another point, he found the next day, someone had smeared a swath of blood across his forehead. At one point he could hear Ramse telling everyone not to give him another drink and then he was outside, vomiting onto the gravel, Ramse seeming to be trying at once to hold him up and to knock him over. Then they were stumbling across the gravel courtyard, Kline covering one of his eyes so he could see, and into the bar where he was drinking not whiskey but first coffee and then water. It was not exactly a bar either, but more like a club. They were sitting in armchairs, a small coffee table before them, pointed toward a stage, and Kline realized the curtain was opening.
The stage was bare at first, lit by a reddish spotlight, and then a woman came out onto it swaddled from knees to neck in boas.
"Watch this," said Ramse, his words slurring even more than usual. "She's really something."
A strip show, thought Kline. He had seen a strip show before, more than once, had seen several in fact with the man who had since come to be known as the gentleman with the cleaver, the man who was dead now. He didn't care about strip shows one way or the other. He watched the woman lose one boa after another while Ramse whistled. She would let a boa trail first and then finally let it flop all the way off and then kick it to one side of the stage. And then finally she was done, stripped naked, blurred in the red light, not particularly attractive.
He waited for the curtain to go down but the curtain did not go down. He turned to Ramse but found him still staring rapt at the girl, and so he himself turned back to her and watched as, with a flick of the wrist, she cracked off her hand.
A dim howl went up through the house and Kline heard, scattered through the chairs, a dull thumping, the sound of stumps beating against one another. She made her way toward one side of the stage, spinning slightly, and then snapped the stump of her arm against her remaining hand and Kline saw three fingers wobble loose and slough away. The crowd roared. He tried to stand up but Ramse had his hand on his shoulder and was shouting in his ear. "Just wait," Ramse shouted, "the best is yet to come!"
And then the woman sashayed across the stage and reached up with her remaining finger and thumb to tear free her ear. She spun it around a few times before tossing it out into the audience. Kline saw a group of men rise up in a dark mass trying somehow, with what hands they had left between them, to catch it. And then she turned away, turned her back to them, and when she turned back her artificial breasts had been pulled away to hang like an apron around her belly, revealing two shiny flat patches where they had been. She spread her legs and squatted and Kline imagined her legs were beginning to separate, to split up. Jesus, God, he thought, and tried to stand, and felt Ramse trying to hold him down, and felt the blood rush to his head. He staggered forward and into the small table, hot coffee sloshing all over his legs, and looked up to see the woman on the stage gouging her fingers beneath one side of her face, but mercifully, before she had torn it away, he had fallen and did not, despite Ramse's urging, get up again.
VI
It was late in the afternoon before he could bring himself to get up again, his head still spinning. He went into the bathroom and drank cup after cup of water and then turned on the water, stood under the shower for a while, steam rising around him.