“You in here a lot?” I said.
He thought about it. “I ain’t here, Luther don’t bother opening up.”
“Know a guy named T.C.? Regular, they tell me. Tall dude-”
He grinned. Not a good sign.
“-hair cut short, wears one earring. Light skin.”
“Man, I tell you, these beers be disappearing in a hurry on a day like this one here. You notice that?”
I put another five on the bar in front of him.
“Well, then. He be coming out of the bathroom back there just about any time now, I ‘spect,” he said after ordering and sampling a new beer. “What you want with T.C. anyway? He ain’t much.”
“Friend asked me to talk to him.”
“Ain’t much for talk, either.”
And at that, as if on cue, the man himself stepped into the penumbra of light behind the pool players, six-four or-five and at least two-fifty, all of it muscle except maybe the earring, followed a moment later by two guys in sportcoats and jeans who hurried on out of the bar.
He watched me approach without registering anything at alclass="underline" alarm, suspicion, caution, interest. Or humanity, for that matter.
“Buy you a drink?” I asked.
“Why th’ hell not?” And after we’d bellied up to the bar over my beer and his double Teacher’s rocks, he said: “So what is it you’re needing, my man? How much and when. And a name, somewhere along the way.”
Faint tatters of an accent drifted to the surface, Cuban maybe.
“I’m throwing a chicken fry for my friends,” I said. “Someone told me you were the man to see.”
He looked at the bridge of my nose for a minute or so. No sign of alarm, suspicion, etc. (See above.)
“I get it,” he said. “You’re crazy, right? Like ol’ Banghead Terence over there. Hey: you been buttin’ down any walls lately, boy?”
“No sir,” Terence said. My informant.
“Nigger got his head scrambled right good back there in Nam, so now every few days we’ll find him in some alley somewhere and he’ll be running headfirst into the wall over and over again till he falls down and can’t get up no more. Wall just sits there.”
He finished his drink, rolled ice around the bottom of the glass.
“Figure something like that must of happened to you. Ain’t no other possible reason you be comin’ here this way, rubbing up against me like this. You got to be crazy too. Now you tell me: am I right?”
I smiled, ordered a couple more drinks for us, and started telling him why I was there. That Sheryl wanted me to talk to him, explain why he had to leave her alone.
“So you just run on out and do whatever any pussy tell you. That it, man?”
I started over. Clare was a friend of Sheryl’s and-
“So you be fucking them both at the same time? Or they do each other while you watch.”
I tried once more. I really did intend, or at least had convinced myself that I intended, just to talk to him. But intentions are slippery things.
When the gun came over the table’s edge, suddenly, at the exact moment he switched his eyes toward the door and lifted his face as though in greeting, I slammed my glass down as hard as possible on that hand. The glass shattered, but I didn’t feel it then. I did feel bones give way under the glass. My other hand was already moving toward him with a heavy ashtray, and that connected just above his left eye.
“Righteous,” Terence said from the bar.
T.C. went back out of the chair, toppling it, but sprang almost at once to his feet and made a grab for my shirtfront. Suckered, I leaned back with the top half of my body-and he swept my feet out from under me.
“Moves,” Terence said. “ ‘Member that shit.”
Things looked quite different from down there. It was absolutely amazing, for instance, how much bigger T.C. had gotten. Or how many cockroaches there were skittering about under chairs and things. At one point when T.C. was sitting on top of me kind of boxing my head from side to side playfully, I saw by a table leg what I’m certain was a severed, dried-up ear.
Then I watched two fingers jam up hard into his nose and heard cartilage give way there. When he lifted his hands to pull mine away, I struck him full force in the throat and he fell off me, gasping. I kicked him in the ribs, then a couple of times in the head before I noticed he was lying still and turning blue. No one made any move toward us; they simply watched.
“Better call the paramedics,” I told the bartender, staggering over to him. It sounded like: Btr. Kawl. Thpur. Medix.
He looked about the room, timing it.
“Man does comedy too,” he said.
There was skittery laughter.
But he also said, to me: “You better get on out of here. We’ll just ‘low Mr. T.C. to sleep it off a while. But come closing I ‘spect I’ll notice him there. Don’t see no way ‘round that. And then the Man’s gonna want to know things.”
I started out.
“That be two-ninety for the last round,” the bartender said.
Chapter Eight
I rang the bell and then just kind of leaned there against the sill to wait. I didn’t know what time it was. After one, maybe closer to two. Lights still burned in many of the houses. Streetlights, moon and windows all had a red haze about them. I’d wrapped a handkerchief around my hand, but it was soaked through now, and periodically thick gobbets of blood would squeeze their way out and fall like slugs.
After a while I heard her coming to the door, duh-DA, duh-DA, duh-DA, in perfect iambs. She wore a short, sky-blue, kimonolike robe.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You wanted to beat the rest of the kids to the candied apples and other treats.”
“Already been tricked,” I said. Then: “You should see the other guy.”
“Who won?”
“I did.”
“Then I don’t think I want to see the other guy. Aren’t you getting a little old for this?”
“Tried to tell you that. Damn glad now I didn’t wear my tie-dye.”
“Sheryl’s ex-live-in?”
“The chicken man himself.”
“Oh Lew. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry enough to let me come in?”
“What? Oh, sorry. Sure. You really do look like shit, by the way.” She turned and stepped away from the door. I took a step forward. Nations disappeared, new suns appeared in the sky, planets formed around them. I took another step.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Just a little damaged in transit, as they say at the post office. Then, of course, they hand you this thing that’s taped back together three ways from Sunday and whatever was inside is crushed beyond recognition.”
“Are you?”
“Crushed? Absolutely. Many times over. But it always springs back. Well, these days I guess it’s more like it seeps back.”
“Stronger than before?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. You?”
She shook her head. “Be nice if it were true, though. Like a lot of things.”
I eased myself onto the couch.
“Tell Sheryl T.C. won’t be bothering her anymore. Actually, I’m not sure he’ll be bothering anyone anymore.”
“Must have been one hell of a talk.”
“I won’t forget it soon. You got anything to drink?”
“Might be some scotch under the cabinet from when my parents were here. Want me to look?”
“Oh yes.”
There were a couple of inches left in the bottle she put on the coffee table before me. Ignoring the glass, I tilted the bottle up. Seemed easier that way: less movement, less pain. I remembered O’Carolan asking for Irish whiskey on his deathbed, saying it would be a terrible thing if two such friends should part without a final, farewell kiss. I tilted the bottle again.
“I feel like I just blinked and twenty years went by-backwards,” I said. “Definitely an old TV science fiction show. Can’t be real life.” I looked at her. “Sorry. It’s late.”