It was Duncan. I'd forgotten all about him. He was yelling. 'What the fuck are you doing?' The carpet was steaming, pieces of teapot fanning out around his feet like petals. His face was paper-white, even whiter than it had been in the cafe. He kept yelling. I didn't like him yelling like that. I'd had enough of it. It really was time for me to go.
I started to get up. Violet, with a casual flick of her wrist, slammed me back down. The impact knocked the breath out of me. I reached out, rather unsteadily, to push myself up again. Perhaps she saw the movement as a threat, or perhaps she was just being playful. My arm was suddenly grabbed, and squeezed, and wrenched so hard I thought it might pop out of its socket.
There was a flash of dazzling white incisor, and a grinding, followed by a crisp snapping sound, like a ginger biscuit being broken in half.
I managed to pull away, or she let me go — I'm not sure which. For a fraction of a second, it didn't hurt at all. I opened my mouth to say something, and then the pain reared up and hit me. For a moment, there was so much pain, I didn't know who I was, or where I was coming from, or what I'd been doing there. It came from my shoulder, my elbow, my hand, all down my left side, all at the same time. The first wave ebbed, but my gasp of relief was cut short when it came roaring back, worse than ever.
I looked at my hand, then away. Then back again. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The little fingernail had gone. My little fingernail had gone. All that was left was a raw stub, and a flappy bit of skin, and something knobbly and white which I didn't want to examine too closely. But it wasn't white for long because while I watched, the whole area filled up with red which spilled over and began to trickle down my wrist. I stared and stared, not wanting to admit that the reason the nail was missing was because the entire top joint of the finger had been bitten off.
It looked painful, but I couldn't quite connect it to the pain I was feeling. After what seemed like an age, I managed to croak, 'My finger.' I tried to glare accusingly at Violet, who was chewing daintily.
Through the pain, I thought I could hear Duncan wailing, 'But it was going to be me.' I couldn't work out whether he was wailing at me, or at her. Surely he didn't want his finger chewed off. Either way, it didn't matter — I knew I was going to bleed to death, or die from shock, or both. Blood was now dribbling through my fingers, down my arm, and dripping on to the sofa. I knew I had to keep the hand pointing upwards — that way it wouldn't bleed so much — and I had to find something to staunch the flow. With my other hand, I fished around in my bag, only to find I'd used up all my Kleenex on the crying jag.
'Uh, the bathroom,' I mumbled. 'Gotta get some-thing.' It was an effort to form words, and I wasn't sure I was saying them loud enough for anyone to hear, but I managed to totter to my feet.
Violet was twice as quick, and standing in front of me again. 'You are going nowhere,' she said. She was still smiling, but she'd given up pretending to be nice. 'You know too much, but you know nothing.' She stretched her arms out wide, like a miniature basketball player blocking my route to goal. If I'd been quicker off the mark, I could have dodged around her, but I was thinking and moving in slow motion.
'Here you all are,' she said, 'and you might as well not be there. You are just objects and shadows.' Now she was ranting. She said something else in a language I couldn't even identify, let alone translate. I was in too much pain to care.
'Oh, for God's sake,' said Duncan.
'Help,' I said weakly, but he wasn't even looking at me. My finger was gone and the bastard wasn't even looking.
He said, 'Oh, hell.'
Violet seemed to have lost interest in me too. 'Remember what I told you,' she said to him. 'Do it.'
'I can't.' His voice was much too loud. 'Not now.'
'Excuse me,' I whispered, 'I think I'm bleeding to death.'
'Remember what we talked about.' An edge of impatience had crept into Violet's even tone. 'Do it.'
'I remember, for God's sake. Stop treating me like a child.'
'So go ahead,' she said. 'What's your problem?'
I thought he had calmed down, but I was wrong. He suddenly bunched up his fists and started yelling again. He was yelling so hard the veins stood up on his forehead. I couldn't make it all out, but I caught the last part: 'You never told me. You never told me you were fucking dykes. Both of you.'
This was too much. I wanted to tell him no, he was wrong, I had never liked women, and it had been Violet's fault, not mine, and anyway he'd got it all back to front, because after all she hadn't been seducing me, she'd gone and bitten off my finger, for Christ's sake, and that wasn't my idea of foreplay, not at all, and now look at me, I was bleeding to death. I wanted to say all this, but I could barely string two words together.
And then I forgot all about it anyhow, because she laughed at him, and he immediately clouted her hard, across the face.
Time stood still. I even forgot the pain for a second. I held my breath, waiting for her to lunge back at him and take his head off. She could have done it with a single swipe. But she didn't. Her gaze never left his as she slowly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were glittering dangerously as she said, 'Or maybe you're not up to it, eh?'
'Bitch,' said Duncan, and hit her again. There was a soft scrunch as his fist connected with the bones in her nose. She stepped back in surprise, and her hands flew up to her face. Blood was gushing from her nostrils. Her fingers pushed and probed, as if to inspect the damage. When the gloves came away soaking wet, she studied them calmly for a moment. Then she turned back to Duncan, and smiled and said in a voice that was now slightly nasal, 'You guys, you're all alike.'
When he whacked her again she stumbled, and then he kicked her legs away from under her, and she went down, and there was a loud crack as her head struck the floor, and he immediately started kicking her in the face and stomach, but she kept on laughing and rolling around, as though he were tickling her, as though this were the most fun she'd ever had in her life — which just seemed to make him kick all the harder.
If she'd been human, I might have asked him to stop what he was doing, but it wasn't as though she were one of us. She wasn't human at all, so it didn't count. And besides, she'd eaten my little finger and now my hand was hurting like hell, so she deserved everything she was getting. But I didn't care for the expression on Duncan's face. It was an expression I'd never seen before — not on anyone. Under any other circumstances, it would have made me feel uneasy. I tried to work out what it was, but my finger was hurting so much, I couldn't think straight, so I sat down and stared. The whole thing was unreal. It was like watching a movie.
Eventually, when her face had been reduced to a bloody pulp, the swelling made it almost impossible for her to laugh. But one of her eyes was swollen shut, so that she seemed instead to be tipping the wink at some huge arid incomprehensible joke. Duncan stood over her, only slightly out of breath, and every time she made a noise, he kicked her again. 'You'll have to speak up,' he said with exaggerated clarity, like someone talking to his deaf grandma. 'We can't understand it when you mumble.'
She made another noise. Bubbles of blood came out of her mouth and the remains of her nose. To my horror, I realized she was singing. Something from La Boheme. It was a thick liquid sound, like someone warbling through an ocean of treacle.