“I want you out of this fuckin’ house,” she repeated as she stared at me.
“I ain’t going.”
“Please,” Helmsley appealed. “Go.”
“I ain’t going.”
“I’ll give you money for a hotel,” he implored.
“No.”
“I’ll get him out for you,” Angela said, taking a step forward.
“No,” Helmsley commanded.
“Then call the fucking police!” Angela yelled. Helmsley stood still and looked about miserably. She screamed louder this time, “Call the fucking police!”
Helmsley went over to the phone and looked at me pleadingly. “For God’s sake, please go. Just for now.”
“No, Helmsley,” I replied. “If you can’t rule your own house you should go into your room and let me handle it.”
“YOU DIAL THE POLICE GODDAMN YOU!”
Helmsley snatched up the phone nervously and started dialing. As he did, a victorious sneer smeared over the bitch’s face.
“I got your own friend calling the cops on yer, yer a pair of fucking faggots.”
“I thought you were going to bash me,” I taunted.
Her face started lacing back and tightening. Before I knew it, she jumped forward and tore the bandage off my right arm. When I stood up, she clipped me, a right cross to my head. Falling backwards, I reached out to grab her, trying to regain my balance. Accidentally I shoved her. She fell backwards right through the old oak coffee table. Now she was screaming and hollering.
“He hit me! The bastard hit me!”
“It was an accident,” I replied as I tugged on my pants. Helmsley hurdled over his fallen lover and was punching me all over. He was bigger and stronger than I, so I tried running, but he pinned me down with his knees on my shoulders. All the anger that she had generated and he had stored was punching out on me. I tried to talk to him, but suddenly I felt the hem of my pants being pulled up. Catching a glimpse beyond Helmsley’s anchored torso, I saw Angela drunkenly yanking up my bare leg, and I howled as her molars pierced deep into my calf.
Quickly and instinctively I kicked her in the face, catapulting her against the wall and onto the floor in a heap. She lay still now. Helmsley saw that she was badly hurt. He bolted off and attended his beloved maniac. Grabbing my shirt, shoes, and coat, I wobbled out the front door.
Several yuppies walking in an unintentional formation must have thought it a strange sight on their way to work, when they saw me wearing little else but pants, madly limping down Clinton Street. Suddenly a police car with sirens blaring turned a corner and screeched in front of Helmsley’s door. The son of a bitch had actually called them. Goose pimples or not, I wasn’t going to dress until I was a couple blocks clear of the serpent’s love nest. I dressed in a doorway and inspected my leg. Both the upper and lower bridge of her teeth had sunk deeply into my calf. Upon careful inspection I noticed a tiny patch of flesh and sinew ripped off altogether. It was probably sitting in the bottom of Angela’s leathery stomach. I tied a tourniquet around my knee and hobbled to the F. Not knowing where else to go, I got off at Broadway/Lafayette and walked up Broadway, finally ending up at the Loeb Student Center at NYU. I limped my way to a booth in the cafeteria downstairs. There, I recuperated over four cups of tea squeezed out of a single tea bag. My jaw had a deep bruise, my neck and chest pulsated and everything else swelled. But the bloodiest gem of my lacerations was the tear in my right leg. With napkins and rubber bands, I was able to sop up and control the ooze of blood, but I was still worried about infection. I finally decided to go to one of the most merciless and dreaded places in the city, a hospital.
Since I owed Saint Vincent’s money for repairing the cut arm, I started hobbling northeastward toward Beth Israel. As I walked, the wound reopened. I kept stopping and trying to curtail the bleeding.
I wasn’t in pain, but by the time I reached Second Avenue I was numb and dizzy. I paused a moment in front of the Saint Mark’s Cinema, just to catch my breath. I didn’t recognize anyone inside. By the time I finally arrived at Beth Israel, the self-applied battle dressing along with the hem of my pants and right shoe were all soaked in blood. I staggered into the emergency ward. Quickly a novice nurse laid me on a gurney and started cutting away at the pants.
“He hasn’t been admitted yet,” I heard the head nurse remark. Someone questioned me, and then the young nurse returned to the wound. She cleaned it out and brought over an intern, a young Indian woman. She quickly stitched all the frayed flesh ends into an integrated calf, and dashed off to the next impatient patient. As a final fuck you to that wimp bastard, I told the hospital people I was Helmsley and gave his location as my billing address.
After a couple of hours of recuperation, it was time to go. The Zeus Theater was only a couple of blocks away, and it was already late afternoon, so I slowly staggered there for work.
I arrived a half hour before my scheduled time. Today was going to be my first solo flight. I was supposed to manage the theater alone. But when Miguel saw me his mouth fell open in disbelief.
“Are you a masochist?”
“No.”
“What’s with you? Every time I see you you’ve been wounded.”
“Fate’s a sadist.”
Miguel offered to cover that night’s shift, but I could tell that he was looking forward to having the night off. He had been working every night for the past two weeks, ever since the manager whom I was replacing had quit. I was equally eager to see if I could handle the job. He planted a thankful kiss on my cheek, promised to call, and left.
All I had that day was the watery tea at the NYU student center, so I appropriated some money from the petty cash drawer, and I went out to get some food. I went over to the Korean greengrocer, which had just opened a salad bar, and put together a complex salad. Then I hobbled back to the theater, and slowly ate it down. I began my first inspection of the theater. Toilet paper was stocked in the bathroom. All the fire codes were being observed. Checking the screen, I noticed that all the acts of fellatio and sodomy were correctly in focus and all the grunts and moans were distinctly audible. Along some of the seats, I saw the dark silhouettes of pleased patrons in rhythmical motions. Life was following art in the theater. I was about to dip back into the office when I heard someone address the box office lady, “Is Miguel here?”
“Miguel?” she replied. I turned to see the oily subway kid who was initially recommended the job by Tanya. Before the box office lady could tell him that Miguel wasn’t here, I stepped up and spoke to him.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Miguel?” he asked. Silently I went around to the turnstile and opened the door for him.
“Why?” I said.
“Tanya sent me for the manager’s job.”
“I needed someone a week ago. Where the hell were you?” I replied, and then concluded, “I filled the spot.”
“Shit,” he replied.
“Sorry,” I replied. He vanished back into the night.
Proceeding back into the office, I took out the portable TV to forget the dirty deed. The kid shouldn’t have taken so long. I turned on the TV.
The only time I had ever watched TV in the recent past was when I was depressed. After about five minutes of watching a sitcom, the funniest part of which was the laugh track, I lost reception.
Finding nothing else to do, I started cleaning the accumulations out of my pockets. Other than soiled tissues, I found a “Be A Cashier In Six Weeks” mail order coupon, which in my former unemployed despair I had pulled from a subway advertisement. The bottom of my pocket was impaled with broken toothpicks and lined with pulverized after-dinner mints that I had taken from the Italian restaurant where Helmsley had treated me, pre-Angela. Finally I came across an unknown phone number scribbled on a loose piece of paper. This I threw into the garbage with everything else. But no sooner did I drop it than I remembered that it belonged to the career woman I had met during the hold-up. I push-dialed her number, but got a recording mandating use of the newly implemented 718 area code. I remembered that she said she lived in Brooklyn Heights, and I dialed the number again, properly. This time I got a mellow “hello.”