He said this every time. Then Lisa would take the phone and tell me she missed me.
“I miss you,” she would say.
“Yeah, Lisa, same here.”
“Keep taking good care of her,” she’d add. “Don’t ever forget her…”
“No, don’t worry.”
Then she’d hand Eddie back over.
“Hi, it’s me. Listen, you know that if anything happens we’ll be there in a hurry… you know that… you’re not alone, you know…”
“Of course I know that.”
“Maybe in two weeks or so we can come down…”
“Great. Love to see you.”
“Anyway, in the meantime take care…”
“Right, man. You too.”
“Right… Lisa is motioning to me to say she misses you…”
“Tell her same here.”
“You’ll let me know if anything… you sure you’re all right…?”
“Yes, the worst is over.”
“Right, well, we think of you often. Anyway, I’ll call again soon.”
“Fine, Eddie, I’ll be waiting…”
It was the kind of phone call that made me melancholy. It was like getting a postcard from the other end of the world that says I LOVE YOU, if you get my drift. If there was something not too horrible on TV, I’d just plop myself down in front of it, with a box of candy on my lap. Going to bed would be a little tougher. Don’t forget her, she’d said… Are you sure everything’s all right, he’d asked… The worst is over, I’d answered. This is how a large bed becomes a bed for two again, and I would lie down on it like it was a bed of coals. Later, people would ask me how I managed during this period-what I did for sex. But I just told them, Nice of you to ask, don’t worry about it-why should I bore you with my troubles? Isn’t there something else you’d like to talk about? People always want to know how famous people live, otherwise they don’t sleep well at night-it’s nuts.
All this to say that I began to live normally again-Life, the standard model: highs and lows, part of me believing in Heaven and part of me not. I wrote, I paid my bills, I changed the sheets once a week, I killed time, I took walks, I had drinks with Bob, I stole peeks at Annie’s thing, I kept track of sales, I changed the oil in the car regularly, I didn’t write back to my fans, or to the others; and I used my more peaceful moments to think of her. It isn’t rare that I still find her in my arms. Under such conditions, I never expected anything to happen to me. Especially nothing like what happened. But you should never assume that you’ve made your last trip to the checkout counter. There will always be something you haven’t paid for yet.
It was a day like any other, except that I’d gone to the trouble of making myself a nice pot of chili. I’d gotten up out of my chair several times during the afternoon to taste it. It made me smile. I hadn’t lost my touch. I just had to make sure it didn’t stick to the bottom. When the writing was going well, I was always in a good mood… and with chili as a reward I was practically in paradise. When I had chili I heard her laughing.
When I noticed it getting dark, I closed my notebook. I got up to pour myself two fingers of gin with a few necessary ice cubes. I set the table without letting go of my glass. There were still a few red streaks in the sky, but it was the color of the chili that interested me, and a lovely color it was.
I served myself a big helping. It was a little too hot to eat, so I sat back peacefully with my drink and put on some music. Not just any music, but “This Must Be the Place,” which I love so much. I closed my eyes. Everything was copacetic. I rang my ice cubes like little bells.
I was so into it that I didn’t hear them come in. I couldn’t have been more relaxed. The house was flooded with the smell of chili. The blow to my arm paralyzed it. The pain made me fall over in my chair. I tried to grab onto the table but all I did was tip over half my plate, falling down on the tile. I thought they must have used a crowbar on me. I yelled. A kick in the stomach took my breath away. I rolled over on my back, drooling. Somehow, through the fog, I managed to see them. There were two of them, a big one and a little one. I didn’t recognize them right away they weren’t in uniform, and I’d long since forgotten the episode.
“Scream again and I’ll cut you into little pieces,” the fat one said.
I tried to get my breath back, but it was like someone had doused me with gasoline. The fat one took his front teeth out of his mouth and held them up in his hand.
“Perhapth you recognithe me better like thith,” he thaid.
I curled up slightly on the linoleum. I couldn’t take it-not this. The fat one was Henry, the one whose big toe I’d shot off, and the little one was my lover boy, the one I’d enchanted, the one who wanted to go away with me. For a second, a vision of myself running across the fields with a purse full of bills passed before my eyes-only now the scene took place in twilight, filmed through a frozen lake. Henry let out a little whine as he put his teeth back in, then he came at me, all red in the face. I got his foot in my head. Had it been twenty years earlier, when men wore heavier shoes, I would have woken up in a hospital. Today my aggressors wore tennis shoes. The shoes had plastic soles on them-I’d seen them on sale at the supermarket-they were worth about the price of a pound of sugar. All Henry did was give me a slight cut on the side of my mouth. He seemed very agitated.
“Shit, I can’t let myself get too worked up,” he complained. “I’ve got to take my time…”
He grabbed the bottle of wine off the table and turned to the kid, who was staring at me.
“Come on, let’s have a drink. Don’t just stand there like a jerk. I told you he wasn’t a woman.”
While they were drinking, I sat up a little. I had practically gotten my wind back, but my arm was useless. There was blood running down my clean T-shirt. Henry emptied his glass, smiling at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m glad to see you’re getting your strength back,” he said. “So we can talk a little.”
That’s when I saw what he had, slipped through his belt suddenly I couldn’t see anything else. With the silencer, it made a hell of a big gun. I knew he had used it to smash my arm. I nearly hiccuped. I felt as if I’d just swallowed a toad. I wished I were invisible. The young man looked like he’d been struck by lightning-he hardly touched his drink. Henry poured himself another. His skin was shiny, like the skin of someone who’s just wolfed down three pepperoni sandwiches and half a dozen beers on a stifling summer night, electricity in the air. He came and stood in front of me.
“So… aren’t you amazed to see me?” he said. “Isn’t this a nice surprise?”
I preferred to look at the floor. He grabbed a handful of my hair.
“I told you you’d signed your death warrant, remember? Thought I was kidding? I never kid.”
He slammed my head into the wall. I heard bells.
“Now,” he went on. “You’re probably thinking, what took me so long to find you? I have other things to do, you know-I only worked on this during weekends.”
He went back and got another drink. On his way, he stuck his finger in the chili.
“Hmmm… delicious,” he said.
The other one hadn’t moved an inch. All he could do was stare at me. Henry shook him a little:
“What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you waiting for-search the place!”
He didn’t seem to be feeling well. He set his half-full glass on the table and turned to Henry.
“God, are you really sure that’s him…?”
Henry squinted.
“Look, do what I say and don’t get on my nerves-you get me, little pal?”
The little pal nodded and left the kitchen, sighing. He wasn’t the only one who felt like sighing. Henry dragged a chair up next to me and sat down. I think he must have had a thing for grabbing people by the hair. He didn’t stand on ceremony-it was like he was determined to pull it out by the roots. It wouldn’t have surprised me if half of it had stayed in his hand. He leaned toward me. It no longer smelled like chili in the house-it smelled more like hemlock.
“Hey, have you noticed that I walk with a slight limp? You seen that? It’s because I don’t have a big toe anymore, see, it makes me lose my balance…”
He sent his elbow into my nose, thus adding it to the ranks of my useless arm, my split lip, and the huge bump on the back of my head. It was not very late, and he didn’t seem anxious to go home to bed. I wiped at the blood running down my chin. He didn’t let me recover. It wasn’t that I was suffering so much, it’s just that the pain came from all over at once. It was as if I’d been plunged into a bath that was slightly too scalding. I couldn’t analyze the
