moment her eyes met mine, and they were as empty as the eyes of a Greek bust. Her face was dead pale, haglike with horror.
All of this might have happened in ten seconds, or maybe twenty. I remember it like a series of photographs or filmstrips, but it has no timeline. Time ceased to exist for me at the moment Alfalfa the maitre d' brought his left hand out from behind his back and I saw the butcher knife. During that time the man in the tuxedo continued to spew out a confusion of words in his special maitre d's language, the one that old girlfriend had called Snooti. Some of it really was in a foreign language, some of it was English but completely without sense, and some of it was striking . . . almost haunting.
Have you ever read any of Dutch Schutz's long, confused deathbed statement? It was like that. Much of it I can't remember- What I can remember I suppose I'll never forget.
Humboldt staggered backward, still holding his lacerated cheek.
The backs of his knees struck the seat of his chair, and he sat down heavily on it. He looks like someone who's just been told he's got cancer, I thought. He started to turn toward Diane and me, his eyes wide and shocked. I had time to see there were tears spilling out of them, and then the maitre d' wrapped both hands around the handle of the butcher knife and buried it in the top of Humboldt's head. It made a sound like someone whacking a pile of towels with a cane.
'Boot!' Humboldt cried. I'm quite sure that's what his last words on planet Earth was - 'boot.' Then his weeping eyes rolled up to whites and he slumped forward onto his plate, sweeping his own glassware off the table and onto the floor with one outflung hand.
As this happened, the maitre d' - all his hair was sticking up in back now, not just some of it - pried the long knife out of his head.
Blood sprayed out of the head wound in a kind of vertical curtain, and splashed the front of Diane's dress. She raised her hands to her shoulders with the palms turned out once again, but this time it was in horror rather than exasperation. She shrieked and then clapped her blood-spattered hands to her face, over her eyes. The maitre d'
paid no attention to her. Instead, he turned to me.
'That dog of yours,' he said, speaking in an almost conversational tone. He registered absolutely no interest in or even knowledge of the screaming, terrified people stampeding behind him toward the doors. His eyes were very large, very dark. They looked brown to me again, but there seemed to be black circles around the irises.
'That dog of yours is so much rage. All the radios of Coney Island don't make up to that dog, you motherfucker.'
I had the umbrella in my hand, and the one thing I can't remember, no matter how hard I try, is when I grabbed it. I think it 'must have been while Humboldt was standing transfixed by the realization that his mouth had been expanded by eight inches or so, but I simply can't remember. I remember the man who looked like George Hamilton bolting for the door, and I know his name was Troy because that's what his companion called after him, but I can't remember picking up the umbrella I'd bought in the luggage store.
It was in my hand, though, the price tag sticking out of the bottom of my fist, and when the maitre d' bent forward as if bowing and ran the knife through the air at me - meaning, I think, to bury in my throat - I raised it and brought it down on his wrist, like an old-time teacher whacking an unruly pupil with his hickory stick.
'Ud!' the maitre d' grunted as his hand was driven sharply down, and the blade meant for my throat plowed through the soggy pinkish tablecloth instead. He held on, though, and pulled it back.
If I'd tried to hit his knife hand again I'm sure I would have missed but I didn't. I swung at his face, and fetched him an excellent lick -
as excellent a lick as one can administer with an umbrella anyway -
up the side of his head. And as I did, the umbrella popped open like the visual punchline of a slapstick act.
I didn't think it was funny, though. The bloom of the umbrella hid him from me completely as he staggered backward with his free hand flying up to the place where I'd hit him, and I didn't like not being able to see him. Didn't like it? It terrified me. Not that I wasn't terrified already.
I grabbed Dianne's wrist and yanked her to her feet. She came without a word, took a step toward me, them stumbled on her high heels and feel clumsily into my arms. I was aware of her breasts pushing against me, and the wet, warm clamminess over them.
'Eeee! You Boinker!' the maitre d' screamed, or perhaps it was a
'Boinger' he called me. It probably doesn't matter, I know that, and yet it quite often seems to me that it does. Later than night, the little questions haunted me as much as the big ones. 'You boinking bastard! All these radios! Hush-do-baba! Fuck cousin Brucie! Fuck YOU!'
He started around the table toward us (The area behind him was completely empty now, and looked like the aftermath of a brawl in a western movie saloon). My umbrella was still lying on the table with the open top jutting off the far side, and the maitre d' bumped it with his hip. It fell off in front of him, and while he kicked it aside, I set Diane back on her feet and pulled her toward the far side of the room. The front door was no good; it was probably too far away in any case, but even if we could get there, it was still jammed tight with frightened, screaming people. If he wanted me -
or both of us - he would have no trouble catching us and carving us like a couple of turkeys.
'Bugs! You Bugs!… Eeee!…So much for your dog, eh? So much for your barking dog!'
'Make him stop!' Diane screamed. 'Oh, Jesus, he's going to kill us both, make him stop!'
'I rot you, you abominations!' closer now. The umbrella hadn't held him up for long, that was for sure. 'I rot you all!'
I saw three doors, two facing each other in a small alcove where there was also a pay telephone. Men's and Women's rooms. No good. Even if they were single toilets with locks on the doors, they were no good. A nut like this would have no trouble bashing a bathroom lock off its screws, and we would have nowhere to run.
I dragged her toward the third door and shoved through it into a world of clean green tiles, strong fluorescent light, gleaming chrome, and steamy odors of food. The smell of salmon dominated. Humboldt had never gotten a chance to ask about the specials, but I thought I knew what at least one of them had been.
A waiter was standing there with a loaded tray balanced on the flat of one hand, his mouth agape and his eyes wide. He looked like Gimpel the fool in that Isaac Singer story. 'What -' he said, and then I shoved him aside. The tray went flying, with plates and glassware shattering against the wall.
