Everyone froze.
“Danny, put the damn knife down,” he said. “I said put it down.”
Danny obeyed.
I could have hugged Victor Flowers.
He looked at me, and at the knife on the bar top, as if it had finally dawned on him that these men were about to do something horrific. As if realizing that it had gone too far too fast, but that it was still possible to step back from the brink, to rewind this unfolding moment just as he had rewound the video. It could all still be nothing other than a ruined poker night. A ruined evening, but not worse than that. I could still go home.
“I will not allow blood in this room,” Victor said. And for one more blissful moment I continued to misunderstand. “Anyway, that,” he said, pointing, “is the wrong kind of knife.” The skin on my face lost its feeling. “I want everyone in the kitchen. Now.”
3
Russell was suddenly dragging me through the doorway, tugging me across the house toward the kitchen, the others trailing. The sounds I heard came from me, I think, though Ellen was saying things, too, she was shouting, and my blood was screaming in my ears, and someone—Jason?—said, Hold on a minute, will you? and then my body was being shoved against the kitchen island and I could smell Russell against me, his sweat and something else, something harsh and vulgar, and Danny was reaching up for something—What was it? What was he reaching for?—and I felt my arm being yanked outward, and one of my hands smacked the island countertop while the other arm was pinned against my body, and then I saw what Danny had reached for, big and awful, a meat cleaver that had been hanging above the island with all those other pots and pans and knives, and my vision scrambled for a second and finally found Victor, but he was facing the window—he was gone, checked out—and my legs went soft and I made a desperate jerk with my body, but Russell held on tight. He wasn’t youthful anymore, but he still had strength and was steady and businesslike, and my eyes were fixed on the cleaver in Danny’s hand.
“Here,” he said, offering the cleaver to Ellen. “Take it.”
She began to protest: “Please, you all need to—”
“You brought her here,” he said. “Prove to us you weren’t in on it.”
Ellen watched the cleaver, eyes wide.
“She isn’t in on it,” Victor said, back with us again. “I know she isn’t.”
“You know? How do you know?” Danny put his face close to mine. “Was she in on it?”
I forced myself to shake my head.
“Is that a no?”
My tongue felt huge in my mouth. My voice was a curled-up insect. “N-no …”
“I vouch for her, okay?” Victor said.
“Yeah?” Danny nodded toward the cleaver. “Let’s see you vouch for her.”
Russell was crushing my hand. He had pulled the thumb and two fingers toward the edge of the island and down, leaving the exposed fourth and fifth fingers stretched out over the flat surface of the island.
“This is so wrong,” Ian said, and I nearly wept with thanks, until he turned to me and said, “I mean, Nora, how could you do this to us?”
A whimper escaped my lungs, and I yanked my arm so hard I thought my shoulder would dislocate. But my hand didn’t budge.
“Take it,” Danny told Victor, still offering the cleaver. “This is your house, and it was our money. You have to show her that cheaters don’t prosper.”
“Just hold it a minute,” Victor said. He took the cleaver and set it on the island. “We gotta slow this down.”
“Man, this election is muddling your brain,” Danny said. “I got news for you, Vic. She ain’t voting for you.”
“I don’t want you joking right now,” Victor said.
“Joking? No. I don’t hear any jokes. And I’ll tell you something else that isn’t a joke. I place a couple of calls and it’s over for you. I know how you use that foundation. How you cook your books.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “Like you’re so clean.”
“Me? Who cares? I’m a fucking car salesman,” Danny said. “But you know me well enough to know I don’t deal with bullshit, and this right here is the biggest bullshit I’ve come across in a long time.”
“Come on, Danny.”
“Come on, nothing. Nobody cheats me and gets away with it. Not for money like this. Now you’re gonna make this right. Or by the time I’m done with you, the Flowers Corporation will be worthless and you won’t get elected dog catcher.”
“For Christ’s sake, Danny—”
“Oh, just be a man, will you?”
Victor glared at Danny for another moment, then surveyed his kitchen—the men, Ellen, and me, with my hand still pinned to the kitchen island, the fourth and fifth fingers still fully exposed. Whatever calculation Victor was doing in his mind, whatever was tipping the scale in one direction or the other, didn’t take long.
“I forgot something in the other room,” he said. His voice seemed to hold no anger or aggression, seemed to hold nothing at all, and some remote lizard part of my brain sent an extra burst of panic that nearly shut me down completely.
“You sure, Vic?” Russell said.
Victor’s reply was to turn his back on us and quietly leave the room.
The moment he was gone, Russell reached up lightning fast and with the flat part of his thick hand slapped the front of
