Somebody Owes Me Money

That’s a long time, seven months. I lay there thinking about that, listening to the far-off shush of the shower running, imagining the flesh that water was pouring over, thinking about pouring over that flesh myself sometime maybe, and in an oddly good frame of mind for somebody who had just recently been shot at with bullets I drifted very gradually and pleasantly into a soft and dreamless sleep, not waking till Abbie screamed.

14

I sat up, and the room was full of a man with a gun. He was standing one pace in from the doorway. The light was off now, but gray daylight ebbed in the airshaft window, and unfortunately I could see him. He was wearing a hat and an overcoat and a gun, and the gun was pointed at me, and his eyes were looking at me, and his eyes appeared to be made of slate.

Abbie screamed again, and something crashed. She was in some other room in the apartment, and she was in trouble, but I was convinced I was as good as dead, so I didn’t move.

In that other room something else crashed, and a male voice roared in what sounded like a triplicate combination of anger and surprise and pain. The man with the gun glanced back at the doorway in irritation, then glared at me again and waggled the gun. “Don’t move,” he said, in a voice that was forty percent gravel and sixty percent inert materials.

Move? Wasn’t he going to shoot me anyway? Wasn’t he the one who shot me last night? If not, what was he doing here? What was his gun doing here? What was his friend doing to Abbie?

Crash. The male voice roared again.

What was Abbie doing to his friend?

The man with the gun wanted to know that, too. He backed up a step, looking very irritated, and was about to bend backward and stick his head through the doorway when a table lamp sailed by from the direction of the living room. We both heard it crash, and then we both heard something else crash in or near the living room, and Abbie and the male voice hollered at once, and the man with the gun growled at me, “You don’t go nowhere, see? Not if you don’t want nothing to happen to you.”

“I don’t want nothing to happen to me,” I said, hoping his double negative had been bad grammar.

“Then just stay where you are,” he told me. “Don’t move outa that bed.”

“You can count on it,” I assured him, but I don’t think he heard me. He had already backed up through the doorway and was standing in the hall. With one last glare and gun-waggle at me, he took off toward the living room.

Nothing changed for a minute, the ruckus continued unabated, and then all of a sudden it went absolutely insane. The crashing doubled, it tripled, it sounded like St. Patrick’s Day on Third Avenue.

And then, abruptly, silence.

I squinted, as though to hear better. Silence? Silence.

What had happened? What was happening now? Was Abbie all right?

I should have gone out there, I told myself. Regardless of whether or not I could have gotten out of bed, regardless of the fact that I was naked and weaponless and too weak to move, I should have gone out there and done what I could to help. If anything had happened to Abbie—

Abbie came hurtling into the room, brought up against the dresser, spun around, and shouted at the guy who’d shoved her, “You stink, you bastard!” She was dressed but disheveled, hair awry, makeup smeared, clothing wrinkled and all twisted around. She was the most insanely beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.

My old comrade with the gun came through the doorway, pointed the gun at Abbie as though he was pointing a finger at her, and said, “You ain’t no lady.”

“And you’re a gentleman,” she snapped. She turned away from him and came over to me. “How are you, Chet?” she said. “Did they do anything to you?”

I was lying flat on my back, sheet and blanket tucked up around my neck. I blinked up at her, and I felt like an absolute lummox. “How are you?” I said. “Did they do anything—”

“Them,” she said with total disdain.

The man with the gun said, “Lady, you’re outa your mind. My partner would of been dead within his rights to let you have it. You know that? You know what you done to him, if I’d been in his place I’d of shot you down like some kind of wild beast. I think you’re nuts or something.”

“You force your way in here—” she shouted, blazing at him, all set to start brawling again, and I could see by his face that what she was going to get this time was at the very least a hit on the head from the gun-butt, and I reached out and grabbed her hand and said, “Abbie, cool it.”

She tugged, trying to get her hand free. “These people think they can—”

“They can, Abbie,” I said. “They’ve got guns. Don’t try their patience.”

“That’s right,” the man with the gun said. “You just listen to him, lady, he’s got sense. You been trying our patience, and you shouldn’t ought to do that. You should ought to soak your head in some brains for a while and think about things. Like we don’t want to give you two any more trouble than we have to, so why make us make things tough on you?”