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Strolling among the crowd, I considered the fight I’d just had along with the concept of organized sport. One day elevator fighting might become a recognized competition.
Before she tried to kill herself Katrina’s beauty denied her fifty-five years. She could have been forty and, on her better days, thirty-five. She exercised and used all the right unguents to preserve the skin and eliminate wrinkles. But now her flesh seemed to sag and you could see all her years like Marley’s chains.
“I strayed. Twill and Shelly are not your children. You have always known but you raised them with love and you never ran away. You were always there for us.” “That’s like complimenting a beaver for having big buckteeth,” I said, “or a lion for his deep voice.”
I sat back in my chair and swiveled around to look down on southern Manhattan. I had lived on the island my entire life; running wild, committing almost every crime imaginable. For the last six years I’d been trying to climb out of the dung pit and wash myself clean. I think it was just then, on that Tuesday morning, that I understood the metaphor of baptism—it’s funny how some truths hide away in a pocket or a forgotten drawer and show up when they hardly matter anymore.
Buddha had departed the building, and all that he left was rage. My office, my door, my wall, my guard, my father…Dalton’s hand moved toward his firearm. His younger partner looked a little confused. I was absolutely sure of what I’d do. I didn’t have to draw out my gun—just reach in the pocket and shoot them both through my coat.
Through the foliage I could see a table for four in the far corner. Seated around various plates of food was Dimitri, my only blood son; Tatyana, his Belarusian girlfriend recently delivered from the East European underworld; Katrina, wearing an alluring blue dress; and Clarence Tolstoy Bill Williams McGill. Katrina, most recently a depressed invalid, and Dimitri, who had always been a sour child, were both laughing. “Trot!” my father called out. “Twill, come on over.”
Even the darkness could not assuage my conflicted heart. There were three groups of killers after me or mine and three women I had feelings for. None of these people stayed in the right place or were likely to wait their turn.
