“We’re approaching Houston, sir. Will you and the lady still be getting out on St. Luke’s?”
“Yes, please,” Crandall said.
In Vietnam, Michael had simply quit. He had told that colonel to go fuck himself, sir, and he had meant it. He had quit. Because after the way Andrew died, there was no sense pursuing this dumb fucking war any further. This war was all about people doing unspeakably horrible things to themselves and to other people. If he had been the one who’d picked up that baby, if he had been the one who’d reached for that little girl a second before Andrew did, then his hands would have been blown off, his chest would have blossomed with blood, Andrew would have carried him through the jungle, and he would have been the one who was loaded onto that chopper in a body bag, dead. The obscenity had been as much in the randomness of death as in the singularly callous act that had preceded it, the wiring of a baby, yet another random victim. The whole fucking thing was a lottery, and Michael had wanted nothing more to do with it.
He wanted nothing more to do with this, either. But on Christmas Eve, for no reason and no cause, he had been chosen at random to take part in yet another obscenity.
The promotion of a goddamn movie.
So he went for Mama’s knife.
A lot of people got hurt in that limousine. Including the driver. Who’d been nowhere near that slashing knife. A couple of people got hurt outside the limousine, too. What happened was that he had her up against this brick wall in this sort of little alleyway between two buildings on Houston Street and he had his hand up under her skirt and they were both breathing very hard and all of a sudden there was a screeching sound and lights flashing and he thought at first that perhaps he’d had an orgasm since he was only thirteen years old or perhaps she’d had one since she was only twelve or perhaps both of them’d had one together because that was when the earth was supposed to move.
But instead it was only a big mother of a black Cadillac jumping the curb and coming up onto the sidewalk and almost into the mouth of the alley, forcing him to fall down on top of her with his hand still up under her skirt, causing him to break his wrist and causing her to lose her virginity, for which dire injuries their separate attorneys said they could collect big money for damages.
This was what Tony the Bear Orso told Michael in his room at St. Vincent’s Hospital. It was still Boxing Day. Eight o’clock in the morning. From the window of his room, Michael could see a rooftop Christmas tree, its branches tossing wildly in the fierce wind.
“It was a terrible accident, sir,” Orso said. “The driver told me everybody was screaming and kicking in the backseat and yelling in Spanish and Chinese and grabbing for guns and knives and kicking at the window separating them from where he was sitting, so naturally he lost control, just like you and me would’ve.”
“Naturally,” Michael said.
“When a person is wielding a sharp instrument,” Orso said, “the backseat of a limousine can become a very small place.”
The instrument had indeed been sharp.
In the Operating Room, when Michael came out of the anesthesia, the doctor told him he’d been slashed and stabbed eighteen times. He said it was a miracle that Michael was still alive, since one of the slash wounds was dangerously close to the jugular and another had almost severed his windpipe. “Is Connie all right?” Michael asked him. The doctor did not know who Connie was. He thought Michael was hallucinating, and asked the nurse to give him a sedative.
“Is Connie all right?” Michael asked Orso.
“Yes, she is a brave Chinese person,” Orso said. “When she saw Mama carving you up like a Christmas turkey, she right away jumped on him. She got cut herself, too, on the hand, but she’s okay.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she is now, sir. I talked to her in the Emergency Room.”
“Does she know where I am?”
“I don’t know if she knows where you are or not. The last she saw of you was when they were wheeling you upstairs to the O.R. She herself was bleeding, and they were bandaging Crandall’s head, and the blonde was still yelling at him. There was a good deal of confusion, sir.”
“Yes,” Michael said.
“Yes. But everybody’s okay now, including Mama. Who, if you’d have killed him, sir, the city would have given you a ticker-tape parade on Fifth Avenue. Which, as you may know, sir, is up-town.”
“Where is he now?”
“Mama? Down the hall, with a police officer outside his door. Not that he is going anyplace. He went through the window.”
“What window?”
“That separated the back of the limo from the driver. Crashed through it headfirst when the car jumped the curb and almost hit them two kids in the alley. You should see him, sir. He looks like the Invisible Man all bandaged up.”
“Good,” Michael said.
“Yeah, fuck him,” Orso agreed.
On the rooftop, the Christmas tree danced in the wind.
“Why were they bandaging Crandall’s head?” Michael asked.