in their booths suddenly fell silent at Ralph’s proclamation. Red glow grew a notch. Singleton eased up from his chair. The baseball hat fell quietly to the floor. For a very long time, it seemed, no one could think of anything to say, and later Waldo would note the presence of what he called “the very ambivalent pause,” the stop-time sequence in which violence or retreat could weigh the balance and flop one way or the other. “That has to be factored in somehow–that moment, the propensity of that moment one way or the other. That’s the damn criterion we’ve been looking for. Some settings, some ambiances stir things one way or another. We’ve got to break that down, itemize its factors and provide some quantitative measure. That’s what we mean by the toughest bar in town.”
Ever the deflectionist Walling interceded with an offer, “Here let me pick up your hat.” He eased out of his chair, dropped to his haunches and reached for the hat just covering the bouncer’s left shoe.
“That’s a nice gesture.” The fellow said, slowly. “It puts me in the mind of tolerating this asshole,” he gestured toward Ralph, who in rising up tossed the table directly at the knees of the bouncer and over Walling’s ducking head. The edge of the table cracked directly into the bouncer’s kneecaps sounding as if a truck had run over chicken bones. The large center leg of the table drove into Walling’s backbone with such force that Walling threw up on the shoes of the bouncer. Not content with this mayhem, Ralph grabbed the bouncer’s short hair and slammed his head into the top of the tilted table, not once, not twice, but four machine-gunned times. Teeth spilled out, blood flowed down the table top and into the vomit on the floor. The sound of teeth skittering and Walling gagging , coughing and retching filled the room.
Waldo shouted with delight, “One from the scrum delivers. And how! “
Suzan began taking digital pictures of the cascaded table.
“Jesus!” Singleton said, “Someone call an ambulance. For God’s sake call an ambulance.”
The young woman behind the bar screamed, “They’ve killed Eric.”
“Not yet,” said Ralph. “Not yet, but soon!” He kicked the table over so that it came to rest atop the bouncer’s unconscious body, two feet beyond Walling, still kneeling and retching.
“Wait a minute,” Waldo shouted. “We’re done. It’s over. We’re done. No more. Nothing more!”
The bar stools emptied as patrons ran for the front door.
“You’ve killed Eric.” The woman insisted again, to the vacant room.
Singleton dragged the table off. “No he’s breathing fine, just bloodied. He’ll be fine
But, Mr. Jelliffe, I’m not sure how we’ll put all this back together.”
“Yes, how will we assemble it,” Suzan said cheerily. “How does it go back to the way it was?”
“Walling, you okay? “ Waldo asked.
“It will take a lot of lawyers to make everything right again,” Suzan said, taking more pictures.
“Pet, put away the digital. We need to address the problems at hand,” Waldo said evenly.
“Walling, can you speak?”
“Yes, but no wind, no breath.”
“Take it easy,” Singleton said. “You’ll get your breath back. Can you move your arms?”
Walling lifted his arms.
“You’ll be fine,” Singleton said.
“A whole floor of lawyers,” Suzan said. “Maybe more. But maybe we can sue . . . ”
“Now you’re thinking, Pet. Of course we can sue. How damn aggressive can a bouncer get, coming directly at us? Shouting obscenities. Challenging us. Over some stupid game. Calling us out over some innocent, completely innocent observation aimed at no one. No one at all.”
“It smells bad in here,” Suzan said.
Waldo said, “Ralph, take Mrs. Jelliffe back to the office and wait there for us. We’ll manage everything here, Pet. Don’t worry. It’ll make a helluva feature.”
5.
That night Waldo dreamed of Batam Island. In khaki shorts and mint Teva sandals he walked among the sleeping hammocks of barracks 21-7 and counted for his own collection of possible feature material the rather low number of mosquito nettings surrounding some of the hammocks. The air was dense, mucid, sweat-inducing, so that the polyester of his Guayabera shirt (in French blue) clung to his back. Waldo thought, “These are my people–young, brown, breathing easily in the hot night.” Arms were flung out to him; he had to swivel by several just to reach the far end of the barracks. In the morning they’d each eat a bowl of rice topped by a raw egg. They didn’t give a damn about The Spy, had no longings for any part of the Worcester Club, envied him nothing of Suzan’s largess. Instead, The Spy had given him a translator, a wiry forty-year-old with thick black hair somehow knotted in back. In baggy canvas pants and with a lemon colored T shirt the fellow was, Waldo convinced himself, the very personification of Lunch Pail. He promptly dubbed him that and was doubly pleased that the fellow took no insult from the nickname—apparently assumed it was an American term of endearment.
Waldo heard the fellow say from a corner of the barracks, “Captain, what are you doing here?”
“Checking on the troops, LP. Just checking.” Waldo answered.
“Checking for what?”
“For conviction, LP, for conviction. I can measure who will get out, who will blossom.”
“Blossom?”
“Grow, LP, grow. Enlarge, marry well, acquire, maybe, maybe only acquire.”
“Acquire?”
“Buy stuff . . . own stuff. Not flip-flops, LP, but real sandals. Real leather, or maybe real Velcro.”
“I know Velcro.”
“I’m sure you do, LP. I’m sure you do. It’s what keeps us attached, isn’t it?”
“Attached?”
“It was a joke, Lunch Pail, just a joke. “
”You’re always joking, and I don’t like joking. I don’t like it. I don’t understand it.”
“LP, if you can’t laugh, you can’t live.”
“I don’t like joking.”
“Get over it, Lunch Pail. It makes the world go round.”
But LP, drawing closer, had brought up a small mallet from behind him. He tapped it on his palm. Then inverted it so that he held the rubber end, the handle extending toward Waldo. He jabbed it into Waldo’s chest.
“Hey what are you doing?”
“I don’t like joking.”
“Good, LP. I understand that.”
