he almost fell turning around to face a middle-aged woman with deeply rouged cheeks and pinched mouth sitting at a boxy, oak desk behind a clunky typewriter and peering up at him over tiny spectacles perched on her nose like a second set of eyes.
“May I help you, sir?” she asked, looking a bit flummoxed.
He managed to untie his tongue. “You might start with a little better way of getting into this building,” he said, still agitated.
“Sir?”
He unfolded his letter and handed it to her. “I’m here for this.”
Lifting her glasses to read, she took the paper. “Order number 148, yes, it’s here. Our suppliers are very efficient,” she said, resetting her glasses and rising from her chair to retrieve a small carton box from a shelf lined with lettered bins. “TA… TH… TR…. This is it.” She handed the package over to him. “If you’ll just sign here, sir….”
He scribbled his name and tucked the box under his arm.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” she asked, settling herself behind her desk again and adjusting the white lace collar of her dress.
“You can start by making sure that door opens when I leave here.”
“Door, sir?”
He pointed. “The one down near the end of the hallway there.”
“Down there, sir?”
“Yes, down there, ma’m,” he said, poking the air, “that way.”
“Oh, you must have turned yourself around coming into the office through this door, sir. It happens occasionally. The outside door you’re pointing to is non-functional. As far as I know, it hasn’t been used in ages, and certainly not in the ten years that I’ve been employed here.”
“Well, I have news for you…”
“I’m sorry, sir. I know it can be confusing getting around all the corridors in this building. It took me awhile to get used to it myself, but I’ll be sure to report the need for better wall signs.” Smiling demurely, she nodded toward her left. “That’s the entrance there, sir. And exit. I’m sure you’ll find it easier leaving that way. Simply go through the doorway, bear right and go straight ahead to the end, turn right and you’ll see the outside door to South Division Street.”
“South--now wait a minute,” he said, looking around, confused. “Unless I’m going crazy, I know which way I came in here and--”
“Really, sir, if there is something else I can do for you….”
“All right, all right, we’ll do it your way,” he said, adjusting his package. “I suppose I’ll just have to walk around the block to get back to my car.”
He crossed the room, found his way through the corridors and out into the street, a street lined with warehouses washed and freshened with afternoon sunlight, their windows gleaming like mirrors. The world seemed newer, somehow, the buildings sturdier and the air itself had an odd feel to it, a tingling kind of edge to it with a subtle and alien fragrance that sent a chill through him. Shrugging off the peculiar sensations touching him, he concluded that the North Division Street side looked shabby because it was the back side of the buildings.
Looking up and down the street, he saw no signs of life and broke into a quick walk toward the intersection a dozen or so yards ahead.
At the same time a group of four boys, teenagers, maybe sixteen or seventeen, came loping around the corner toward him, laughing, their shoes slapping and scraping the pavement as they shoved each other around. At the sight of him their roughhousing ended abruptly and their raucous voices trailed off and died. They froze, blocking his path, their cold eyes fixed hard on him. Gary tried to sidestep them but they moved with him, like a wall. He stepped to the other side and they shifted with him like a quartet of dancers.
“Excuse me, guys,” he said, feeling his heart pump as he tried to get by them again.
“Where you goin’?” the big-muscled one said, the obvious leader of the gang.
“To my car. Now if you don’t mind--”
“I don’t see no car,” the apparent second-in-command said, his nose twitching, “did you, Joey?”
Joey’s muscular arms hung loose. He glared out of snot-green eyes. “Nobody did.”
“It’s around the corner on North Division.”
“We just came that way. We didn’t see no car there, neither.”
“Well it’s there anyway, so let me by and let’s avoid trouble.”
“He doethent want any trouble, Twitch,” the beefy one lisped through a set of buck teeth.
“We don’t neither,” Joey said. Forming a crescent, they backed Gary against the brick wall of the building.
“Whath in the bockth?” the beefy one said.
Despite his rising anger and the obvious threat, Gary couldn’t help smiling, recalling Alfonso Bedoya, the big-toothed Mexican bandit asking Humphrey Bogart, “What eez een ze bag?”
“Whath tho funny?”
“None of your damned business.”
Joey stepped in close. “We’re making it our business.”
“Out of my way,” Gary snapped, arm-locking the box and sticking out his other arm.
“You ain’t gonna let him push you, are you, Joey?” one of them taunted. “He pushed you, Joey, I saw him push you, didn’t we see him push him, Twitch?”
Joey shoved Gary up against the building. “What’re you doing around here, anyway? This ain’t your neck of the woods.”
A prickly fear painted sweat on Gary’s face. “Look, you guys, I just want to get to my car and get out of here.”
“Well, boo hoo, ain’t that a damn shame. We can’t let him do that, can we, guys?” Joey said, glancing around for approval. “Not without payin’ somethin’.”
“Whath in hith pocketh, Joey?”
Gary pulled back, casting desperately around for somebody to help. He thought he glimpsed someone on the corner, a man standing in the shadows.
“Get your hands off me and get the hell out of my way! I told you I don’t want any trouble.”
Hardly had the words left his mouth when he heard the smack of bone on flesh, his flesh. He felt the pressure of the blow on his jaw as his knees sagged and his senses reeled. Another punch to the face rocked him back and slammed his head against the wall behind him.
Tasting the blood choking him as he slid off the wall to the ground, he flailed blindly against the swarming bodies that cut out the daylight and rained punches down on him until his arms fell away and an encroaching darkness threatened consciousness. The sudden fear of
