Before I knew it he was pointing the gun at me. I cried, "What the hell! Put that thing down, man!" He got up, came up to me--I was backing down, toward the window--came within two inches of me, and cocked. For some reason, I didn't panic. It all happened too fast, I suppose. I said, "Please put that down."
He said, not to me, but referring to me, "He fucking broke it on purpose."
I said, "Who? What?"
He said, "The fucking ostrich."
I said, "I swear, it wasn't on purpose." I had apologized two minutes ago. What was his problem all of a sudden?
He said, "It fucking was."
I said he swore an awful lot, for a God-fearing man.
He pressed the barrel harder and, gnashing his teeth, he said, "Fuck God."
Now I began to panic. This man was a lunatic. I began to sweat, a lot, and to babble. I expressed the sincerest regret for having broken the little ostrich and said I understood the sentimental value attached but I insisted that I had meant no harm and he should show compassion for this fellow mortal and put down that gun because we both wanted to find Zelda who I was sure was still alive and if he killed me how would he find her?
He said, "I don't want to find her. She doesn't want to see me."
I said, "She does, she does, she doesn't stop talking about Dan, Dan this, Dan that, Dan the other, I swear she--"
He said, "Shut up. I know what she thinks of her asshole brother Louis."
"Oh no," I said, "we made up. We're friends now. We talk all the time."
The barrel of the gun was touching me now, and his nostrils were quivering, and huffing.
I said, "Put it down, please."
He put it down, and he burst into tears. He wept for five minutes at least, with his face in his hands and his right hand holding that revolver, which I was aiming to snatch but didn't get the chance. Then he turned the gun and pressed the barrel against his own temple.
I said, again, "Put it down, man."
He did not put it down. He said, "That ostrich...that ostrich...that ostrich..."
"That ostrich what?" I said.
"Meant all the world to me," he said.
I said, "I'll get another. I know where to get stuff like that."
"It was Zelda's," he said.
"Listen," I said, "put that gun down."
"It was Zelda's," he insisted.
"I'll get another ostrich," I said. "Put it down."
He began to stammer: "It w-w-was…it w-was..."
People are so sentimental; I can't understand it. Lao Tzu said, The sage is not sentimental; he treats all his people as straw-dogs. I had to do something or he would blow his brains out. I jumped him. I jumped on top of him, on his back, and attempted to wrench that gun from his hand. There was a long struggle, with him turning in circles, to shake me off his back, and me reaching for the gun and kicking and punching. In the end I managed to slam him to the ground. I shook that big arm of his, till the gun flew out of his hand, and I pounced on it, and he pounced on me and tried to take it back, and there was another struggle, which I won, but I pulled the trigger, not on purpose, and a bullet flew off, shattering the window pane.
We rushed to the window, hoping the bullet had hit nothing else. It had. Across the street, on a windowsill, there was, there had been, a flowerpot. The bullet had shattered it to bits, and out came a cloud of white powder. A man appeared at that window, a man in a suit; he saw us. I couldn't tell if he was outraged or shocked. I tried to gesture to him that it was an accident. I wanted to apologize, to tell him I would get him a new flowerpot. But Dan slammed me to the ground, and told me not to utter a word.
"Who's that?" I said. "We need to get him a new flowerpot. He might call the cops."
"Moron," he said, and again he spoke to me in the third person. "He has no fucking idea who that is, does he."
"Who is that?" I said.
"That's Bob," he said.
"Bob?" I said. "Bob Who?"
He did not know the man's last name, but he did know this: "Bob is going to cut our nuts off."
"Tell him it was an accident," I said. "It was just a flowerpot."
"It was at least two kilos of pure cocaine," he said.
I was wondering what that powder was. I thought it might have been a fertilizer of some sort.
"He's going to kill us," he said.
His cell phone rang. He pulled it out and showed me the screen. It read Man.
I said, "Who's Man?"
He shushed me and took the call. He listened, and nodded. I couldn't make out what Bob was telling him, but I could tell he was shouting.
I found a piece of paper and a pencil, and I wrote the following and showed it to him: Tell him we have information that could help him. Tell him he's implicated.
Bob had hung up, and there was a gunshot. A bullet hole appeared on the wall opposite the window. Another gunshot, and the overhead lamp exploded. Another bullet hit the wall, and another.
Dan said, "Come," and he began to crawl toward the bedroom.
I followed. The bullets kept pouring in, shattering things. We reached the bedroom; he shut the door behind us and opened the window, which faced the back of the building, and we ran down the fire escape. The first-floor ladder wouldn't budge, so we had to jump. Dan sprained his ankle in landing, but there was no time to think about it. We climbed the fence to the next building, broke in, came out on the other side, on Saint Marks Place, and ran for our lives. We ran to Third Avenue. And there was Bob, right on the corner, as if he had planned our escape route himself. He was grinning, and frowning, beckoning to us with his finger. We were so stunned, we didn't know what to do. It was then that I noticed that Bob looked familiar. I knew him, I thought, from somewhere, but where? College perhaps? It was more his expression than his face that seemed familiar; he had the look of a contemplative man, a thinker.
He went straight for Dan's throat. Dan tried to fight it, clutching at Bob's wrists, but Bob was a big man.
The street was packed, and no one lifted a finger to help; no one even bothered to look.
I kicked Bob in the shin as hard as I could. He let go of Dan and let out a high-pitched scream, like a woman. We turned around and ran back to 2nd Avenue, and Bob after us. We zigzagged uptown, up 2nd Avenue, right on 9th Street, left on 1st Avenue, right on 10th Street, Bob still behind us. The grin was gone, but he retained that contemplative expression, which made him all the more frightening. I told Dan we should get a cab; he just kept running. On Avenue A we came to a park. We went in, and we hid behind some bushes: behind three benches on which three homeless men were sleeping. We saw Bob appear and remained as still and as low as we could, but he noticed us and ran in our direction and leaped into the bushes. He got close enough to grab Dan's sleeve. It ripped. Bob slipped, and fell. We ran. We crossed the park, got out on Avenue B and 7th Street, ran to Avenue C, and Bob still after us. I was running out of breath. I insisted we grab a taxi as soon as we saw one, or just get in someone's car. He insisted he would not, but gave no reason. I thought it might be against his religion. On Avenue C we made a right and ran southward, till Houston Street. I looked back, as we were crossing Houston, and saw Bob slowing down, then stopping to catch his breath, leaning on a newspaper dispenser. We continued south down Pitt Street, made a right on Rivington to Clinton, made a left on Clinton, then got on the Williamsburg Bridge bike path. We looked back again. And thank God, Bob was no longer behind us. We were exhausted, panting like dogs, but we didn't stop.
"What next," I said, "if we get out of this bridge alive?"
"Hannah," he said, "will take us in."
"Who's Hannah," I said.
Hannah was his twin sister. He said he had cartloads of kin in Williamsburg, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, mother, father, but no one would talk to him, except Hannah.
"How come?" I said.
"I don't believe in God," he said.
I said, "So what's with the beard and the hat?"
"I'm a religious man," he said.
I told him this was inconsistent with what he had just told me.
"I don't care," he said.
I said, "So who the hell is Bob?"
He didn't respond.
"I think we should call the police," I said.
"No," he said.
"He wants to kill us," I said.
"Bob kills whoever displeases him," he said. "For all I know, he killed Zelda. She used to work for him."
"Doing what?" I said.
"Selling," he said.
"Selling what?" I said.
He looked at me as if I were a moron and spoke to me in the third person again: "He just doesn't get it, does he."
"Stop talking to me in the third person," I said. "This isn't Spanish. Selling what?"
"Cocaine," he said, "and heroin, and other stuff."
I was not surprised. Zelda does all kinds of stupid things.
"She was his best seller," he said. "No one suspects a blind girl."
Did Dan not know? "She isn't blind," I said.
He said, "What?"
"She just pretends," I said.
"She is blind," he said. "I know."
"She isn't," I said. "I know. She just does that to fuck with people. She doesn't even need glasses."
He was still incredulous. He said, "Then how come--"
"It's all a ruse," I said, "the stick, the dark glasses, the dog. She pretends not to see, in order to see better, to be free to observe people around her, who think she can't see them. She's like a see-through mirror."
He gave me another incredulous look.
As we were reaching the summit, that is, the middle of the bridge, we saw a girl walking, or staggering rather, toward the Williamsburg side, a black girl in a miniskirt and a torn shirt, barefoot, holding a pair of high-heeled shoes in one hand. We overtook her. She was beautiful. She was drunk, I thought. Dan asked her if she needed help.
She said her feet hurt and she couldn't walk.
"Come," he said. "Get on." And he carried her on his back half the length of the bridge, to the other side. I suggested, several times, that he shouldn't tire himself out, that we should take turns. But he didn't listen to me.
When we got to the other side, the beautiful girl dismounted, put on her shoes, and cat-walked off without a word of thanks.
I thought it was strange, outrageous, that she hadn't even thanked him. I asked him if he knew her at all. He said he didn't. I asked him if it was the custom in this town, or in this neighborhood, for people not to thank each other for gallant services rendered. I was scandalized. He had carried her across half the bridge, and she couldn't even bother to thank him. I had half a mind to go after her and tell her so.
He asked me please to shut up, and to stop being obsessed; he had forgotten all about her.
It was dark out, and there was almost no one in the streets. We walked for a couple of blocks to a brownstone which stood between a produce store and what looked to me like some kind of temple; it had a big sign in what I assumed was Hebrew. There was a pile of about one hundred black garbage bags, right in front of the building. We climbed the stoop and he rang a doorbell. Someone answered, and he spoke to her in a language I couldn't understand. We were buzzed in.
We walked up three flights. The apartment door was ajar and we entered. It was dark inside. Dan called, "Hannah?" We entered the living room and saw, on the couch, with his feet on the coffee table, watching TV, peeling a tangerine, Bob. He had his goons with him, three of them, standing behind him. One was holding Hannah, clutching her arm with one hand and pointing his gun at us with the other.
