And after all that wanka wanka wanka and the talk about the wonderful clitoris of his pistol, Wacky Woo shot Bob in the head. For a second I suspected it was all part of this performance art performance and he wasn't really dead, but then the blood started to pour out of that head and to flow down the boards like a bloody river. The ironic Nazis were all in shock. I was also in shock. Where the hell was Dan and why the hell didn't he come to help his friend? The yellow spook had disappeared. I looked at Woo's face for any indication, a smile, a wink, what have you, that this was all a joke. But no. Woo was all tense and intense like a psycho. And he looked back at me. It was then that he smiled. I didn't like that smile one bit. It was a madman smile and he had a loaded pistol in his hand and Bob was dead and I was next. Woo lifted himself up from his squat. He dusted himself off, his pants I mean. He blew into the barrel of his pistol like you see in the movies, and continued to smile like a lunatic. And then he winked, once, then another time, and I started to think that maybe it was all a joke, but then why were the ironic Nazis all in shock? Was it ironic shock? Were they just "shocked," in scare quotes, as opposed to really shocked. They looked pretty shocked. Help me they would not, that much was clear, the bastards. I was totally on my own, since that Dan bastard didn't want to be involved. I had to do like that yellow spook. I had to disappear. Woo finished the dust-off and the blow-the-pistol-like-you're-in-the-movies, and then he turned to me, and pointed his bloody weapon in my direction.
I shouted, "Don't!" I didn't, actually. I was frozen. I couldn't move a muscle and I couldn't speak for all the strawberries in the world. (I love strawberries.) But that's what my face said.
Wacky Woo cocked the pistol, and he smiled even more broadly, and he said, "You too."
"No," I said. This time I actually said it.
"Yes," he said. "You too."
"You too what?" I said.
"You too," he said, "shall die."
"No!" I cried, but internally. My face said it.
"Oh yes," he said, the bloody maniac. "You know this pistol has a very nervous and impatient clitoris that needs to be tickled constantly, constantly. However--I will allow you one final verbal reflection before I shoot you. You see? I am not wicked. This is all part of a plan."
"A plan?" I said. "No. I'm not. What plan?"
"A reflection please," he said. "That's all I will allow. And hurry up."
I had no reflection for him. It's curious, but this time, with Woo's pistol in my face, I didn't summon back any particular memory. I suppose the shock was too intense. Now that I think of it, now that I recall Wacky Woo with his pistol to my face, I summon up a thousand memories that would have applied, like the last time I went to see Betsy in her little one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, not far actually from where that freak shrink Dana tried to seduce me and then kill me. Betsy was, for want of a better word, my lady-friend. I say for want of a better word not only because she was fond of the term and refused to be referred to in any other way but because we were never exactly a couple. And yet I loved her, if that's the correct word. Betsy was all about le mot juste, as she put it. I don't speak a word of French, but for some reason I'm always around people who do or who think they do. I don't want you to think that Betsy was a snob. Far from it. She was very down-to-earth. She was from Nebraska, and people from Nebraska are very down-to-earth, or so she would say. I heard the same about Alaska, how everybody in Alaska is very down-to-earth. Maybe everybody who lives in a place that rhymes with aska is down-to-earth. I'm not sure there is any other place that rhymes with aska. Maybe it's just the cold, or the wide open spaces. I hear wide open spaces make you earnest and down-to-earth. In any case, Betsy was not a snob. If she spoke French it's because she majored in French at the University of Nebraska and it stuck. So that time I went back, that last time to see Betsy, because we were about to break up, kind of, since as I said we weren't really a couple. But that time, we knew it was the last time we would ever see each other. I can't explain it. I suppose I don't have les mots justes. What happened was, the reason this was the last time we would ever see each other, the reason was that she was about to move to Calcutta to work for a non-profit there and she planned never to return to the United States because she was sick of the Monika Lewinski scandal--that was her reason. The Monika Lewinski scandal drove Betsy off the deep end. She was obsessed with how obsessed everybody was with the Monika Lewinski affair and she said she couldn't live in this country anymore. She was sick of everybody. She wanted to fly the hell away, as far away as possible and forever. Hence Calcutta. So that last time I went to see Betsy, the day before she flew off, that's what I would have recalled if I could when Woo had his pistol to my face. And what happened was that Betsy wasn't there. She had already left. She was probably up in the air on her way to Calcutta at that very moment. And there I was, outside her apartment on 30th Street, Astoria, between 31st Avenue and Broadway. I knocked on her door and there was no answer. I knocked and I knocked and there was nobody there. I started to cry. I couldn't believe she would do this to me. Not that we were ever a couple, but we loved each other, I think. So I cried like a baby. But then I remembered that if she wasn't there, it was all my fault. I had mistaken the dates. I was a full day late. This was Sunday, and I was supposed to come on Saturday. Her plane left on Sunday, very early. It was all my fault. And that made me cry even more because I realized I was an idiot. Betsy had enormous breasts that flopped down to the floor if she let them. She was a redhead, all freckly and cute, and she spoke French. And she went off to Calcutta because America had disappointed her. I should have remembered that last time I went to see Betsy, but I didn't, when Woo wanted to kill me.
"No reflection?" said Woo. "No last words?"
I didn't say no. I didn't even shake my head. I was too stunned I suppose, and that's why I didn't think to think of the last time I went to see Betsy before she left America forever and before I died.
Woo said, "Well, now you will die." And he smiled like a madman, about to squeeze his anxious clitoris. I shut my eyes. I was about to die. There was a shot. I was dead. Wait, no I wasn't. I hadn't been hit. I opened my eyes and saw Woo on the floor, with his hand on one of his knees and the blood that leaked out of it like a fountain.
He had shot himself in the knee, or so I reflected. But then I saw Dana, the crazy shrink. She came out from behind the curtain. She had a little pistol in one hand and her little poodle in the other. She went up to Woo and put her pistol to his head. She said, "Talk, motherfucker! Where are the teeth?"
Woo was in pain, and did not answer. There was a puddle of blood by his knee, and the poodle started to lick it. He pushed the poodle away.
Dana did not like that. She said, "Don't you touch Foodle!" And she pressed her pistol harder to his temple. She cocked the pistol. "Now where the fuck are the teeth? Do you want to tell me or don't you?"
"I don't have them," said Woo.
"Who has them, Woo?" she said. Then she looked up and saw me. I had hoped that she wouldn't. I didn't want to be involved, even if she did save my life just now. She had tried to have me killed before.
Woo said, "I don't know."
She did not believe him. She said, "Do you want me to kill you, Chinaman? Is that what you want? Because I will. I'll kill you and obtain the information from one of your Nazi friends."
The ironic Nazis yelped in horror and started to disperse, but she pointed her pistol at them and ordered them to stay where they were. Then she pressed her weapon to Woo's temple once more and said, "The teeth, motherfucker. Who has them? You want to tell me?"
Woo saw she meant business and he told her all he knew. He said Izzy had the teeth.
She said, "Who the hell is Izzy and where is he?"
He said, "At work."
She said, "Where's that?"
He told her the address: a jewelry shop on 47th Street.
Dana looked satisfied. She scooped up her poodle and turned to leave. And it was really stupid of her I must say not to have taken Woo's pistol, because the second her back was turned he shot her in the back. She collapsed, fell backward, hit her head. She was dead. The poodle started to whine and to lick her face. Then he turned to me once more, the Chinaman I mean, with his pistol, as if I had sent that woman to shoot him in the knee.
I cried, "Woo, don't! It's not my fault! I don't know that chick!"
He still had one hand pressed to his knee. He said, "You die, white man!" He took aim. He aimed at my face. I shut my eyes. I covered my face with my hands. Now I was definitely about to die--and I knew this because now I did recall, I vividly relived, a particular incident from my life. It was the day I introduced Betsy to my sister, who was seventeen at the time. I took her to Betsy's place in Astoria. Betsy had made spinach-stuffed chicken for lunch, her specialty. After that we planned to see The Fifth Element, which had just come out. Well, Zelda and Betsy hated each other the second they met. I couldn't understand why. I assumed it was on account of the cat. Betsy had a black and white cat called Muffin Top, whom we found on the street, and when we knocked on Betsy's door, my sister had the cat in her arms. Betsy told Zelda to put Muffin Top down because he didn't like to be held. That was it. They were sworn enemies from then on. I introduced them, but they didn't even say hello. It was bizarre. It was as if they already knew each other and disliked each other. We had lunch, and I tried to make conversation, but the two just sat there and ate. At one point they looked at each other, I had no idea why, and Betsy said, "I like your shirt," and Zelda said, "I like your hair." I had no idea what that was all about. We never went to the movies, because as soon as Zelda finished her spinach-stuffed chicken, she said she just remembered she had plans to see a different movie with a friend. I told her not to be silly; I reminded her that she was the one who wanted to see The Fifth Element and had talked about it for weeks. She said, "Will you lend me twenty bucks?" I said I wouldn't lend her twenty bucks; I wanted her to come with us to see The Fifth Element as we had planned. She just shook her head and stuck out her hand. I only had a ten-dollar bill. She took off without another word. Betsy didn't even look up from her spinach-stuffed chicken. I asked her what the hell was the matter. She said my sister was a brat and that was all. I said, "You could have been nice to her." "She doesn't know Muffin Top," she said. "She shouldn't pick up a cat that isn't hers." "She's my sister," I said. "She's a brat," she said. "Even so," I said, "you didn't have to treat her like crap." "She should know better," she said. "She's just a kid," I said. "I don't care," she said. "What was that I-like-your-shirt-I-like-your-hair all about?" I said. "I liked her shirt," she said. "You said it sarcastically," I said. "No I didn't," she said, "I really liked her shirt." I let it drop. But later that day, after we'd had dinner and sex and all, Betsy suddenly burst into tears, and when I asked her what was the matter, she said my sister was a brat and she knew. "Knows what?" I said. "She knows I dye my hair," she said, and burst into tears once more. I had no idea Betsy dyed her hair; it had always looked natural to me. But I didn't understand what upset her so much. I said, "Well, why do you dye your hair?" That made her sob even harder, but eventually she calmed down and said, "White." She said her hair had turned completely white by the time she was twenty, and so she had to dye it or else she would look like a crone. It's funny that in all the time I'd spent with Betsy, I had never noticed that, and Zelda spotted it in an instant. But the awful part was that I could never look at Betsy the same way after that. Whenever I saw her I saw the crone-hair under the red dye. I started to obsess about it, about her white hair, and if it weren't a taboo subject, I would have asked her not to dye it anymore. I wanted to see it for what it was. I wanted to see Betsy for what she was, white and freckly. Not that it turned me on or off, but I was curious, I was passionately curious about this, and I started to obsess about every woman I saw, not only old women but all women, and try to find out if she dyed her hair or not. I would check the roots for traces of white, and scan the surface for suspicious color-uniformity, and I started to despise women who dyed their hair, not Betsy but other women, especially those that dyed their hair red, which made them look like pathetic clowns. It was a silly detail, and there was no point really to my obsession. I could have fixated on some other object, on the beauty of her freckles for example, but somehow I latched onto this, and so Betsy had become a different person, and I also became a different person. I don't want to imply that I was not attracted to her anymore, but there was some part of me, I don't know what to call it, that was simply not there anymore. I was out of breath in a weird way. How to explain it? On some level she was as sexy as ever, still bubbly and curvy and freckly, and I knew I could never resist her, but I felt every time that I kissed her like a dwindled-down twister, a wheezy transistor, out of wind, out of love, and I missed her. I wanted the old Betsy back, the natural redhead. I did not want and I could not love a white-haired woman with false red hair. She was only twenty-six. It was silly and it was awful, and it was all my fault.
I wasn't dead yet. I opened my eyes, and noticed that Woo had been distracted. He had turned his head. And there she was. There was my sister, without the dark spectacles, without the cane. She entered the room, went up the aisle, and hopped onto the boards. She had an Uzi in one hand, in the other an enormous porcelain beer stein with decorations. Woo's jaw dropped, and the ironic Nazis screamed, "Himmler's beer stein! Himmler's beer stein!"
She said to Woo, "You may as well drop that pistol, mein freund."
Woo refused to drop it. He said, "Where'd you find that stein?"
She shot him. He collapsed, with his hand on his shoulder and the blood that poured all over the place. The ironic Nazis dispersed and ran the hell out of the theater. I noticed the Olympic symbol on the beer stein, and a swastika and the year 1936 and the face of a blond man with a square jaw who didn't look at all like Himmler.
"So," I said, sarcastically, "you're not blind anymore?"
"You're blind," she said.
"You're a jerk," I said. "Look at the mess you've involved me in." And I ran, I ran to embrace my sister, but in my haste I tripped over Woo and fell, and knocked off Himmler's beer stein, which smashed to pieces.
"Louis," she said, "you're such a klutz."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Never mind," she said. "It was a fake anyway. Come. We have to leave this place. It isn't safe."
We took Dana's poodle and made a quick exit. The skies had cleared, but the street was all wet from the cloudburst. The sun was out. It was still early afternoon, and the puddles reflected the sun like in a Chinese poem. Foodle was thirsty, and helped himself to some of that. Dan was there. He came out of the deli with The New York Post and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper.
Zelda looked neither happy nor unhappy to see him. She took out a Chap Stick from her pocket, applied it to her lips, then said, "What do you want?"
"You're in peril," he said. "People want to kill you."
"What kind of word is peril?" she said.
"It means--"
"Shut up," she said. "I know what it means. So you think you can protect me, do you? Or save me or all that bullshit?"
"Yes," he said, very serious. "Yes."
She said, "Bob's dead, you know."
"I know," he said.
"Coward," she said. He started to explain: how sorry he was about this and that and the other, but she interrupted him. "We have to find Izzy. He has the teeth."
Dan had tears in his eyes. I also had tears in my eyes. He said, "I'm so happy you're okay, Zel."
"Don't blubber," she said, "and fetch us a cab."
He went over to the curb and waved his arms all over the place, and Zelda took my hand and tenderly squeezed it.
