Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [97]
Despite having begun with promise this encounter was souring rapidly, an unhappy Harbison saw. As a lawyer, he knew when to pursue a case and when to settle and get out. It was time to get out. Plainly, the poor, beautiful kid was seriously disturbed, maybe strung out on crystal or Ecstasy or who knew what. He had suppressed his personal problems just well enough to fool Harbison. Until now. Regrettably the lawyer decided he would have to take a pass on his singular pleasure today. But there was still lunch to look forward to. The street, with its fluctuating complement of ready, accommodating, doe-eyed melancholic urchins, would still be here tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that.
“On second thought, Mr.—Peter, I think we’ve wasted too much time talking and not enough doing. Now it’s too late. I’ve got an appointment I have to keep.” He turned to go.
He was not sure what they hit him with. It might have been a stick, it might have been a brick. Too early anticipating the night, stars filled his vision. He hit the alley pavement hard, his head bouncing off the wet asphalt like a mud-filled sock. Blinking, trying to clear his vision, he saw them standing over him. There were four, maybe five. A couple of them pretty big, all of them armed with potentially lethal detritus scavenged from the alley’s battered, oversized Dumpsters. Reaching around behind his throbbing head, his hand came back bloody.
“Don’t hurt me,” he mumbled weakly. “I’ve got money.”
The boy was bending over him, unsympathetic, thoughtfully checking the bleeding face. To the others he snapped, “He’ll be all right. Joey, Arturo—get his wallet. Just the cash.” The lawyer felt grubby fingers fumbling at his pockets. “Don’t forget his watch.” Crap, Harbison thought. Insurance would cover part, but not all, of the expensive chronograph’s replacement cost.
He saw the boy straighten, open the ostrich-skin wallet, and pull out the couple of hundred bucks Harbison always carried with him. Another boy admired the glint of the Piaget on his own dirty wrist. His face flush with contempt, Peter let the wallet fall on Harbison’s face.
“Come to my home, you self-important, condescending fucker. I’ll turn you over to our local felon and his crew. They’d use you up. But you’d probably get off on that.” He gestured to the other members of the gang before sparing the man on the ground a last, disdainful look. “I don’t want to see you here again. Meanwhile, me and the local version of my homeboys are gonna go and get us something to drink and something hot to eat.”
Turning sharply, he and the other kids, laughing and joking, headed for the street. Pushing himself up on one elbow, a dazed but still gratefully alive Harbison watched them go, sniggering and cursing and shoving one another playfully in the manner of arrogant street kids everywhere. Superior and self-confident in the shadowy, misty murk, their leader seemed to float along just above the ground.
Slowly, painfully, Harbison picked himself up. His clothes were a mess, smeared with street grit and dirty snow, but the red oozing at the back of his head seemed to have slowed. He needed medical attention. Any legitimate doctor or hospital emergency room would demand the details of his encounter. As he staggered toward the street, his afternoon trashed, he was already hard at work putting together the lie he would have to tell.
He could hardly confess to having been mugged by a boy named Peter.
The Last Akialoa
A number of years ago a friend and I had the opportunity to spend a week on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which is known as the Garden Isle. The top of the island is a volcanic caldera. Over the millennia, the caldera has filled up with decaying