Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [74]
Romeo clicked his tongue. “Not much good at rough stuff, are we, Mr. Movie Man?”
Ham lunged for Romeo’s tie. Romeo was a man of quicker reflexes. He gripped Ham’s throat in those killer hands. “Big-stick bullies, you Americans,” he sneered.
Ham’s eyes bulged, his knees sagged, his voice box let out gaspy, growly sounds. When Romeo finally let go, the body thudded to the floor. I jumped.
“What was that?” Romeo grinned. “A quake?” He hauled Ham’s body by the feet inside the galley ell. “There was this warden I had a nice thing going with, hash for deutsche marks and pound sterling. The warden chap went down heavier than Mr. Movie Man, and he couldn’t have weighed more than sixty, sixty-five kilos.”
“What did Ham ever do to you?” I crawled as far from him as I dared. The cabin was cramped, but not with the kind of furniture you can crouch under.
“Nothing.” He lifted Ham’s limp body by Ham’s gray ponytail nearly off the floor. “Everything.” He slammed Ham’s head, facedown, on the butcher-block counter, and pinned it with an elbow. “How much blood does a dead wimp bleed, little Devi?”
I threw up on the scatter rug, splattering Ham’s running shoes.
Romeo laughed. “Don’t spoil the fun.” He snatched the Chinese meat cleaver off its galley wall peg. He whacked the blade on the base of Ham’s neck. Whack! Whack! The blade got stuck in Ham. “Shit! I’ve lost the wrist, the snap. No practice.” Romeo kept cursing as he worked to ease the blade out of bone.
I pressed my face into the rug; I smelled the sour smells of Ham’s shoes, my vomit. I heard a final swish! and crack! Then the thump of Ham’s severed head falling to the floor.
Romeo nudged me gently with his boot. Snakeskin rubbed my arm. When I squinted up, he was standing over me, cleaver in hand, and sucking on a miniature bottie of whiskey, the kind Pappy saved from plane trips. FREEZE TAPE.
“Need a drink?” He pulled another bottle out of his pinkish suit pocket. This time it was vodka. “Take a sip, go on.” I thought of Aloysius Fong hitting the bottle in the wings, just before going onstage. Nerves, not guilt. “Hey, what was that?” He staggered.
I’d felt the wave too. “Never spent time on water?” I mocked.
“What do you keep in your waters? Jaws?” He stumbled again.
Violent propensities. The sea has them, the Earth rocks with them. I claim my inheritance, kneeing Bio-Dad so hard as he tilts his head back to draw from the tiny bottle that it tumbles him. TAPE ROLLING. The cleaver fuses to my arm. It soars and plunges, soars and plunges. “Monster!” I scream. I keep screaming as I cradle Ham’s tormented face to my bosom. I am screaming as I dial 911.
Epilogue
Physicists and fantasists suspect that someday there will be one simple equation to express and explain all the problems of all the galaxies. My big toe, which got Ham all horny, is also the TOE: the Theory of Everything. The mysteries of our universe become more mysterious as they grow ever more accessible. The symmetry of asymmetry.
What was it that I’d read in Yanofsky’s I Winked, the Stars Wobbled? The world you see isn’t the world you get Ninety percent of it lurks out of your sight Invisible matter is the cosmic glue holding reckless galaxies in place.
I am that dark, ghost, thing.
The quarks and electrons that make up villains and heroes also make the coffins we’re laid to rest in, and the earth we molder in, and the maggots we fatten, and the stars that shine on us after our worlds vanish.
Destiny works itself out in bizarre loops. I made the 911 call. Domestic dispute, I told the dispatcher. Let them find out how bloody. I heard the urgent police sirens, I waited a long while for the waist chains, handcuffs, leg shackles. And just when I prayed for my misery to be over, the waves rocked wild and heaved Last Chance free of its moorings. The houseboat skimmed a molten gold sea carrying its cargo of dead and living towards a horizon on flames, I heard mermaids sing and police sirens screech,