Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [117]
But these thoughts were not in my head, they were only mute spaces of air between heartbeats I was trying to calm with steady breathing. If we didn’t find them, what would I do with this nearly gut-sick readiness? Where would it go?
Sam turned right onto Main, the lights of Sambo’s ahead in Monument Square. It was an hour before dawn, but as we rode slowly by, the place seemed even more crowded than before, every booth filled now, every counter stool occupied. Beyond the counter, waitresses worked swiftly, pouring coffee, pulling plates of food from the serving shelf to the kitchen where I could see the hurried movement of cooks in white. There was cigarette smoke in the air, a man in a black shirt and thin red tie leaving the bathroom. I looked to my left, past Liz and her friend. In the center of the square, the statue of the Union soldier was a granite silhouette against the fluorescent glare of the gas station on the other side, and I could feel it all begin to back up on me, my arms and legs starting to feel heavy now, Liz’s hand a weight on my knee.
Theresa’s voice was in the air—That’s them. Sam, that’s them. She sounded as if she’d been holding her breath, her words coming out on released air. They’re in that first booth. Did you see them? They’re right there.
We were steering fast into the lot of Sambo’s, Sam pulling into a space between a pickup and a small sedan. That’s their car. Under the security light, it was a dull green, like it had been sandblasted and spray-painted that color, and in the backseat a boy and girl were kissing. My body was light again. If my heart had a sound it would be an electronic thumping in the air. I reached for the door handle, but this was a two-door and Vinny wasn’t opening his fast enough—Go, go, go. Then there was cold air and I was pushing the seat against Vinny’s back, his voice a warning, and I had one leg out the door, my hand squeezing Sam’s shoulder; he turned to me, his face as still as a photograph. Just throw that first punch, these words I left behind as I ran across the lot for the glass doors. I could feel how far ahead of everyone I was, but the doors swung open from their centers and grasping the handles were hands that looked like mine, small hands, and there’d been no weight to those doors, no surface to the rust-colored porcelain tiles of the entryway under my boots, no resistance as I pushed open the final doors, thick commercial glass on double hinges that swung back and forth behind me. There were the smells of bacon and eggs and coffee, of maple syrup and dried ketchup and cigarette smoke. There were men and women in their party clothes, their barroom clothes, their dance-club clothes, none of them looking up at me as they smoked and sipped and laughed and talked and chewed; all of this made sounds but none of it was understandable, voices without words lost in wind off the ocean that was my head. I was moving to the first booth, had been along.
It was a silent, well-lighted island, and it held three men, young I could see now, younger than I was. One of them sat facing the door, the two others across from him, a smear of skin and hair and leather and wool. It was hard to see them clearly, only what was in front of each: a ceramic coffee cup on a white saucer, the cups empty, and now I was standing at their booth, their faces turning slowly my way as words came out of me, friend knife my best friend? My friend? And the one who sat alone, the one with the stringy black hair whose eyes were on mine, he began to smirk, and I knew it was him who’d pulled the knife, and then his cup was in my hand and I was breaking it across his nose and cheeks and I grabbed the next cup and pushed it into the face of the one at the