Or a pin, aIPb, thought, and discovered that this idea was funny in spite of the fix he was in… or perhaps because of it. This was the real pin-sticker man; James Roy Hong could be only a pale imitation.

And I never had a chance to cancel this appointment, Ralph thought. But then again, he had an idea that nuts like the guy in the Snoopy sweatshirt didn’t take cancellations. Nuts like this had their own agenda and they stuck to it, come hell or high water.

Whatever else might happen, Ralph knew he couldn’t stand that knife-tip boring into him much longer. He used his thumb to lift the flap of his coat pocket and slipped his hand inside. He knew what the object was the minute his fingertips touched it: the aerosol can Gretchen had taken out of her purse and put on his kitchen table. A little present from all your grateful friends at WomanCare, she had said.

Ralph had no idea how it had gotten from the top of the kitchen cabinet where he had put it into the pocket of his battered old fall jacket, and he didn’t care. His hand closed around it, and he used his thumb again, this time to pop off the can’s plastic top. He never took his eyes away from the twitching, frightened, exhilarated face of the man with the zany hair as he did this.

“I know something,” Ralph said. “If you promise not to kill me, I’ll tell you.”

“What?” the man with the zany hair asked. “,Teepers, what could a scum like you know?”

What could a scum like me know? Ralph asked himself, and the answer came at once, popping into his mind like Jackpot bars in the windows of a slot machine. He forced himself to lean into the green aura swirling around the man, into the terrible cloud of stink coming from his disturbed guts. At the same time he eased the small can from his pocket, held it against his thigh, and settled his index finger on the button which triggered the spray.

“I know who the Crimson King is,” he murmured.

The eyes widened behind the dirty hornrims-not just in surprise but in shock-and the man with the zany hair recoiled a little. For a moment the terrible pressure high on Ralph’s left side eased. It was his chance, the only one he was apt to have, and he took it, throwing himself to the right, falling off his chair and tumbling to the floor.

The back of his head smacked the tiles, but the pain seemed distant and unimportant compared to the relief at the removal of the knife-point.

The man with the zany hair squawked-a sound of mingled rage and resignation, as if he had become used to such setbacks over his long and difficult life. He leaned over Ralph’s now-empty chair, his twitching face thrust forward, his eyes looking like the sort of fantastic, glowing creatures which live in the ocean’s deepest trenches.

Ralph raised the spray-can and had just a moment to realize he hadn’t had time to check which direction the pinhole in the nozzle was pointing-he might very well succeed only in giving himself a faceful of Bodyguard.

No time to worry about that now.

He pressed the nozzle as the man with the zany hair thrust his knife forward. The man’s face was enveloped in a thin haze of droplets that looked like the stuff that came out of the pine-scented airfreshener Ralph kept on the bathroom toilet tank. The lenses of his glasses fogged over.

The result was immediate and all Ralph could have wished for.

The man with the zany hair screamed in pain, dropped his knife (it landed on Ralph’s left knee and came to rest between his legs), and clutched at his face, pulling his glasses off. They landed on the table.

At the same time the thin, somehow greasy aura around him flashed a brilliant red and then winked out-out of Ralph’s view, at least.

“I’m blind!” the man with the zany hair cried in a high, shrieky voice. “I’m blind, I’m blind!”

“No, you’re not,” Ralph said, getting shakily to his feet.

“You’re just-” The man with the zany hair screamed again and fell to the floor.

He rolled back and forth on the black and white tiles with his hands over his face, howling like a child who has gotten his hand caught in a door. Ralph could see little pie-wedges of cheeks between his splayed fingers. The skin there was turning an alarming shade of red.

Ralph told himself to leave the guy alone, that he was crazy as a loon and dangerous as a rattlesnake, but he found himself too horrified and ashamed of what he had done to take this no doubt excellent advice.

The idea that it had been a matter of survival, of disabling his assailant or dying, had already begun to seem unreal.

He bent down and put a tentative hand on the man’s arm. The nut rolled away from him and began to drum his dirty lowtop sneakers on the floor like a child having a tantrum. “oh you son of a bitch” he was screaming. “You shot me with something!” And then, incredibly: “I’ll sue the pants off you.”

“You’ll have to explain about the knife before you’re able to progress much with your lawsuit, I think,” Ralph said.

He saw the knife lying on the floor, reached for it, then thought again. It would be better if his fingerprints weren’t on it. As he straightened, a wave of dizziness rushed through his head and for a moment the rain beating against the window sounded hollow and distant.

He kicked the knife away, then tottered on his feet and had to grab the back of the chair he’d been sitting in to keep from falling over.

Things steadied again.

He heard approaching footsteps from the main lobby and murmuring, questioning voices.

Now you come, Ralph thought wearily. Where were you three minutes ago, when this guy was on the verge of popping my left lung like a balloon?

Mike Hanlon, looking slim and no more than thirty despite his tight cap of gray hair, appeared in the doorway. Behind him was the teenage boy Ralph recognized as the weekend desk assistant, and behind the teenager were four or five gawkers, probably from the periodicals room.

“Mr. Roberts!” Mike exclaimed. “Christ, how bad are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, it’s him that’s hurt,” Ralph said. But he happened to look down at himself as he pointed at the man on the floor and saw he wasn’t fine. His coat had pulled up when he pointed, and the left side of the plaid shirt beneath had gone a deep, sodden red in a teardrop shape that started just below the armpit and spread out from there.

“Shit,” he said faintly, and sat down in his chair again.

He bumped the hornrimmed glasses with his elbow and they skittered almost all the way across the table. The mist of droplets on their lenses made them look like eyes which had been blinded by cataracts.

“He shot me with acid!” the man on the floor screamed. “I can’t see and my skin is melting. I can feel it melting.l” To Ralph -, he sounded like an almost conscious parody of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Mike tossed a quick glance at the man on the floor, then sat down in the chair next to to Ralph. “What happened?”

“Well, it sure wasn’t acid,” Ralph said, and held up the can of Bodyguard. He set it on the table beside Patterns of Dreaming. “The lady who gave it to me said it’s not as strong as Mace, it Just irritates your eyes and makes you sick to your-”

“It’s not what’s wrong with him that I’m worried about,” Mike said impatiently.

“Anyone who can yell that loud probably isn’t going to die in the next three minutes, It’s you I’m worried about, Mr. Roberts-any idea how bad he stabbed you?”

“He didn’t actually stab me at all,” Ralph said. “He… sort of poked me. With that.” He pointed at the knife lying on the tile floor.

At the sight of the red tip, he felt another wave of faintness track through his head. It felt like an express train made of feather-pillows.

That was stupid, of course, made no sense at all, but he wasn’t in a very sensible frame of mind.

The assistant was looking cautiously down at the man on the floor.