“Leukemia,” Gardener said, speaking directly to Ted's wide-eyed wife with dreadful confidentiality. “The children. The children are always the ones to go first after a meltdown. One good thing: if we lose Iroquois, it'll keep the Jimmy Fund busy.”
“Ted?” she whimpered. “He's wrong, isn't he? I mean-” She was fumbling for a handkerchief or tissue in her purse and dropped it. There was the brittle sound of something breaking inside.
“Stop it,” Ted said to Gardener. “We'll talk about it if you want, but stop deliberately upsetting my wife.”
“I want her to be upset.” Gardener said. He had embraced the darkness completely now. He belonged to it and it belonged to him and that was just fine. “There's so much she doesn't seem to know. Stuff she ought to know. Considering who she's married to, and all.”
He turned the beautiful, wild grin on her. She looked into it without flinching this time, mesmerized like a doe in a pair of oncoming headlights.
“Used core rods, now. Do you know where they go when they're no more good in the pile? Did he tell you that the Core Rod Fairy takes them? Not true. The power folks sort of squirrel them away. There are great big hot piles of core rods here. there, and everywhere, sitting in nasty pools of shallow water. They're really hot, ma'am. And they're going to stay that way for a long time.”
“Gardener, I want you out,” Arberg said again.
Ignoring him, Gardener went on, speaking to Mrs Ted and Mrs Ted only: “They're already losing track of some of those piles of used rods, did you know that? Like little kids who play all day and go to bed tired and wake up the next day and can't remember where they left their toys. And then there's the stuff that just goes poof. The ultimate Mad Bomber stuff. Enough plutonium has already disappeared to blow up the eastern seaboard of the United States. But I've got to have a mike to read my incoherent poems into. God forbid I should have to raise my v
Arberg grabbed him suddenly. The man was big and flabby but quite powerful. Gardener's shirt pulled out of his pants. His glass tumbled out of his fingers and shattered on the floor. In a rolling, carrying voice-a voice which maybe only an indignant teacher who has spent many years in lecture halls could muster-Arberg announced to everyone present: “I'm throwing this bum out.”
This declaration was greeted by spontaneous applause. Not everyone in the room applauded-maybe not even half of them did. But the power guy's wife was crying hard now, pressing against her husband, no longer trying to get away; until Arberg grabbed him, Gardener had been hulking over her, seeming to menace her.
Gardener felt his feet skim over the floor, then leave it entirely. He caught a glimpse of Patricia McCardle, her mouth compressed, her eyes glaring, her hands smacking together in the furious approval she had refused to accord him earlier. He saw Ron Cummings standing in the library door, a monstrous drink in one hand, his arm round a pretty blonde girl, his hand pressed firmly against the sideswell of her breast. Cummings looked concerned but not exactly surprised. After all, it was only the argument in the Stone Country Bar and Grille continued to another night, wasn't it?
Are you going to let this swollen bag of shit just put you out on the doorstep like a stray cat?
Gardener decided he wasn't.
He drove his left elbow backward as hard as he could. It slammed into Arberg's chest. Gardener thought that was what it would feel like to drive your elbow into a bowl of extremely firm Jell-O.
Arberg uttered a strangled cry and let go of Gardener. He turned, hands doubling into fists, ready to punch Arberg if Arberg tried to grab him again, tried to so much as touch him again. He rather hoped Arglebargle wanted to fight.
But the beefy sonofawhore showed no signs of wanting to fight. He had also lost interest in putting Gardener out. He was clutching his chest like a hammy actor preparing to sing a bad aria. Most of the brick-color had left his face, although flaring strips stood out on each cheek. Arberg's thick lips flexed into an O; slacked; flexed into an 0 again; slacked again.
“-heart-” he wheezed.
“What heart?” Gardener asked. “You mean you have one?” attack-” Arberg wheezed.
“a cr-”
“Heart attack, bullshit,” Gardener said. “The only thing getting attacked is your sense of propriety. And you deserve it, you son of a bitch.”
He brushed past Arberg, still standing frozen in his about-to-sing pose, both hands clutched to the left side of his chest, where Gardener had connected with his elbow. The door between the dining room and the hallway had been crowded with people; they stepped back hurriedly as Gardener strode toward them and past them, heading for the front door.
From behind him a woman screamed: “Get out, do you hear me? Get out, you bastard! Get out of here! I never want to see you again!”
This shrewish, hysterical voice was so unlike Patricia McCardle's usual ladylike purr (steel claws buried somewhere inside pads of velvet) that Gardener stopped. He turned around… and was rocked by an eye-watering roundhouse slap. Her face was ill with rage.
“I should have known better,” she breathed. “You're nothing but a worthless, drunken lout-a contentious, obsessive, bullying, ugly human being. But I'll fix you. I'll do it. You know I can.”
“Why, Patty, I didn't know you cared,” he said. “How sweet of you. I've been waiting to be fixed by you for years. Shall we go upstairs or give everyone a treat and do it on the rug?”
Ron Cummings, who had moved closer to the action, laughed. Patricia McCardle bared her teeth. Her hand flickered out again, this time connecting with Gardener's ear.
She spoke in a voice which was low but perfectly audible to everyone in the room: “I shouldn't have expected anything better from a man who would shoot his own wife.”
Gardener looked around, saw Ron, and said: “Excuse me, would you?” and plucked the drink from Ron's hand. In a single, quick, smooth gesture, he hooked two fingers into the bodice of McCardle's little black dress-it was elastic and pulled out easily-and dumped the whiskey inside.
“Cheers, dear,” he said, and turned for the door. It was, he decided, the best exit line he could hope to manage under the circumstances.
Arberg was still frozen with his fists clutched to his chest, mouth flexing into an 0 and then relaxing.
“-heart-” he wheezed again to Gardener-Gardener or anyone who would listen to him. In the other room, Patricia McCardle was shrieking: “I'm all right! Don't touch me! Leave me alone! I'm all right!”
“Hey. You.”
Gardener turned toward the voice and Ted's fist struck him high on one cheek. Gardener stumbled most of the way down the hall, clawing at the wall for balance. He struck the umbrella stand, knocked it over, then hit the front door hard enough to make the glass in the fanlight quiver.
Ted was walking down the hall toward him like a gunfighter.
“My wife's in the bathroom having hysterics because of you, and if you don't get out of here right now, I'm going to beat you silly.”
The blackness exploded like a rotted, gas-filled pocket of guts.
Gardener seized one of the umbrellas. It was long, furled, and black-an English lord's umbrella if there had ever been one. He ran toward Ted, toward this fellow who knew exactly what the stakes were but who was going ahead anyway, why not, there were seven payments left on the Datsun Z and eighteen on the house, so why not, right? Ted who saw a six-hundred-per-cent increase in leukemia merely as a fact which might upset his wife. Ted, good old Ted, and it was just lucky for good old Ted that it had been umbrellas instead of hunting rifles at the end of the hall.
Ted stood looking at Gardener, eyes widening, jaw dropping. The look of flushed anger gave way to uncertainty and fear-the fear that comes when you decide you Ire dealing with an irrational being.