Knight Life (21 page)

    
“Yeah?” He got louder, angrier, and he advanced on
her, his fist clenching and unclenching. “And I can do it again. And again. I'm tired of your superior attitude. I thought you understood me. But you're just ignorant, like all the rest. Ignorant! But I'm gonna teach you!”

    
“Teach me? Teach me what!” she said defiantly. “Hit me again and swell both my eyes shut, so you can teach me not to look at you! Because you're disgusting! Look at what you've become!” It all spilled out of her, everything she'd been bottling up. “When I met you, you were bigger than the whole world. You were young and confident and full of fire! And I keep praying that the Lance that I fell in love with will return somehow. But he's not coming back! All you're doing is dragging me down with you! I can live on love. But I can't live on pointless hope anymore! I can't!”

    
He shoved her hard, and she hit the floor. “Big man!” she spat out. “Show who's tougher! We're the two biggest losers in the world. And the really sick thing is, I don't deserve better than you!”

    
“I'm going to show you what you deserve,” Lance shot back. He swung his fist back. Gwen shrieked, throwing up her hands to defend herself.

    
Suddenly the front door was smashed open, wood splintering everywhere. Arthur stood in the door frame, and there was cold fury in his eyes.

    
Lance took one look at the intruder, grabbed a steak knife off a nearby table and charged. Arthur effortlessly sidestepped, grabbed the knife hand at the wrist, and drove a knee into Lance's gut. Lance gasped, unable to draw a breath, and Arthur tossed him like a sack of bones across the apartment, sending him crashing to the floor.

    
He turned and looked at Gwen with infinite sadness, as if seeing something that he had fully expected. “What happened to you?” he asked.

    
Operating on reflex—a reflex that told her to cover for Lance whenever possible—Gwen stammered out, “I ... I ... punched myself in the eye.”

    
“You hit
yourself?
”

    
“Yes.”

    
“In the eye?”

    
“That's right.”

    
He shook his head sadly. “Why in God's name would you do that?”

    
“I was aiming at my nose and I missed.”

    
Arthur's attention swiveled back to Lance, who was going for the fallen steak knife again. Gwen's eyes widened in shock as Arthur, still nattily attired in a royal-blue, three-piece suit, reached to his left hip under his coat. For a moment she thought he was about to draw a gun. Instead there was the smooth sound of metal on metal as a gleaming sword was drawn from its sheath, seeming to appear in his hand like magic. In the dimness of the apartment the sword glowed with a life all its own. Lance scuttled back, crablike, toward the wall, never taking his terrified eyes from the darkly furious face of the man standing over him. Arthur knocked a lamp out of the way with a sweep of the sword, advancing on Lance until the frightened man could back up no farther. He pulled his knees up to his chin like a frightened child.

    
“You ... you wouldn't kill an unarmed man?” he managed to say.

    
“Not a man,” Arthur said. “No. But you ... you little pissant ...”

    
He drew back his sword, ready to strike. Gwen cried out, “No!!”

    
Arthur looked to her and said, his contempt for Lance clear in his voice, “You would spare this ... this thing?”

    
“Please,” she whispered, her eyes fixed upon the gleaming blade. “The moment I saw that sword, my whole life ... made sense ... if you kill him, you're a murderer, and nothing will make sense anymore ... I can't go back to that ... I can't ... don't make me.”

    
Arthur took two steps back and sheathed the sword. Lance let out a long, unsteady breath, but it caught in his
throat as Arthur said, “If you ever raise a hand to this woman ... or any other woman ... I shall cut it off. Then I will make you eat it. Do we understand each other?” Lance managed a nod, but not much more than that.

    
Arthur turned to face Gwen, who was still looking at him in wonderment. “Why?” he asked.

    
She couldn't look at him, but she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Why what?” she whispered.

    
“Why did you stay here?”

    
“I had nowhere else to go.”

    
He basked in the warmth of her body, held close to him. “Now you do.”

    
He walked with her to the door. He looked back at Lance who still cowered in the corner, then smiled again and said, “Have a nice day,” and left with Gwen on his arm.

    
They went down to the street, and Arthur called “Taxi!” to the first unoccupied cab he saw. The cab swung over to the curb, and they popped into the back. As Arthur pulled the door shut behind them, Gwen said, “I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe when you whipped out your sword—”

    
“Hey!” said the cabbie angrily. “I know this is New York, but let's keep the filthy talk to a minimum, okay?”

    
“Yes, sir,” said Arthur meekly. He glanced over at Gwen and winked, and she smiled. It was her first real smile in weeks.

    
“So you two lovebirds want to tell me where you're going?”

    
“Yes,” said Arthur. “Central Park.”

    
“Sounds good.” The car eased its way into the busy lunch hour traffic.

    
“Central Park?” said Gwen. “What's there?”

    
“My home away from home.”

    
“Oh.” She paused. “Thank you. About not hurting Lance.”

    
Arthur turned and looked at her with surprise. “His name is Lance?”

    
“Yes. Why?”

    
“No reason,” he said grimly. “Just ... sick coincidence, I suppose. As for Lance, the only reason I didn't hurt him was because you asked me not to. But he hurt you.”

    
“I suppose in a way he was right. I had only myself to blame. Because I let him get away with it. But never again.”

    
“That's the way I like my queen to talk.”

    
She took a deep breath, and then said, “The sword ... it was Excalibur, wasn't it.”

    
The surprise was evident in his face. He seemed both astonished and relieved that she was one step ahead of what he was going to say.

    
She looked up at him dreamily. “I'm really your queen? You're really—”

    
“Yes. I am.”

    
“And I'm really—”

    
“I think so.”

    
“How can we know for certain?”

    
Arthur smiled. “We'll think of something.”

Y
E
O
LDE
S
OUND
B
ITE

“Firefighters responded quickly to the blaze and were able to extinguish it within a matter of minutes. No one was hurt. And now Louise Simons on brings us up to date on the doings of New York's most offbeat candidate for mayor. Louise?”

    
“Thank you, Walter. Well, it was certainly the most unorthodox beginning to a mayoral campaign in recent times. He calls himself Arthur Penn, he is a self-described “Independent” candidate, and his ideas are, well, novel. First drawing attention to himself by climbing atop a statue in Duffy Square and putting forth intriguing and
—
some say
—
lunatic ideas about capital punishment, it was today announced that he has gained the requisite signatures to off daily enter the race for mayor. The campaign managers of front-runners Kent Taylor and Bernard Keating had no comment other than to say that they welcomed all comers ... even, according to DA Keating, the ‘clearly nut so' ones. “

C
HAPTRE

THE
T
WELFTH

B
ERNARD B. KEATING
was accustomed to coming out of court rooms and being surrounded by the press. He smiled now into the cameras as they crowded around him on the steps of the big marble building he'd just left. Bernard struck a dramatic pose, one hand jauntily on his ample hip, his head cocked to one side, a smile plastered across his face. Moe floated unobtrusively in the background.

    
Bernard waited for questions about his plans for his campaign, his opinions on the current hot issues, his plans for the city if elected. And it was a tribute to Bernard B. Keating's skill as a politician that he did not turn and slug the questioner when the first question out of a reporter's mouth was, “What do you think of Arthur Penn's chances in the upcoming mayoral race?”

    
“He's made quite a splash with his soapbox speeches, Bernie,” shouted the reporter from Channel 4 news. “And some of the proposals he's made are real unorthodox. Do you have any comment on—”

    
Bernard waved off the question and managed to keep
his smile glued on his mouth. “Now boys, I have all of Mr. Perm's proposals under consideration, and before I make further comment I'm getting the opinion of my advisors on the matter.” Switching into his stump speech, he suddenly said, “This city needs me and, more important, I need this city. And I'm hoping that you guys are going to put me where I can do the most good ... and no, not on unemployment.” He felt briefly buoyed by the laughter that line got. “We've got too many whining creeps on the city's doles already. We don't need welfare cases cluttering up houses. We don't need homeless people to trip over in the streets. Now I've got as much humanity as the next guy ... unless the next guy is a sucker. Bottom line is this: New York for New Yorkers.”

    
“But Arthur Penn ...” another reporter began.

    
And Keating promptly cut him off. “That's all, that's all.” And he brushed by the reporters with uncharacteristic abruptness.

    
Moe followed on his heels, not thrilled by the turn of events, and when Bernie hopped into his waiting limo, Moe was even less thrilled that Bernie waved for him to get in as well. Bernie slid over to accommodate Moe and tossed one last wave to the reporters as the limo pulled away.

    
Once they were under way his friendly facade melted away like butter in a hot skillet. “What the hell was that all about?” he demanded.

    
“I'm not sure what you mean exactly,” said Moe slowly.

    
“Then I'll explain it, exactly.” Bernie lit up one of his dread cigars, and opened the window a crack to allow the smoke to trail out behind them. “You were telling me a couple of weeks ago that there was barely any interest in this Arthur Penn, that he was going to go away.”

    
“I never said that, Bernie,” said Moe reasonably. “I said I hoped he'd go away. There's a big difference.”

    
“Wonderful. So how come all I get are questions about
Perm? Now what, I wonder, put the press on to this guy. Huh?”

    
“Well, uh,” Moe tugged uncomfortably on his collar, “I suppose in a small way it's my fault.”