Paul was staring coldly at the doorway. Michael followed Paul’s stare. A tall figure stood motionless in the shadows. Paul said nothing, but the look he gave Michael made him want to run away again.
“You’re late,” said Paul.
“Who’s he?” asked Martin.
“This is Michael Bean,” Paul said casually, directing his statement more to the roast than Martin. He then began carving it up with all the agility and speed of a surgeon trying to squeak in the front nine at the country club before rush hour. Martin said nothing, sizing up the kid with a single, sidelong, top-to-bottom glance. He summarized his findings with one unspoken word:
Chump.
“Michael, this is Martin,” Paul said, mildly irritated. Martin remained silent, taking a chair at the opposite end of the table, glaring at the interloper as Paul plopped a slab of mystery meat onto his reused paper plate.
Paul returned to his chair in the middle of the table and kept carving. “I would apologize for Martin’s lack of table manners, but I never apologize. Though he lacks in the social graces, he more than compensates for those shortcomings in other areas.”
Michael looked at Martin with a blend of envy, wariness and unabashed curiosity. Martin looked at the steak Paul slapped on his plate and abandoned all interest in the kid.
Paul looked at both of them with barely repressed glee.
“Uh, is there anything else to eat?” Michael asked cautiously, staring at the bloody hunk of meat on his otherwise empty plate. Martin and Paul looked at him like he was crazy and went back to gulping down the meat in huge swallows, keeping all chewing activities to a bare minimum. Michael stared at his steak, his stomach growling again. “Oh, what the hell. It’s not like I never ate meat before.” That was true enough. He’d only been a vegetarian for the last three months—after the waitress he had the hots for told him she was a vegan.
Michael picked up his big knife daintily, but once he cut off a chunk and pushed it between his lips, he was shocked by how juicy and flavorful it was, and how much he missed the taste of meat. “What ish this?” he asked, still chewing, the meat squirting with every bite.
Paul set down his utensils and wiped his mustache with the sleeve of his overcoat. “Roast rump. Tasty, isn’t it?”
“Yessh,” Michael replied, between enthusiastic mouthfuls. “Isshh really good.”
Martin rolled his eyes, still not looking up from his plate.
“So, how many piercings do you have there, Michael?” Paul asked, reluctant to change the topic so quickly, but wanting to recapture Martin’s attention.
“Eleven,” Michael answered, looking from Paul to the expressionless face of Martin, who nonetheless managed to convey acres of contempt. “Got the three brow rings,” he said, nervously pointing out each placement with his index finger. “Four earrings, the nose, tongue, both nips and…another one,” pointing under the table in a swizzle stick motion.
“You poked your pee-pee?” asked Paul with an exaggerated wince.
“Not my pee…er, my, uh, something else,” Michael replied, becoming increasingly uncomfortable, squirming in his chair as if the concealed piercing might be infected.
Martin shook his head with disgust. Another pinhead. The neighborhood was lousy with them. What was he doing here? How did he know Paul?
“Michael lives below me,” Paul said, stomping on the floor to accentuate his unexpected reply to Martin’s unasked questions. “The poor lad heard you screaming…and like any concerned citizen he came up to offer his kindly assistance.”
“That was you…screaming like that?” Michael blurted out with a stupid grin.
Martin’s face turned beet red. Paul grinned broadly, relishing the shame and rage transforming his features, stifling the phlegm-laced chortles that threatened to erupt in lava plumes all over his plate. “Indeed, it was,” he cut in. “Martin just had his own piercing!”
Martin’s stomach tightened and he slowly put down his fork, staring at Paul and the kid. Why would Paul discuss their session with a stranger? He stared blankly at the boy, trying to determine his age. Nineteen? Eighteen? Younger? He could tell from the kid’s confused and eager expression that he couldn’t have known Paul very long. No one looked like that after they’d known Paul very long. So what was he up to?
Paul gave Michael a wink that felt more like a nudge in the ribs. “Go on,” the wink said. “Ask him about it.”
“So whatcha get pierced?” Michael asked nervously, his shaky grin teetering between fear and a budding boldness, encouraged by the wink.
Martin remained silent, glancing at his bandaged hand.
“Oh…” Michael nodded, staring at the cloud of red in the middle of the coarse white fabric and the fresh scar in the web of his own hand. “Temporary piercings.”
“Temporary piercings,” Martin muttered with total contempt. His shoulders relaxed. The kid was just another filthy, tattooed squatter—another toy for Paul to bat around between his mitts like a squeaky mouse until he tired of him.
Michael didn’t know what else to say next. Martin stared into his eyes for a long uncomfortable moment, then returned to his meal, eager to conclude this encounter.
“Martin is in a class all by himself,” Paul interjected suddenly, with a flattering intonation that caught his tablemates by surprise. “Or maybe I should say he’s in a very select class. The master class. As you can see, he doesn’t bother with all that fancy jewelry. I’m sure those titty rings feel nice when you’re soaping up in the shower, but Martin here is a purist. Like all warriors, he knows that pain has its own virtues…and rewards. He’s learned to control unimaginable levels of suffering, and even though he’s been known to indulge himself in a girlish scream from time to time, it still can’t tarnish his ample achievements.”
Michael could plainly hear the admiration in Paul’s voice…and his disdain. Now it was his turn to frown with shame.
Despite the “girlish” dig, Martin felt a surge of pride, like he’d been exonerated of the most hideous crime imaginable: vulnerability. But when he looked at Paul’s twinkling eyes and saw how determined he was to undermine the kid’s confidence as well as his own, he felt another surge of apprehension. Paul was definitely up to something.
“What’s your opinion, Martin?” Paul asked, ignoring his wary gaze. “I’d venture to guess you feel nothing but contempt for this new generation and all their showy ornamentation.”
Martin nodded halfheartedly.
“Our Martin is a man of very few words,” Paul whispered to Michael.
Martin squinted at Paul, then returned to the much more important business of refueling his depleted reserves. Halfway done, he calculated. About twelve more bites.
Paul grinned at Michael like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Michael stared at the grin and Martin’s bandaged hand and tugged nervously on an earring. The silence, interrupted only by the sounds of sawing blades and slobbery chewing, hung over the table like organ music in a funeral parlor. Michael ate along with them, until he felt a nagging itch that someone was watching him. When he lifted his eyes up, Martin was staring right back at him with unconcealed malice.
What’s going on here? Who are these people?
Michael thought in a complete panic. When Paul had told him about Martin, he thought he was going to be attending some kind of seminar—
How To Be an Action Hero in Ten Easy Steps
—or some shit like that. But not only was this buzz-cut cowboy tight as a clam; not only was he unmistakably, palpably dangerous; not only did he look like Dirty Harry minus the wavy hair and with only half the squint; not only was this lean, mean clearly-pissed-off-for-no-good-reason fuckhead making him feel as squirmy as a baby in a bucket of eels…but to top it off, he acted like he wanted to kill him!
Bean couldn’t hold Martin’s baleful gaze and immediately shifted his eyes back to his plate and the growing pool of red juice leaking out from his steak. Martin stared at him across the expanse of weathered wood and looked at the knife in his hand.
Paul raised his head from his plate and cleared his throat again. “Martin,” he gurgled between swallows of meat, “I don’t suppose you’d like to share a story”—(gulp,
slurp
, chew)—“of our exploits together”—(gnaw,
crunch,
gulp)—“with our young guest here.”
Martin said nothing, gripping his knife tighter.
“Well, I have an amusing anecdote, now that I think about it,” he sighed, leaning on the edge of the plywood table. “I remember a time when you were just a bit younger than Michael here and we were traveling through the redwoods of Northern California.”
Martin couldn’t believe it. Paul was going to tell
this
story to a seedy little punk like Bean? Who
was
this guy? What the hell was Paul doing?
Paul ignored Martin’s bug-eyed stare and turned to face Bean, twisting his chair around to the side. “We were stopping by to visit a very old acquaintance of mine,” Paul said blandly. “A man by the name of Firth. Even though we dropped by unannounced, I’ll be damned if he didn’t act like he was expecting us. We barely made it halfway up the long gravel road in our old pickup truck, when I heard the first shot.”
Outlaws,
Michael thought.
Cool.
Paul plowed ahead with his story. “Now you may not guess that a beefy old fella like meself would be the agile sort, but I can move at quite a clip when I feel the urge—and young Martin had a knack for the most amazing acrobatics. So when we heard that big loud
bang!
neither of us wasted any time getting out of the way.” Paul punctuated the
bang!
by clapping his hands so loudly that Michael jumped in his seat. Paul grinned and went on with his story.
“Martin bailed out the passenger door like he was parachuting from a plane during takeoff. Meanwhile, I ducked down so quickly in the vacant seat he provided that the whizzing blob of lead missed me with a few milliseconds to spare.” He paused to take another slug of whiskey and rose from his chair, waving his arms enthusiastically as he spoke. “The truck crashed into the massive iron gates, and we took the fight to Firth, scrambling through the trees, guns blazing. The house was a castle, really, and his soldiers were shooting at us from the high towers on the left and right. Martin, with his keen, youthful eye and dead-calm trigger finger, knocked out two of them, at a good hundred yards, no less…while on the run! I contented meself with some well-timed shotgun blasts to the stones around Firth. I knew it was him in the highest turret, on account of his cowardly fondness for sniper rifles. I kept him pinned down until Martin blew open the front door with his trusty sawed-off twenty gauge.”
Paul paused to take another slug of whiskey. “Hmmm. I wonder if Martin could be persuaded to pick up the tale at this point…”
Martin glared at Paul, then stared blankly at his nearly empty plate like it contained the answer to the riddle of why he’d come back again.
“No? Oh, well. I guess I’ll stumble along on my own as best I can. Now where was I? Oh, yes, we went inside and rounded up Firth, his family, servants and soldiers. The soldiers were summarily executed, the servants locked in the pantry and Firth and his offspring, fraternal twins of either sex, were held at gunpoint in the library, until I got what I came for.”
“What did you come for?” Michael asked, right on cue.
“Firth had taken a book from me, a very special book,” Paul said, his face flattening out again. His answer was so unexpected that Michael almost interrupted again, but Paul filled in the dark, brooding pause himself. “He knew this was the reason I’d come for him, but he’d be damned if he was going to part with it so easily, even though it wasn’t his to begin with, though for some odd reason he kept insisting that it was. Now it’s hard to imagine a work of literature inspiring such passion, but Firth was willing to bargain with all he had, if Martin and I would leave him and the precious tome in peace.”
“Why was the book so important?” Michael asked.
Paul considered for a moment, then spoke with a dismissive wave. “For you it would just be marks on a page. For me it was very special. Let’s say it had a sentimental value. Like a family heirloom. Of course, I turned down Firth’s offer cold flat, but he was a quick thinker. He proposed an alternative I couldn’t refuse, given my highly competitive instincts. He called for a duel!”
“He wanted to fight you?” Michael asked, astonished.
Paul laughed so loud it shook the table. “Me? No, Firth was nobody’s fool. He challenged young Martin against his son, winner take all. The book…and all their lives. I asked him why he was betting all his chips on his very big boy, who had more than a foot on Martin, by the way, and looked every bit as crafty as his dad and twice as mean.
“So Firth looks at me funny, well, not that funny, then turns his eyes to his son, as if to ask if he’s truly up to the task. The son in turn sizes up Martin who was still a little lad for his age—didn’t have that big growth spurt till two years later—and nods back to poppa like this’ll be a cakewalk.
“Naturally, I keep my poker face on, but I’m chuckling inside, thinking how many men have already paid the price for underestimating little Martin. All the while I’m making funny remarks to his skinny little daughter, who cunna been more than seventeen, wouldn’t you say, Martin? Wouldn’t you say she cunna been more than seventeen?”
Martin speared his fork in the last piece of meat, raised it and opened his mouth.
“Martin didn’t look at her much, if the truth be told,” Paul went on, a fresh hunger in his voice as he watched Michael perk up his ears and lean closer towards him. “He never cared much more for the ladies than he did for all the finer things in life, a good belt of rye, a nice, juicy steak…”
Martin chomped down hard, barely pulling the fork out before the tines were clenched in his teeth.
“No, no, no…Martin was much more interested in keeping an eye on me. I suppose he was wondering what I had in store for the lovely lass after the big battle.”
Martin pushed back his chair from the table. Paul didn’t even look in his direction, keeping his eyes locked on Michael, sizing up every twitch and flinch.