Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) Read Free Page A

said, “that’s enough, okay?”
    “What’s enough?” Charlie said.
    “Lady tells us she likes our music,” Jeff said, “Matthew tells us that’s enough.”
    “How was the prom?” Charlie said. He was proud of his little metaphor, eager to trot it out again. “Have a nice time at the prom?”
    “What kinda music was they playin’ at the prom?” Jeff asked.
    “Did you do a lotta dancin’?” Charlie asked.
    “How would you like to dance, lady?” Jeff asked.
    “How would you like me to call the police?” I said.
    “If you can get to the phone, that might be a good idea,” Jeff said. “Meanwhile, me and the lady’s gonna dance.”
    He grabbed her wrist and started pulling her out of the booth. Charlie stepped aside to give them room. I started to get up, but Charlie, with his weight lifter’s muscles, slapped out at me effortlessly, backhanded, and I sat down again on the high-backed wooden bench. I thought, This isn’t happening . This encounter with two redneck cowboys in a shitty little lounge was as far removed from the ordered reality of my life as would have been an elephant hunt in darkest Africa. But Jeff, the one with the potato-chip mustache, was dragging Dale out onto the postage-stamp dance floor near the jukebox, and Dale was calling him a son of a bitch and struggling to release her wrist from his grip, and Charlie—the black-bearded weight lifter—was standing with his back to me and the booth, his hands disdainfully on his hips, throwing his head back to laugh as Jeff pulled Dale in against him, and I thought, It’s happening, all right . I lunged out of the booth and shoved myself past Charlie, trying to get to where Jeff, the ballroom wrestler, was sliding his beefy hand onto Dale’s behind, Dale yelling and trying to shove him away, and that was when Charlie hit me on the back of the head with both hands clenched together like a mallet.
    I staggered forward, my arms wide, my eyes wide, my mouth open, and Jeff released his grip on Dale only long enough to punch me full in the face as I came lurching toward him. I wish I could say that, in the brief massacre that followed, I got in even one solid shot, but I didn’t. As I fell to the floor, I saw Dale lift her knee and take off one of her sequined slippers. I wish I could say that the heel of it connected with Charlie’s head, because that’s where she was aiming it, but he simply brushed her arm aside, and then decided it would be gentlemanly to punch her as hard as he could over the left breast. Dale was screaming as they dragged me over to the booth again and began pounding my head against the tabletop. The waitress was screaming, too. The bartender ran into the back room and started shouting. Somebody—the old man in the yachting cap, I think—was running for the wall telephone.
    When the Calusa police officer finally arrived, I was mopping the back of my head with a handkerchief monogrammed with the letters M.H. , and Charlie and Jeff were long gone. I told the officer I didn’t know their last names. I told him there had been a blue pickup truck out front, but I hadn’t noticed either the make or the license plate number. I also told him I personally knew Detective Morris Bloom of the Calusa PD, but he seemed singularly unimpressed by this piece of information. The bartender thought he should call for an ambulance. I said, No, no ambulance. The cop insisted that I be taken to a hospital. Dale said she would drive me to Good Samaritan. Somebody else—the old man in the yachting cap again, I think—remarked that there was blood all over my nice white jacket. The last thing I heard before leaving the appropriately named scene of the crime was the waitress sadly saying, “Have a nice day.” I guess she was referring to tomorrow, because the night wasn’t over yet, and it was going to get a hell of a lot worse in the next little while.
    It took the intern in the emergency room at Good Samaritan almost a full hour to