How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? by Barry Graham Page B

him, and snapped a side kick at his knee. It doesn’t matter how big you are—everybody’s kneecaps are the same. And my kick shattered his. As he fell, I cut off his scream with a knife-hand strike to the side of his neck. As he flopped on his back, I brought an ax-kick down on his stomach. Vomit shot out of his mouth in a geyser that reached two or three feet high. When it stopped, I went down on top of him, grabbed his hair, and pounded his head into the floor a few times. I wanted to keep on going until his brains leaked out of his ears. But the sound of him choking on his puke got through to me, and I forced myself to stop. I rolled him onto his side, and the puke spilled out of his mouth and onto the floor, steam rising from it in the air-conditioned chill.
    I stood up.
    I walked toward Fallowell. “Want some too?” I asked.
    “You’re a fucking psycho. I don’t know what you’ve got against me. I don’t know anything about what you said.”
    “Whatever.” I spat a mouthful of blood in his face. “If you call the cops, you’d better hope they figure out who I am and find me before I come back here and tear your fucking throat out.” He didn’t say anything. “Tell your boyfriend thanks for the lesson in manners.”
    As I walked through the reception area, I gave his receptionist a bloody smile and a wink. Then I got in the elevator. When it reached the ground floor and the doors opened, I fell into a hapkido stance, thinking he might have somebody waiting for me. But nobody even looked at me as I walked hurriedly out of the building, then ran to my car in the heat.
    I started the car, hauled ass out of the lot, and drove a few blocks up Central Avenue. Then I pulled into another lot and parked. I checked out my face in the rearview. My lower lip was split, and could have used some stitches. My upper lip was swollen so big I looked clownish. My throat was red and black. There was no other visible damage, but I was worried about the ache in my kidneys.
    I drove home. When I walked into the apartment, Janine was sitting on the couch, readying Vanity Fair or something. She started to say hi, then looked at me. “What the fuck, Andy—”
    “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said. “I’m okay. But I want to take a bath and relax, okay?”
    She just stared at me, shaking her head.
    I went into the bathroom and shut the door. As the bath filled with water, I sat down on the toilet and pissed. When I’d finished, I stood up and looked at the toilet bowl. There was some blood, which was what I’d been afraid of. I gently touched my abdomen with my fingers, then pressed harder. It didn’t feel too bad.
    I flushed the toilet, then got in the bath. I lay there and breathed slowly, imagining that I was breathing out all the pain and garbage in a black cloud that floated away on the steam from the water. While I was doing that, the door opened and Janine came in.
    “What happened?”
    “Just let me have this bath, then I’ll tell you.”
    “You got in a fight?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You went after Fallowell, didn’t you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You asshole. What did you do to him?”
    “I didn’t do anything to him. One of his heavies messed with me.”
    “He did that to you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Christ. And what happened?”
    “I messed with him.”
    “You are such a fucking idiot.”
    “Janine, I’m hurting. Okay? Beat up on me later.”
    “Where did it get you? Have you found anything out? Has Tim come back to life?”
    “No, but I feel better.” Seeing her about to explode, I added, “And I think I might find something out. I definitely put a scare into Fallowell. He’s a small-time thug. He’s not used to being stood up to. You should have seen his face when his boy couldn’t kick my ass. If I lean on him enough, I’ve got a feeling he might cave in.”
    She was quiet for a moment, just reached out and touched my face. Then she said, “You think he did it?”
    “Honestly, I know he did. I