Getting punched in the head and knocked to the ground with no warning would’ve been disorienting enough. But Dan was severely nearsighted, and losing his glasses added a whole other level of complication to the crisis.
One of his legs was pinned under his bike, and when he turned his head from the pavement, his blurry, green-and-blue attacker was already looming over him, hands outstretched with malevolent purpose.
Dan twisted away from the attack, pressing his hands to the asphalt and trying to push himself up to stand. But he couldn’t free his legs from the tangle of his bike. Underneath him, something hard and sharp was digging into his hip.
Then the bike came to life as his attacker tried to yank it out from under him.
NO!
Dan wrenched his legs free and lurched to his feet. Pain signals were flooding his brain, but they were drowned out by the urgency of reclaiming his bike from the blurry shape that had it by the handlebars and was beginning to swing a leg over the seat.
Dan grabbed the man by his fleece jacket and yanked as hard as he could, pulling the would-be bike thief off balance.
The thief countered with an elbow to Dan’s face. Starbursts exploded in his already blurry field of vision, and he lost his grip on the man’s jacket. As Dan staggered backward, he felt something bang against his hip.
The can of corn—the hard, sharp thing that had dug into him when he was on the ground—was still in his front raincoat pocket.
Dan reached in and pulled it out.
The blurry thief had finally gotten his leg over the seat of the bike and was rising up to bring his foot down on the pedal.
Dan raised the can over his head and brought the metal edge of it down on the back of the green baseball cap covering the man’s head.
A howl of pain erupted from the thief as he lost his footing on the pedal and lurched forward over the handlebars.
Dan hit him again with the hard edge of the can.
Another shriek. The man tried to waddle forward as he straddled the bike. Possession of it was no longer an asset—its bulk was preventing the thief from maneuvering away from Dan’s attack.
Grunting with rage, Dan clubbed him a third time.
Reeling from the onslaught, the man tried to abandon the bike. But he couldn’t get free of it. Handlebars, wheels, frame, arms, and legs were all working at cross purposes as Dan kept hitting him with the can.
Finally, the man stumbled free and began to stagger up Hawthorne toward Paterson. Dan chased him until his fury dissipated enough to realize there was no reason to keep going.
I won.
I fucking WON.
A man had sucker punched him. Had tried to take what was his. And in return, Dan had beaten the shit out of him.
He looked down at the can in his hand. His vision was so bad that he couldn’t even read the label. When he held it up closer to his face, he realized it was smeared with fresh blood.
Dan lowered the can, nauseous and dizzy. His ears were ringing. The side of his head was hot with a dull pain from the initial blow. There was a much sharper pain just below his right cheekbone, where he’d caught the elbow.
Now that the adrenaline was subsiding, other parts of his body were starting to cry out in pain, too. Worst of all, his whole world was a fuzzy blur.
Where are my glasses?
Dan turned around. Back in the middle of the intersection, something big and orange was moving.
It was a second man. This one wore a bright orange jacket. He was picking Dan’s bike up off the ground.
“HEY! THAT’S MINE!” Dan broke into a sprint, scrambling toward the figure as it rose up and jiggled down Morton Avenue in the direction of the parkway.
The orange blur was speeding away much faster than Dan could run.
He threw the bloody can of corn at the man. When it missed its target and clattered to the pavement, he could barely hear it over the ringing in his ears and the growl of thunder overhead.
Eventually, Dan stopped running. The orange blur disappeared into the haze of a world he could no longer see clearly.
He staggered back to the intersection and began to search for his glasses.
By the time he found them, shattered and useless by the side of the road, the rain was coming down on him in sheets.