She closed the door on the Salesman of God and moved back into the kitchen to fill the glass cafetiere with Columbian roast. On the windowsill the radio played away to itself, Dave Matthews’ voice lost behind the bubble of water boiling on the stove. Turning the volume up, she dismissed her visitor as just another one of New York’s colourful cranks. Harmless, but crazy.
A bunch of dried flowers had collapsed on the draining board, stalks and stems waiting for the knife to trim them for the vase. “Carlos Lamenzo,” she said quietly, pulling at a string that had twisted itself around one of the thorny stems. The dried stalk snapped in her clumsy fingers.
“The flowers... The flowers never came.”
Behind her, in the passage, she heard Lamenzo hurl himself at the door, heard the dry cracking of it beginning to splinter inwards, the sudden scream of the guard chain’s mounting being ripped from its wooden bed. Another kick and the splinters were splintering.
She scanned the kitchen frantically for some kind of makeshift weapon. The long bench was littered with utensils and half-prepared salad. Her eyes trembled across a fan of knives, lingering on a thin bladed carver, its arrogant silver sheen already bloodied with the juices of a beetroot.
She grabbed at the knife, her heart hammering against her breastbone, and sent it skittering off the bench top onto the linoleum floor. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus...” Quickly, she stooped to recover it, her hand closing around its comforting metal strength. It felt good in her hand. Reassuringly heavy. Heavy enough to gut a salesman of God, she told herself.