The guy let out a cry of agony as my lance came straight down into the valley between the first and second knuckles on his clenched fist—all the way through the tissue, all the way through the other side of his hand. I mean, Jesus, I penetrated ligaments—stabbing as hard as I could at the only occupation of space I knew of.
His voice registered every decibel of the start of our war. “Ggaaaaaaaaaaaghhhh!”
I sprinted—the opposite direction—heading straight for the courtyard window. If I had any common sense, I would’ve jumped through the glass, shattering it into a thousand shards of emancipation, but I was still operating on a stunted IQ and concluded, decisively, woefully, that the best course of action was to come to a stop, take a moment to search for a window handle, find no handle, check for a way to break the window with maybe my elbow, realize that the window was too thick, then turn around to return to the stairwell, which was a decision that took far too long, because the guy plowed right into me.
He tackled me with everything he had—undeterred by his mangled hand—his momentum taking us both directly into the back wall so that we tumbled into a fistfight on the floor. Despite punching me with his free hand and kneeing me in the ribs, the pen stayed lodged. All I could do was hold my arms over my face in pure terror as I got hit and hit and hit—a doomed boxer on his way to a loss. I must’ve been struck six times before I caught him in the chest with my foot, shoving him backward, which gave me the chance I needed to grab that free hand of his, the one he was hitting me with. This is not your life. You flash on the profoundly useless, metaphysical thought. This is not really happening. You can’t imagine how detrimental your mindset can be in a fight, violating every rule of tactical engagement, rendering you the laughable victim you see in the evening news—the panicked pedestrian who runs toward the shooting. In the midst of this struggle, I looked over at his other hand, bent backward against the carpet, functioning as his primary support, and realized I had only one chance to survive and this was it. I held him and held him and held him, then as fast as possible rolled sideways, giving up all control of his free hand to grab his impaled hand—grab the pen in it—and push that pen as hard as I could in the ugliest, nastiest direction possible.
He convulsed instantly. “Ghhhaauuuuuugh!”
I scrambled to my feet, sprinted toward the window, and stomped the frame outward so that I and the whole glass assembly fell forward onto the pavement of the atrium. Everything about it hurt—I must’ve twisted both ankles and bloodied up both hands, but my adrenaline was flowing full bore and I was up and running before I even decided where I’d go, bursting through the nearest door, through the short hallway beyond it, and out onto the street, spattered with his blood, drenched in my sweat, smelling like a concoction of the worst odors a city has to give, as I ran left then right, then immediately started walking. Normally.
“Walk . . . Walk,” I murmured to myself. “Normally.” Don’t attract attention, just walk. “Excusez-moi,” I mumbled to the lady I bumped into. “Walk,” I whispered to myself again, scolding my legs for hesitating to do so. I didn’t want to look behind me. I couldn’t. There was a chance that the back of my head was blending in with the rest of the people around me—with the foot traffic in Paris being so constant—but the sidewalks are so narrow, so deathly narrow, that you can’t pass by anyone without first dipping into the street, into plain sight, and you might not easily be able to stay out of a psychopath’s view.
I took the first left turn I could. I needed my path to wrap around the block, away from the front of the hotel. This would give me a chance to get a quick glance backward through the window of the corner boulangerie and, Christ, there he was. The guy. The moment I saw him, I veered right, not letting even a fraction of a second elapse, turning street-ward without checking for cars or vans or scooters, and thereby was broadsided by a bicycle—wham—instantly slammed sideways along the street.
I was no longer on my feet. I didn’t contact any vehicles and I ended up crouched on my knees, stunned. After an unknown duration of seconds—Three? Five?—I stood up just as the bystanders were starting to converge to help me. “Est-ce je peux vous aider?” “Ça va, mec?” Glancing to the right, I could see the cyclist who hit me tangled up in his own mess. The crowd hadn’t yet cinched up around us but they were approaching fast.
Barely processing the full parade of visuals in front of me, I tried to get a look past all the legs and tires and caught sight of my nemesis. The guy. Now running toward me. I got up, staggering, but got to my feet and pushed forward, soon getting to full speed, full stride, pummeling some poor high school kid who was trying to lift me up, then charging toward an alley. I ran as hard as I could. I had no other thought in my brain. Run. Hard. Alley. Run. Raw fear finally reducing me to only one function. Fleeing. I skidded through a tight turn leading to a second alley before turning again—an act that ultimately had me rounding a corner into a dead end. God no! It was a small construction site, probably abandoned for the week, tucked in the alley, one of a hundred you’d find on any given day in a city constantly undergoing surgery. Nobody was around. The fence was too high to climb but it wasn’t too low to crawl under, so I ducked down to scoot below the jaws of the very tight gap—below the sharp tips of the chain-link fence—and, contorting, had a chance to look behind me to check the entrance of the alley from where I’d just come from, from where this lunatic might emerge. I pushed harder with my legs in an effort that got my front shoulder through, having dragged my chest across the ground to do so, clawing at the loose dirt with my hand to dig myself another half inch forward, pulling with my free hand, pulling as hard as I could, finally starting to slide myself through, finally getting a good look at the inside of the construction area, just in time to see this same fucking guy coming at me from inside the site.
Christ, he’d gotten ahead of me!
Carrying a large rock now, arriving just in time to slam that rock toward my face.
I recoiled just quickly enough that the rock cratered itself in the dirt, missing me, then I lurched in retreat—never pulling so hard in my life—still stuck under the fence, feeling my chest bone flex inward as I tugged with all my might.
“You understand?!” he growled threateningly.
He’d grabbed my elbow. He’d circled around the block to intercept my escape. I could see that his bloody hand no longer had a pen piercing through it. Did I understand? He’d knelt on my arm and the leverage was crippling. His venomous face was now visible through a crack in the partition. He obviously wanted to ruin my world, pulling at me ferociously—you could see it in his eyes. Understand what? He’d been saying something to me the whole time, but, deafened by my own adrenaline, I was only now finally hearing it.
“You understand?” he said. “I’m a cop. I’m a cop.”