CHAPTER 5
In his memory, the scream he makes is an exclamation of pleasure rather than an expression of pain. Moira is on one side and Penelope is on the other, their mouths and tongues soft and sensual on his neck. The feeling is like being between two erotic clouds. He feels himself floating, careless of matters that seemed so pressing just a few hours earlier. But despite this, despite his ecstasy, Maurice reacts in anger as if it’s his business to deprive Reginald of his companions. It happens like magic, the back of Maurice’s head suddenly becoming his irate face as he hears the scream, as if he’d turned it faster than the eye could see.
In the next moment, the women fly backward as Maurice appears in front of him, both Penelope and Moira landing on the pavement near the back door to the bowling alley. Reginald feels his euphoria lift and pain descends like a hammer, his head feeling as if it’s been mostly severed at the neck. But moments later, blessedly, the pain starts to dissolve into a swimmy semiconsciousness and he feels his shirt becoming wet, starting to sit heavy against his skin.
His perspective changes and he wonders why, but then realizes that he’s fallen against the dumpster and has slumped down, and might have been that way all along. He’s not sure. The world is nothing but pain and obscene fantasy.
Exhibit: Maurice yelling like some kind of a beast, a roar coming from him that can’t be made by a man.
Exhibit: The two women skittering backward on their hands and feet, chests up, moving like crabs.
Exhibit: Maurice rounding on Isaac and Charles, returning to where they’re standing so fast that Reginald knows he must have lost a blink of consciousness, and Reginald is suddenly very interested in going to sleep as soon as this odd dream ends. Anger radiates from Maurice like heat from a coal, somehow blaming the men for whatever has gone wrong, and suddenly the fact that Maurice is very much in charge is apparent to everyone. Isaac and Charles back away. Maurice says something. Isaac says something back and, fear and anger mixing on his face, pushes Maurice in the chest. This is the wrong thing to do. Maurice pushes back, but it’s more like a strike than a push and the noise is like a sledgehammer hitting a steak and suddenly where Isaac was is not where Isaac is and he’s flying backward across the parking lot, striking a car, the car folding in half around him, broadside, the car/Isaac hybrid then flying into a lamppost, which falls over in a shower of sparks.
Maurice is suddenly back by Reginald in another quick cut of memory, too fast to have actually happened, and then Penelope appears — doesn’t climb onto, but appears on — Maurice’s back. Both of Maurice’s hands swing over his head and behind his back and then he’s got her lengthwise and then, as if she were a twig, he brings her down onto the top of the second dumpster, on the other side of the back door. The dumpster, humbled by the impact, warps at the front edge and its right front wheel digs two inches into the concrete with a sound like a shotgun.
And then Isaac, who is obviously dead, appears in front of Maurice, clearly not just not dead but also unhurt. And now he’s angry, and who could blame him after being blown into a car and then into a lamppost, and his hands go to Maurice’s throat and his teeth bare and they’re sharp and his fingers are like claws, tendons twitching in his forearms, but then he stops suddenly, backing away, his hands up like a supplicant.
There’s a blur as Maurice’s arm moves at his waist, and Isaac disintegrates into fire, like the flash of a pile of gunpowder.
Then Maurice is over Reginald, ten or twenty feet tall, his coat pendulous behind him like a cape and Charles, Moira, and Penelope are making odd noises of surrender, their hands up and palms out, backing away, and Charles is on one knee and there are sparks from the felled lamppost and shouts and then