“I’ll miss hearing you process this in therapy,” Greta said.
“Yeah, well, I quit,” Big Swiss said, still catching her breath. “I need to lie down for a minute.”
Big Swiss climbed onto the bed and lay on her side. She raised her arm, indicating that she wanted to be spooned. Greta pressed herself against Big Swiss’s back, like old times. She liked to pretend to be stuck to Big Swiss, in the same way dogs were knotted together after mating.
“Why’d you quit?” Greta asked. “I thought he was helping you, in his Om way.”
“I’m leaving for Ecuador in a week,” Big Swiss said. “I’m sick of talking about myself. But you—I was thinking the other day how difficult it must have been for you not to talk, not to tell me all the things you were transcribing. You must have dirt on everyone in town.”
“I do,” Greta said.
Big Swiss parted her legs just enough for Greta’s hand. Greta paused, but only for three seconds.
“I hope it’s as good as you remember,” Big Swiss said a few minutes later.
Greta removed her hand. She held it to her face and inhaled.
“Indeed,” Greta said.
“I’m not done with you,” Big Swiss said. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be.”
“Me neither, but I’m done sneaking around,” Greta said. “You should tell Luke about us before he hears it from someone else. You should tell him immediately. Tonight, as soon as you get home.”
18
Four days later, on the day of her first appointment with Om, Greta arrived early to get coffee at Cathedral. She’d already chugged three cups at home, but a little extra would be conducive to taut storytelling, and Om had mentioned that their session would be short. She sat at a table and waited for it to kick in—the sweats, the shakes, hopefully not the shits—and wondered if all of Om’s clients arrived in a similar state, on the verge of a silent heart attack. None of them were there now. The place was full of voices she didn’t recognize. At the table to her right, two ladies frowned at fabric swatches. To her left sat two dudes—cooks of some kind, Greta assumed, since they were both wearing checkered chef pants and filthy clogs. The one closest to her smelled like booze and a bag of onions.
“I was outside Lil’ Deb’s the other night, smoking in the alley, and these two guys stumbled out of the bar next door,” Onions said. “That bar nobody goes to.”
“Cousin’s,” the other guy said.
Greta perked up. She’d smoked in the same alley the previous week. From now on, she supposed, she’d have to get gossip the old-fashioned way, by eavesdropping in public like everyone else.
“One of the guys looked like a Patagoniac visiting from the city,” Onions said. “The other guy was an older townie—hairy shoulders, tank top tucked into baggy jean shorts. Anyways, they were arguing in the alley about thirty feet away from me, and I figured it was about politics. Trump or whatever. The city guy was all wound up. Not super vocal, but jumpy, ready to throw hands.”
“Were they wasted?”
“The townie was, I think. He’s one of those dudes who looks drunk no matter what. I bet he gets hammered after two drinks.” Onions coughed. “The shampoo effect.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s when your liver is so saturated, it only takes a few drops of alcohol to get lathered.”
“That happens to me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Onions said. “Only serious alcoholics achieve the shampoo effect. It takes years. I’m nearly there myself. Anyways, I don’t know what they were arguing about, but the townie tried to walk back into the bar, and that’s when the city guy made a big fucking mistake.” He coughed again. “He pulled a knife. Imagine? He pulled a knife on a drunk townie. In an alley. On a Sunday.”
The other guy snorted. “Let me guess—it was an Opinel.”
“What?”
“Those fancy French pocket knives.”
“No, this was like a hunting knife. I thought it was a cleaver at first, but the blade wasn’t broad enough.”
“Shit,” the other guy said. “Jesus.”
“Yeah. And he didn’t just brandish the knife—he started thrusting and parrying like he was in West Side Story. It was so over-the-top, I almost started laughing.”
“Was the townie laughing?”
“Oh no. He was stony as hell. He just watched the kid slice at the air. But then he suddenly came to life—he put up his dukes and started bobbing and weaving. For a minute I thought it was all a performance, and I actually looked around for the film crew, like were they shooting from a rooftop?”
“Yeah, I’m surprised more movies aren’t filmed here,” the other guy said. “Like at the Basilica—”
“Hold on. The townie—I don’t know how he did it, but he moved in really fast and somehow maneuvered the knife away from the city guy. It looked like a magic trick. Now the townie was holding the knife. I thought that’d be the end of it, that he’d just walk away, but—” Onions looked pale and sweaty. Greta watched him mop his forehead with a wrinkled bandana. “He fucking stabbed the kid in the stomach, like eight or nine times.”
“What?” the other one said. “He did not!”
Greta’s heart fluttered, though she didn’t know why—it wasn’t the first stabbing she’d heard about in Hudson.
“It happened so fast I thought I was hallucinating. The city guy probably thought he was hallucinating, too. The look on his face? I’ve never seen such disbelief.”
“Holy shit, the poor guy was probably up here for the weekend, staying in an Airbnb, hiking the Catskills—”
“Right, never in a million years thinking he’d get stabbed. I mean, you come here to get away.”
“Then what?”
“The townie wasn’t even winded. It was like he’d just chopped up some chicken for a salad or something.”
“What’d you do?” the other one said. “Did you call the cops?”
“I was in shock, dude. People were streaming out of both places, and there was blood fucking everywhere. The city guy was completely covered, and there was blood all over the ground in, like, puddles.”
“It’s easy to forget how much blood we have inside us,” said the other one.
Greta’s stomach gurgled.
“The kid was in the fetal position, clutching his stomach, and blood was still pouring out of him, like a tap had been opened. I’m not ashamed to admit—I started crying. Like, hard. Like a tap had been opened in me, too.”
“What was the townie doing?”
“Just standing there. He finally dropped the knife when he heard sirens. All the Deb’s people were going berserk, crying, screaming, and a couple of them were comforting the kid, covering him with towels, holding his hand, asking him questions, but the kid just—I mean, he was weeping. In the movies, a guy gets stabbed and he’s in shock, right, just lying there, blinking at the sky. Not this guy. He was wide awake and, like, fully there. It was fucking intense, dude. But I think he lost consciousness before the ambulance arrived.”