She slid out of the booth. Sparky followed her, and I followed him. I told myself that if I wasn’t eaten by coyotes while lying in a bassinet, I was meant to survive for a purpose more important than having a meal of pulled-pork sliders in an Arizona truck stop before being shot down by wormheads.
Calculating a trajectory with exquisite precision, Bridget angled off among the tables, as if she had no intent other than intercepting the hostess. Only the most suspicious Screamers would notice that at the same time she was drawing closer to them, with her right hand in her open purse.
“Excuse me, please,” she said, waving her left hand, speaking a little louder than necessary. “Is Paloma in the kitchen tonight?” The hostess meant to come to a stop to respond, but Bridget took her by the arm and moved her along with such aplomb that it seemed quite natural. “No, no. I don’t mean to delay you. I’m Paloma’s friend. May I pop in the kitchen for a sec, tell her what a fabulous job she’s doing?” Although the hostess said the kitchen wasn’t open to the public, Bridget pretended to misunderstand, responding loud enough for her targets to hear. “Oh, that’s so sweet. Paloma is a treasure. I’ll only be half a sec.”
As they reached the empty table toward which they had been headed, Bridget let go of the hostess and covered the last few steps to the booth beside the kitchen entrance. Sparky had been following her, but as she closed in on the Screamers, he quickly moved up to her side, drawing the pistol from under his coat as she drew hers from her handbag. One of the college boys slash monsters reached into the checkered tote on the banquette beside him and withdrew a pistol with an extended magazine that held maybe twenty rounds, and the other began to pull aside a panel of his topcoat to draw a weapon, but they were too late.
The point-blank fusillade that Bridget and Sparky unloaded on the pair caused a sensation in the restaurant. Dishes and flatware rang off the floor, toppled chairs clattered, shrill cries erupted as people dived for cover or fled toward the nearest exit. Such is the temper of our strange times that the reaction was instantaneous and universal, as though everyone present had been anticipating such a moment for years.
Leaving two dead something-or-others in the booth, Bridget and her grandfather moved directly to the adjacent swinging doors and disappeared into the kitchen.
As I passed the bloody booth, those bizarre creatures no longer fluctuated between being college boys and wormheads. Somehow, in death, their bodies locked into the human mode, which would be most inconvenient if we were ever required to stand trial for executing them. I might have doubted that I’d ever seen those monsters, but the guns they possessed and the ten or twelve spare magazines that had spilled out of the overturned tote established their intentions and thereby also seemed to confirm that the horrific creatures that Bridget and I had seen were no illusion.
I hurried through the swinging doors and saw my companions rushing toward the back of the enormous kitchen. The staff regarded us wide-eyed, less fearful than perplexed. The culinary cacophony in the kitchen had partly masked the gunfire. The busy workers appeared in fact to be in a state of such utter perplexity at our frantic intrusion that you might say they were nonplussed, even if you could expect to be criticized for using that word.
We found our way into the night and sprinted along the back of the enormous building, which covered a few acres. I suppose Bridget must have been as radiant as ever, no less so than the Roman goddess Diana. She was certainly lithe and swift, considering the volume of pulled pork that she’d eaten. But running with her under the moon in the aftermath of a hunt was far less romantic than I had imagined and not at all mystical.
I thought we’d never make it around the building to the parking lot without pursuit, would never make it to the Buick without being apprehended by truck-stop security. I was wrong. Sparky took the keys from me and said he would drive, and Bridget meant to ride up front. I plunged into the back seat and pulled the door shut and lay gasping for breath, at first staying below the windows lest more Screamers were in the vicinity and would open fire on us.
BACK IN THE DAY
THE BOY, THE FATHER, THE ANTS
My best friend at the orphanage was Litton Ormond, though only the nuns and I knew that was his real name, and even I didn’t know it until he had been my roommate for almost a year. He lived with us under the name Peter Claver, which the sisters selected for reasons more clear to them than to me; Peter Claver was the saint who fed—and pressed hard for the freedom of—the African slaves in Colombia in the early 1600s. Litton, a.k.a. Peter, was nine when he came to Mater Misericordi?, a year older than me, and for the next three years, he looked out for me as if he were my older brother. He wasn’t strong or tough, but he was steadfast and brave.