Free Man in the Dark by Paul Auster Page A

Obviously.
    Your stuff? Duke replies. I don’t think so, funny man.
    What are you talking about?
    It’s mine now.
    Yours? You can’t do that. Everything I own is in there.
    Then try and get it back.
    Brick understands that Duke is itching for a fight—and that the bag is merely a pretext. He also knows that if he tangles with Molly’s boyfriend, there is every chance he will be ripped apart. Or so his mind tells him the instant he hears Duke issue his challenge, but Brick is no longer thinking with his mind, for the outrage surging through him has overwhelmed all reason, and if he allows this bully to get his way without offering some form of resistance, he will lose whatever respect he still has for himself. So Brick takes his stand, unexpectedly wrenching the bag out of Duke’s grasp, and immediately after that the drubbing begins, an assault so one-sided and short-lived that the big man floors Brick with just three blows: a left to the gut, a right to the face, and a knee to the balls. Pain floods into every corner of the magician’s body, and as he rolls around on the tattered rug gasping for breath, one hand clutching his stomach and the other clamped over his scrotum, he sees blood dripping from the wound that has opened on his cheek, and then, lying in the gathering puddle of red, a fragment of a tooth—the lower half of one of his left incisors. He is only dimly aware of Molly’s screams, which sound as if they are coming from ten blocks away. A moment after that, he is aware of nothing.
    When he picks up the thread of his own story, Brick finds himself on his feet, maneuvering his body down the stairs as he clings to the banister with both hands, slowly descending to the ground floor, a single step at a time. The backpack is gone, which means that the gun and the bullets are also gone, not to speak of everything else that was in the bag, but as Brick pauses to reach into the right front pocket of his jeans, the trace of a smile flits across his bruised mouth—the bitter smile of the not quite vanquished. The money is still there. No longer the thousand that Tobak gave him the previous morning, but five hundred and sixty-five dollars is better than nothing, he thinks, more than enough to get him a room somewhere and a bite to eat. That’s as far as his thoughts can take him now. To hide, to wash the blood off his face, to fill his stomach if and when his appetite returns.
    However modest these plans might be, they are thwarted the moment he leaves the building and steps onto the sidewalk. Directly in front of him, standing with her arms folded and her back resting against the door of a military jeep, Virginia Blaine is eyeing Brick with a disgusted look on her face.
    No monkey business, she says. You promised me.
    Virginia, Brick replies, doing his best to play dumb, what are you doing here?
    Ignoring his remark, the former queen of Miss Blunt’s geometry class shakes her head and snaps back: We were supposed to meet at five-thirty yesterday afternoon. You stood me up.
    Something happened, and I had to leave at the last minute.
    You mean I happened, and you ran away.
    Unable to think of an answer, Brick says nothing.
    You don’t look so good, Owen, Virginia continues.
    No, I don’t suppose I do. I just got the shit kicked out of me.
    You should watch the company you keep. That Rothstein’s a tough fellow.
    Who’s Rothstein?
    Duke. Molly’s boyfriend.
    You know him?
    He works with us. He’s one of our best men.
    He’s an animal. A sadistic creep.
    It was all an act, Owen. To teach you a lesson.
    Oh? Brick snorts, indignation rising within him. And what lesson is that? The son of a bitch knocked out one of my teeth.
    Just be glad it wasn’t all of them.
    Very nice, Brick mumbles, with a sarcastic edge to his voice, and then, all of a sudden, the final chapter of the dream comes rushing back to him: the All-American Dental Clinic, Flora and the pliers, the new face. Well, Brick thinks, as he touches