Free How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? by Barry Graham Page B

out, ate and talked. I didn’t want to be anywhere but at home. There was a weird kind of full moon atmosphere that night, a constant air of threat, of something about to happen.
    There were two young guys waiting to be seated. They kept yelling at people to hurry up and vacate their tables. When they finally got a table, they had to pass ours on the way to it. One of them ran a hand over my cropped head and said, “Hey, fuzzy.”
    I just smiled. I was used to it. In spite of my size, I’ve always been a hostility magnet. I don’t have to do anything—just let me sit passively in a room full of people, and some asshole will pick on me.
    “Tell me something,” I said to him. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”
    He gave me a look, but seemed to decide I was too weird to be worth picking on. He went and sat with his friend.
    A few minutes later, Janine got up to go to the toilet. As she came back, one of the guys said something to her. She said something in reply. The guy stood up, and made to touch her.
    It seemed unreal, like a cartoon. It was all over before I’d taken it in. Janine dodged his grip, picked up the glass of Coke on the guy’s table and smashed it over his head. Then she shoved the broken end of it into his face. Without pausing to look at what she’d done, she headed for the door. As she passed our table she said, “I’ll head round the block. Follow me and pick me up.”
    There was hysteria in the restaurant. The guy’s face was spurting like a water-pistol, blood spraying out with each beat of his pulse. I stood up. “I think I’m out of here,” I told my companions. “If you’re going to wait for the cops to show, you don’t know who we are, okay?”
    They decided not to linger. They followed me outside. No one tried to stop us from leaving. I don’t think the waitresses were sure who was with who, or what had really happened. I got in my car, started it, drove around the block until I saw Janine, the picture of innocence, strolling along the street.
    “Take me home,” she said as she got in the car.
    “What the fuck happened back there?”
    “He was talking shit to me. I could tell he was doing it so he could get a fight with you. I wasn’t going to play his game. You’ve been through enough today. When he grabbed me, I knew you’d come over to help me, which is what he wanted. So I took care of it first.”
    “You certainly did. Hell.” I drove a few blocks, expecting to see flashing lights appear in my rearview. It didn’t happen. Maybe we were clear. “Did you have to stick the glass in his face after you brained him with it? He’s probably blind.”
    “I didn’t think. It was just a panic thing. Besides, since when were you a pacifist?”
    “I’m not criticizing you, I just thought it was kind of extreme. You’re supposed to be the pacifist.”
    “Doesn’t mean I have to take abuse from some cracker in a diner. Or let him abuse you.”
    I laughed. “You criticize my classes, but maybe you should be teaching them.”
    “I doubt that.”
    “You acted tonight the way I teach my students to act.”
    “I re acted. It was panic.”
    I pulled the car into our complex and parked it. We got out. I looked at Janine. She seemed perfectly composed, if a little subdued. “Are you okay? I thought you’d be more shaken up.”
    She nodded, then shook her head. “I think maybe I’m in shock. I can’t believe what I did.”
    I put an arm around her and held her to me as I unlocked the door to our apartment.
    “Are you okay about it?” she asked me.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, you’re not bothered, are you? It didn’t put you off me, seeing me do that?”
    “Shit, no. Of course I’m surprised, but it doesn’t bother me. Actually, I’m kind of impressed.”
    “I’m not. I’m ashamed.”
    “I don’t see what’s to be ashamed of.”
    “That’s the thing we’re never going to agree on,” she said.
    Inside the apartment, I lit a