Free Mystic River by Dennis Lehane Page A

Dave?”
    He ran the faucet and tipped his head into the sink, gulped some water. “I don’t know why. I freaked. I mean, I freaked seriously, babe. I fucked this guy up.”
    “You…?”
    “I mangled him, Celeste. I just went apeshit when I felt the knife in my side. You know? I knocked him down, got on top of him, and, baby, I went off .”
    “So it was self-defense?”
    He made a “sorta-kinda” gesture with his hand. “I don’t think the court would see it that way, tell you the truth.”
    “I can’t believe this. Honey”—she took his wrists in her hands—“tell me exactly what happened.”
    And for a quarter second, looking into his face, she felt nauseous. She felt something leering behind his eyes, something turned on and self-congratulatory.
    It was the light, she decided, the cheap fluorescent directly above his head, because when his chin dipped toward his chest and he stroked her hands, the nausea went away and his face returned to normal—scared, but normal.
    “I’m walking to my car,” he said, and Celeste sat back on the closed toilet seat as he knelt in front of her, “and this guy comes up to me, asks me for a light. I say I don’t smoke. Guy says neither does he.”
    “Neither does he.”
    Dave nodded. “So, my heart starts clocking a buck-fifty right then. ’Cause there’s no one around but me and him. And that’s when I see the knife and he says. ‘Your wallet or your life, bitch. I’m leaving with one of ’em.’”
    “That’s what he said?”
    Dave leaned back, cocked his head. “Why?”
    “Nothing.” Celeste thinking it just sounded funny for some reason, too clever maybe, like in the movies. But then everyone saw movies these days, more so now with cable, somaybe the mugger had learned his lines from a movie mugger, stayed up late at night saying them into a mirror until he thought he sounded like Wesley or Denzel.
    “So…so then,” Dave said, “I’m like, ‘Come on, man. Just let me get in my car and go home,’ which was dumb because now he wants my car keys, too. And I just, I dunno, honey, I get mad instead of scared. Whiskey-brave, maybe, I’m not sure, and I try to brush past him and that’s when he slices me.”
    “I thought you said he swung on you.”
    “Celeste, can I tell the fucking story?”
    She touched his cheek. “I’m sorry, baby.”
    He kissed her palm. “So, yeah, he sorta pushes me back against the car and takes a swing at me and I, like, just duck the punch and that’s when Homeboy slices me, and I feel the knife cutting through my skin and I, I just flip. I crack him in the side of the head with my fist, and he ain’t expecting it. He’s like, ‘Whoa, motherfucker,’ and I swing again and hit like the side of his neck? And he drops. And the knife goes bouncing away, and I jump on him, and, and, and…”
    Dave looked into the tub, his mouth still open, lips half puckered.
    “What?” Celeste said, still trying to see the mugger swinging at Dave with one hand cocked into a fist, the other holding a knife at the ready. “What did you do?”
    Dave turned back, looked at her knees. “I went fucking nuts on him, babe. I mighta killed him for all I know. I bashed his head off the parking lot and punched the shit out of his face, shattered his nose, you name it. I was so mad and so scared and all I could think about was you and Michael and how I might not have made the car alive, like I coulda died in some shitty parking lot just because some crackhead was too lazy to fucking work for a living.” He looked in her eyes and said it again: “I mighta killed him, honey.”
    He looked so young. Eyes wide, face pale and sweaty, hair plastered to his head by perspiration and terror and—was that blood?—yes, blood.
    AIDS, she thought for a moment. What if the guy had AIDS?
    She thought: No. Deal with the right now. Deal with it.
    Dave needed her. That was not the custom. And at that moment she realized why his never complaining had begun