eyes narrowed. "I don't like that you broke my lamp."
"I didn't break your lamp!"
"I said you broke it. You hard of hearing?" He picked the lamp up from the floor and threw it at me. I sidestepped, and the lamp sailed past me and hit the wall.
I rammed my hand into my pocket, but Bender tackled me before I could grab hold of the spray. He was a couple inches taller than me, thin and wiry. He wasn't especially strong, but he was mean as a snake. And he was motivated by hate and beer. We scrabbled around on the floor for a while, kicking and scratching. He was trying to do damage, and I was trying to get clear, and neither of us was having much luck.
The room was a mess of clutter with stacks of newspapers, dirty dishes, and empty beer cans. We were bumping into tables and chairs, dumping the dishes and cans on the floor, then rolling over it all. A floor lamp went down, followed by a pizza box.
I managed to slither from his grasp and get to my feet. He lunged after me and came up with a ten-inch chef's knife. I suppose it had been buried in the garbage heap in his living room. I yelped and bolted. No time for the pepper spray.
He was surprisingly fast, considering he was shit-faced drunk. I ran flat-out, up the street. And he ran close at my heels. I skidded to a stop when I got to the boosted goods market, putting the Cadillac between me and Bender while I caught my breath.
One of the vendors approached me. "I got some nice T-shirts," he said. "Exactly like what you'd see at the Gap. Got them in all sizes."
"Not interested," I said.
"Selling them for a good price."
Bender and I were doing a dance around the car. He'd move, then I'd move, then he'd move, then I'd move. Meanwhile, I was trying to get the pepper spray out of my pocket. Trouble was, my pants were tight, the spray was shoved to the bottom of my pocket, and my hands were sweating and shaking.
There was a guy sitting on the Oldsmobile's hood. "Andy," he called, "why're you going after this girl with a knife?"
"She ruined my lunch. I was just sitting down to eat my pizza, and she came and ruined it all."
"I can see that," the guy on the Oldsmobile said. "She got pizza all over her. Looks like she rolled in it."
There was a second guy sitting on the Olds. "Kinky," he said.
"How about one of you guys giving me a hand here," I said. "Get him to drop the knife. Call the police. Do something!"
"Hey, Andy," one of the men said, "she wants you to drop the knife."
"I'm gonna gut her like a fish," Bender said. "I'm gonna filet her like a trout. No bitch just walks in and ruins my lunch."
The two guys on the Olds were smiling. "Andy needs some anger management courses," one of them said.
The T-shirt salesman was next to me. "Yeah, and he don't know much about fishing, either. That ain't no filet knife."
I finally pried the pepper spray loose from my pocket. I shook it and aimed it at Bender.
The three men mobilized into action, slamming the trunks shut, putting some distance between us.
"Hey, you want to watch which way the wind is blowing," one of them said. "I don't need my sinuses cleaned. And I don't want my merchandise ruined, either. I'm a businessman, you see what I'm saying? We got inventory here."
"That stuff doesn't scare me," Bender said, inching his way around the Caddy, waving the knife at me. "I love it. Bring it on. I've had so much pepper spray I got an addiction."
"What you got on your wrist?" one of the men asked Bender. "Looks like you got a bracelet on. You and the old lady doing S and M shit now?"
"Those are my cuffs," I said. "He's in violation of his bail bond agreement."
"Hey, I know you," one of the men said. "I remember seeing your picture in the paper. You burned down a funeral home and set your eyebrows on fire."
"It wasn't my fault!"
They were all smiling again. "Didn't Andy go after you with a chain saw last year? And all you got now is this puny girlie-size pepper spray? Where's your gun? You're probably the only one in the whole project not got a gun."
"Gimme the keys," Bender said to the T-shirt