man with the zany hair squawked-a sound of mingled rage and resignation, as if he had become used to such setbacks over his long and difficult life. He leaned over Ralph's now-empty chair, his twitching face thrust forward, his eyes looking like the sort of fantastic, glowing creatures which live in the ocean's deepest trenches.
Ralph raised the spray-can and had just a moment to realize he hadn't had time to check which direction the pinhole in the nozzle was pointing-he might very well succeed only in giving himself a faceful of Bodyguard.
No time to worry about that now.
He pressed the nozzle as the man with the zany hair thrust his knife forward. The man's face was enveloped in a thin haze of droplets that looked like the stuff that came out of the pine-scented airfreshener Ralph kept on the bathroom toilet tank. The lenses of his glasses fogged over.
The result was immediate and all Ralph could have wished for.
The man with the zany hair screamed in pain, dropped his knife (it landed on Ralph's left knee and came to rest between his legs), and clutched at his face, pulling his glasses off. They landed on the table.
At the same time the thin, somehow greasy aura around him flashed a brilliant red and then winked out-out of Ralph's view, at least.
"I'm blind!" the man with the zany hair cried in a high, shrieky voice. "I'm blind, I'm blind!"
"No, you're not," Ralph said, getting shakily to his feet.
"You're just-" The man with the zany hair screamed again and fell to the floor.
He rolled back and forth on the black and white tiles with his hands over his face, howling like a child who has gotten his hand caught in a door. Ralph could see little pie-wedges of cheeks between his splayed fingers. The skin there was turning an alarming shade of red.
Ralph told himself to leave the guy alone, that he was crazy as a loon and dangerous as a rattlesnake, but he found himself too horrified and ashamed of what he had done to take this no doubt excellent advice.
The idea that it had been a matter of survival, of disabling his assailant or dying, had already begun to seem unreal.
He bent down and put a tentative hand on the man's arm. The nut rolled away from him and began to drum his dirty lowtop sneakers on the floor like a child having a tantrum. "oh you son of a bitch" he was screaming. "You shot me with something!" And then, incredibly: "I'll sue the pants off you."
"You'll have to explain about the knife before you're able to progress much with your lawsuit, I think," Ralph said.
He saw the knife lying on the floor, reached for it, then thought again. It would be better if his fingerprints weren't on it. As he straightened, a wave of dizziness rushed through his head and for a moment the rain beating against the window sounded hollow and distant.
He kicked the knife away, then tottered on his feet and had to grab the back of the chair he'd been sitting in to keep from falling over.
Things steadied again.
He heard approaching footsteps from the main lobby and murmuring, questioning voices.
Now you come, Ralph thought wearily. Where were you three minutes ago, when this guy was on the verge of popping my left lung like a balloon?
Mike Hanlon, looking slim and no more than thirty despite his tight cap of gray hair, appeared in the doorway. Behind him was the teenage boy Ralph recognized as the weekend desk assistant, and behind the teenager were four or five gawkers, probably from the periodicals room.
"Mr. Roberts!" Mike exclaimed. "Christ, how bad are you hurt?"
"I'm fine, it's him that's hurt," Ralph said. But he happened to look down at himself as he pointed at the man on the floor and saw he wasn't fine. His coat had pulled up when he pointed, and the left side of the plaid shirt beneath had gone a deep, sodden red in a teardrop shape that started just below the armpit and spread out from there.
"Shit," he said faintly, and sat down in his chair again.
He bumped the hornrimmed glasses with his elbow and they skittered almost all the way across the table. The mist of droplets on their lenses made them look like eyes which had been blinded by cataracts.
"He shot me with acid!" the man on the floor screamed. "I can't see and my skin is melting. I can feel it melting.l"