hall toward him like a gunfighter.
'My wife's in the bathroom having hysterics because of you, and if you don't get out of here right now, I'm going to beat you silly.'
The blackness exploded like a rotted, gas-filled pocket of guts.
Gardener seized one of the umbrellas. It was long, furled, and black - an English lord's umbrella if there had ever been one. He ran toward Ted, toward this fellow who knew exactly what the stakes were but who was going ahead anyway, why not, there were seven payments left on the Datsun Z and eighteen on the house, so why not, right? Ted who saw a six-hundred-per-cent increase in leukemia merely as a fact which might upset his wife. Ted, good old Ted, and it was just lucky for good old Ted that it had been umbrellas instead of hunting rifles at the end of the hall.
Ted stood looking at Gardener, eyes widening, jaw dropping. The look of flushed anger gave way to uncertainty and fear - the fear that comes when you decide you Ire dealing with an irrational being.
' Hey - !'
'Caramba, you asshole!' Gardener screamed. He waggled the umbrella and then poked Ted the Power Man in the belly with it.
'Hey!' Ted gasped, doubling over. 'Stop it!'
'Andale, andale!' Gardener yelled, now beginning to whack Ted with the umbrella - back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The strap which held the umbrella furled against its handle came loose. The umbrella, still closed but now loose, slopped round the handle. 'Arriba, arriba!'
Ted was now too unnerved to think about renewing his attack or to think about anything but escape. He turned and ran. Gardener chased him, cackling, beating the back of his head and the nape of his neck with the umbrella. He was laughing ... but nothing was funny. His head smashed and thudded. What victory was there in getting the best of a man like this in an argument, even temporarily? Or of making his wife cry? Or of beating him with a closed umbrella? Would any of those things keep the Iroquois nuclear-power plant from going on-line next May? Would any of those things save what was left of his own miserable life, or kill those tapeworms inside him that kept digging and munching and growing, eating whatever was left inside that was sane?
No, of course not. But for now, senseless forward motion was all that mattered ... because that was all there was left.
'Arriba, you bastard!' he cried, chasing Ted into the dining room.
Ted had his hands up to his head and was waving them about his ears; he looked like a man beset by bats, and the umbrella did look a little batlike as it lashed up and down.
'Help me!' Ted squealed. 'Help me, man's gone crazy!'
But they were all backing away, eyes wide and scared.
Ted's hip struck one corner of the buffet. The table rocked forward and upward, silverware sliding down the inclined plane of the wrinkling tablecloth, plates falling and shattering on the floor. Arberg's Waterford punch-bowl detonated like a bomb. and a woman screamed. The table tottered for a moment and then went over.
'Help? Help? Heellllp!'
'Andale!' Gardener brought the umbrella down on Ted's head in a particularly hard swipe. Its trigger engaged and the umbrella popped open with a
hollow pwushhh! Now Gardener looked like a mad Mary Poppins, chasing Ted the Power Man with an umbrella in one hand. Later it would occur to him that opening an umbrella in the house was supposed to be bad luck.
Hands grabbed him from behind.
He whirled, expecting that Arberg was over his impropriety attack and was back to have another go at giving him the bum's rush.
It wasn't Arberg. It was Ron. He still seemed calm - but there was something in his face, something dreadful. Was it compassion? Yes, Gardener saw, that was what it was.
Suddenly he didn't want the umbrella anymore. He threw it aside. The dining room was perfectly silent for a moment, except for Gardener's rapid breathing and Ted's harsh, sobbing gasps. The overturned buffet table lay in a puddle of linen, broken crockery, shattered crystal. The odor of spilled rum punch rose in an eye-watering fog.
'Patricia McCardle is on the telephone, talking to the cops,' Ron said, 'and when it's Back Bay, they show up in a hurry. You want to bug out of here, Jim.'
Gardener looked around and saw knots of partygoers standing against the walls and in the doorways, looking at him with those