that moment he had the power to take on anyone whatsoever. He threw himself against the gorilla alongside Tom-Tom. The gorilla stumbled backwards a few steps, but his large ape body was caught by the sink, which kept him from falling. Then everything happened very quickly.
Eric managed to hit and roar and bellow a few more seconds. Then a massive gorilla hand took a firm grip on his neck and lifted him up into the air. Eric had forgotten the red ape on the other side of the room. Eric Bear was thrown through the air, over the kitchen table, striking against the hard metal of the refrigerator. He pulled himself up, dazed but not yet defeated. The gorilla who had thrown him was on him again before he regained his balance. He lifted him up again by the neck, then slammed him against the kitchen table. The table fell apart with a crash. One of the splinters was forced into the back side of the bear’s thigh and came out the front side.
The pain waited a few seconds before it reached his awareness.
Somewhere in the tumult Dove’s clear voice was heard, but Eric couldn’t make out any words. With a certain effort he got up, the adrenaline muting the pain in his thigh for the time being, and picked up a long, rough splinter of wood that he found on the floor. He staggered forward toward the nearest gorilla. The idea was to mercilessly drive the splinter right through the ape’s eye, but Eric was neither quick nor strong enough. The ape easily warded off the attack, and with the back of his hand struck Eric across the face so that the bear fell backwards down onto the floor and finally came to rest.
When Eric Bear awoke, he saw Nicholas Dove’s worried face looking down at him.
“Have you…” said Dove, but the bear heard no more before he disappeared back down into unconsciousness.
In the following moment—which wasn’t the following moment at all but rather a few minutes later—the dove’s head was replaced by a gorilla face that was grinning happily.
“He’s alive now,” said the ape.
After that the bear was out.
CHAPTER 22
But that’s ridiculous,” said Emma. “You must go to the doctor.”
Eric Bear had made an attempt to go over to the kitchen island to get the red wine he’d uncorked shortly before, but he didn’t manage more than a few steps. The pain in his thigh prevented him from moving freely, and in shame he had to limp back to the chair and sit down.
“It’s not so bad,” he assured her again.
He’d maintained that it was a strained muscle he got when he tried to run a race with Teddy on the beach.
“Idiocy,” Emma had snorted. “Fifty-year-old bears shouldn’t run at all.”
Eric had been away from home for almost three weeks; he told Emma that there were only a few days left. A truth with an ominous import: it was still Friday when he granted himself this short leave in order to have dinner with Emma Rabbit.
On Sunday the Chauffeurs would pick up Teddy Bear and Nicholas Dove if Eric didn’t succeed in preventing it.
“I’ve never understood who you think you impress with your suffering,” said Emma, letting all the city’s males be summarized in this “you.”
Eric threw out his hands.
“There’s nothing to do. I’ll take some painkillers and rest, then it’ll get better.”
Eric had taken Tom-Tom with him to Dr. Thompson when Dove had finally gone away and the bear and crow had recovered consciousness. The doctor had sewed a few stitches in the bear’s thigh, and then Eric exited the doctor’s office leaving the crow, who needed more extensive bandaging, behind. But instead of returning to Yok, Eric drove home.
Emma Rabbit carried the plates of vitello tonnato over to the table. Then she put out the salad, wine, and bread and lit the candles in the large candelabra they’d bought at an auction a year or two ago, one of A Helping Hand’s many events. She dimmed the ceiling light and sat down.
“I want you to come home,” she said with a tender smile, “because I’ll soon get tired of waiting.”
And then she lifted her wineglass in a toast. Feelings of melancholy caused Eric Bear to shiver, leaving behind a clump of anxiety in his throat. It grew so quickly that it closed up his esophagus before he’d even managed to bring the wineglass to his mouth. He wanted what she wanted. He, too, wanted to come