toward the table and the grin dropped from his mouth, and she felt a sudden sick panic at the pit of her stomach. Carella moved out of the booth quickly. His eyes had tightened into focus on the man with the leather jacket.
“Come on,” Dave said, “what you got to be that way for, huh? All I’m asking—”
“What’s the trouble, mister?” Carella said suddenly. She looked up at her husband, wanting him to know she had not asked for this, hoping it was in her eyes. Carella did not turn to look at her. His eyes were riveted to Dave’s face.
“No trouble at all,” Dave said, turning to face Carella with an arrogant smile.
“You’re annoying my wife,” Carella said. “Take off.”
“Oh, was I annoying her? Is the little lady your wife?” He spread his legs wide and let his arms dangle at his sides, and Carella knew instantly that he was looking for trouble and wouldn’t be happy until he found it.
“You were, and she is,” Carella said. “Go crawl back to the bar. It’s been nice knowing you.”
Dave continued smiling. “I ain’t crawling back nowhere,” he said. “This is a free country. I’m staying right here.”
Carella shrugged and pulled out his chair. Dave continued standing by the table. Carella took Teddy’s hand.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Teddy nodded.
“Ain’t that sweet?” Dave said. “Big handsome hubby comes back from—”
Carella dropped his wife’s hand and stood suddenly. At the other end of the dining room, the elderly couple looked up from their meal.
“Mister,” Carella said slowly, “you’re bothering the hell out of me. You’d better—”
“Am I bothering you?” Dave said. “Hell, all I’m doing is admiring a nice piece of—” and Carella hit him.
He hit him suddenly, with the full force of his arm and shoulder behind the blow. He hit him suddenly and full in the mouth, and Dave staggered back from the table and slammed into the next table, knocking the wine bottle candle to the floor. He leaned on the table for a moment, and when he looked up, his mouth was bleeding, but he was still smiling.
“I was hoping you’d do that, pal,” he said. He studied Carella for a moment, and then he lunged at him.
Teddy sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her face white. She saw her husband’s face, and it was not the face of the man she knew and loved. The face was completely expressionless, the mouth a hard, tight line that slashed it horizontally, the eyes narrowed so that the pupils were barely visible, the nostrils wide and flaring. He stood spread-legged with his fists balled, and she looked at his hands, and they seemed bigger than they’d ever seemed before, big and powerful, lethal weapons that hung at his sides, waiting. His entire body seemed to be waiting. She could feel the coiled-spring tautness of him as he waited for Dave’s rush, and he seemed like a smoothly functioning, well-oiled machine in that moment, a machine which would react automatically as soon as the right button were pushed, as soon as the right lever were pressed. There was nothing human about the machine. All humanity had left Steve Carella the moment his fist had lashed out at Dave. What Teddy saw now was a highly trained and a highly skilled technician about to do his work, waiting for the response buttons to be pushed.
Dave did not know he was fighting a machine. Ignorantly, he pushed out at the buttons.
Carella’s left fist hit him in the gut, and he doubled over in pain, and then Carella threw a flashing uppercut, which caught Dave under the chin and sent him sprawling backward against the table again. Carella moved quickly and effortlessly, like a cue ball under the hands of an expert pool player, sinking one ball and then rolling to position for a good shot at the next ball. Before Dave clambered off the table, Carella was in position again, waiting.
When Teddy saw Dave pick up the wine bottle, her mouth opened in shocked anguish. But she knew somehow this did not come as a surprise to her husband. His eyes, his face, did not change. He watched dispassionately while Dave hit the bottle against the table. The jagged shards of the bottleneck clutched in Dave’s fist frightened her until she wanted to scream, until she wished she had a voice so that she could scream until her throat ached. She knew her husband would be cut, she knew that Dave