During that silence, the poetess sharply turned to the door and peered into the peephole again. I couldn't see the stairs from my position. The door opened, and something cold, something cotton, burst into the living room. The cotton belly of the Spanish lady. She was yelling something emphatically, presumably in an unprintable mix of Spanish and Bengali. She spun on her restless flamenco feet all over the living room, shoving the light table in the middle, full of ideas, now west, now south, now east, now north. She ran counter-clockwise, and time ticked on. No Dormshiganger. Or was he?

Yeah. That same Sinatra song blasted right over my burning heart. I clenched my teeth so hard they nearly bit each other off. I was drenched in sweat, tears, blood. All of it so hot.

The bathroom door burst open, and She ran out, yanking up her jeans. She headed for her friend’s apartment exit. The music stopped. The moon was on the Goddess’s face. A mask of fear, disgust, hatred, in response to my—tenderness, treachery, hatred. Why me?! Her friends grabbed her and, desperate to keep her standing, tackled her to the floor. The Spanish lady leaned over her, brows raised questioningly, yelling something into her face. Her brows kept rising and rising. It looked like her eyelids would tear, and her eyes would pop out like oxygen masks in an airplane cabin during depressurization.

The nickel beneath me grew slick. I rolled a bit further and kept watching. My unfortunate stranger, choking under the Spanish lady’s weight, flustered with panic, barely holding onto the last traces of color in her face, rapidly muttered something back. The Spanish lady nodded, her fiery hair fixing the Awesome One’s makeup.

I noticed the walkie-talkie hissing. Button’s released, I could say something!

“Dormshiganger! What have you done, Dormshiganger! Over!” Tears streamed from my mouth. No answer. Just hiss. Dormshiganger was gone. Maybe for the best. I scrambled off that roof, into the street, into the yard. I sprinted to the forklift. The platform was still at the same height, but empty. I climbed on, looked around: near-night darkness shrouded the yard. Both pipes were untouched. I touched the spackle on the walls around them. Rough, cold, cottony, slightly dusty.

“Oh, you’re here already? So, did I play okay? Hit the mark?” Dormshiganger was scrambling onto the platform with gnarled hands. Saxophone slung on his back. I irritably turned away, wiping tears with my elbow.

“Where do you keep disappearing to, Dormshiganger?”

“Well, sometimes I gotta relieve myself!” Oh right, how could I, a toilet company employee, forget that necessity! “I did everything we agreed on, right?” He bent down, smoothed an untidy patch on his trousers so it wouldn’t bulge. Then stared at me again. His face was triumphant: he was sure I’d fall to my knees, thanking him for his wise stubbornness that had disarmed my cowardice.

“You’re the most infernal scoundrel, Dormshiganger. Keep the fee, but I never want to see you again. Get out!” Dormshiganger’s eyes went feral. 

Suddenly, checking the saxophone on his back, he grabbed my throat and shoved me against the wall. My head hit hard, just as my back had stopped bleeding. He was far stronger than I’d imagined. He squeezed my neck, leaving me only one option: squeeze back. Dormshiganger, skin warm and rough like a sewer pipe. A fierce glare from huge pupils, loud, warm, hard breathing. His lips trembled. 

He slowly started pressing into me. The block formed by his hands on my neck shifted from horizontal to an increasingly steep angle. He was forcing my head back. My legs buckled, I groaned, sliding down the back wall of the alcove on my raw back, probably leaving a bloody trail on the yellow, cold, rough surface. The saxophone slipped from Dormshiganger’s strap and, with full force, struck my eyebrow with its sharp bell. Blood started flowing again. But now it was flooding my eyes. The wound on my back was ready to gush again too. The saxophone bounced off my forehead and hit the adjacent wall. This distracted Dormshiganger, and he loosened his grip slightly. I knew I couldn’t get up and push him off. So I suddenly lifted my feet from the platform, kicked his shins with all my might, and fell onto my back, which was finally bleeding again. 

My left eye saw nothing due to the blood. Huddled, I was like a tsunami wave, upon which an oil tanker might fold. Dormshiganger sprawled on top of me, his shins hitting the platform edge hard. His head landed precisely between the platform and the back wall. It didn’t get stuck, but Dormshiganger was in a bad spot. I started to get up and rolled him over. He was still lying with his head under the platform, but now his face was pressed against the wall, not his occiput. I stood in momentary confusion. He needed a bit longer to recover. I finally decided to get into the cabin and drive away. My head was a mess; I felt terribly ashamed in front of the three ladies. I was already starting to climb off the platform when Dormshiganger stood up, rubbed his face, and paused for a second, wondering what to do with me. His enemy was abandoning the battlefield. He glared fiercely at me just as a poorly secured exhaust pipe slammed into the right side of his neck. It was the one I hadn’t managed to hide behind the waste pipe. I should have placed them diagonally opposed, but I put them mirroring each other for Dormshiganger’s playing convenience.

And now, right before my eyes, from the wall, blasting the spackle plug and raising a cloud of dust, with a metallic clang, my Ford’s exhaust pipe rapidly shot out. I watched it impale the saxophonist’s neck, its downturned end sharply pulling him down. His head slumped to his chest, blood gushing from his neck. Hot, braided streams began to flow. His knees buckled, and he fell, smashing his head right between my hands, which were still clinging to the platform’s edge. He made no sound. Only a faint crunch somewhere in his neck. And a dull thud against the platform. Prying a chunk of flesh from his neck, the pipe dropped onto the platform, rolled off with a clang, and landed on the ground. He generously spattered me with blood. His saxophone lay like a pistol, an arm’s length away.

From the wall opening, I heard a muffled, ecstatic shout with a Spanish accent: “I think I hit something! Something soft. He must be hurt! I’m going to check!”

I slid off the platform, rushed into the cabin, disengaged the forklift’s brake, and quickly reversed it into the dark corner of the yard, behind the right wing of the building, closer to the office building. Dormshiganger’s body was profusely watering everything with blood. He was like a cracked quartz flask, now oozing sulfuric acid. The hole in his neck, dangling from the platform, left no doubt he was dead. I had a real Mustang, and its pipes were fist-sized!

A minute later, the Spanish lady burst into the yard. She looked at the wall, studied it carefully, and seeing chunks of plaster on the ground, ran to the alcove. She looked up to the third floor, shaking her head—everything simultaneously made sense and defied comprehension. Her cotton belly, her cotton body recoiled; she noticed fresh bloodstains on the plaster below, horrified. She saw the bruises on the wall. At six meters high…

And yelled into the open window of the poetess’s apartment: “Sappho, Linda’s got another one just like it in her bathroom! C’mon, girls, smash it out!” Half a minute later, the kitchen window of my sufferer’s apartment opened. Almost simultaneously, I heard the banging as the girls tried to knock out the second pipe. It wasn’t that easy because it was nearly touching the waste pipe. They probably shoved a board or metal plate between the pipes and used it to force the pipe out of the wall. Finally, it too popped out, plaster crumbling with a dull thud, the pipe clanging as it fell. The Spanish lady jumped with delight and shrieked: “Hurray, girls, awesome, let’s give him a good thrashing. We wounded him. He’s nearby!”

My heart seized. Was I about to be beaten by a girl I almost loved? I quietly slipped out of the cabin and hid behind the forklift, where it was even darker. I felt sick. I just wanted a laugh, some fun! And now there’s a casualty! I crept quietly along the office building wall. My heart hammered in my soles; the ground seemed to shake beneath me. I tripped, walking sideways, fell, and started to vomit. I couldn’t help myself. I made such loud noises it was impossible not to hear them, even from the windows of the upper floors. I tried to muffle them, but it only got louder. I felt so wretched, it was like a bio-toilet must feel when its tank overflows and starts to leak. Like a conductor must feel when one musician launches into an incomprehensible solo nowhere in the score, drowning out the rest of the orchestra. We figure everyone’s got the same hang-up.

The Spanish lady turned at the noise and ran towards me. Not wanting to cross the lawn, she moved along the wall and ran into the forklift, from which Dormshiganger’s boots dangled. At six meters high…

She walked around the forklift and, seeing the wound in his neck, recoiled onto the lawn in shock. She covered her mouth with her hand, then her eyes, then her mouth again, then both hands covered her cold, cotton belly. She swore in Spanish. Loud and dirty. Her voice trembled with terror, disgust, and— She felt sick too. Because she knew Dormshiganger’s wound was her work. The Spanish lady ran across the lawn, then tripped, sprawled on the grass, and started sobbing loudly. I heard her retching. She was sick too. 

It was only eight o’clock. I struggled to my feet and headed for the office building’s back entrance. Sometimes they work until ten there. Slipping past security, flashing my ID, I ran into the elevator and hit the ninth floor button. Our offices were on the eighth, but as a precaution, I decided to walk down from the ninth. And for now, I could wash the blood off in the bathroom. I walked down the dimly lit evening corridor. All covered in blood—with a split eyebrow, a cut back, spattered by Dormshiganger. I yanked open the men’s room door, yanked around to the sink, and kept puking. Then I turned on the water, washed all the accumulated grime from my face, and turned to the stalls. And saw… on the counter that spanned all four sinks, just to my right, two figures sprawled—the general’s secretary (yes, that lady) and a guy I didn’t know, probably from another company.

“What happened to you?” the secretary exclaimed, looking me over.

“Oh, you know, what happens when you don’t go on vacations,” I joked, trying to smile. Then I walked into a stall and… tenderness, treachery, hatred. I kept wondering what was happening downstairs, with the Spanish lady, and where her friends were. I needed to change.

“Apparently, you never even tried to leave,” she said when I came out and went back to the sink. I turned on the faucet, and the guy kept pleasing the secretary. Well, good for him, no time to waste, right? That’s what they teach you in MBA!

“I got into a slight fight here. I’ll wash up, change, and go on vacation.”

“How’d you end up on the ninth floor?”

“See how badly my fingers move? Hit the wrong button.”

“Are you drunk?” I shook my head, waved goodbye, wiped my hands on paper towels, and walked out. She just yelled after me: Don’t come back without a girl! Keep going, Fritz!