A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames (popular books to read TXT) 📗

sixty-one. When you lose an organ, you lose a decade of your life, someone told me. Which is probably not true but it’s a good line when you’re looking for sympathy.

“Yeah, you can help us,” said Midwest. “You can help us remember Carl Lusk.”

That’s when I knew for certain the baton needed to make an appearance, and I brought it out and snapped it to its full sixteen-inch length. It’s one of those extendable steel batons you can buy on the internet if you’re a wannabe fascist or in the security business like me.

Midwest saw my weapon but it didn’t scare him—probably because he had never been hit by one—and he took two big steps forward, with his fist cocked, and as he threw his haymaker, I took a step to my right and slashed down on his wrist, breaking something, and he went straight to the ground, mewling.

Then Hawaii charged me, going for a tackle, and I squatted and swiped at his knees with the baton and heard a nice crunch, which made him come up short and fall, but he still was able to knock me to the asphalt, and I landed hard on my ass, with half of him on top of me.

I then hit him brutally across the back of his broad shoulders, which he definitely felt, and I was able to push him off, like pushing off a piano, and Midwest was still on his knees, wailing; his hand was hanging from his wrist at a weird angle.

I stood up, a little slowly, panting from the adrenaline and the fear and hitting the ground hard, and Hawaii also stood up, quicker than I expected, and he punched me in the face, a nice shot to the right cheekbone, and I staggered back and faltered, which made him hopeful.

He then rushed me with a looping punch and I jumped up—I don’t know where the instinct came from—and I hit him on the top of his head with the baton, like chopping a piece of wood, and he went down face-first into the pavement.

He wasn’t knocked out, but he didn’t get up. He curled into a ball, grabbed the top of his head, and vomited. Then I looked around. My fight with these two had lasted less than a minute, and the alleyway was still empty: no one had seen anything.

I didn’t want to go near the vomit, and so I limped over to Midwest and he looked up at me, like a child.

His pain had made him innocent again, but not too innocent, and I raised the baton up into the air, like I was going to strike him, but I was just bluffing, playing the tough guy, and I said, “Give me your phone.”

He obediently reached into his hoodie pocket with his good hand and gave me the phone. I bypassed his code, hitting the word EMERGENCY in the lower-left corner, and put it on speaker.

“I called 911,” I said. “Keep me out of it and I won’t press charges. And I won’t hit you again.”

I handed him the phone—we could both hear it ringing through the speaker—and he just looked at me; he was in some kind of shock, holding his arm out away from his body, like it scared him, which I could understand. His hand was dangling off his wrist like a dead bird, and I said, “I’m very sorry about Carl Lusk.”

And I meant it.

Then a woman’s neutral voice came out of the phone: “This is 911, what is your emergency?” Midwest then put the phone in front of his mouth, looked at me, and mumbled, “I’ve been in an accident.”

Satisfied, I grabbed my thermos off the Caprice and went quickly through the back door of the Dresden. There was time enough for a swift drink before my meeting, and I wanted some ice for my face.

About the Author

Jonathan Ames is the author of I Pass Like Night; The Extra Man; What’s Not to Love?; My Less Than Secret Life; Wake Up, Sir!; I Love You More Than You Know; The Alcoholic; The Double Life Is Twice as Good; and, most recently, You Were Never Really Here. He’s the creator of the HBO series Bored to Death and the Starz series Blunt Talk and has had two amateur boxing matches, fighting as “The Herring Wonder.”

Also by Jonathan AmesFiction

I Pass Like Night

The Extra Man

Wake Up, Sir!

You Were Never Really Here Nonfiction

What’s Not to Love?

My Less Than Secret Life

I Love You More Than You Know

The Double Life Is Twice as Good Comics

The Alcoholic As Editor

Sexual Metamorphosis