Cry Baby Read online

  ‘Yes, sir,’ says the girl. ‘I understand perfectly. Would you like me to exchange it for a cappuccino?’

  ‘Yes, I would. I would like a cappuccino. Like I freaking well asked for in the first place. But now that you’ve admitted it was your mistake, I think you should give me my money back too.’

  The woman shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t do that. I can give you a cappuccino or I could give you your money back, but I can’t do both. I don’t think that would be fair.’

  Erin looks around. Everyone in the place has been stunned into an anxious silence. Waiting to see what happens. Hoping this will be settled amicably and the man will take his coffee and leave them in peace. Hoping that it doesn’t get any nastier than it already is.

  ‘Fair? What do you mean, fair? You messed up, sister. All I’m asking is that you make a little restitution for your mistake. A little compensation. That’s what I think would be fair. Is that so much to ask?’

  ‘Sir, would you like me to make you a cappuccino? Is that what you’d like me to do?’

  The man sighs. A deeply exaggerated expression of his unhappiness. ‘Why is this so hard for you to understand? Am I talking in Swahili here?’ He turns on his heel, sweeping his hard gaze across the other customers, none of whom seem capable of meeting his eye. ‘Anyone else here think this is so difficult to grasp?’

  He turns back to the girl, who is trying to stand her ground but is looking more and more like she’s about to run away in tears. ‘One more time. I’ll speak nice and slow, just for you. Give me my fucking money back, get me a cappuccino, stick this latte up your fat ass, and then everyone is happy. All right?’

  ‘Sir, I’m sorry—’

  ‘NO!’

  The slam of his palm on the countertop is like the sound of a firecracker. The girl takes a whole step backward. Erin notices that the baby also jumps at the sound, and then it opens its mouth to scream.

  ‘No,’ the man repeats. ‘No excuses. You’re already in my bad books for fucking up my day, so don’t make it any worse for yourself, okay?’

  And that’s when the mother decides to step in. It was an uncomfortable enough situation already, but now her baby has been alarmed, and that’s a step too far. That’s over the line.

  ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘would you mind cooling it a little? You’re upsetting my baby.’

  The man rounds on her, eyes blazing. ‘For one thing, I wasn’t talking to you. For another, why the fuck do you bring a baby to a coffee shop if it’s peace and quiet you want? Why don’t you take it to a fucking church or a library or something?’

  ‘Woo-hoo,’ says Erin’s commentator. ‘Which charm school did this bozo go to?’

  As if responding to the verbal assault, the baby steps up its crying. The woman starts to stroke its back and bounce it gently while she sends hushing noises at it. Erin can feel her own anguish building. This baby is younger than Georgia, but still she can picture her own child making these screams. This is like an attack on herself and her baby, and she finds herself being inexorably drawn into this conflagration.

  Says the woman, ‘The girl told you what she can do. She made you a good offer. She didn’t even have to do that. It’s a cup of coffee, for crying out loud. What’s the big deal?’

  And now the man is squaring up to her. Straightening up and showing her how tall and broad and immovable he is. Demonstrating what a fine specimen of testosterone-fueled manhood he is.

  ‘Oh, shut the fuck up, bitch. This ain’t none of your business. You or your ugly little rug-rat. Keep your big nose out of it.’

  The baby screams louder. The sound drills into Erin’s skull and sets her brain on fire. Through the flames she sees images of Georgia. Sees her lying on her back, fists clenched and cheeks red-hot as she throws every ounce of her little might into pleading for her mother’s help.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Erin?’

  Erin steps out of the line. An I-am-Spartacus moment.

  ‘Hey! What is it with you? You got a complaint, fine. You don’t have to make an asshole out of yourself to do it.’

  The man turns his gaze on her now. He looks dumbfounded at first, then he finds his voice again.

  ‘What the hell is this place? A dykes’ convention or something? Am I upsetting one of the chief rug-munchers here?’

  ‘Ha! This guy’s a hoot. Is he on something?’

  There was a time when Erin would have stayed silent. There was a time when, faced with aggression like this, she would have slinked into a corner and cowered. This time, though, something makes her refuse to back down.

  ‘What is it with you? Why do you have to be like this? Why can’t you just be nice?’

  The man takes a few steps toward her. Erin brings her hand up and rests it on the mouth of the tan leather bag slung over her shoulder. Come on, she thinks. Try it with me, asshole. Let’s see how those muscles of yours cope with a pound of steel coming at your ugly face.

  ‘Nice?’ he says. ‘Nice? Jesus. And people wonder why the country’s falling apart.’ He points to the girl behind the counter. ‘She fucked up. All I’m doing is letting her know about it, in words she might just understand. Nice don’t get you nowhere.’

  ‘First of all,’ says Erin, ‘we might all understand you better if you spoke proper English. Second of all, I believe the girl when she said it was your mistake. And thirdly… you’re an asshole. And that means you deserve zip.’

  ‘Great speech, Erin. Very succinct. Were you in the school debating team?’

  She sees his face harden. It tells her he is no stranger to violence and intimidation. They are tools he will deploy as readily as most would attempt rational debate. When he steps even closer to her, she allows her fingers to dip into the bag.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asks.

  The baby continues to cry. Everyone else hides behind its wail. Nobody voicing an opinion or coming to her aid.

  But still she doesn’t back off. From somewhere she finds the courage to play him at his own game.

  ‘Now who doesn’t understand? You want me to say it again, nice and slow and loud like you did with the girl?’

  ‘Go, Erin. I think you’re winning on ball size here.’

  ‘You say one more fucking word, bitch, and I’ll make sure you never speak again.’

  ‘Them’s fighting words. Does he know who he’s talking to? Maybe you need to show him Mr Hammer.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ she says. ‘You get off on hitting women, is that it? Is this really about the coffee, or are you just fulfilling your pathetic need to demonstrate that you can be tougher than a woman? Is that it? Something to do with the size of your dick, maybe?’

  He’s on her then. Too fast for her to respond. He has his huge hand clamped around her throat and he’s pushing her up against the glass fronted cabinet containing all those muffins and cookies, and his body is tight against hers, so tight that she cannot move her right arm, cannot push it into the bag and grab the hammer, cannot fight him off, and God what have I done, why did I think I could deal with this situation, why didn’t I just keep my big stupid mouth shut?

  He puts his face right up to hers. When he speaks she can feel the spittle flying from his mouth. He says, ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that. Do you understand? Well, do ya, bitch?’

  She tries to twist and turn, to get that arm free, to get those fingers to the wooden handle in her bag. Around her now there is consternation. The woman with the baby yelling at him to let Erin go. The serving girl announcing that she’s calling the cops. The baby still screaming, screaming, screaming like Georgia.

  And then suddenly he releases her and steps away. He looks around at everyone in that small, cramped space, utter disdain on his face.

  ‘This is a fucking shithole,’ he says. ‘Keep your fucking coffee.’

  He pulls back the hand still holding the coffee. Launches the cup at the girl behind the counter. She ducks, and the cup explodes against the wall, its content
s bursting across the shop. Erin feels a few drops of the hot liquid hit her on the side of the neck. Her hand finally finds the hammer. She grips it tightly, thinking, Come back here. Try that again now I’m ready for you.

  But he doesn’t come back. He marches toward the door, flings it open so hard it slams against the back of a chair in which an old lady is seated, then leaves.

  Erin takes a step forward, feeling dazed and confused, her eyes on the street outside. People are talking to her, babbling. She catches fragments of the chatter. They’re asking her if she’s okay. Saying what an asshole the guy was. The Hispanic girl is thanking her and offering her anything she wants, on the house. But rising above it all is one voice.

  ‘What are you waiting for, Erin?’

  And he’s right. She was on the verge of taking that guy’s head off. Would’ve done it too if she’d been able to get to her weapon. Isn’t that what she’s been looking for all morning? Well, isn’t it, Erin?

  She leaves. Ignoring the blizzard of concerns and the all-too-late outrage, she gets out of there.

  She starts walking up the street, in the direction the man went, but she can’t see him anywhere. She picks up her pace, her eyes scanning the street ahead for any sign of her quarry. Where is he, damn it?

  She reaches the pizzeria at the end of the block. The pedestrian lights are against her. Did he beat them? Is he already on the next block, putting further space between them?

  And then she sees him. Not ahead, but to her right. He’d turned the corner, and now he’s heading downtown. She pulls away from the knot of people waiting to cross, and hastens after the man.

  She follows him for another block. She checks the street signs. They’re on Pitt Street. Ahead she can see the low, slanted beginnings of the Manhattan Bridge. There are fewer people on the sidewalks here, because there’s nothing to see. No stores or restaurants; just tall brown apartment buildings. It suddenly occurs to her that if he should happen to turn, he will spot her instantly. As she walks, she reaches into her bag and takes out her woolen hat and scarf. They were knitted for her by Clark’s grandmother. She puts on the hat. Pulls it low over her forehead, then wraps the scarf around her neck and across her face, so that only her eyes are now showing. It’s not that cold right now, but it’s the best makeshift disguise she can manage. Whatever that maniac remembers of her, it will not be that she was wearing bright red knitwear.

  The man takes a left. Up a narrow path and into one of the buildings. Erin’s pace becomes almost a jog. If he leaves the lobby before she gets there, she’ll never find him in this huge monolith.

  She pushes through the door, breathes a sigh of relief through the scarf as she sees he is still there, waiting for the elevator to arrive. Alongside him is a broad-shouldered black woman, resting her substantial bones on an aluminum walking-frame. The lobby is dimly lit and smells of industrial cleaning fluid. One of the fluorescent lighting tubes flickers as if sending out Morse code.

  Erin focuses on the man. She notices he is now wearing earphones, the white leads trailing down to his side pocket. He taps the fingers of his right hand on his thigh, and she wonders what he’s listening to. She bets it’s nothing as the interesting as the transmissions she picks up on her own earpiece.

  ‘Why not do ’em both?’

  Right on cue again. I think of him, and he jumps in. Uncanny.

  ‘Go on, Erin. Nobody will see you here. That’ll take you up to four in one swoop. What’s to think about?’

  She turns her gaze on the woman. Tries to imagine herself caving in the back of her skull. No. It’s not an image she’s comfortable with. She couldn’t do it.

  But this guy… Well, that’s a different matter.

  She fingers the handle of the hammer again. She could do it right now. Just step up to him and bam! The old lady wouldn’t be able to stop it. Wouldn’t know what the hell was going on.

  But not yet. Wait. Patience. Choose your moment carefully.

  The elevator arrives and the door stutters open. The three of them shuffle inside. Erin watches the man’s face as his eyes pass briefly over her and register no interest. Good. No need for a fight just yet.

  Erin leans against the rail at the back and waits for the others to select their floors. There are twenty in all. The man hits 17, but doesn’t bother to ask what anyone else might want. He just faces out into the lobby and puts his hands in his pockets. The woman makes a smacking sound with her lips as she slowly locates the button for the fifth floor. Then she looks over at Erin.

  ‘You got a floor, or just here to enjoy the ride?’

  She laughs after she says this. A breathless cackle that turns into a phlegm-filled cough.

  Erin reaches across and stabs the top button, just as the door squeals shut.

  ‘End of the line, huh?’ says the woman. ‘Nice view from up there.’

  Erin just nods and smiles with her eyes, the rest of her face still hidden behind her scarf.

  The elevator hauls itself painfully up through the building, rattling and shaking as it goes. Erin stands in silence, staring at the back of the man’s head. She can hear the tinny beat of his music. Gangsta rap, she guesses. It would suit him. Stuff about killing cops and abusing women and taking drugs. Yeah, that’s him, all right.

  The elevator slows, if going any slower were possible, then grinds to a halt. Its door struggles with the effort of opening. The man makes little effort to move aside as the old lady squeezes her walker past him, and he snaps her a look of disgust when she brushes against his arm. She is hardly through the opening before he stabs angrily at the button to close the door again, and when she has gone he shakes his head in disbelief at the gall of the woman.

  And then they’re moving again. Alone. Just him and her. He’s nodding his head and tapping his fingers and listening to crap about what it’s okay to do to women because they’re worthless anyhow, and she’s slipping her fingers around that handle again, closing them tightly around that hammer, thinking about what he did to her, what he said to her, the sheer contempt he exhibited toward her, and when other thoughts try to push their way in – wishy-washy liberal thoughts about how maybe he just had a bad day, maybe he lost his job, or maybe somebody in his family died, and so his attitude isn’t really his fault – she forces them back again, because yes, it is his fault, there can be no excuse for acting as he did, and anyway somebody needs to die, so it may as well be him.

  Somebody needs to die? Did I hear you right? Did you really just think that, Erin? This guy needs to die?

  Fuck off. Yes. He needs to die. There, I said it again. What are you going to do about it?

  And now she glances at the floor indicators and sees that they have reached the twelfth, and despite the snail’s pace crawl of this box, they’ll get to his destination soon, and that could be too late. He will get out and she will have to follow him and he will become suspicious and maybe there will be other people on that floor and her opportunity will be gone, so it’s now or never, Erin. Now? Or never?

  ‘What are you waiting for?’

  So she pictures it again. The scene back in the coffee shop. His hand around her neck as he spits into her face and calls her a bitch and tries to make her feel like the most unworthy pond life, and when she would gladly have brought the hammer out if she had been able to, would happily have smashed it into his ugly, hate-washed face. And it works because now the hammer is out of her bag, it’s here in the open, and there in front of her is the back of this man’s head, waiting there like a coconut on a shy, just waiting to be struck – two fairground games in one: test your strength and knock the coconut off. Go ahead, Erin, win that fucking coconut and take your prize home…

  ‘I’m not a bitch,’ she says.

  But he doesn’t hear her over his music. He’s not interested in anything outside of his own pleasures.

  ‘I said I’m not a bitch.’ Louder now. Hear that, asshole? Show me you heard that.

  And he does. Or at least she takes it th
at he does. A twitch of his head to the left and a slightly puzzled brow, as if he’s trying to make sense of a phrase that doesn’t quite fit in with the other lyrics about bitches and whores.

  That’ll do it. Say goodbye, creep.

  It doesn’t go as she expected. Despite the striving for independence symbolized by her move to this city she is not well versed in the use of a hammer, save for the fixing of one floorboard, and that didn’t demand much effort. And her only recent thoughts about skull strength – a subject that tends not to dominate her thinking – were in relation to Georgia and the need to protect her soft, expanding dome. Both of these are factors in Erin’s woeful lack of force in applying the head of her weapon to the head of her chosen victim.

  Oh, it makes a nice enough noise. A kind of thwack that sounds as though it should do some serious damage, all right. But does he drop down dead on the floor? No, he does not. Doesn’t even bother to go horizontal. He just yells and clutches his head and bends at the waist. Well, that’s hardly good enough, is it? That’s hardly what you’d call playing along.

  ‘Again, Erin! Again! Hit that motherfucking sonofabitch!’

  So she hits him again. Harder this time. And now the thwack is accompanied by a higher-pitched note that definitely suggests something is breaking. It’s like the magnified sound of an egg-shall being cracked open. And this time he does go down. He grunts and he drops, but he’s not dead because now he’s making all kinds of curious noises that don’t even sound human, and worse than that he’s reaching a hand out toward Erin – sliding it along that filthy, dusty elevator floor toward her ankles, and she can’t allow that, she can’t allow him to put his disgusting, women-hating hands on her again, because that would be a violation, that would be all the things in the lyrics still beating into his thick cracked skull, it would be him making women into worthless objects and him making babies cry and him just being a hateful piece of shit that deserves to…

  ‘DIE!’

  Thwack!

  Down goes the hammer. And in goes the hammer. Yes, actually in. She has swung it so hard this time that it has actually penetrated his cranium. It has smashed its way through his bony armor and found his spongy, hate-filled brain. And so now he’s flapping about on the floor like a wounded bird, and she wants to vomit and get away from him, but the hammer is stuck, held fast in his head, as if his brain has taken hold of it and refuses to let go in case she strikes again, and while this tug of war goes on, what should happen but for the elevator door to start opening, because this is the seventeenth floor, where this guy lives, welcome home. And her worry now is that there might be other people on the other side of the door, standing there in the hallway, waiting to climb aboard this death capsule. When this door – which, hallelujah, is finding it a struggle to get its aging mechanism to cooperate – finally yawns open and offers up this gruesome spectacle, won’t they suspect that all is not quite as it should be?