Pandora's Closet Part 3

"Got you all beat," said Rick. "Look up."

I did, and flinched. Poised above me, like I was Damocles or something, was a huge pair of old, rusty blades. I mean, the suckers were big. "What the h.e.l.l?" I asked.

"Gelding shears," Rick said. "They used to use 'em on horses."

There was a moment's silence. I shuddered.

"... annnnnd I'm vegetarian tonight," said Ravi.

Everyone accepted that Rick had taken the lead. "I'm not even going to try to top that," I said. We turned to Quig, who was still poking at his half-thawed margarita. "How about you, boss? Can you beat the Amazing De-stallionizers?"

"Hmmm?" he asked.

"Come on, Quig," said Gabby, shaking his arm. "We're trying to cheer you up. Can you see anything stranger than those G.o.dawful things?"

Quig sighed, glanced at the shears, then started scanning the room. He usually won the game. He had a good eye for weirdness. I watched him go from wall, to wall, to...

"Mother of G.o.d," he said.

"What?" we asked.

Saying nothing, he got up and went over toward the bar. There was a ghastly old puppet that must have provided nightmare fuel for kids fifty years ago, and I thought he was going for that, but instead he reached to the right and picked up something else. He brought it back to the table.

It was round and wide, a tarnished disc of bra.s.s with a deep bowl in the middle and what looked like a bite out of the rim. He held it up.

"I give you the Golden Helmet of Mambrino," he said.

"The who of the what now?" I asked.

"You never read Cervantes?"

I gave him a look. "Sorry. I'm still working my way through the collected works of Proust. Come on, Quig. That thing's just an old bowl."

"Close," he said, his eyes shining. "Shaving basin. You put your throat in the niche, here, fill it with water, and a barber shaves you."

"I thought it was a helmet," Gabby said.

"It is. Don Quixote. He met a barber on the road, and he thought the man's basin was a famous helmet. He wore it on his head after that. Like so."

He raised it, ready to put on the bowl. Other tables were staring at him now. So was the restaurant manager, a beefy, humorless guy named Stan who rumbled toward us from across the room. "Hey!" he yelled. "What have I told you guys about taking stuff off the walls?"

People at the other tables chuckled. Quig turned a little red, then lowered the bowl-basin-whatever-and handed it to Stan. "My apologies, good sir," he said. "It was not my intent to weigh upon the hospitality of your inn."

Ravi nearly folded up, he was laughing so hard. The others at least tried to contain it. I wiped tears from my eyes as Stan took back the basin and rumbled away.

"I say my thing still beats that," Rick said.

"Nah," I replied. "The demonstration put it over the top. You win, Quig."

Rick gave me a dark look. "I could arrange a demonstration..."

"Easy, now," Gabby said. "Where'd you find out about the helmet, Quig?"

Quig watched Stan hang the basin back on the wall. "Oh, I played the Don once, in a production of Man of La Mancha. Dinner theater in Connecticut, back in the eighties."

"Ah," Ravi said, still laughing. "Glamour."

"Shut up," Gabby told him.

Quig wasn't listening. He'd gone back in time. "I got to wear the helmet every night, and sing 'The Impossible Dream.' " He hesitated, then sighed as he sat down again. "And I gave that up for e-Baby."

"At least you've got me, hon," said Donna, coming back over. She was older than most waitresses at Chuckles Feeblebuzzard's Cholesterol Hut, maybe forty, and still good-looking. She flirted with Quig constantly-and not, I got the feeling, just because he tipped well. She set down a plate of wings that gave off eyeball-melting fumes and another round of drinks. "You guys know what you want?"

We told Donna our orders. She gave Quig another wink and went back toward the kitchen. We laid into the wings-all but Ravi, who kept looking up at the shears.

As we were eating, I noticed Quig glancing back at the basin. "You could go back to it, you know," I said after a while. "Acting, I mean. Give up this c.r.a.p, sell your condo, try again. G.o.d, you could probably put together your own little troupe of disenchanted programmers, tour the country."

"I'd join," said Gabby. Rick, sucking meat off a bone, nodded too.

Quig shook his head. "It's a hard life, J. I can't go back to cinder-block furniture and insta-noodles for dinner."

But then he looked at the basin again.

By that point, Donna was on her way with our food. With the drinks and all, the tray must have weighed twenty pounds, but she carried it one-handed, weaving through the place like it was nothing. And the d.a.m.n thing is, I saw what was about to happen, saw the biker-types snickering, but I froze up and couldn't say anything until it was too late.

It all went in slow motion, like so: The biker who nearly grabbed her a.s.s before, a fat guy with a bushy beard that looked like his neck had thrown up, gives it another shot. And this time Donna can't get away. He gets a handful. She stumbles. The tray rocks, she twists, her ankle rolls, and down she goes-along with about a hundred dollars' worth of greasy food and frozen drinks. She doesn't make a sound, but gla.s.ses smash and cutlery clatters and plates go crrrang, and there's about a fifteen-foot spray of fries and ice and Krazy Tequila Lime Dippin' Sauce splatted across the floor. Somehow, she manages to miss all the customers. The noise is ridiculous-and all the talking and laughing stops, just a lousy Foreigner song playing in the background. Count to three, and no one moves.

Then someone says something. It's one of the food-throwing teens. "Two points!" he shouts.

The idiot teens laugh and go back to flinging onion rings. But everyone else is paralyzed-even the bikers, who stare at Donna, sprawled on the tiles. Mortified.

I stare, too. Your brain just kinda locks.

But then a chair squeaks, and next thing I know, Quig's on his feet. And the look on his face-well, there's anger and then there's blank, white-lipped rage. He walks to Donna, through broken gla.s.s and mango salsa, and offers his hand.

Oh, yeah... I have no idea how he got it down from the wall again, but that bra.s.s bowl-thing? It's on his head.

"Milady," he says.

"His what?" murmurs Rick. Gabby kicks him under the table.

Donna looks up at Quig. There's a smear of coleslaw on her cheek. She's got rice in her hair and tears in her eyes. She takes his hand, and he helps her up. The whole restaurant applauds. I've never been so proud of anyone. He should've looked like a fool with that thing on his head, but he didn't. He looked... well, n.o.ble.

But the slow motion doesn't stop there. Quig offers Donna a napkin to clean herself up, then turns to the bikers. If looks could blow things up, there would have been a smoking crater there in the middle of the restaurant. But looks can only... well, look. So he reaches out, grabs a beer mug off the table, and dumps it over Neck-beard's head.

That's when things started moving normal speed again. Maybe even a little faster.

The bikers all got up at once, yelling stuff that sent moms diving to cover their kids' ears. Neck-beard was dripping-with the beer on him, he smelled like a college dorm stairwell-and he took a swing. Quig ducked, and Neck-beard slipped in the goo on the floor and went down. Our table got up next, and we grabbed hold of Quig before he could hit back. I saw his eyes-he was going to. Donna helped us drag him away, while two truckers, three college kids, and a guy who looked like a retired accountant surrounded the bikers, trying to break up the fight.

The bikers looked ready to grab chairs, flip tables, just trash the place-but Stan the manager came barreling out of the back, his face a really spectacular shade of purple. I remember there was this vein throbbing on his right temple. I thought it was going to pop, and boom, down he'd go with an aneurysm, but it didn't.

"What in the flying h.e.l.l is going on here?" he roared. "Anyone touches a stick of furniture, and I'll have the cops here. Any of you have any outstanding warrants?"

The bikers quieted down.

"a.s.shole dumped beer on my head!" yelled Neck-beard, getting up off the floor. He pointed at Quig.

"And you tripped me!" said Donna.

Stan looked at her, at the mustard-and-ketchup Jackson Pollock all over the floor. His lips moved, and I could see he was counting to ten. When he was on seven, Quig stepped forward.

"Sir," he said, "it's true, I did what that man said. But I was avenging the honor of the lady-"

Stan glared at him, his eyes flicking up to the basin as if wondering how it got on Quig's head. "Shut it," he snapped, and turned back to the bikers. "All right, you lot-out. If I ever see you back, spilled beer's the least of your worries."

The bikers muttered, suddenly sheepish. Stan had this effect on people-they could have crushed him into the ground, but the guy was built like a fire hydrant. He intimidated people.

"Now," he said, and they skulked out.

There was some scattered applause, but Stan gave the room the stink-eye and it stopped. Next he turned to Quig. "You, too."

"Him?" Ravi asked.

Gabby pointed at Donna. "He was defending her!" Rick and I joined in, and so did a bunch of other people, with variations on "yeah!" and "that's right!"

"Stan," Donna said. "Those jerks are waiting for him in the parking lot. You know that."

But he just shook his head. Stan could be a bit of a d.i.c.k, sometimes. "Company policy. Anyone fights or disturbs the other diners, I have to throw them out."

And there's the part that the legal department of P.F. Whistlefart's Grease-a-torium didn't like me telling: how their corporate policy was to send a fifty-year-old software engineer out to get the snot knocked out of him by six guys who could crush beer kegs against their foreheads. It's the sort of bad press that could make America want to buy its two-thousand-calorie meals elsewhere.

Gabby began to explain, in precise anatomical detail, what Stan could do with company policy. She was just getting into the part about twisting it sideways when Quig held up a hand. "It's all right," he said. "I don't fear those riffraff. If it's a fight they want, then a fight they shall have. Stand aside."

And he made for the door.

I watched him go. We all did, a bit too stunned to react. Quig looked different-maybe it was because he was balancing that bowl on his head, but he was standing straight, his programmer's hunch gone. And he was thin, which was weird. He'd always had a bit of a gut.

Donna broke the silence. She stepped forward, ripped the nametag off her uniform, and threw at Stan. The pin stuck in his tie and it hung there, upside-down, proclaiming him to be "p.r.i.c.k," she said, and went after Quig.

We followed him, too. Looking back, I was asking for what happened to me out in the parking lot, but I'd do it again. Quig was my boss, but he was also my friend. I wasn't going to let him go out there alone.

Anyway, we all gathered around Quig near the coat rack. He was rummaging through the umbrella stand and came up with his-a st.u.r.dy old thing, not one of those collapsibles that blow inside-out if you breathe on them wrong.

"Trouble yourselves not for me," he said, holding up the umbrella. "I can fend for myself, even against such a horde."

"Uh, Quig?" I asked. "What are you going to do?"

"And why are you talking like that?" Rick added.

I heard a sound, and there was Stan again, coming up behind us. "Not so fast," he said. "Give that back."

He reached for the basin, then yelped when Quig hit him with the umbrella. It was a quick blow, and precise. Quig hadn't forgotten his stage-fight training, I guess. Stan pulled back, clutching his wrist.

"Uncouth rogue!" Quig said. No, not said-proclaimed. "Do not despoil the Helm of Mambrino with your innkeeper's hands. Now begone!"

Stan looked at him, pop-eyed. He could have had Quig arrested for a.s.sault, even for that little smack, but he just stepped back, blinking.

"No, seriously," Rick said, "why do you sound like someone from a Monty Python movie?"

"Shhh," said Gabby. She started grabbing more umbrellas and handing them out. "We're coming with you, Quig. We're your men at arms."

"What?" asked Ravi. He stared at the umbrella in his hand.

Quig smiled. "Very well," he said, and his eyes fell on Donna. "But not you, milady. You must wait until the battle is done-but if you would give me a token to wear as I sally forth..."

She looked like she was going to argue, but she didn't. There was something irresistible about Quig just then, the same thing that made me not question going out to face six thugs armed only with a b.u.mber-shoot. I didn't know the word for how he looked at the time, but I learned it later. He looked gallant.

"All right," Donna said. She looked at herself, frowned, and pulled a b.u.t.ton off her uniform. Carefully, she pinned it onto Quig's shirt. It read: ASK ME ABOUT OUR DOUBLE-FUDGTASTIC BROWNIE SPLITZ!.

Then, leaning forward, she kissed his cheek.

"All right," Rick said. "Everyone ready to get their a.s.ses kicked?"

"Wait," said someone behind me.

I turned, and there was the retired accountant. And the truckers. And the college kids. And even one of the idiot teens, a pimply, quiet kid who'd been sitting off to the side.

"How many more umbrellas you have?" the accountant asked.

We armed ourselves. No one tried to stop us. Then out we went. It was still raining in the parking lot. And there, waiting by the mini-golf course, were Neck-beard and company. They were armed, too- three had pipes, a couple had knives, and one big bald dude had a freaking bicycle chain. They grinned when Quig stepped out, the bowl glinting under the street-lights-but they faltered when the rest of us followed him. We had them outnumbered, two to one. Behind us, Donna and half the restaurant watched through the window.

"What the h.e.l.l?" blurted Neck-beard. "You put together a posse, freak? And what's that thing on your head?"

Quig looked at him. Slowly, he raised his umbrella. "Yield, varlet," he said. "Beg forgiveness and quit this field, or taste my steel!"

The bikers laughed, and can you blame them? This was insane. Except it didn't feel insane, not at the time. It was exciting. I felt every raindrop as it hit me. I raised my umbrella too, and stepped forward. So did Rick, and Ravi, and Gabby. And the rest.

I'm amazed none of the pa.s.sing cars drove off the road at the sight of us.

The bikers must have felt a little of what I was feeling, because they quit laughing and spread out. The guy with the chain started to whirl it slowly. They looked different than they had inside-bigger, cruder, more savage. Like ogres. It could have been a trick of the light... but you know, I doubt it.

"As you will," Quig said. He kissed the Double-Fudgtastic b.u.t.ton, then raised his head again. I wondered how I'd ever thought the thing he was wearing was a bowl. Couldn't everyone see it was a helmet?

The bikers charged.

We ran to meet them, our weapons held high.

So here's the problem: Quig had his army, but he'd overlooked one thing. None of us knew how to fight. Plus we had umbrellas, for the love of G.o.d. What I'm saying is, it was sort of a lopsided battle. The truckers managed to break one guy's teeth, but the rest of us didn't accomplish much except for a lot of shouting and falling down and yelling in pain. Bicycle Chain took out all three college kids by himself. The accountant got stabbed through the hand. The high school kid ended up with a cut that took thirty-three st.i.tches, I found out later.