raised by wolves

Wester’s is an all night diner. A different one on every corner it seems. This town has a lot of night owls. It sits, squat and vaguely ovoid in a dark corner. More neon signs. The walk leaves me sore. Gracie’s already there. Her blonde hair is disheveled and matted but looks as good as anything, just like it always does. She’s all wrapped up in a big black coat and a scarf around her neck. I can’t help but smile when I see her under the fluorescent lights. She looks at me and says, “Legs, you look like hell.”

“I always look like hell,” I tell her and collapse like a building being demolished into the seat across from her in the booth.

She takes a short sharp breath and reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers.

“Legs, what’d they do to you? What’s happened?”

Like flood gates, the whole story comes out. At the end my face is buried in my hands because some of it sounds like the craziest nonsense when you’re telling it out loud. I tell her everything. About my “mother,” about Lusky, about The Boss, my “father,” and even about the disappearing man in the ski mask. At the end she just sits, undoubtedly horrified, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. The silence becomes a corporeal thing, like a terrible invisible octopus that wraps it’s suckers around your neck and chokes the life out of you, simply because it can. I feel tentacles down my throat. I want to puke.

“I don’t know what to do, Gracie,” I tell her finally. “This is the first time I don’t know an easy solution to a problem.”

Silence, crushing silence. I can’t feel my toes. My hands are freezing.

Eventually I begin to stutter some sort of excuse or apology, but to my great surprise, Gracie cuts me off.

“Von Tier,” she says. “Who is he? A rival of Lusky? Have you ever heard of him before?”

Her hands are pressed flat on the table. Her nails are painted a dark brown that reminds me of dried blood. There is something of an animal in Gracie at times. This is one of them. Her eyes have turned hungry. She’s asking questions. Right. Questions need answers.

“Never. I can only guess…What—why do you ask?”

“He’s the biggest piece of the puzzle. If this woman—this woman who claims to be your mother—works for Von Tier, taking him out will take her out, too. How bad could he be? He was a rival of Lusky and it sounded like you dealt with him pretty handily…”

The hunger in her eyes has bled into her voice. She clears her throat.

“Think about it, Legs…I mean, really. What have you got to lose here? You’ve gone your whole life with nothing but the head on your shoulders. And now, suddenly, you got a family, or part of a family…something you’ve never had before. Who is this guy Von Tier to stand between you and that? If what Lusky said is true, finding Von Tier will solve two of your problems. Von Tier was the name in the files of the men who killed your boss, right? But why would Von Tier want your boss dead? And why would he send a con woman after you to pose as your mother? Who sent the hit squad? Easiest way to find out is to ask the man who knows all the answers. Von Tier.”

There is a glow in her eyes that gives me a warmth in my stomach. She’s holding my hands tighter than a vise-grip. She’s licking her lips. She leans back as far as she can, but doesn’t let go of my hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know…why I was talking like that. This is all crazy, isn’t it? Oh, Legs, I don’t know what to tell you to do. How do I know you aren’t making all this up? I want to believe you. But what about the man in the ski mask? Did you really see him? Are you seeing things because of stress? I can understand…How long has it been since you slept?”

“No,” I tell her. “Don’t be sorry. I am tired. I’m hungry. I might have been seeing things, it’s true. Maybe I am crazy and making it up. But it feels real. The other ones I killed were real. I saw them. I felt them. If it’s not real, it’s not worth telling the difference, because I can’t shake it.”

Once again we lapsed into a long, heavy silence.

“I don’t care if you’re crazy, Legs,” she said at last with a tone of firm finality. Once again I found myself unable to prevent myself from smiling at her.

“Thank you,” I tell her. “This is all I needed. If there’s just one person who doesn’t care if I’m just crazy, it’s all worth it. I’d kiss you if you’d let me.”

I swear it just slipped out.

I feel myself turning red, but she’s smiling.

“Oh Legs,” she says, and I see she’s getting red in the cheeks, too. “You can kiss me any time you please.”

And so I do. I know it’s only for a moment, but I can feel my soul stretching out in every direction, every dimension, turning me into a wavy line in time, a leaf down a stream. Her lips are so small and taste delicious. They remind me of tiny pink orange slices, like those jelly candies from the local markets.

A breath passes between our lips like a gust of wind on an empty ocean.

When I open my eyes, she’s still there.

“I don’t care if you’re crazy,” she whispers, her eyes still closed, her head still tilted back with her candied lips just barely parted. I kiss her again. It might be the best thing I’ve ever felt. Better than pancakes. Better than fast cars. Better than flying. Better than breaking legs. I kiss her again.

I stand and watch the burning cars. I wonder about the woman. Where could she have gone? I start walking. The blood runs through me like oil in an overheated engine. I’m all wired up from caffeine and killing. I need to get my head straight. I need to decide what I’m going to do.

As I walk down the street away from The Crab, I hear a strange sound, a whistling and a pop, but quiet and far away. Something goes zing! past my ear. I start running. People see silencers in movies and think it does what it’s name implies. But that’s not true. A silencer reduces the sound of gunfire substantially, but does not silence it. The mechanical noise of gun parts sliding back and forth is still there. The sound of bullets whizzing through the air is still there. That’s what I’m hearing. I drop behind a car and hope I’m running in the right direction—that is, away from whoever is shooting at me.

I get up and run some more. That distant clicking of gun parts is getting harder to hear. I’m going the right way. But I’m still in range. The sound of glass shattering is still there. I pivot on my toe as a I leap forward and run backwards like you would if you were playing soccer, in order to try and catch a glimpse of whoever is shooting at me. I look high for perches, but everything is pretty much ground level. I look at second story windows, but I’m in the middle of a long street, all the doors and windows facing me on either side. No one could hang out a window and shoot like that. Then I’m stunned to see the distant figure of a man with a rifle running towards me from a few blocks further up than The Crab. Reinforcements. He’s fast as hell. Gaining on me. I see him raise the rifle and take the shot. I drop and duck behind another car. The side view mirror shatters and flies apart. A high caliber round leaves a dent in the asphalt. I take a deep breath and pull my legs up to my chest. I reach for my gun. At the count of five, I pull my gun. At ten I’m up and aiming for him, but he’s not there. He’s gone.

Suddenly the street seems a lot shorter. I realize, somehow that I’m only two blocks away from The Crab at absolute most. Did I run in a circle? I get confused about directions sometimes, but I don’t think I turned at all. My head is above me on the end of a string, like a balloon it feels like. What is going on?

It seems I have just hallucinated being chased by a man in a brown suit and ski mask, but I can’t think of anything that makes that sound reasonable. On the other hand, I can’t think of any other explanation. I put my gun away and begin walking briskly home. I try to think as little as possible. Not thinking is easy. Thinking is difficult. My head clears before I get to my door.

It’s late now, past midnight. Nine hours. I’m starving but I don’t have time to eat. I sit down in my apartment. I yawn and stretch and then slouch down real far in the chair and put my hands in the pockets of my coat. I feel a small piece of paper in one of them. I pull it out. Salvatore Lusky. I clench my fist around the business card. I’m out the door.

I burst through the door of the Pallid Mallard like the goddamn Incredible Hulk. The girl in front screams. I’m surprised they’re still open. It looks dead. I point my gun at the girl and demand to know where Lusky is hiding. I’ve killed enough of his men by now that he’s got to know his plans turned to shit. But that doesn’t matter. Fuck his plans. No one uses me.

But what if she was lying? Something inside me says. You still don’t know who she is.

But the more I think about it, the more I feel like I do. Why did she run? Why didn’t I chase her?

“Where is he?” I say again and pick the girl up by the collar. Her face turns white and she points towards the stairs. I drop her and tell her to run. She does. Smart girl.

Downstairs, Lusky is eating a bowl of soup at a table of armed men. He does a perfect spit take when he sees me, and I start shooting. I brought two guns for this one. The red mist fills the room and Lusky sits there at the end with soup dribbling down his chin, mouth hanging stupidly agape. I count the sitting dead men. Six. I smile at Lusky.

“I have some questions I’d like you to answer, Mr. Lusky.”

Lusky drops his spoon into his soup and gets up from the table as fast as he can, knocking his chair over. He breaks for a door that isn’t there. We’re in the basement. There’s only one set of stairs. I grab him by his thinning hair and pull him backwards and onto the floor.

“Mc…” he chokes out, my foot on his throat. “Legs! Achh!” I take my foot off and let him breathe, then I bend down and put my knee on his chest.

“Legs, Legs, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just listen! Listen to me will you! I can explain I can explain! They weren’t after you! The men you killed, they were after the woman I swear!”

I pause. Interrogations aren’t usually this easy.

“We didn’t set you up! She’s the one setting you up! My men were at The Crab to get her, we’d been watching her. Oh God, Legs you gotta believe me!”

I slug him one in the mouth for good measure.

“She’s not your mother! She’s a con!”

I slug him again.

“She wasn’t even married to Cosmo! He didn’t want nothin’ to do with her! I swear it! She works for Von Tier! Those pictures are fakes, she tried pulling the same con on one of my guys about two years ago! I swear it, I swear it!”

I pick him up and toss him over a table. I put my hands on his face and press down.

“Even if you were telling the truth,” I say, my face mere centimeters from his. I look directly into his eyes, from as close as I could possibly be without kissing the guy. “I’d kill you anyway.”

I cover his mouth with one hand and close his windpipe with the other. I hold him down until he’s gone.

Outside of the Pallid Mallard, I hear that familiar zing!

I’ll try something different this time. I throw up my hands and call out, “Lusky’s dead!”

I hear another shot whiz past me. “Come on!” I holler. “Killing me won’t solve anything! You won’t even get paid now!”

Another shot, and I look down the street. Here he comes. Brown suit and ski mask. Big scary rifle. Running full speed.

“You can’t shoot worth shit, man!”

This time I don’t take my eyes off him. I pull my guns and start shooting back. And somewhere in the muzzle flashes and sulfur smell, he vanishes again.

This is getting insane.

I feel dizzy again. I find a payphone.

“Hello?” she says, voice like a church mouse with a cold. She was asleep. I shouldn’t have called.

“Gracie?”

“Legs? What time is it?”

“Gracie, something strange is happening. Can you meet me somewhere? I’m down town.”

“What time is it?” she says again, still struggling to break the hold of sleep.

“About three. I’m sorry Gracie, I just…”

“No, it’s okay, I know…Give me a minute.” she takes a deep breath.

“I’ll meet you at Wester’s in half an hour. Is that okay?”

I can’t help but give a big sigh of relief. I tell her it’s fine and thank her. Maybe too much.

No, she’ll understand. She’s smart. She’ll know what to do. She’ll know just what to tell me.

At least, this is what I tell myself on the walk to Wester’s.

I grab the woman by the arm when she doesn’t get to her feet quick enough. I put the gun back in my waistband. I’ll need to be quiet here. I could punch a hole clean through this woman at this range. This woman, I think. Who might be my mother.

Could I do it?

I can’t do this right now.

My head needs to be clear.

I take a deep breath.

We creep into the cave-like darkness of the back hallway. I look for something heavy. Something nasty. I remember there was a work crew here some weeks back, tearing up the concrete floor with pickaxes to get at the plumbing. It would be too good to find a pickaxe right now.

I hear the groaning of the smashed back door. They’re inside. As many as ten of them, assuming there aren’t more cars on the way. Could’ve waited. Got carried away.

My foot bumps something that sounds like metal on the concrete and tile. I grope for it and find a wooden shaft, about waist-high. I pick it up and tentatively touch the end of it. A shovel. But it will do just fine.

Around the corner that leads to the kitchen in the back of the restaurant, I press the woman against the wall. Barely audible, I tell her if she moves from this spot before I tell her to, she will die. She doesn’t have time to think about it before I’m gone. This will be easy.

Framed in dim silhouette, I see four figures, four distinct shapes moving, darkness on darkness. More outside. I can do this.

“Frankie, I can’t see a god damn thing,” says one of the shapes.

“Shut up,” says a second shape.

“Someone hit the lights, would ya?” says the first voice again, a nasal bleating. “I can’t see a god damn thing.”

“Shut up, Teddy,” says the second voice. “Or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?”

None of them noticed the muffled sound of wood on Frankie’s spine.

“Come on, tough guy,” the shape called Teddy says. “You wanna square up with me in a dark hallway and me carrying a machine gun, be my friggin’ guest.”

“Would you both shut up?” demanded a third voice. “I’m trying to find the god damn light switch, alright?”

The light switch is right in front of me.

There’s that familiar click and suddenly, the lights are all on. Three of them still standing. Frankie, presumably dead on the floor.

Before any of them can register what’s happening, I’m swinging the business end of the shovel like I’m getting paid for it. One, two, three squashed-melon heads later, and the only sound any of them make is the thud of a cadaver hitting the floor.

I turn the lights off.

I wonder who has this much firepower to waste on something like this. Two of the four had machine pistols. The other two had AK’s. I thought I spotted a grenade before the light went off, clipped to one of their belts.

I creep back to the spot where I left the woman, but she isn’t there.

I punch the wall where she was standing. I could do it.

Even if she’s telling the truth?

I could do it.

I pluck the grenade off of the third man’s belt. It’s the kind that detonates on impact. The fun kind.

“Lou, Frankie,” says the fourth voice of the fifth man. “What the hell are you morons doing in there? Turn the lights on!”

I pick this fifth man up by the head and toss him back the way he came, right through the door. He lands between the two cars. I toss the grenade after him, a nice underhand throw with a little hang time on it. The grenade lands gently in his lap. It still blows up, taking the man, his crotch and both cars with it into the great cindery beyond.

There’s even a lovely secondary explosion when the cars gas tanks ignite.

The last one left, a charred barbeque-smelling husk, is too deep in shock to answer any questions I might have and so I put my boot through his still-smoldering face. I didn’t have any questions anyway. You don’t need to know why someone is trying to kill you. You just have to know how to kill them first.

Now, I think, is a good time to tell you a little bit about my past.

My earliest memory is of looking up from a small bed, bundled up in foul smelling blankets at a man with a bald head and thin silver spectacles. This was the priest at a church-run orphanage far away on the outskirts of town. That is where I was raised. I tried my best to do good by the priest and the nuns who brought me up, but it always seemed as though the path of sin was one I was predisposed to. The priest would beat me frequently for my transgressions. He would tell me that it was in my blood to do wrong, that nothing more could be expected from the abandoned son of a whore.

When my growth spurt hit, the priest realized he would not be able to control me with beatings any more and turned me out into the world to make my way on my own. I’d like to think that I figured things out pretty quickly. A lot of it was because I was lucky enough to have met The Boss. He found me one December night, cold, thin, hungry, robbing a sandwich cart. He took me in and let me run errands for him. A few years later I started doing proper work for him. A few years later, well…Here we are.

I never knew my parents, and I never much cared to. And now, this woman is telling me she’s my mother, and my head is spinning. It feels like someone has stabbed me in the heart with a giant corkscrew and just keeps twisting. My mouth goes dry. My ears start to ring.

“Nice try, lady. Now give me one good reason not to shoot you for trespassing.”

I draw the hammer back on the gun and the woman yelps.

“Arthur, no! Please, you’ve got to believe me! Please! Here, look!” she motions frantically towards the shattered picture frame on the floor. “The picture, please, Arthur, look at it.”

Her eyes are wide and scared and bloodshot and desperate. I look at the picture frame, then back at those bloodshot gray eyes. I tell her to pick it up. Slowly.

“And stop calling me Arthur. My name is Legs.”

She swallows hard and bends down, very, very slowly to pick up the picture frame. She plucks the photo out of the shattered glass. Very, very slowly, she puts her hand out to me with the photo between her first two fingers. I take it and move back. I keep my gun trained on her. I look at the photo.

In it is a young couple, a man and a woman. The woman is holding an ugly baby. The man has slicked-back, greasy looking black hair. The woman is wearing big dark sunglasses and a scarf around her head. The baby is drooling like an imbecile.

It’s her. The woman in the photo is the woman behind the desk, but I would guess roughly twenty five years ago. The man is The Boss. The baby is me.

I drop the photo.

“You see?” the woman whimpers. “Oh, Arthur, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. I know you can’t forgive me…I don’t expect you to. What I’ve done is terrible, what has happened to you is terrible…Oh, Arthur, I know you won’t ever forgive me, but you’ve got to let me try!”

I really might throw up. The coffee isn’t sitting well.

“Shut up,” I say. It’s not a request. “If you open your mouth again without me telling you to, I’m going to shoot you. Do you understand?”

Her lips tremble. She covers her mouth with her hand and nods. I bend down and pick up the photo. I sit down across from her at the desk. I force myself to look at the photo again. It could be a fake. That drooling baby could be anyone. But I know. The way when you hear a bell ring, like a big church bell, loud and strong and solid and beautiful and true, the way you can feel it like a physical force, like a wave washing over you at the beach. I know it’s real. I know it’s me and The Boss and this woman who claims she’s my mother. But I can’t be certain.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her finally. “Keep it short,” I add. I crumple the photo up and put it in my jacket’s inside pocket. I lift the gun up, reminding her I’ve got it pointed at her when she hesitates before answering. “Today,” I tell her. She swallows hard.

“I…I don’t know what I’m doing here. I came to find you, I suppose. I don’t know why I thought you’d be here. Woman’s intuition, I guess.”

She’s lying.

“How did you know where my key was?” I ask and all the color goes out of her again. She’s thinking.

“I—I’ve been watching you. Since the funeral. I saw you at the funeral and I saw you talking to that dog, Lusky, and I knew something was wrong. I followed you. I saw you reach up and grab the key one night and then I came here tonight. I used one of the trash cans around the back to reach it. I’m sorry. It’s there, on the desk,” she says and points. There’s my key on the corner of the desk. I reach over and put it in my pocket, then sit back in the chair, which creaks unabashedly under my weight.

My head is starting to clear.

“Nice try,” I tell her. “Lying to me is not a good way to keep yourself from getting shot. I haven’t been here since the night The Boss got shot. You didn’t follow me anywhere after the funeral. If you’ve been watching me, it’s since before The Boss got shot. So, how long?”

It’s a lovely feeling, making someone’s lie come falling down all around them. She looks like she’s trapped behind a crumbling dam.

“Arthur, please, I just—” she starts.

“Stop calling me Arthur,” I interrupt. “You don’t know me. You don’t get to say my name like it doesn’t matter. Now how long?”

She swallows hard and says: “Not long. Two weeks, maybe.”

“What are you actually doing here?”

She hesitates. The wheels are spinning.

“The truth,” I tell her. “Or I shoot you. I ain’t had a mother in twenty five years. You’re just more mess to clean up to me, no matter who you claim to be.”

“I know about the deal you made with Lusky, and I know about the deal Lusky made with Cosmo. I came to tell you that you’re walking into a trap. The deal isn’t like Lusky said. And I know you have problems with things like reading, especially legal documents, so I know you never would have found it on your own. The deal’s bad. There are bi-lines and sub-clauses. By declaring yourself the next of kin under the false name Lusky got you, you’re also signing a waiver stating that if anything should happen to you, Lusky is named as the sole benefactor. He gets you to sign the papers, then he snuffs you and takes over. You’re going to be signing over everything Cosmo worked for for the last three decades if you go to that office tomorrow morning and sign those papers. I came to convince you not to do it, because you can do it without Lusky.”

I’m not quite sure what she means.

“You are the next of kin, Arthur. You’re Cosmo’s son. You’re my son. I have the DNA tests to prove it. You don’t need the fake papers Lusky gave you to claim the inheritance. All you need to do is show up.”

A chill runs up my spine. I have to remind myself to breathe. I look at this woman, claiming to be my mother. I’ve never had to deal with this kind of a situation before. I feel my head getting clouded.

On a small array of video screens, the closed-circuit surveillance system wired into The Boss’s office, I see movement. Two cars have just pulled up around the back. I remember that I left the back door wide open. I can’t believe how dumb I am.

I’m on my feet.

“Are they yours?” I ask the woman, gesturing at the small monitor with my gun. She whirls around and looks at the screen, then back at me and shakes her head. I nod.

“We should leave.”

I find the first of them downtown. The files Lusky gave me are some real professional work. I look right to the addresses. It’s still early. Thugs only go out at night. I hail a cab.

I knock on the door and the thug who blasted The Boss opens the door. He’s still got a length of bandage around his hand where The Boss got him with his straight razor. His numb eyes go wide when he recognizes me.

“You!” is all he manages to utter before I’m driving my fist into his face. It makes a sound like two steaks slapping together while porcelain breaks in the background. His head snaps back and there’s a spray of blood with teeth in it. This gets on my shirt, which is one I just washed. I bend down and hoist him back to his feet. He’s out cold. His eyes are rolled back into his head and his tongue droops out of the corner of his mouth. I punch him again and let him fall to the ground with a sound like fruit falling down the stairs.

I close the door and lock it, then I light a cigarette.

I don’t give him a chance to talk. I torture him, break his fingers, then his knees, then his elbows and then his toes. I stuff a sock in his mouth and duct tape it there to keep him from screaming. After the second knee, he’s bawling like a baby. I spend the afternoon kicking him around the apartment. I find a cabinet full of wrenches and screwdrivers and pliers and then I use those on him, too. He looks at me so pathetically.

I finish him off by picking him up by the neck and pitching him like a baseball out the window. He falls five stories and lands on a parked car. A woman screams, just like in a movie. I leave the apartment fast, but calm, before anyone thinks to even look up. On the ground, there’s a small crowd gathered around the trashed car and the trashed thug.

I don’t believe it, but he’s still gurgling. Someone is screaming to call an ambulance. I step close to the thug and lean in close.

“You got it easy,” I whisper in his ear. I reach into my waistband and pull my gun. “The others won’t be so lucky.”

I pull the trigger. I pull it again to make sure. The small crowd is growing, and now there’s more people screaming. I hail a cab.

I’m gone.

It’s about 7 pm when I’m through. This leaves me with fifteen hours to find out what’s so important to Lusky about the shares. It’s going to be a long night.

I tell the cabbie to drop me somewhere with cheap coffee. None of that chain crap. I like my coffee with a layer of grease on top, from a pot that hasn’t had more than a light rinsing between brews in years.

He lets me out on a corner and I pay him. It’s a little diner, Maura’s. I drink two pots straight and leave a big tip.

I arrive, once again by taxi, at the corner closest to The Crab. The lights are all out and it doesn’t look like there’s anyone inside. It’s been closed ever since The Boss went. I wait for the cab to pull away, then walk around to the back door, the staff entrance. I reach up to the top of a light fixture over the back door to grab my key. I figure it’s easier to leave it here, and no one could reach up there without bringing a step stool. And besides, who would want to break into The Crab?

My key is missing.

I lunge for the door, but it’s locked. I reach up and check again for the key, but it’s really not there. Frantically, I check my pockets. I grab ahold of the door knob, almost reflexively, and give it a good yank. It pops right out, the lock inside snapping clean from its fittings. The door swings gently open.

I pull my gun from my waistband and step cautiously inside. It’s dark.

Moving in the dark through this hallway is easy. I feel like a bat, navigating by sonar. I listen. I move as quietly as I can towards The Boss’s office. When he was alive, I would never have dreamed of going into his office without permission. But The Boss is gone. He would understand.

The first sign of anything amiss is a thin line of light projecting from the crack under the door of The Boss’s office. Someone is here. I can almost smell them.

I press close to the door. There is a soft, trembling sound, almost like coughing coming from the other side. Whoever it is, isn’t moving around. They aren’t moving anything else, either. Sleeping? Waiting? How many? These and other questions flood my mind, but my body knows what to do. I should always remember to listen to my gut. My head gets clouded so easily. Lugs like me should always listen to their guts.

I kick the door to splinters and get ready to make a mess.

Sitting in The Boss’s old chair behind his heavy oak desk is a woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. A pair of dark sunglasses are on the desk in front of her. She’s holding a small square wooden object. A picture frame. She screams and drops it, and the glass shatters.

“Don’t shoot!” she shrieks. “Please don’t shoot!”

I don’t. But I keep the gun trained on her. She knows the drill. She puts her hands up. She looks at me and I see her lips tremble. She’s older. I can see the wrinkles at the corners of her glassy gray eyes and her thin mouth. She’s been crying. That was the coughing sound, I realize. Buy why?

I stand silently, utterly still. I see her bloodshot eyes down the barrel of my gun and I decide whether to waste her or not.

“Who are you?” I demand, finally breaking the silence.

She replies by bursting into tears.

I haven’t got time for this.

“Who are you?” I say again, louder, more forcefully and she drops her arms. She covers her face with her hands and sobs like a fire hydrant in the summer.

“So you really don’t know?” she manages to squeak out between sobs. “You really don’t know?”

There is a look of utter defeat on her face. The color has all gone out of her, the way The Boss looked all done up in the hospital. She sobs.

“Don’t know what? Lady, what are you talking about?”

“Oh, Arthur,” she sobs. The hair stands up on the back of my neck. My name is Arthur. My real name is Arthur.

“Oh, Arthur, don’t you recognize your own mother?”