Page 66 of The Bad Weather Friend

Belatedly, Theron realized his assailant was standing at too great a distance to have broken his thumb. The assault had occurred when the old man had been vomiting forth a stream of obscenities and blasphemies, so transported by fury at the sight of Harper with the rabbit that he had insufficient peripheral awareness to notice that something of an unnatural nature had occurred. Cradling his injured right hand in his left, his shriveled face difficult to read but his voice rich with perplexity, he said, “Hey. What the? How did you?” At last, the fear he should have felt at first sight of Spike came upon him, but he was too proud to back down. “Get out of my house, get out, get out now, you piece of shit.”

“Uh-oh,” said Harper.

“Please do not call me names,” Spike said.

“Freak,” said Theron. “Piece of shit.Peasant.”

“I must insist that you apologize.”

Theron glared at Harper and then returned his attention to Spike. “Tell the slut to put down my Arabella.”

After a moment of silence, Spike said, “To whom do you refer?”

Unable to let go of his anger long enough to assess the truth of his position—or perhaps, in spite of his broken thumb, unable to imagine a grandee like himself in peril—Theron said, “There’s only one stinking slut in the room holding a rabbit. The slutty slut in the pink hat. Tell the bitch in the pink hat to put down my rabbit, and all of you syphilitic freaksget out of my house.”

“Uh-oh,” Benny said.

“She’s a lady,” Spike informed Theron. “Do not speak such filth to a lady.”

Ninety years of ever-increasing self-esteem had resulted in the extinction of any self-awareness Theron might once have possessed. The maniacal purity of his arrogance was a wonder to behold. “Lady?Lady?When my people get done with you,you’llbe a lady.”

To Benny, Harper said, “Good grief, he’s no better at tough talk than I am.”

Spike tossed the remote control to Benny, who gasped at the thought of what might happen if he dropped it. He caught it.

Without taking a step, the big guy reached out about ten feet with his right arm and seized the master of Palazzo del Coniglio by the throat, reached an equal distance with his left arm and gripped him by the crotch. Lifted him off his feet. Lifted him high. Turned him upside down. Joggled Theron as though toshake some sense into him. Turned him right side up. Dropped him into the armchair.

This time, the old man could not help but see the arms elongate and then return to their proper proportions. From him issued feeble and pitiable sounds of a small animal in grave distress, but those whimperings could not mask the drizzling noise that accompanied his decision to empty his bladder without bathroom or bedpan.

When he spoke, he couldn’t command his language to be coherent. “Don’t me touch. Back stay! What, what you? How you what?”

Spike towered over him, careful to remain beyond the stain that spread slowly through the antique Persian carpet. “I don’t want to hear your political opinions, your theories of social organization, your definitions of progress, your absurd vision of utopia, your justifications for destroying people and tearing down civilization to rebuild a better one. I don’tneedto hear them. For more than eighteen hundred years, I’ve listened to the same stupid, heartless words from others of your ilk. I want to know just a few things, a very few. First, Mr. Theron, what do you connivers call yourselves? You have some name for your crusade. Your type always does. A name that makes you feel enlightened, superior, above the common herd. What do you call yourselves?”

Incredibly, when Upton Theron achieved coherency, he still stubbornly resisted. Sounding shaky but nonetheless haughty, he invited Spike to consume a dinner of excrement.

Ignoring that offensive invitation, voice calm but no less ominous than before, Spike said, “I also want to know how many delusional narcissists are in your organization and what resources you have available to spend.”

Upton then suggested Spike stick his head up a feature of his anatomy that no one would find pleasant to inspect in such an intimate fashion.

Although Spike was an extraordinary contortionist who might have accomplished that incredible feat, he had no need to potty and therefore lacked the feature that Theron so rudely named.

The prospect of being murdered with a poisonous gas had passed, yet Benny grew more tense with each exchange between the craggle and the crackpot.

He glanced at Harper. She smiled. So did the rabbit.

To Theron, Spike said, “Finally, I want to know the name and whereabouts of the person at the top of your gaggle of imbeciles. Who decided that Benjamin’s career and life must be destroyed? Who gave the go-ahead? I want to settle this tonight.”

Remarkably defiant in his urine-soaked pants, Theron advised Spike to copulate with himself, give birth, and send the baby to a zoo where it would belong.

Benny didn’t fully grasp the logic of that insult, but there was a lot about Upton Theron and his kind that eluded understanding.

Thus far, Spike had shown more forbearance than Benny expected, but the giant had reached the end of his patience. He glowered down at the old man as though he might tie him in a Gordian knot and then sever it with a sword.

Clearly frightened but drawing some courage from the power of his contempt, Theron glared up at Spike from the sodden and reeking armchair of mortification.

“Perhaps,” said Spike, “you fail to understand my commitment to Benjamin, how very much he matters to me. Maybe it would help you to understand if I showed you what’s in my heart.”

With the style of legerdemain particular to cragglekind, Spike thrust a hand through his black T-shirt, into his chest, and tore out his heart. He held it toward Theron, a pound or two of blood-dripping muscle that continued to beat slowly, steadily. The rip in his shirt revealed a hideous cavity.

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