I was inching my way back toward the couch as we talked. Now that I knew about his plan to cut off a nipple, using the gun didn't seem like such a bad idea.
“Hold still,” he said. “You're not going to make me chase you all around the apartment, are you?”
“I just want to sit down. I don't feel so good.” And this wasn't so far from the truth. My heart was flopping around in my chest, and the roots of my hair had started to sweat. I plopped down on the couch and dipped my fingers into the space between the cushions. No gun. I ran my hand under the cushion next to me. Still no gun."
“What are you doing?” he wanted to know.
“I'm looking for a cigarette,” I said. “I need one last cigarette to steady my nerves.”
“Forget it. Time's up.” He lunged at me with the knife, I rolled away, and he plunged the knife into the couch cushion.
I let out a shriek and scrambled on my hands and knees, looking for the gun, finding it deep under the middle cushion. Munson came at me again, and I shot him in the foot.
Bob opened one eye.
“Son of a bitch!” Munson yelled, dropping the knife, grabbing his foot. “Son of a bitch!”
I backed away and held him at gunpoint. “You're under arrest.”
“I'm shot. I'm shot. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna bleed to death.”
We both looked down at his foot. The blood wasn't exactly pouring out. A small spot by the little toe.
“I must have just nicked you,” I said.
“Jesus,” he said, “what a lousy shot. You were right on top of me. How could you have missed my foot?”
“Want me to try again?”
“It's all ruined now. You ruined it just like always. Every time I have a plan you have to go ruin it. I had it all worked out. I was going to come over here, cut off a nipple and set you on fire. And now it's ruined.” He threw his hands into the air in disgust. “Women!” He turned and started limping toward the door.
“Hey,” I yelled, “where are you going?”
“I'm leaving. My toe is killing me. And look at my shoe. It has a big rip in it. You think shoes grow on trees? See, this is what I'm talking about. You have no regard for anybody but yourself. You women are all alike. Just take, take, take. Gimme, gimme, gimme.”
“Don't worry about the shoe. The state will see to it that you get a new one.” Along with a nice orange jumpsuit and ankle chains.
“Forget it. I'm not going back to jail until everyone's convinced I'm insane.”
“You've made a believer out of me. And besides, I've got a gun, and I'll shoot you again if I have to.”
He held his hands in the air. “Go ahead and shoot.”
Not only couldn't I bring myself to shoot an unarmed man, but I was out of bullets. They'd been on my shopping list. Milk, bread, bullets.
I raced past him, snatched my shoulder bag off the wall hook and dumped everything onto the floor, since that was the fastest route to finding my cuffs and pepper spray. Munson and I both dived at the scattered junk, and he won. He snatched the pepper spray off the floor and hopped to the door. “If you come after me I'll spray you,” he said.
I watched him do a sort of gallop down the hall, favoring the injured foot. He stopped at the elevator doors and shook the pepper canister at me. “I'll be back,” he said. Then he stepped into the elevator and disappeared.
I closed and locked the door. Terrific . . . for what that was worth. I went to the kitchen and searched for something comforting. The cake was gone. The pie was gone. No Mounds bars hid forgotten in the dark recesses of a cupboard. No booze. No Cheez Doodles. The peanut butter jar was empty.
Bob and I tried a couple of olives, but they weren't totally what the situation called for. “They need frosting,” I said to Bob.
I scooped up the mess on the foyer floor and dumped it back into my shoulder bag. I put the broken alarm on the counter, turned the lights off, and returned to the couch. I lay there in the dark, and Munson's parting threat kept replaying in my mind. It really didn't matter if he was crazy by design or for real; the bottom line was that I'd come close to being nippleless. Probably I shouldn't go to sleep until I got a bolt put on the door. He'd said he'd be back, and I didn't know if he meant in an hour or a day.
Trouble was, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I tried singing, but I drifted off somewhere in the middle of “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Last I remember I was at fifty-seven bottles of beer, and then I was jolted awake with the feeling that I wasn't alone in the room. I lay perfectly still, my heart skipping beats, my lungs in suspended animation. There had been no sound of shoes treading across carpet. No deranged-madman body odor disturbed the air around me. There was just the irrational knowledge that someone was in my space.
And then, without warning, fingertips settled on my wrist, and I was galvanized into action. Adrenaline spiked into my system, and I catapulted myself off the couch into the intruder.