The Golden Globe

She looked down at the dog in the crook of my arm, then back at my face. Recognition dawned.

By the time I saw the right hook coming, it was way too late. I sat down hard, and put my hand to my nose. Jesus, did it hurt!

"Can I come in?" I honked, and stared at a handful of blood.

"How could you have the nerve to come here?" she shouted. "After what you did to me. You walked out and left me for that monster!"

She was pacing up and down the small living room of her apartment. She'd been over this same ground before, dozens of times in the last ten minutes, but I knew she had to get it out of her system. She would, eventually. There had been a moment of quiet as she stared down at me, perhaps a little surprised at what she had done, but a long way from regretting it. She had pulled me up and in, slammed the door behind me, and the tirade began.

She yelled at me as she shoved me toward the couch, harangued me as she went to the kitchen for a wet rag and some ice, screamed abuse as she hurled the cold pack at me, fumed and muttered as she picked up the ice and wrapped it up again and thrust it at me defiantly.

I just sat there with my head lowered. The rag was red now, but the bleeding had stopped. My nose throbbed a little, but I didn't think it was broken.

Toby sat at the other end of the couch, as far away from me as possible, and watched her pace the floor, licking his lips nervously from time to time. By sitting on the couch I think he meant to signal he was still with me in spirit, but by taking the distant ground he was letting me know that, if she gets violent again, Sparky, you're on your own. Toby was an artist, not a pugilist. If I'd wanted a bodyguard, I'd have bought a Rottweiler.

If you don't intend to resume the violence, you eventually reach a point where most of the anger is burned out of you. There's a lot of different ways to go from there. She might try to throw me out. I wasn't going to let her, but she might try. She might begin to cry. I thought that was likely. What she did, though, was sort of wind down. She paced a few more times, trying to think of more original ways to abuse me, paced slower and slower, and came to a halt looking down at Toby. The faintest of smiles touched her lips.

"Nice dog," she whispered.

"His name is Toby," I said. It was the second sentence I'd spoken to her since I found her lying on the bloody bed.

Toby knows his cues. He bounced down to the floor and stood up on his hind legs and did a little dance, pink tongue hanging out fetchingly. He knows he's cute. He did a back flip, then sat and barked, three times. Poly made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.

"My name isn't Trevor, though," I said. It set her off again. I had pretty much expected it would.

"Oh, really?" she hooted, voice dripping with scorn. "Imagine my surprise. The police told me Trevor Howard was some kind of old actor, and he'd been dead for two hundred years. Can you imagine how foolish I felt?" She ranted on a little longer, but her heart was no longer in it and she ran down again. This time she sat, and Toby jumped up in her lap and licked her face. Her hand came up absently to pet him, and he curled up in her lap, looking up worshipfully.

There's this thing about dog people—and Poly was definitely a dog person—that makes us unable to be totally angry, totally sad, or anything but calmed and at least a bit pleased when our hands are stroking a dog's back and scratching behind his ears. Toby played the moment for all it was worth, arching sensually, licking his lips. A cat would have purred, but Toby doesn't need to. A dog's body language is at least as eloquent.

Perhaps I'd be able to talk now.

"First, I'd like to say I'd never have left you there if I thought you were in danger from him." She looked over at me dubiously, but said nothing. "I know, you're thinking, 'Then why did he come back?' Well, obviously because, thinking about it a little more, I wasn't sure I was right." I would not point out that coming back was one of the bravest things I ever did. If she could accept that I would do anything brave she would see that for herself. If she couldn't, no amount of pleading my case would do any good. Besides, being silent about one's heroics is the mark of a hero, or so you'd believe if you watched any adventure story. Since most of us get our information about situations of melodramatic heroism from just such stories as that, I hoped her own mind was conditioned to think that way. Myself, I've met people who had done things I thought heroic who never shut up about it. Most people like to crow, hero and coward alike. The strong, silent, ah-shucks type from old western movies is rare indeed. But I knew the role, and I played it.

I had noticed the last three fingers of her right hand were pink and a little raw looking. They had been the ones severed by Izzy in his brief interrogation. Those fingers were undoubtedly in some compost pile in the bowels of Oberon. The ones she wore now were replacements.

"At least you'll play the violin again," I said, searching for a positive spin. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I said it, and it was, but not for the reason I had thought. She sat Toby on the couch and stood. Hand up, fingers spread, she shook it at me. The new fingers seemed a little loose.

"I'm glad you're so pleased about that," she grated. "I'm sure you've never heard anything about 'muscle memory,' since I doubt you've ever had any fingers pulled off."

I had to admit I hadn't.

"It works like this. You learn a manual skill—typing, throwing a baseball, playing the violin—the skill gets imprinted in your brain." She tapped her lovely noggin with her uninjured index finger. "The imprinting's still there, even if your arm gets cut off. But you replace the arm, the signals get sent down to your fingers, and the muscles don't know how to respond. They haven't been developed properly to do what you want them to. And they think there's some memory in the muscles, too, so they have to relearn the skill, just like if you'd had part of your brain taken out and some other part tries to take over. This finger right here"—she extended her right ring finger—"is the klutziest digit you own, except for your toes. It takes years to get it able to do the things you need to do to play the violin, even moderately well. This one isn't much better." She was holding up her pinkie. "But the finger I'd really like you to study is this one." She held up her middle finger and extended her hand toward me. "Fuck you, whoever you are. Now get out of my apartment."

"I just have a few things to say, and then I'll go, if you still want me to." I waited, took her silence as acceptance.

"The first thing is, my real name is Sparky Valentine."

She gave me a reaction I'm used to: a blank stare. For a lot of people, saying I'm Sparky is like telling them I'm Mickey Mouse, or the tooth fairy.

"Crazy," she muttered.

"There's no way I can prove it to you, but I want you to know I'm being straight with you." It's true, you know. Even wearing my "natural" face, I don't look a lot like little Sparky. I could do the voice, but that would prove nothing. There was a time when every two-bit comic in the system could do Sparky, and most of his gang, too. Many of them were better at it than I was. When I finally grew up, my voice changed just like other people.

"What I'm here to ask you," I plunged on, "is if you'd like to get back at him. If you'd like to give him one in the eye."

There was no need to explain who "he" was. I saw wild interest grow in her face at the idea of getting back at him. She leaned forward, intense.

"Can we kill him?" she whispered.

Well, that was direct enough. I resolved never to get her angry at me again.

"I doubt it. I mean, as a practical matter, he's very hard to kill. I've tried three times now, and he's still out there. And personally, my hope is to never be on the same planet with him again, much less close enough to him to take a shot."