Perfect Little World(7)
“His car is gonna run out of gas, bet on it,” one of them said, a little louder than before, as a matter of fact. “Why show the needle of the gas gauge unless he’s going to run out of gas later?”
“Well, of course it’s going to run out of gas, shit, man, that’s a given.”
Hal turned around again and whispered, his voice cracking a little with exasperation, “Guys? Could you not talk?”
“Why don’t you and your daughter move to another seat if it’s bothering you so much, man?”
Hal, his twitchiness and anxiety sometimes obscuring the fact that he was solid and fairly tall, stood up and turned to face the still-seated men. “Why don’t I fucking move you guys out of the fucking theater,” he said.
“C’mon, Hal,” Izzy said, immediately pulling on his arm, which he snatched from her grip. “Let’s just move.” She tried to calm him while knowing, the way he kept snapping his head to the side, that he was already well on his way toward that frightening stage of his mania, where he smashed something into tiny pieces.
“Jesus, man, relax,” one of the men said, smirking. “We’re sorry, okay? We’ll shut up.”
Izzy leaned toward Hal and said, “Let’s get the heck out of here, please?”
Hal kissed her and then turned back to the movie. “I cannot fucking figure this thing out to save my life.”
Less than a minute later, just enough time to believe that order had been restored, disaster narrowly averted, the man sitting behind Hal kicked viciously at the back of the seat. As if coiled in anticipation of this very action, Hal snapped around and punched the man squarely in the face. The man recoiled from the impact and slumped in his seat, stunned by the act. Before the other man could even react, Hal had jumped over the seats and was on top of him; they were wrestling and Hal kept grabbing for leverage while the man shouted, “Take it easy. Take it easy, man. Take it easy.”
Izzy didn’t realize it, but she was pounding on Hal’s back, trying to get him to disengage from the fight, to get his feet moving out of the theater. “Please, Hal, we have to go.”
By now, the rest of the audience was turned to watch the fight. “You had to be a fucking asshole, didn’t you? Like the world isn’t already full of fucking assholes,” Hal said, his voice still barely above a whisper, as if trying to be courteous to everyone else. Izzy nearly fell over the back of her seat trying to maintain her grip on Hal’s shirt. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Finally, Hal pulled away after he managed to land a single punch to the man’s ear, which made him howl in pain. Izzy pulled Hal down the aisle, out of the theater, not stopping to look around. The pocket on Hal’s shirt was nearly ripped off, and the knuckles on his right hand were as red as raw meat, but, otherwise, there was no immediate sign of a fight on his person. No one was yet following them out of the darkened theater. They moved swiftly but calmly out of the building, past the concessions, past the ticket taker, into the parking lot. Izzy tossed the keys to Hal and they sped onto the main road, putting traffic between them and the fucking calamity that they had made.
After nearly ten minutes of uneasy silence, both of them breathing so hard and their bodies radiating so much heat that the windows constantly fogged, Hal finally said, “Are you okay?”
Izzy was still unable to speak. She just nodded, not able to look at Hal.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his foot touched the accelerator at this same moment and the car kicked forward. “Everything hit at once. I need things to hit in a sequence and things just hit all at once. I don’t know how to handle myself sometimes.”
“How is your hand?” she finally asked.
“It hurts, actually. I’m not going to say that I haven’t punched someone before, but I don’t think I’ve ever punched two people in the same fight. The human hand is not made for that kind of activity.” He was trying to lighten the mood in the car, but Izzy would not let him. This was what always happened, the tension ratcheting up until Hal exploded and then, a mess made, he grew sheepish and conciliatory. He grew self-deprecating, not quite self-loathing, and he hoped that his renewed good humor would save the day.
“That was bad, Hal,” she told him. “That was awful to see.”
Hal didn’t respond, just kept driving. After a few minutes, he said, “I’ll be a good father, Izzy. I’ll do every single thing you ask in order to be good to you. I fuck up, I know that, but I always clean up after myself.”
Izzy was shocked to remember that she was pregnant, had forgotten for a few moments that a baby was inside her and waiting to make itself known to the world. She had, in that rush of violence and activity, simply been a girl who was struggling to keep up with the awful shit around her. It was familiar and she fell into it without hesitation. Now she put her hand on her stomach and felt nothing on the other side.
“Cleaning up after yourself is not the same as fixing things,” she said. “It’s not the same thing, Hal.”
“I love you, Izzy,” he said. Izzy did not like this phrase and was both upset and weakened to hear it from Hal. Her family did not say things like this and she had worked so hard to believe that it was something that she did not need. She did not value love nearly as much as she valued kindness, not knowing if they were the same thing.