The Impossible Fortress(51)
But Tyler was just getting warmed up. He twirled the crowbar like a baton and walked toward the aisle with all of the typewriters.
“Six months I worked here,” he said. “I swept the floors. I stocked the shelves. I fixed the whole goddamn inventory. That room on the second floor? It was a mess when I got here. I designed that room. I built those shelves.”
With the curved end of the crowbar, he hooked the mouth of a Brother portable typewriter and yanked it off the shelf. It landed with a crash and Tyler stepped over it, moving onto the next machine, an old-fashioned black Olivetti. “I showed up on time, I did my work, and the asshole fired me anyway.”
“You stole from him,” I said.
“Bullshit,” Tyler said. “I never stole a thing from this place. But I’ll tell you what happened, if you really want to know.”
The Olivetti hit the floor and split open like a melon, cracking down the middle and revealing its oily black innards. Tyler looked crazed, and I wondered if he was high on drugs, because what he said next was ridiculous: “First of all, Mary Zelinsky is the horniest bitch I’ve ever met. From the day I started working here, she couldn’t keep her hands off me. Every time Daddy turned his back, she’d start rubbing up against me. Pushing her tits in my face. I’d leave the store and she’d come racing after me on Market Street, hanging on my elbow like I was her boyfriend.”
He toppled three more typewriters, knocking them to the floor, then turned to a shelf of Elmer’s Glue—twelve white bottles with orange tips, arranged in rows like toy soldiers. With one swing of the crowbar they went scattering across the store. And through it all Tyler kept talking: “For weeks, I put up with her crap. I figure she’ll get over it, she’ll lose interest. But she doesn’t lose interest, she just gets worse! She’s sending me letters and song lyrics. So one day I lay it out for her: I say, ‘Sorry, but you are never going to be my girlfriend. It’s not happening, ever.’ And that’s when she runs to Daddy. Tells him I tried to steal a lighter. And the asshole fires me on the spot.”
By this point Tyler had stopped smashing stuff. He was concentrating on telling his story, holding my eye contact to make sure I was paying attention. I nodded in all the right places but I knew it was bullshit, just like his stories about Se?ora Fernandez and banging girls on the roof of the train station.
“Now, if that’s not bad enough,” Tyler continued, “Zelinsky spreads the word in town so no one will hire me. And pretty soon I can’t pay the insurance on my bike. And the day after it lapses, I swear to God, Tack pulls me over and there goes my license. Now I’ve got no job and no way to get around. All because of Mary and her dad. So this is my little way of saying thanks, understand?”
Maybe if I’d answered “Yes,” the night would have ended right there. We would have taken the magazines and the lighters to the roof; we would have crossed the bridge and gone home.
Instead I said, “You’re full of shit.”
Tyler stared back at me, astonished. But I couldn’t help myself. Someone had to say it: he was full of shit. He knew it, I knew it, anyone who knew Mary knew it.
“Me? I’m full of shit?”
“Mary would never go for you,” I said. “She’s too good for you.”
Tyler snorted. “You don’t know that girl at all.”
“I know who I believe,” I said.
And this really set him off. Tyler took aim at the nearest shelf, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat, toppling jars of ink and paste and rubber cement. He swung again and again, laying waste to everything in sight, smashing calculators and adding machines, flinging merchandise to the floor and stomping it with his shit-kicker boots. And all the while he was working his way toward me. I had my back against the Aiwa stereo that powered the store’s music; I pushed the Eject button on the tape deck, pocketed the cassette labeled “All Your Favorite ’80s Love Songs,” and got the hell out of the way. A moment later the stereo was on the floor; Tyler stomped it with the heel of his boot, smashing it into tiny pieces of plastic, like he was beating the life out of it. I kept telling myself that everything could be righted in the morning—everything could be reshelved—but Tyler was relentless, and my confidence was fading fast. He toppled the spinner rack full of batteries. He smashed dozens of reading glasses. He gouged the walls and shattered the light fixtures and pulled down the hand-lettered signs. If Rene hadn’t intervened, I’m not sure he would have stopped. His cousin had both duffel bags slung over his shoulders—they were so full of antique lighters and cigarette cartons, he couldn’t zipper them shut—and he stilled Tyler with a single touch on the shoulder. Rene didn’t have to say a word. We all understood what he meant: enough was enough. The store was trashed. It was time to go.
Tyler paused to catch his breath. All of the destruction had left him winded. “We’ll hit the computers on the way out,” he said, turning to the showroom. “She loves those fucking things.”
I stepped in front of him. “No.”
Tyler pulled back the crowbar, raising it over his head, allowing me a moment to change my mind. “Move.”
I lunged for the crowbar but didn’t have a chance. Tyler tripped me with his left knee, knocking me to the floor. I fell on the rack of reading glasses, and Tyler brought down the crowbar. It caught me in the side, and everything went white, like I was staring at the sun. The pain was so sharp and sudden, I nearly threw up.