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Show Acting Alone Page 27Q Sam vacated the premises. Someone half-rational picked up the ashtray and followed the trail of blood out onto the porch. It was the young man, the only Jew not screaming now. Sam was leaning on a splintery porch rail, unable to focus his eyes or close his mouth or breathe or speak. His upper jaw and upper incisors had snapped under the alabaster. He heard himself making odd frog noises in response to the young Jew's efforts to comfort him. "My uncle liked you, Edwine, and wouldn't want you to suffer unjustly. So I'm interrupting the Kaddish to tell you that my Aunt Zeitl, in her grief, overestimates the influence of her husband's magazine. We tell her that neanderthals like your Mr. Wamsutter don't read such publications. But she must shift blame on someone within reach for her husband's and her brothers' murders." He paused. "My God, Aunt Zeitl really got you, didn't she?" asked his eyes, but not his circumspect mouth. In response Sam sent forth the second gush of blood across the flyspecked glass of Dr. Abraham's storm door. He was sickened by the solicitous eyes of the bereaved, the gory alabaster in his hands. From Sam's depths, up from the soles of his feet, came a throat-ripping screech. "Lawsuit!" Sam clawed both hands at his doubly destroyed nose, his absent spleen. "Lawsuit!" The door slammed in his face. |