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Not only did he feel primed to take on Kate Root, he was ready to conquer worlds.
Swallow a pound of pig iron and spit it out as razor blades
. Deacon Landry said that.

The same as any other sickness, now that he was freed of it, it seemed mostly fuss about nothing. He had been temporarily indisposed, that was all. Put it down to the heat.

That’s not to say he wasn’t nervous. Of course he was. Like any other performer before a major premiere, his stomach disputed him, and his mouth was sandpaper dry, there was a burning behind his eyes. Moving at random through Ivana’s room, his balance felt wrong, and he had to watch himself every step, in case he veered off course, stumbled over a stray duck hunter.

But edginess was no bad thing; not as much. He had seen boxers in their dressing rooms before the Golden Gloves, and they were like men with St. Vitus’s dance. Twitching and jiggling, running to the bathroom, punching the walls. Anyone who didn’t know better would have said they were terror-blind.
So many pigs to slaughter. And anyone would have been dead wrong. Ready to rumble, that’s all those fighters were. Hot to trot.

Likewise with Willie. The way he felt, everything that he had suffered in the past month had been down to training. Roadwork, sparring, getting whipped into shape. What was that dumb Jane Fonda phrase?
No pain, no gain
. Well, just maybe it wasn’t so dumb after all. He had been subjected to hell on earth. Stripped naked, half-broken on the wheel. But he had come through. He was on the other side now, and if you wanted his humble opinion, not a thing alive could touch him.

What gave him such certainty? It was obvious. Everything that went down in the Zoo last night had been a dead giveaway. The style that snake had stared at him, challenging. And the way he had responded. Not cowed, in no way abashed, but rising up redoubled. Raw to conquer worlds. Take on any species of red hair that dared come at him, and bring it to order, to heel. And Kate Root, of course, she’d felt that. Sensed the change. The moment she came down the stairs and inside the room, brandishing that gun, she’d known him for another man. No pushover, no more. No shape or size of weak stuff, but a contender. A horse.

She hadn’t even tried to face him down. What would have been the point, when they both knew the truth? The way her hand flew to her throat, clutching at her nightdress. Her face and throat all flushed, and the gun spinning from her fingers, you couldn’t fake stuff like that. Nor the look she gave him when she ducked behind the counter, and handed him the knives. Not looking through him, no. Not as if she saw nothing, and there was nothing to see. But as if they were joined somehow. Allies, or partners in crime. “Seven
o’clock,” she’d said. Or whispered, to be exact. And Willie was set free.

Looking back now, all the way from the morning after, it seemed almost humorous to think. To picture that a few hours ago he had lived and died over three red hairs, used, shopworn, not even clean. It just went to show.

Part of him was tempted to walk away. Leave the old trout flat, wham bam thank you ma’am. That would have been the percentage move, no question; not a man at Chez Stadium would have blamed him. Still, he didn’t like to be discourteous. The true Man of Power did not run. Didn’t even jog.

Besides, the story was unfinished. Not to be vindictive, but he had a score to settle. The image of Kate Root in pink tights and a whalebone corset, pinned helplessly against a wall while he buzzed knives like hornets round her ears, teased him still. It was the least he deserved.

Of course, he’d need new shoes.

Picture a black boot.

A black boot, calf-length, in Verona leather. A black Verona boot, matte finish, with stacked heel and a tapered toe of timeless elegance terminating in a blocked wedge and decorated with a strong yet tasteful motif. A classical black boot embossed with a silver blade.

Of course, it would take finance. This time around, he would need to earn his feets the old-fashioned way; anything less would be bad karma. So he sprinkled his toes with sandalwood talc. To lend him intestinal fortitude while he suffered Mrs. Muhle.

This day she prepared a simple but nutritious lunch of Sauteed Chicken Livers with Blueberry Vinegar, the tart fruity sauce a perfect complement to the richness of the livers. “One pound livers halved, trimmed and patted dry, four tablespoons
sweet butter, four scallions including green tops chopped, vinegar, crème fraîche, and a generous pinch each of ground ginger, allspice, mace, nutmeg and cloves,” said Mrs. Muhle.

Her plateful cost her $300.

And afterwards, when Willie walked into A Shoe Like It, Mariella neither smiled nor flinched, merely bowed her head. Allowed the long black veil of her hair to shelter her. “What do you have in the way of half boots?” he asked.

“Would that be cash or theft?”

The exact design he had visioned was not in stock; no silver blades came to hand. Instead, he was forced to settle for a retro Beatle. The toes were too pointed, the heels too Cuban, and the leather was mere Padua, but at least they were not disfigured by buckles. Leaning forward to try them on, he smelled the bottled horses running wild in Mariella’s hair, and he felt himself rise and swell, stiffen.

That was when he knew he was truly saved. But he did not take advantage. For this moment it was enough to feel Mariella’s hands on him, her touch like answered prayers, and to breathe in that smell of virgin shoe leather which was the sweetest aroma in creation.

According to Deacon Landry, the dancer Bojangles had had his coffin lined with stage shoes that he didn’t get around to wearing in life. They were his conception of eternity’s scent; of paradise.

A thought like that, it brought you up short, forced you to take stock of deeper things. “Do you want to wear those right now?” Mariella asked.

“Ask rather,” said Willie D, “ ‘Do they want to wear me?’ ”

The manner the girl looked at him then, you would have thought he had proposed a suicide pact. Position one, mouth open wide; position two, mouth open wider. Obviously, the
spiritual plane was beyond her compass, she couldn’t begin to follow him there.

“It’s a concept,” he explained, off-hand. “I get them all the time.”

Which was the truth. When he was firing on all cylinders, his brain was an 007, licensed to kill. Sister Teresa with the moustache had told him once, if he didn’t slow his smartness down he would do someone an injury. Maybe even himself. “If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick,” she’d said. But that was just her ignorance. Being smart had a trick to it, same as anything else.

Keep It Simple
, was all.

There was an old movie, he couldn’t remember the title, but some of the lines had always stuck in his mind, they went right to the heart of everything. “Just don’t get too complicated,” this character said. “When a man gets complicated, he gets unhappy. And when he gets unhappy, he runs out of luck.”

Someone should carve those words in marble someplace.

But enough philosophy. What signified here was practice; strictly business. His new boots in street action proved tough and rigorous, yet bracing; in a nutshell, hard but fair. There was a jut to their strut worlds away from the armadillo’s languorous glide. It made him feel like a conquistador. A warrior born, and he carried the knives to prove it.

$73.26, after tax, still nestled in his hip pocket, but Willie didn’t take a taxi uptown, he walked. To let the Beatles get used to him, and he to them. To work up a full partnership, with no dirty secrets, and nothing held back.

All the way up Broadway he felt rabid, scraped raw, but exulting; a thoroughbred on the muscle. Every bitch he passed, it seemed, had legs up to her armpits.
Long, lissome and luciferous
—what man had said that? With their hard butts and tip-tilted
tits, creamed butter. And the pussies, oh those pussies; those sleek sugar slits. Jailbait jamming on the crosswalks, the green light meant Go.

At the corner of 42nd, a girl in cut-offs saw his boots, and she flashed him her scars. Razor slashes, they looked like, and maybe a cigarette burn or two.

If there was one thing that lit Willie’s candle, always had done, it was a quality deformity, and these looked aces high. Still he kept on keeping on. Kept his mind on the blowfish, and nobody else. Because she was his. Yes, she was. Because.

Only when he came in sight of the Chemical Bank clock, and Sweeney’s, and Blanco y Negro, did his guts start to lurch again. And what man would dare to downrate him for that? This was no easy riding, after all; it was his life’s destination.
Kill or be killed
, as the saying said. Confidence was one thing, arrogance another. Like at the Golden Gloves. Any fighter who stepped in the ring, let himself go naked under those lights, and he wasn’t aware that he might be carried out in a bodybag—that wasn’t bravery; that was just bone ignorance.

Outside the OTB, he paused and tried to whistle, but only dead air came out. So he made a stab at a ditty.
We Are the World
, he tried to sing. Forget it.

Ten minutes to seven, five, he walked round the block, then round again. One word like a tin hammer kept jarring on the off-beat.
Love
, it sounded like. That could not be right.

Kate Root at the moment she opened the door reminded him of someone he couldn’t place. Not Elvis, not George Washington. The Statue of Liberty, that was it. Which made no sense. Realistically, they didn’t look blood related, not even second cousins. But there was something in her attitude. Big shoulders squared, head high, a hint of a sneer. “You’re late,” she said.

And Willie D was powerless. Straight back to square one. Scrub all that stuff about the Golden Gloves, and warriors ready to rumble, he was paralysed. Never laid a glove on her, no contest. Under that flat, dead stare of hers, he was done before he’d begun.

At one glance, the night before was swept away. Maybe Osain’s feast had drugged his senses, or maybe it had been a trick of light. Whatever, he’d been fooled. There was no partnership here, there never would be.
You’re in thrall, that’s all
. Sandman Ames said that.

Couldn’t get his breath. His feet trapped in the retro-Beatles felt limp and slimy as slugs, and when he held his hands out for Kate to inspect he had the sickest hunger to be found wanting. Have his knuckles rapped with a ruler, collect red weals on his sweating palms. Get his ass kicked even.

Any excuse to weep.

But one thing he hadn’t noticed before: the hollow at the pit of her throat. A smooth round like a shallow cup, and there was a smear of juice in it, looked like it would taste sweet. Snake out your tongue, take a lick, a man would be refreshed. “That hair’ll have to go,” Kate said, and he was laid sprawling in the barber’s chair, she had the freedom of his head. The Harvey McBurnettes in their wine-red morocco case were sitting snug on his lap, a weight warm as a fat cat, he could almost hear the purring. “Sublimity,” Kate Root said.

Absolute surrender. In this place and time, it didn’t feel disgraceful; if anything, it felt like a reprieve. Then she took a step backwards and propped her foot on the wrought-iron rest, she scratched her leg like a ten-dollar whore. And there was only skin. A white patch raked by scratches. Dead ground, where no hairs grew.

And after that? Willie couldn’t say exactly. Could not have sworn on oath. For the moment he was too stunned to compute.
Just sat enthroned as if stuffed and mounted, until the woman shunted him to the floor. The old trout.

Her hands were all over his body, moving him and turning him, kneading him like play-dough. Talking at him, words he heard clearly but had no power to obey. “Constructed and predicated,” she said, and a knife was in his right hand, she was positioning his fingers along the handle. “One elementary act,” she said, and she pushed his arm upside his head, the blade pointed straight ahead.

Willie smelled Brasso.

Half the night he’d sat up with these knives, cleansing them of rust and grime, scouring them with steel wool, shining, buffing, honing; and now the sharp, goatish tang of metal polish acted on him like smelling salts. His mind crept back to him, he felt himself start to tremble. Then a solitary thought, quite distinct, detached itself from his fog.
I’ll kill him
, it said.

It calmed him right down.

It gave him his sanity, a branch to cling to until the dark flood receded and he could think calmly, in rhythm,
I’ll kill him, I will kill him
, rehearsing it like a jingle,
I will kill him, I’ll kill him, I will decease him dead
.

How did he know it was a man? Stood to reason. No woman would do such a thing to herself. Those hairs had been Kate Root’s uniqueness, she would never destroy them. But some man, spurned and jealous. Or no, not jealous, just possessive. The sort of dickless wonder who thought, if he couldn’t own beauty himself, beauty had no right to exist.

And all this time Kate Root kept handling his body, she did not stop talking. “Grasp the handle firmly in the same natural manner as if you were picking up a household hammer, keeping the plane of the blade vertical with your thumb extended along the top edge, acting as a pointer,” she said, and he saw her stretched on a bed, you could call it a vision. It was night,
a candle burned on the bedside table. Her face was buried in a pillow, her upper body covered by a sheet, but her left leg stuck out into the flickering light. Where the big thigh bulged, a man knelt by the bedside, his hands were fumbling with an open razor. The three red hairs looked bronze in the candlelight. A cross-draught ruffled them, and they swayed drowsily. The razor flicked, its blade glimmered, the three hairs vanished. Kate Root never stirred. Only mumbled in her sleep when the kneeling man rose, and revealed himself.

He was the colour of jaundice.

He wore a cutaway bartender’s jacket, a stained bow-tie, and he looked like someone had whacked his eye with a branding-iron, his mama probably.

That rouge Irishman. The defective. JoJo, or whatever his name was. Sneaking in the shadows like creeping Jesus, never saying a word, you’d think he was a choirboy, a freaking eunuch. When all the time he’d been plotting, lying in wait. An unfaithful servant. “The thrower should remember to avoid any wrist snap. The blade should be released as if it was hot butter,” Kate Root said. But Willie had no heart to follow her, he’d lost his driving wheel.