Blue Eyes by Jerome Charyn

Coen. He would take the cop to Mexico, but he wouldn’t wear his high shoe above Fourteenth Street. He no longer thought of it as Arnold’s boot. He hadn’t changed the laces or smoothed the wrinkles out. He didn’t want a fancyman’s shoe. No cop in the world could make him give it back. Not even the great Isaac, who was washing nickels in Papa Guzmann’s sink. The Chinaman could have rushed. The Dwarf with his pistol, a Colt Commander .45, which he would bury in a lot on Prince Street before his Mexican trip. He could have left some smoke on the lapels of the bouncer girls, Janice and Sweeney. But he would have frightened Odile. So he approached the door with his gun hand free, the Colt 45 tucked inside the quick-draw holster sitting over his heart. The Chinaman had only two hours to spare; then he would have to ditch the gun and find Coen at the airport.
    Odile watched him from the curtains. She hadn’t left The Dwarf in thirty-six hours. Even when the Chinaman disappeared from time to time, she suspected he was pissing in a hallway down the block or buying cans of beer. Janice woke Sweeney, who had been snoring comfortably on a cot behind the bar. “The Chinee’s coming,” Janice said. “He’s crossing over.” The cousins had a gleam on their chins that didn’t suit Odile. She could sense the battle lines. The Chinaman would never be able to dodge Janice and Sweeney wearing that wicked shoe. He was foolish to rile the cousins. “Chino Reyes,” she screamed, “I’m not getting down with any of your customers if you don’t step back.”
    They snatched him up by his arms, lifted him over the doorsill (he was only a bantamweight, one hundred and seventeen pounds), and hurled him against the bar. Janice cupped her fist into the finger grooves of the brass knucks. The Dwarf was empty at six in the morning, and she could have the Chinaman at her own leisure, play cat and mouse with him first. Sweeney tore the holster off his chest, threw the gun into an ice pail. She held the Chinaman down while Janice nipped his ear until the blood came. Sweeney cautioned Odile. “Baby, close your eyes. It’s better if you don’t watch.”
    But Odile was already slapping at the brass knucks, dents in her palm from contact with the metal. “Sweeney, get her to stop. The Chinaman’s my problem.”
    â€œNot when he invades the premises,” Janice said. “Then he belongs to us.” She was having too much fun to heed Odile.
    â€œSweeney, I’ll stay out of here for life. One more mark on his ear and that’s it.”
    â€œDon’t listen to the bitch,” Janice told her cousin. “She’ll come crawling.”
    Sweeney was terrorized of having to work The Dwarf without Odile. She raised the Chinaman to his feet. He hung like some rag doll with one raw ear and a high-climbing shoe, his neck under Sweeney’s elbow. Odile catapulted him out of The Dwarf, hooking onto his suspenders with both hands, convinced that such a feather couldn’t have survived one of Janice’s attacks. She was pleased with the Chinaman although she didn’t intend to show it. “Moron,” she said, “you can lean on me if you want.”
    â€œDon’t stretch the suspenders,” was all he cared to say. No man or woman had ever tattooed the side of his face with brass knucks; he heard howlings in his ear. He sucked bits of red mop to preserve his sanity around such noise. Odile began to wonder why he was wetting his wig.
    â€œChino, I could carry you better without the boot.”
    But the Chinaman refused. He wasn’t going to leave his high shoe in the gutter no matter how deaf he became from the blasts inside his head. Odile brought him to her house. She soaked his ear in an iodine solution and dressed him in little cotton bandages. The howling stopped but the iodine sting caused him to bite into the