I accepted lunch, tho’ I hardly knew him.
He seemed excessively proud of his kitchen skills:
He served broccoli.
He melted cheese soup as a sauce for the broccoli.
The burgers were the size of meatloafs.
“Come down stairs for another beer” he said.
So I did – but he suddenly appeared beerless,
and naked.
He tried a pin-move on the couch, but overshot,
and I slid away. He tripped over his own feet
as he tried to follow me out from under,
and fell to the floor.
Magically, I wield
a footstool like a hatchet, and I strike.
I have time to see that I have left
a triangular puncture in his spine
before he shouts, arched up like a cobra,
“You killed me!”
There will have to be a fire,
I decide.
The face in the window woke me but I did not stir.
When the face was gone, I got up, and
I furtively followed the face’s owner around the house,
peeking at him from the back from inside the house.
I hear glass breaking.
I hear movement in the house – not my own.
I look in the great room, and there he is:
a raw-boned red-head sitting on my couch,
counting booty that was mine,
without apology, he jumps to his feet and
starts throwing punches even tho’
both hands are still full of money.
It’s a battle.
I duck away and he trips over the coffee table.
falling awkwardly and slowly to his hands and knees
still off-balance, momentarily, a harmless assailant,
he’s just looking back up
when I hit him with a chair.
I took one last glance in the hall mirror, adjusted my tie and squared my shoulders.
In the street in front of my house, they wait.
They watch as I walk to my car.
I see them without looking at them, so’s not to give offence:
with their red hair and beards,
in their denim coveralls and too-small gimme-caps
It’s going to be a trial.
