– Gasp! I just. Fuck! Gasp! I just don’t know. I put it back in the box yesterday. Gasp! And last night after those guys were here, I got drunk. Choke! I got real fucking drunk. I fucking blacked out. I fucking shit my pants, for God sake. I don’t know where it is now. I left it in the box.

The sock.A staple.

– Where is the key?

I say nothing. I try to get as much air as I can. I breathe. I try to figure out a way to live. And Roman says something odd:

– Chew the fat.

I have no idea what that’s about until Blackie releases my arm and starts scrabbling under the bed and I hear Bud crying. Then I realize he meant to say, “Get the cat.”

In all fairness, he probably did say “Get the cat” and I only heard “Chew the fat.” Bud is giving Blackie hell under the bed and the bastard is grunting and cursing in Russian. My left arm is free now, but the circulation is all messed up and it hurts so bad that I can barely move it. Not that I’d know what to do with it if I could move it, but it’s nice not to have someone pulling at it for the moment.

– Man, just. Gasp! Just leave the cat. Just leave it alone. Gasp! Don’t hurt the fucking cat.

Aren’t there rules about this kind of thing? I mean, there are rules, right? You can do whatever you want to people, but you don’t hurt fucking animals.

As if on cue, the toiletflushes, the door to the bathroom opens and the Samoan returns. Enter the torturer of animals.

– Sorry, guys, I hadta drop a deuce. Hey, you got air freshener or what?

Sooner or later, even the most profound events of your life are reduced to concerns like this.

– Under the sink.

– I looked there.

– The kitchen. Not the bathroom sink, the kitchen sink.

– Fuck you, who keeps freshener under the kitchen sink?

– I do.

– What, your shit doesn’t stink? You don’t needno freshener in the bathroom?

Meanwhile, Blackie has got hold of Bud and is dragging him out of his hiding place, but the fur is flying. Bud comes into the light of day howling and clawing at Blackie’s eyes. As the Russian stands upright, I get my first look at Bud. He’swrithing this way and that, trying to get a piece of someone, but his left leg is twisted up real weird and he’s not moving it at all.

– What the fuck? What, man, what did you do to the cat?

Suddenly the Samoan reaches over and grabs Bud. He wraps those huge hands around the struggling cat and locks him up. Bud’s legs are all trapped, just his head sticks out of the Samoan’s grasp. And then Blackie hits him, the fucker makes a little fist out of his little hand and hits Bud in the face.

– I kicked this shit cat, this fucking shit cat I fucking kicked. This fucking shit cat, I tried to pet and it fucking bit me and I fucking kicked the shit cat. So fuck you, Mr. Bartender, can’t make a fucking cosmopolitan. Mr. Fucking Shitty Drink Maker with the Shitty Cat.

He punches Bud again. They get the sock back in my mouth before I can finish screaming at Blackie.

My head is clearing. The few minutes I had to breathe helped and the adrenaline has cut some of the haze and I’m starting to think a little more clearly. They want the key. I don’t know where the key is. As soon as they feel sure I don’t know where the key is, they will kill me. If I did know where the key was and I told them, they would get the key and then kill me. I have no idea what to do. Done battering the cat, Blackie gets a fresh grip on my left arm and stretches it back out.

Roman twists my head to the left so I can get a good look at the Samoan and whatever he’s gonna do to Bud. Red is still on my legs and he resettles himself, getting comfortable for the next round. Roman is getting cute.

– If you were the key and you had mysteriously disappeared, where would you be?

The sock is still in my mouth, but I grunt so he knows I’m following him.

– Where would you hide if you were a key?

Breathing is starting to be a problem again.

– Would you hide in this apartment?

Bud now has a scrape on the side of his face where he was hit. I can’t really tell if he’s awake or not. The Samoan tucks the cat into his left armpit, keeping all his limbs pinned except for the broken left leg.

– Would you put yourself in an envelope and send yourself somewhere?

Very gently, the Samoan has taken hold of Bud’s injured leg. He extends it until it’s fairly straight. I can see the little bend where the bone is broken. I can hear Bud give a mew of protest, but he’s clearly run out of fight.

– If you were a key that wanted to hide itself, would you give yourself to a friend for safekeeping?

The Samoan starts to twist Bud’s broken leg. He twirls it around and I can see the loose skin bunch up on itself at the break. Bud comes back to life for a moment, yowling and trying to wrestle free, but the Samoan has him pinned tight. A thin stream of urine is leaking out from under the Samoan’s arm, but he doesn’t notice or care. Bud is shaking now and probably going into shock and dying. I’m jerking around on the bed, but I can only move a couple inches in any direction and the boys dig in and hold me tighter. Black speckles are filling the corners of my eyes and that’s OK because I really don’t want to see what it looks like when the Samoan gives Bud’s leg another twist. If I were a key, where would I hide? I guess I would hide with a friend, yes, that sounds like me. Fuck, yes! I start screaming it.

– I took it to the bar! I took the fucking key to the bar! I gave the key to Edwin to put in the safe! The key is in the safe at the bar!

They pull out the sock so they can understand what I’m saying.

– On the roof, the key. Gasp! It’s on the roof. Gasp!

There is a pause. I breathe.

– Where on the roof?

– My. Gasp! My laundry bag is up there. Gasp! I did, I did my laundry yesterday. I. Gasp!

– Why is it with your laundry?

– I putit, I put the key in my pocket when I found it. And. Gasp! Later I did the laundry and I washed those pants. Gasp! It’s. It’s gotta be on the roof. I left it there.

– Why on the roof?

– Yesterday. When I saw you guys yesterday and I went to the roof. Gasp! I had it with me. I left it there. I forgot about it.

The Samoan still has hold of Bud’s leg, but he’s not twisting it anymore. Roman lets go of my head and I breathe and breathe. He turns to the Samoan.

– Go check.

The Samoan drops Bud. Just lets him flop to the floor into the little puddle of cat pee. Bud lies there, like me, and breathes. The Samoan is heading out the door.

– There’s a lock.

Roman looks at me.

– Where?

– The door to the roof has one of those push-button lock things.

– And?

– Three-nine-eight-nine-two.

Roman looks at the Samoan to make sure he’s got it and the Samoan nods once and goes out the door. Roman drifts into the living room and this seems to indicate a time-out. The Russians let go of my arms and light cigarettes and Red climbs off my legs and walks around, stretching his own. I watch Bud. He doesn’t look very good.

A couple minutes pass.

That’s when the Samoan pushes in the wrong combination for the door to the roof, tries to force it open, and sets off the fire alarm for the building.

Things go about as well as you could hope for I suppose. Roman looks at me. He just stares into my swollen eyes as he tells Red and the Russians to get out. They leave just as the Samoan is coming back down the stairs and, over the alarm, I can hear them shouting at him to get out. I can hear people starting to drift out into the hall as Roman pushes my door closed and comes back over to the bed. He is careful not to step on Bud, which I appreciate. He sits on the edge of the bed. I can move a bit, so I roll onto my right side to look at him. Everything hurts. People are talking in the halls, but no one seems to be evacuating the building. This is the nature of New York City: alarms go off so often that no one wants to respond to them until things start burning down or blowing up in front of their eyes. Nonetheless, the NYFD should be here in a moment and that gives me comfort. Roman rubs the back of his neck.