“Who are you?” Rachel said.
“Timmons,” he said. “Director of employee relations.” He spoke very fast. “This is Mr. Boucher, our security coordinator.” Nobody introduced the uniformed guard; he wasn’t on the way up. Boucher was sort of plumpish and had a thick mustache. The guard didn’t have a gun, but the loop of a leather strap stuck out of his right hip pocket.
“And why are you asking me to leave?” Rachel was saying.
“Because you are in violation of company policy.”
“How so?”
“No soliciting is allowed on the premises,” Timmons said. I wondered if he was nervous or if he always spoke that fast. I drifted around behind Rachel’s chair and folded my arms and looked at Timmons.
“And what exactly am I supposed to be soliciting?” Rachel said.
Timmons didn’t like me standing there, and he didn’t quite know what to do about it. He looked at me and looked away quickly and then he looked at Boucher and back at me and then at Rachel. He started to speak to Rachel and stopped and looked at me again.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m the tooth fairy,” I said.
“The what?”
“The tooth fairy,” I said. “I loosen teeth.”
Timmons’s mouth opened and shut. Boucher said, “We don’t need any smart answers, mister.”
I said, “You wouldn’t understand any.”
Rachel said, “Mr. Spenser is with me.”
“Well,” Boucher said, “you’ll both have to leave or we’ll have you removed.”
“How many security people you got?” I said to Boucher.
“That’s no concern of yours,” Boucher said. Very tough.
“Yeah, but it could be a concern of yours. It will take an awful lot of people like you to remove us.”
The uniformed guard looked uncomfortable. He probably knew his limitations, or maybe he just didn’t like the company he was keeping.
“Spenser,” Rachel said, “I don’t want any of that. We will resist, but we will resist passively.”
The dining room was very quiet except for the yellow walls. Timmons spoke again—probably encouraged by the mention of passive resistance.
“Will you leave quietly?” he said.
“No,” Rachel said, “I will not.”
“Then you leave us no choice,” Boucher said. He turned to the uniformed guard. “Spag,” he said, “take her out.”
“You can’t do that,” Dorothy said.
“You should wait and discuss this with your supervisor,” Timmons said, “because I certainly will.”
Spag stepped forward and said softly, “Come on, miss.”
Rachel didn’t move.
Boucher said, “Take her, Spag.”
Spag took her arm, gently. “Come on, miss, you gotta go,” he said. He kept a check on me with frequent side-shifting glances. He was probably fifty and no more than 170 pounds, some of it waistline. He had receding brown hair and tattoos on both forearms. He pulled lightly at Rachel’s arm. She went limp.
Boucher said, “God damn it, Spag, yank her out of that chair. She’s trespassing. You have the right.”
Spag let go of Rachel’s arm and straightened up. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”
Timmons said, “Jesus Christ.”
Boucher said to him, “All right, we’ll do it. Brett, you take one arm.” He stepped forward and took Rachel under the left arm. Timmons took her right arm, and they dragged her out of the chair. She went limp on them, and they weren’t ready for it. They couldn’t hold her dead weight, and she slipped to the floor, her legs spread, her skirt hitched halfway up her thigh. She pulled it down.
I said to Spag, “I am going to make a move here. Are you in or out?”
Spag looked at Rachel on the floor and at Timmons and Boucher. “Out,” he said. “I used to do honest work.”
Boucher was behind Rachel now and had both his arms under hers. I said to him, “Let her go.”
Rachel said, “Spenser, I told you we were going to be passive.”
Boucher said, “You stay out of this, or you’ll be in serious trouble.”
I said, “Let go of her, or I’ll hit you while you’re bent over.”
Timmons said, “Hey,” but it wasn’t loud.
Boucher let Rachel go and stood up. Everyone in the dining room was standing and watching. There was a lot on the line for Boucher. I felt sorry for him. Most of the onlookers were young women. I reached my hand down to Rachel. She took it and got up.
“God damn you,” she said. I turned toward her and Boucher took a jump at me. He wasn’t big, but he was slow. I dropped my shoulder and caught him in the chest. He grunted. I straightened up, and he staggered backwards and bumped into Timmons.
I said, “If you annoy me, I will knock you right over that serving counter.” I pointed my finger at him.
Rachel said, “You stupid bastard,” and slapped me across the face. Boucher made another jump. I hit him a stiff jab in the nose and then crossed with my right, and he went back into the serving line and knocked down maybe fifty plates off the counter and slid down to the floor. “Into is almost as good as over,” I said. Timmons was stuck. He had to do something. He took a swing at me; I pulled my head back, slapped his arm on past me with my right hand. It half turned him. I got his collar in my left hand and the seat of his pants in my right and ran him three steps over to the serving counter, braced my feet, arched my back a little, and heaved him up and over it. One of his arms went in the gravy. Mashed potatoes smeared his chest, and he went over the counter rolling and landed on his side on the floor behind it.
The young girl with the tight clothes said, “All right, foxy,” and started to clap. Most of the women in the cafeteria joined in. I went back to Rachel. “Come on,” I said. “Someone must have called the cops. We’d best walk out with dignity. Don’t slap me again till we’re outside.”
13
“You dumb son of a bitch,” Rachel said. We were walking along Boylston Street back to the Ritz. “Don’t you realize that it would have been infinitely more productive to allow them to drag me out in full view of all those women?”
“Productive of what?”
“Of an elevated consciousness on the part of all those women who were standing there watching the management of that company dramatize its sexism.”
“What kind of a bodyguard stands around and lets two B-school twerps like those drag out the body he’s supposed to be guarding?”
“An intelligent one. One who understands his job. You’re employed to keep me alive, not to exercise your Arthurian fantasies.” We turned left on Arlington. Across the street a short gray-haired man wearing two topcoats vomited on the base of the statue of William Ellery Channing.
“Back there you embodied everything I hate,” Rachel said. “Everything I have tried to prevent. Everything I have denounced—machismo, violence, that preening male arrogance that compels a man to defend any woman he’s with, regardless of her wishes and regardless of her need.”
“Don’t beat around the bush,” I said. “Come right out and say you disapprove of my conduct.”
“It demeaned me. It assumed I was helpless and dependent, and needed a big strong man to look out for me. It reiterated that image to all those young women who broke into mindless applause when it was over.”
We were in front of the Ritz. The doorman smiled at us—probably pleased that I didn’t have my car.
“Maybe that’s so,” I said. “Or maybe that’s a lot of theory which has little to do with practice. I don’t care very much about theory or the long-range consequences to the class struggle, or whatever. I can’t deal with that. I work close up. Right then I couldn’t let them drag you out while I stood around.”
“Of course from your viewpoint you’d be dishonored. I’m just the occasion for your behavior, not the reason. The reason is pride—you didn’t do that for me, and don’t try to kid yourself.”