But why? I said.
“Cause I knew it would work. And it did. It worked. I hit that kid harder than I’ve ever hit anyone — no doubt about it. With my left hand, too, my weak hand. The give of his jaw when I landed the punch was — it was something. I heard things, like, detaching… except now I’ve got this mangled hand. Fucken stupid. Kinda thing that’s gonna hurt for the rest of my life. It’ll rain and I’ll whine. I guess at least it’s my weak hand. How’s your wrist, though? How’s that extra half-lip growing off your bottom one, handsome?”
I’ll be fine, I said. My chin hurts the most, but whatever. It’s fine.
“So why are we still here?”
Where? I said.
“The nurse’s,” he said. “I’m fine, you’re fine…”
We’re getting fixed up, I said.
“We’re already fixed up. Splinted and wrapped. Ready to fight.”
Here. Take these, I said.
I put two Xanaxes next to his watercup.
“Warmth and well-being? Pain without care?”
Yeah, I said.
“Why would I want that?”
You want the other kind instead?
“Four to pass out?”
What’s the tone? I said.
“Maybe I want the SpEdspeed.”
You don’t, I said.
“You know that how?”
What’s your problem, Benji?
Benji said “Tch,” and dropped the pills in his mouth. He chewed them, wincing, chugged both our waters. “So let’s go,” he said.
I futzed with my bandage and tried to look purposeful.
STEVENS: Thanks again, Bob. Indeed, the number of onlookers outside of the Aptakisic Junior High School building in Deerbrook Park does appear to be doubling by the minute. The police have asked us at NBC to ask you folks at home in the Chicagoland area to not, I repeat, to not make your way to Aptakisic. Three concerned parents of boys believed by police to be members of Maccabee’s allegedly Zionist terror organization, the Side of Damage, have already been taken into custody for crossing the cordon in the parking lot. In the meantime, the Chicago Transit Authority just released the following statement: “Between aproximately 8:30 and 9:15 this morning, CTA received four reports from Red and Brown Line operators stating that at least two hundred middle-school-aged boys had boarded their trains without any apparent supervision. As per protocol, CTA sent word of these reports to the Chicago Police. CTA cannot conjecture on how the police responded, but CTA did its part by the book, according to the rules, and as per protocol.” We go live now to a press conference outside of police headquarters in Chicago’s Rogers Park district, the police district that is home to both of those Jewish parochial schools formerly attended by the terrorist Gurion Maccabee.
SEAN O’MALLEY, POLICE SPOKESPERSON: Now I’ll take a couple questions.
REPORTER: We’ve just learned that the Chicago police received word of a mass migration of students on the Red and the Brown Line el-trains as early as 8:30 this morning. That seems to contradict the statement you made just minutes ago.
O’MALLEY: As far as I know, the first we heard of any of this was 9 a.m. We sent truancy cruisers and graffiti-buster squads to the el stations at which both groups of kids had boarded. There wasn’t any graffiti. There weren’t any kids.
REPORTER: You said “both groups,” but you — or at least the CTA — received four calls. What about the other two groups?
O’MALLEY: Right. We believe this was two groups of kids. Each orginated at red-line stations; each transferred to the Brown Line.
REPORTER: But how can you be sure of that?
O’MALLEY: Go back to New York, funnyguy. Go back to Boston. Wherever you’re from.
REPORTERS: (UPROAR OF QUESTIONS)
O’MALLEY: What’s wrong with you guys, huh? You’re the ones showing emails on the television before you show ’em to the police. Thing is, you should have this part cracked already, but you’re numbskulls and douchebags. And just to be clear: I don’t speak for the mayor here, when I suggest that you’re numbskulls, and I don’t speak for the city when I call you douchebags, but I am nonetheless in earnest, you lot of pantywaist hacks. Why don’t you khaki-clad yokels take a walk to any el station in the city and have a look at a map on the wall before you try to question the authority of the Chicago PD? Course I’m not really asking you take a walk on those spindly legs. And I’m not even suggesting you use one of your handy PDAs there to Google an el map because if you’re too numbskull to think of that yourself it’s cause you don’t know how to use those things to begin with is what I’m saying. Or maybe you’re so good at using ’em you forgot about maps because you’re all GPS now. I don’t know what your problem is, actually. I’m just sayin, here. No more hostility from youse. I’m two days from retirement, I got racquetball with Richie Daley at 1:00, and I will not abide it. This hostility being what I mean by “it.” So look: That email’s addressed to kids from two schools. You got the Solomon Whoever and the Northside Whatsit. They’re going north to the suburbs, these kids, right? They’re going north to the suburbs from Rogers Park, right? What do you think? They have to get on the Red Line, and then they gotta get on the Brown Line. And oh, take a look at the attachment that came attached to that email you showed on TV before you showed it to the police. Oh dearie me! In the email there, it says: Take the Red Line to Howard. Transfer to the Brown Line. Now. That latter transfer? That was almost two hours ago when they did it, and the trains have had some slowdowns, sure, but they ain’t that slow. All of which is to say those kids are not in Chicago anymore. Those kids are in the suburbs and have been for a while. You’re bothering the wrong cops, fellas, and in my closing statement, on this, what is certain to be my last press conference before retirement, I, with rapidly blossoming flowers of joy in my old Irish heart, would, on behalf of myself, like to say, just one last time, to you, my spindly-legged semi-literate douchebag pantywaist hackish yokel reporter friends: No. Further. Fucken. Comment.
STEVENS: Well, a little comic relief in the midst of tragic events never hurt anyone, I suppose. Here with me in the NBC studios is our Middle East consultant, Allie Momad. Allie, in your opinion, is the terrorist Gurion Maccabee, as has been alleged, a Zionist?
MOMAD: Well, Rick, the long answer is: Who can say for sure? He’s a ten-year-old boy, certainly a boy who’s been through Jewish schools, certainly an exceptionally violent boy, certainly a boy who invokes the Jewish God in emails that appear to be some kind of coded call-to-arms, certainly someone demanding to speak to Philip Roth, certainly the type of violent Jewish person that both the Eastern and the Western world have been certain would arise soon enough given the Jewish occupation of Palestine, the Israeli apartheid, the war crimes committed daily by the State of Israel, and the rhetoric used by Israeli and American Jewish progagandists to defend the apartheid and the war crimes and the hideous nature of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinean lands and people, not just men and women, Rick, but children, too. Children.
STEVENS: And the short answer, Allie?
MOMAD: Probably a Zionist.
STEVENS: Thank you, Allie. That was Allie Momad, our Middle East Consultant. Now we go to some new exclusive footage NBC has just acquired from another of the five cameras that were in the Aptakisic Junior High School gym at the time of the terrorist attack. I’m told we’re about to see the gym teacher, Ronald Desormie, just as — there. Oh my. Oh my, that’s vivid. Can we rewind that and slow — thank you, Mark. Yes, it looks, from the way he’s holding his neck, and from the angle at which the projectile seems to have pierced him, as though the fatal shot could not have possibly been fired by Gurion Maccabee, who you can see laying on his stomach on the floor before the unfortunate gym teacher. It looks like the shot was fired from on-high. Can we roll that again?