Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

too-manly voice shouted out. »Where’d you two come from?«
    Demolition men were taking down some old hovel at the corner of 19th, and we were lucky enough to be passing by just as their shift was ending. More than a dozen of them were swinging down from their scaffolds like rabid monkeys. »Give us your number, baby. Who’s that, your big sister?«
    »Shake it, baby –«
    »Pass ’em by,« I told my gals, quickening the pace, trying to reach the corner before they could cut us off. No go, though; Moe, Larry and Shemp walled off the sidewalk and their trucks blocked the curb.
    »Hey, gals,« said the one in the centre, a red-faced lout with ropy arms and ham-sized hands. »We lost our phone numbers. Can we get yours?« The one on his right, a wiry Italian, slid behind me as if I wasn’t even there.
    »We’ll take it from here, buddy,« the one on his left said. This wasn’t good, but if worse came to worse and these meatheads lost control of themselves, I’d go to the fallback position. I always keep five STP-12 patches hidden in my wallet in case of emergencies. I slid it out of my pants and got one ready; all I needed to do was slap one wherever they were bare and the lugs would be flat out on a ten count. The big one, I gathered he was the foreman, planted himself in front of Chlojo’s face and switched the charm on high beam. »Some tits, sweetheart,« he said. »Got anybody takin’ care of ’em?«
    »You a go-go dancer, honey?« the Italian asked Eulie.
    »You disinterest us,« she said. »We’ll proceed.«
    »Baby, you going to give me your number?« the foreman asked Chlojo, giving her the eye-to-eye. »Don’t run into many my size.« He took hold of her hand, but then jerked it away as if he’d been burned. »Christ Jesus,« he shouted. »Your hands’re rougher than mine. It’s some faggot, get off –«
    Her flight suit seemed to lack the special brassiere her earlier ensemble sported. What happened next happened very fast, and I can’t truthfully say that I saw it. Chlojo seized his hand and pulled him towards her; her right arm moved, and the foreman fell on the sidewalk, wailing like a banshee. Chlo was still holding his hand, not that it was going to be of much use to him any longer. One time I gashed my thumb, playing Jack the Ripper on a bagel with a dull knife, and there was so much blood I feared I’d be leeched dry before I could curb the flow. That was just a paper cut compared; the foreman’s wrist squirted like a hose.
    » Shit, man –« his companions said, doing a quick reverse. Chlojo pitched the hand into a trash can and started to walk south again. Hard to say now, much less at the time, what was most upsetting – what Chlojo’d done, or the way Eulie took it in stride.
    »Lay still,« I said, kneeling and pulling my belt loose from my pants. I wrapped it around his arm above the elbow and yanked tight, buckling it off. Two workmen ran out with a towel and stick, ready to tie on a tourniquet, and I gladly let them buy out my medical practice. We had already attracted a crowd, and under the sound of the el overhead I heard sirens coming up fast. Just when I’d have wanted everyone to pretend they were asleep and not hear anything, half the neighbourhood seemed to be running over to see. One woman looked at the wrist stump-on and let out a blast like a tugboat.
    Eulie grabbed Chlo and pulled her back to the scene of the crime.
    »Walter, are you coming?«
    I really turned on the air raid siren. »You can’t do things like this,« I said, screaming at tall and frosty. »Don’t you know you could have killed him?« She nodded.
    »Cops’ll be here any second,« I said to Eulie, imagining what could happen if Big Bertha really went to town. »Beat it. They’d haul you in a second.«
    »Walter, please –«
    »Out! Go!« They heeled it down the street; one of the construction crew tried, briefly, to keep Chlo from getting past but she picked him up and slung him on top of the roof of a yellow cab and after that, no one else seemed willing to intervene. Seconds after they disappeared a paddywagon and five cans of Spam careened up, and out barrelled the boys of Killarney, waving their guns and clubs like it was Armistice Day.
    »What’s going on here?« one of the older cops asked me. He had a face like a pile of rocks.
    »Psychos,« I said, estimating a freeform narrative would work best. »Acidheads, probably. Goofballs. Jumped that poor guy, cut his hand off.«
    »Cut