Everything Changes

the guitar like a battering ram, the Elton John wig wildly askew on his head. “Everyone just back off!” he commands, planting himself in a defensive position in front of me, guitar poised on his shoulder like a baseball bat. “You okay, Zack?”
    “I’m fine,” I say.
    “What the hell is wrong with you!” comes Norm’s ragged, booming voice as he bursts out of the onlookers, charging at Jack with his fists raised. The men converge on Norm, grabbing his arms and hustling him roughly away from Jack as he writhes madly in their grasp, his face knotted with rage. “Don’t you touch my son, you fucking animal. I’ll bury you—you hear me? I’ll bury you!”
    Hope and Vivian help a dazed Jack to his feet and usher him gingerly toward the kitchen. “He was kissing that girl,” he mutters dazedly to no one in particular. “Right in my study.” Just before they disappear, Hope turns to look at me, and her eyes are like lasers, cutting through flesh and bone to pierce me at my core, her expression of bewildered devastation branding itself into my brain as it burns through my eyes. I stagger slightly, and start to fall as the room spins, but then I feel myself righted as a soft hand slips into mine, squeezing my fingers. “Okay, then,” says Lela, her voice loud and authoritative. “Matt?”
    “What, Mom?”
    “It’s time to go.”
    And so, with Matt leading the way, and Norm and Pete bringing up the rear, and a swath of angry destruction in our wake, the Fighting Kings make good their exit.

Chapter 35
    Something happens to me in the elevator, some final synthesis of the drinks, the Viagra, and the trauma of the last few minutes, and I leave my body to hover above us as we descend, taking in everyone else’s shifting postures as their combined adrenaline dissipates in the air like smoke: Norm leaning against the back wall, red faced and disheveled, still catching his breath; Matt rubbing his neck thoughtfully; Jed tucking his shirt in—it came undone when he hurled Jack across the room—Pete humming nervously as he studies my own blank expression, worried about me; and Lela still firmly clutching my hand protectively. Her expression, an amalgam of concern and grim determination, would certainly move me to tears if I were in there to cry them.
    We step out into the chilly night, and arrangements are made, logistics confirmed, but I’m still floating, so it all happens beneath me. The sky is clear, but the glow of Manhattan makes it hard to see any stars, and I want to float higher until I can see them, but I seem limited to this lower level of flight, just a few feet above my own bowed head. Jed gives me a pat on the back and tells me he’ll talk to me tomorrow, and I feel a rush of gratitude and want to hug him, but by the time I think of it, he’s gone, and then I’m in the backseat of Lela’s Honda with Pete and Matt, Norm riding shotgun as she pilots her way toward the Harlem River Drive. We head north toward home, exactly how we might have done a lifetime ago, before we had any concept of how far we would all drift. I lean my head against the window, the vibrations from the glass rattling my teeth, and this sensation proves to be the lone thread that pulls me back into my body, where a bone-deep exhaustion mercifully takes the bite out of what little awareness is there to begin with.
    Lela takes charge when we get home, making tea for everyone as we sit, shell-shocked, in the living room, an ice pack pressed firmly to my temple, which is swollen from Jack’s assault. Norm and Matt engage in the inevitable play-by-play, reconstructing the events from their separate perspectives, until, finally, Norm asks me, “What the hell happened back there?”
    And so I tell them, and they nod, not terribly surprised, and somehow, talking about it makes it seem more pedestrian, less calamitous, so I find myself describing the scene in detail, my own editorialized version of my encounter with Jack. It’s understood that we will not tackle the hairier issue of why, exactly, I was kissing Tamara to begin with, but keep the focus squarely on the violence, breaking it down, establishing an exact chronol-ogy, like athletes reliving a recent victory on the field. Pete sits next to me, his head on my shoulder, tired and confused, but not willing to miss out on this rare family time. And there is an undeniable warmth permeating the room as the five of us sit sipping at our teas, a tangible intimacy in which