The Hardest Thing

The Fight 1
    New York City on a dirty night in July is not my favorite place to be. I’d rather be almost anywhere else—I was thinking of the beach in Connecticut or up in the Green Mountains of Vermont, or any of those overseas places I’ve traveled, most of them warzones, where you can breathe without feeling like someone just threw up on your shoes. But New York is where I am, and short of a miracle New York is where I stay, with temperatures in the 80s and humidity in the 90s and me in my late 30s wondering what the hell happened to my life. A couple of years ago I had a career and a salary, status and respect, and a sense of purpose. Now I’m working nights at a shitty club in the East Village for minimum wage. I don’t even have a uniform; the security company is so damn cheap that I have to provide my own. So it’s black polyester slacks, a black T-shirt and a pair of black shoes from my dress uniform that I still keep shined—old habits die hard. I look like a burglar, except you can see my face. But nobody looks at my face except to snarl in it or shout in it or, on particularly
lively nights, to spit in it. And tonight was one of those nights.
    During the week, the Panther Club on East 9th Street is pretty nice by local standards—not too busy, mostly local kids who work in offices by day and fancy themselves hipsters by night, drinking and posing and listening to the deejays or the bands who trot out third-rate art rock and enjoy their fifteen minutes. I don’t mind the weeknights: no trouble, easy money, nobody getting too crazy because tomorrow is a working day. It’s the Fridays and Saturdays I hate, when the out-of-towners pour into the East Village to feel like freaks for the weekend, and they can’t get really freaky without getting really wasted. And that’s when I earn my few bucks an hour.
    This particular Friday night started like all the others. Quiet till nine, the usual jerks wearing sunglasses in the dark, standing at the bar or smoking on the sidewalk, the smoke hanging in the air like fog, collecting under the awning where I have to stand, making my eyes sting and my clothes stink. I hate the smoking laws. Why can’t they be allowed to kill themselves inside the club, and let those of us who work outdoors breathe some nice healthy exhaust fumes instead? And then, at two minutes after nine, by some mysterious signal, along came the Assholes. They came up the street in twos and threes, never alone, guys mostly, a few tough-looking girls, all of them with that schoolyard swagger as if they’re the kings and queens of the universe and people like me are somewhere down there with the rats and roaches. By nine thirty the club was full, drinks were getting spilled and the atmosphere was turning
nasty. A line was forming on the street—it never ceases to amaze me that people will actually wait in line to get into a place like the Panther Club—and you could smell aggression in the air like cheap perfume. Now, I have nothing against aggression. After twelve years in the U.S. Marine Corps, I kind of value it. I like a kid with attitude, if he knows what to do with it. But these guys were just dull drunks with a grudge against life, looking for a fight to perk up Friday night, and if they hadn’t started something by the time they got to the door they were more than happy to have a crack at the sap in the polyester slacks.
    I don’t know where the average out-of-towner thinks that security guys like me are recruited from. Perhaps he thinks we’re former schoolteachers or unemployed librarians. The fact is that most of us are ex-military, and that means that we have probably killed more people than he has fucked. I lost count of the number of lives I’ve taken. Some of them I shot. Some of them fell victim to missiles that I had a hand in firing. But I killed a fair few—twenty, maybe more—with my bare hands. I know exactly how to do it. I can break a neck with the precision of a chiropractor—just a twist and a click and the job’s done. So if you’re looking for a fight in the East Village on a Friday night, you might want to stay away from the Panther Club.
    And this is how the story began.
    It was almost eleven o’clock, and the joint was jumping. The line stretched back half a block—New York City must be short of decent clubs these days—and the band was due on, so the suburban tough guys were getting jumpy. Fire regulations mean I can only allow
a certain number of