Checker and the Derailleurs. Lionel Shriver

noticed how the waitress managed to talk to him in a way that didn’t demand he answer back, but still made him feel like part of a conversation. Wisps of childhood memories were still trailing through his mind, but he also recalled some other classmates—the girl with buck teeth, the little boy who smelled bad—who were tormented along with him. When he smiled at the waitress while she dried, she blushed.

      Howard felt liked. Rahim felt American. Rachel felt sad, but Rachel always felt sad. And in the quiet, steamy closure of the dark club, surrounded by the sound of Checker’s breathing and the hollow expansion and contraction of the pipes below, Eaton Striker had to leave.

      As Rahim walked him home Checker wheeled his bicycle between them, the clicking of the back hub ticking off the moments in precise, perfect points like the stars overhead, bright from cold.

      Checker said, “I want to show you something.”

      They detoured to a run-down industrial block of Astoria Boulevard. The sidewalk shook under their feet as they approached the building, whose sign said VESUVIUS, nothing more. Directly in front, they heard a dull ominous roar. Checker put his hands gently on the front door, like cracking a safe; it trembled under his fingertips. Putting his finger to his lips, he led Rahim down an alley and pointed to a small window. Rahim climbed a trash can to see.

      The pane buzzed in its frame; the glass tickled his hand. Here the sound was louder, huge and ceaseless, like a lion that never inhaled. Through the muddy window Rahim could see dimly inside, though he didn’t understand what he was looking at. Fire framed a square of black like an eclipse. As he watched, the black square moved to the side, and a long stick plunged into pulsing vermilion.

      Lit only by this hellish glow, an unearthly woman pulled the rod from the fire. She was tall, which always unnerved Rahim in women. She wore a long industrial apron and dark glasses that flashed yellow when they caught the light. Her hair was tied back carelessly, but most of it was escaping. Cut jaggedly in different lengths, it was the hair that made this figure so amazing. Thick and wild, it raged from her head like black flames. Rahim felt he was witnessing some satanic worship service, with a lean, terrible shaman prodding a dangerous god.

      While he told himself she was only a woman, Rahim felt even at first glance that this one demanded a whole other word. Trying to rub the window cleaner, Rahim stood up on his toes and took a step closer; his foot missed and he tumbled off the can. The barrel itself fell and made a terrific crash, for it seems the whole container was filled to the brim with bits of broken glass.

      Checker laughed softly and helped him up. Together they began to throw the glass back in the barrel.

      “Sh-sh!” said Checker, still laughing, when Rahim tossed a piece in the can and it smashed loudly hitting bottom. It was hard to see, and grasping for hunks in the dark Check exclaimed, “Jesus!” and pulled back. Rahim didn’t have a chance to ask what had happened before he looked up to find a molten glob pointed menacingly at him on the end of a metal pole.

      “Move and you’re fried,” said a voice. “A minute ago this lump was twenty-four hundred degrees. It may be cooling fast, but it’s still hot enough to turn your face into a pork chop.”

      Rahim froze, crouching; Checker, despite the warning, stood up.

      The woman pointed a flashlight at Checker like a second weapon.

      “What is that?” asked Checker, not sounding very frightened. “It’s fantastic!”

      All three of them turned to the glob, changing quickly from a rich yellow to a duller, more smoldering red. As Checker reached toward it, the woman jerked it away.

      “Hot glass, toddler. And what have you done to your hand?”

      In the beam of the flashlight was a second red glob, on the end of Checker’s arm. There was a quiet, regular patter-patter; the woman trained the light on the ground, where Checker’s blood was spattering onto the chunks of clear glass. The glass sparkled, and the red drops bounced and drizzled over its crystals like expensive rain. Strange. It was beautiful.

      “Sheckair!” Quickly Rahim shed his jacket and tore off his shirt, and began to wrap Check’s hand.

      “Don’t use your dirty shirt,” she said sharply. “I have medical supplies inside. I suppose you can come in.” She led them reluctantly in the door and smashed the rod against the cement floor. The glass, now black, cracked off; she tossed the rod in a barrel and went to get first aid. “Christ,” Check heard her mutter on the way, “I start to run off hoodlums and end up playing Sara Barton.”

      “That’s Clara Barton,” he shouted after her. Unexpectedly, she laughed.

      Checker didn’t seem very concerned with his hand, more delighted to have weaseled his way in here. He and Rahim approached the furnace. Inside, the roar was deeper, striking a broader range of tones. Checker couldn’t take his eyes off the fire though at a certain point he stood back from the heat. In fact, the whole room was sweltering, and recalled the febrile interior of Plato’s Bar.

      When she returned she switched on a light, to Rahim’s disappointment—it ruined the satanic religiosity of the scene. As she rinsed out Checker’s cut in warm water over her sink, they both stared at the glassblower, not quite as mysterious without the glow of the furnace, but no less intimidating.

      Everything about her was long: her neck, her waist, her face. Her cheeks were hollow and drawn; her expressions were conducted in the narrow range between amusement and irritation. As she tended his hand, her face sharpened in an intentness that seemed usual. Her oversized green shirt billowed under her apron with accidental style. Her jeans shone with dirt. The musty smell wafting from them suggested she’d been in these clothes for a while.

      “You’re filthy,” Check observed joyously as his blood ran in diluted swirls down the drain.

      “You’re stupid,” she shot back. “Why were you and your friend crawling around in a pile of broken glass at four in the morning?”

      “Watching you,” said Check. As she went for the antiseptic, he followed her hands. They looked older than the rest of her—fiftyish, sixtyish even—scarred and craggy, with abused nails. Her fingers were long like Caldwell’s, but ancient and knuckly. They tended his cut with care but authority, like a good mechanic’s.

      “What are all these little scars?” she asked about his own hand, which was covered in small white lumps.

      “From drumming.”

      A look. “Violent.”

      “Passionate.”

      She laughed.

      “Why is that funny?”

      “Well, how old are you?”

      “What does that have to do with passion?”

      “Maybe nothing,” she admitted.

      Her motions were jagged, like her hair. When she turned to find the gauze, a peak of hair touched his face; Checker reached up as if to brush it away, but really to feel it—a little coarse; he noticed a few strands of gray.

      “How old are you?”

      “Why?”

      “Cause I can usually tell. You, I can’t place within ten years.”

      “Twenty-nine.”

      “I’d have guessed older.”

      “Real diplomatic.”

      “You’re not insulted.”

      She stopped wrapping his hand and looked at Check as if seeing him for the first time. She seemed surprised by what she saw. “No?”

      “It doesn’t matter to you, looking young,” Check explained. “Just now—I think you were flattered.”

      The woman sucked in her cheeks and shot him a sour, bemused little smile. “Maybe.”

      “You must finish wrap.”