Geoffrey Bartholomew - Manhattan Noir 2 - The Classics

The steak is caught in my throat, he started to say, but then realized he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. My airway is blocked! he thought, amazed because he always thought of that happening in restaurants, seeing all those Heimlich maneuver notices on his way to the men’s room. No, one good, really hard cough. Bob brought his fist up to his mouth and almost stabbed himself with his fork, so he let it fall from his hand to clank on the plate. The hardest cough he could manage, but the cough wouldn’t come. Look! Don’t you see I’m trying to cough up that fucking glob of steak, you stupid bitch?

Chrissie’s hands clutched the edge of the table and she said something brilliant like, “Huh?” Didn’t understand what was happening, because all she did was sit there, her jaw dropping as though she couldn’t believe her eyes. No, more like she was waiting for some terrible, shocking thing to happen as she watched the horror movie.

Bob banged his fist on the table, knocking over his juice glass. She started to look around for a napkin, so he banged it twice more to get her attention, then pointed to his throat. Yes, yes, that’s right, I’m choking, you idiot, and I can’t breathe and obviously I can’t talk.

“Is something wrong?” she squeaked.

Oh my God, this is a goddamn nightmare . No air, no air could get through. He’d always been one of those if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed-try-try-again types, but nothing he could do—

His chest felt like it was about to expand, but then it wouldn’t. Trying harder didn’t work. Be calm. Don’t panic. Maybe try to inhale through my nose. No. Nothing happened.

He could die. He could. He could actually die. He could choke to death and that moron was just sitting on her tub of a butt asking if something was wrong.

The Heimlich maneuver. He put his hands mid-torso and pushed to demonstrate. No reaction. Okay, maybe her jaw dropped a little more so she looked like the idiot she was. Desperately, he made a grand arc with his finger to tell her, Come around here. Get off your ass and ... Pushing against the table, he managed to stand, although he was bent over, as if taking a bow. Then he mimed the Heimlich business again. What do you need, you stupid twit? Written directions? Voice-over narration? How stupid are you that you can’t see that this is an emergency? He’d show her. He swept his forearm across the table, knocking off plates and silverware, coffee cups and the steak and eggs. The stupid piece of parsley she put on practically everything that came to the table seemed to be in a universe with different gravity. It floated...

I’ll do it myself! Stay calm. He’d read about it. If you’re alone and you find yourself choking, you do the Heimlich on yourself. But he couldn’t remember illustrations. The same: probably the same way. He pressed his hands against his diaphragm and pushed and pushed. Powerful arms, the guy in the gym told him once, seeming not to hold it against him that even after the free demonstration lesson Bob had decided against one-on-one training.

No. It wouldn’t come out. Nothing he could do... He was starting to feel... lack of oxygen. Woozy. Not faint, he wasn’t going to faint. And it was like getting punched over and over again, fear! fear! fear! as if his panic was a sadist attacking him.

Finally, she was getting up out of her chair, but like a movie in slo-mo. Maybe time was stretching, the way people say it does during a car accident. So Chrissie was finally getting it, and was actually moving, but it was like she was just a fucking fat turtle on two legs.

“I’ll call 911,” she said, as if she were saying something routine, like, I’ll call my mother . Now she was strolling — fucking ambling, goddamn it, as if browsing a sale at Bloomingdale’s — to the phone. What was she thinking? Didn’t she get that this was the biggest emergency ever? What did she want him to do, die?

Die? No. She loved him, which showed how dumb she was, because he’d fallen out of love... What did she have to gain by his death? Nothing. Freedom. What would she do with freedom? Who the hell would want her? No, ridiculous. But she was taking her time. He couldn’t see her face because the phone was on her stupid little bill-paying desk that she called command central, as if she were a person who could command anything.

Bob shook the table to get her attention but it barely moved. Not much sound. Swept everything off except her water bottle and the salt and pepper. Getting worse than woozy now. Hurry, bitch. She had nothing to gain by—

Aunt Beryl’s money. The last statement, bottom line. Three mil something. Can’t remember. He managed to grab the salt and pepper shakers, bang them together, and they made a dull, ceramic clonk. Clonk, clonk, clonk. Chrissie stank in a crisis, froze, but she did love him. Some things you just know.

She turned toward him with the last clonk. “You should see yourself,” she said. “Your face is a weird dark color.” She squinted. “Your lips are actually turning blue.”

What? What is this, some kind of deranged power play in which she shows she has the power of life and death? And then she’ll come running over and squeeze and then when I cough it out she’ll say something like, This is to show you what it feels like when someone acts like they don’t give a shit about you. Doesn’t she get it? I am dying . Dying.

“Don’t worry,” Chrissie said, “I’m going to call 911... the second you stop breathing.” She ran her hands over the lapels of her bathrobe as if they were the collar of a sable coat. “If this surprises you, it shouldn’t. Do you know you treat me like I’m nothing? How long I’ve hated you?” She asked it so casually, like, Do you know how long it’s been since you got the car washed? “Your contempt, your absolute contempt for me.” Strange, her voice wasn’t a screech, but lower, much lower than he’d ever heard it. “When we go out with Times people, you’re embarrassed by me.”

Then she gave him the finger. Standing there, three feet from the phone, sticking it up high.

“Did you think you were dealing with such an idiot that I didn’t see it? Or someone without feelings? I can’t tell you how many nights I prayed you’d get run over by the 34th Street bus.” He tried coughing again, but he couldn’t. “This is a gift from God, you bastard. Your birthday, my gift. Half the time you say something and I’m thinking, Drop dead, you cheap fuck.” She smiled, her face luminous. “And now you are!”

Last ounce of life. Bob lurched toward his wife knowing she was probably thinking, He’s walking like Frankenstein, but he was dizzy and his legs... his pants had turned to lead and every step... Lift the leg up, put it down, now the other leg.

“I tried so hard! And the harder I tried, doing new sex things, reading every single boring section of the Times and trying to make meaningful conversation, the more disgust I saw in you. But you never had the balls to leave me, did you? You know why, Mr. Hyena Breath? Because you knew nobody else would have you.”

He wasn’t going to make it over to her. So dizzy, and falling...

Bob fell over one of her Shaker chairs that she said went absolutely perfect with the Tuscan farmhouse look. The chair crashed to the travertine floor and he collapsed on top of it. A microsecond before his forehead banged onto the cold tile, his stomach and chest hit the back post. The force of his almost-dead weight against the wood was so violent that even as two ribs cracked, his torso was rammed in such a way that all the air in him was pushed up and out, along with Chrissie’s overdone steak.