Martin Greenberg - Pandora's Closet

The bikers looked ready to grab chairs, flip tables, just trash the place-but Stan the manager came barreling out of the back, his face a really spectacular shade of purple. I remember there was this vein throbbing on his right temple. I thought it was going to pop, and boom, down he’d go with an aneurysm, but it didn’t.

“What in the flying hell is going on here?” he roared. “Anyone touches a stick of furniture, and I’ll have the cops here. Any of you have any outstanding warrants?”

The bikers quieted down.

“Asshole dumped beer on my head!” yelled Neck-beard, getting up off the floor. He pointed at Quig.

“And you tripped me!” said Donna.

Stan looked at her, at the mustard-and-ketchup Jackson Pollock all over the floor. His lips moved, and I could see he was counting to ten. When he was on seven, Quig stepped forward.

“Sir,” he said, “it’s true, I did what that man said. But I was avenging the honor of the lady-”

Stan glared at him, his eyes flicking up to the basin as if wondering how it got on Quig’s head. “Shut it,” he snapped, and turned back to the bikers. “All right, you lot-out. If I ever see you back, spilled beer’s the least of your worries.”

The bikers muttered, suddenly sheepish. Stan had this effect on people-they could have crushed him into the ground, but the guy was built like a fire hydrant. He intimidated people.

“Now,” he said, and they skulked out.

There was some scattered applause, but Stan gave the room the stink-eye and it stopped. Next he turned to Quig. “You, too.”

“Him?” Ravi asked.

Gabby pointed at Donna. “He was defending her !” Rick and I joined in, and so did a bunch of other people, with variations on “yeah!” and “that’s right!”

“Stan,” Donna said. “Those jerks are waiting for him in the parking lot. You know that.”

But he just shook his head. Stan could be a bit of a dick, sometimes. “Company policy. Anyone fights or disturbs the other diners, I have to throw them out.”

And there’s the part that the legal department of P.F. Whistlefart’s Grease-a-torium didn’t like me telling: how their corporate policy was to send a fifty-year-old software engineer out to get the snot knocked out of him by six guys who could crush beer kegs against their foreheads. It’s the sort of bad press that could make America want to buy its two-thousand-calorie meals elsewhere.

Gabby began to explain, in precise anatomical detail, what Stan could do with company policy. She was just getting into the part about twisting it sideways when Quig held up a hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t fear those riffraff. If it’s a fight they want, then a fight they shall have. Stand aside.”

And he made for the door.

I watched him go. We all did, a bit too stunned to react. Quig looked different-maybe it was because he was balancing that bowl on his head, but he was standing straight, his programmer’s hunch gone. And he was thin, which was weird. He’d always had a bit of a gut.

Donna broke the silence. She stepped forward, ripped the nametag off her uniform, and threw at Stan. The pin stuck in his tie and it hung there, upside-down, proclaiminghimtobe

“Prick,” she said, and went after Quig.

We followed him, too. Looking back, I was asking for what happened to me out in the parking lot, but I’d do it again. Quig was my boss, but he was also my friend. I wasn’t going to let him go out there alone.

Anyway, we all gathered around Quig near the coat rack. He was rummaging through the umbrella stand and came up with his-a sturdy old thing, not one of those collapsibles that blow inside-out if you breathe on them wrong.

“Trouble yourselves not for me,” he said, holding up the umbrella. “I can fend for myself, even against such a horde.”

“Uh, Quig?” I asked. “What are you going to do?”

“And why are you talking like that?” Rick added.

I heard a sound, and there was Stan again, coming up behind us. “Not so fast,” he said. “Give that back.”

He reached for the basin, then yelped when Quig hit him with the umbrella. It was a quick blow, and precise. Quig hadn’t forgotten his stage-fight training, I guess. Stan pulled back, clutching his wrist.

“Uncouth rogue!” Quig said. No, not said- proclaimed . “Do not despoil the Helm of Mambrino with your innkeeper’s hands. Now begone!”

Stan looked at him, pop-eyed. He could have had Quig arrested for assault, even for that little smack, but he just stepped back, blinking.

“No, seriously,” Rick said, “why do you sound like someone from a Monty Python movie?”

“Shhh,” said Gabby. She started grabbing more umbrellas and handing them out. “We’re coming with you, Quig. We’re your men at arms.”

“What?” asked Ravi. He stared at the umbrella in his hand.

Quig smiled. “Very well,” he said, and his eyes fell on Donna. “But not you, milady. You must wait until the battle is done-but if you would give me a token to wear as I sally forth…”

She looked like she was going to argue, but she didn’t. There was something irresistible about Quig just then, the same thing that made me not question going out to face six thugs armed only with a bumber-shoot. I didn’t know the word for how he looked at the time, but I learned it later. He looked gallant .

“All right,” Donna said. She looked at herself, frowned, and pulled a button off her uniform. Carefully, she pinned it onto Quig’s shirt. It read:

ASK ME ABOUT OUR DOUBLE-FUDGTASTIC BROWNIE SPLITZ™!

Then, leaning forward, she kissed his cheek.

“All right,” Rick said. “Everyone ready to get their asses kicked?”

“Wait,” said someone behind me.

I turned, and there was the retired accountant. And the truckers. And the college kids. And even one of the idiot teens, a pimply, quiet kid who’d been sitting off to the side.

“How many more umbrellas you have?” the accountant asked.

We armed ourselves. No one tried to stop us. Then out we went. It was still raining in the parking lot. And there, waiting by the mini-golf course, were Neck-beard and company. They were armed, too- three had pipes, a couple had knives, and one big bald dude had a freaking bicycle chain. They grinned when Quig stepped out, the bowl glinting under the street-lights-but they faltered when the rest of us followed him. We had them outnumbered, two to one. Behind us, Donna and half the restaurant watched through the window.

“What the hell?” blurted Neck-beard. “You put together a posse, freak? And what’s that thing on your head?”

Quig looked at him. Slowly, he raised his umbrella. “Yield, varlet,” he said. “Beg forgiveness and quit this field, or taste my steel!”

The bikers laughed, and can you blame them? This was insane. Except it didn’t feel insane, not at the time. It was exciting. I felt every raindrop as it hit me. I raised my umbrella too, and stepped forward. So did Rick, and Ravi, and Gabby. And the rest.

I’m amazed none of the passing cars drove off the road at the sight of us.

The bikers must have felt a little of what I was feeling, because they quit laughing and spread out. The guy with the chain started to whirl it slowly. They looked different than they had inside-bigger, cruder, more savage. Like ogres. It could have been a trick of the light… but you know, I doubt it.

“As you will,” Quig said. He kissed the Double-Fudgtastic button, then raised his head again. I wondered how I’d ever thought the thing he was wearing was a bowl. Couldn’t everyone see it was a helmet?