Pompelli lifted his left hand up from below the desk, made a reaching gesture with it. “Come on. Give me your hand.” Reached across the desk, halfway, his hand open, the fingers loose. Still soft he repeated, “Come on.”

And Jamie raised his right hand and extended it over partway and then thinking it was the wrong hand to shake a southpaw started to take it back but Pompelli had snaked his open hand past Jamie’s and grasped tight his wrist and came up out of his chair as he pinned Jamie’s hand down, open palm up, on the desk and as he rose his right came up from under the desk and flew forward and down and back again with the thin silver slice of a razor in the lamplight and then Pompelli let him go and sank back into his chair and Jamie looked at his hand lying flat on the desk with the cut a broad deep sideways swipe across his palm from the ball of his thumb to the base of his little finger and as he watched the swipe filled with blood and then his cupped palm like an ill-made vessel. Then his knees jerked up and struck the front of the desk and his bloodslick hand bounced once on the desk surface and flew back and he held it with his other hand against his shirtfront that was already hot and liquid and moving against him, his hand a hot hard thing as the rest of him spread and spewed. The room and the lights suddenly hot and bright. His spine curled. A voice came out of him: “Aww shit.” Looking at the pool of his blood left on the desktop, so much of it so sudden.

The pain a meteor trail that blew open inside and ran all through him. An orange split open with blood juice and pulp. The crotch of his trousers dampened and warmed. His eyes blinking, trying for focus. Far back of them his brain stilled, absolute, silent, refusing to work. Shutting down to try and save itself. The lambent light and air of the room suddenly charged, a faint sound as if some insect was working within.

“Sammy, get a towel.” Pompelli turning the razor over in his hands, his head tipped down to study it. Ignoring Jamie.

The man Sammy threw himself up from the chair and with no particular speed left the room and came back moments later with a soft peach handtowel and handed it to Pompelli who used it to sop the blood from the desk, turning the towel over for a dry portion to lightly buff the wood. Then he balled the towel and threw it across where it struck against Jamie’s wrapped-together hands. Jamie took the towel and opened it and wrapped the cut hand in it. His other hand doing this job as if it was the right thing to do. He could see now and, as if he knew this, the man Sammy did not return to his chair but came and stood by Jamie’s shoulder, one large hand spread out over the back of Jamie’s head like a careful cap.