Charlie is talking to one of them, a gravy-complected guy with teeth like someone out of a Ralph Steadman. She begs him not to call us in. She says something about a job in Zurich that constitutes some sort of indebtedness, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect on him. He raises the wire in his sleeve to his mouth and reports our location to Herkimer. Charlie deflates but I just keep staring.

“I know you,” I say vaguely. Then the memory starts coalescing, and I get it. I saw this guy one year ago, in front of a Boucher with an empty picture frame in his hand; I saw the other one as a member of a gang of muggers on Seventieth and Fifth, at first accosting Charlie beside a burst of blooming honeysuckle and then, shortly thereafter, on the sidewalk, under my fist.

It doesn’t take much to understand this. Not even the way I met Charlie was real. The homeless guy, the muggers: all a ruse to set me up with Charlie. In the closet she said she had confessed everything. She hadn’t.

I think: why should I be surprised? She’s a liar.

“A picture...,” I say to no one, “of loveliness.”

Disgust ulcerates my stomach.

The last time I was confronted with these guys it was a setup. I had nothing to lose. This time I do. This time they are not getting paid to feed me lines or to take a flop. This time I have no illusions about my fighting skills. This time they have a pair of guns. Aimed at us, point-blank. Loaded with real bullets.

None of this stops me.

I wish I could say that my action is motivated by conscious choice but it is not. I am animated by an electric hatred; my body is put into motion by pure feeling. And it happens fast. A dazzling bolt of light flashes before my eyes and then my hand clenches and I step forward and hurl it, hard and looping, as if unleashing a fastball, not a fist, directly at Mr. Picture of Loveliness. It is the punch of my life. It scores a direct hit, too, right in the center of his face. The guy hits the ground before he even groans. The other one spins around to put the gun on me but Charlie’s foot impacts his rib cage. He crashes into the wall, then sags onto the floor. Charlie stares at me, amazed.

“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says.