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Let’s try this again.” She wetted down some paper
towels at the industrial sink and handed them to him. “Here. Clean out your
nose so you can breathe.”
    Grateful, Buck blew out the mucus slowly, but pain still
shot through him. It did ease his breathing a little, though.
    “Better?” she asked. He nodded. “Okay, now do you remember
why you’re here?”
    He nodded again.
    “There, that’s progress, see? Now we can move on to what
happens next.” She rose and got a leather sheath out of her large purse. She
pulled out a full-sized old time barber’s straight razor.
    Buck felt faint for a moment. “Oh, God,” he moaned, bile
bubbling up in his throat, “what are you doing?”
    The flash of steel brought Meatface scurrying over
immediately. Red pizza sauce dripped down the front of his shirt. “Alright, make-uh-my
day. Where are you going to start?”
    Twigs shot him an annoyed look. “I’ll call you when I need
you.”
    Meatface sauntered off, shrugging his eyebrows like Groucho
Marx to Jorge.
    Twigs picked up the straight razor and touched her fingers
to the edge. “Now, Mr. Dearmore, let’s just review. You knew you owed us the
money…”
    Buck interjected. “Yes, but—”
    “Fifty thousand, plus interest. Yet who did you get in touch
with last night? After you cleaned out the city’s patriarchs?” She quickly
added. “I heard the old boys weren’t too happy.”
    Buck’s voice was shaky. “I was going to call, but it was the
middle of the night.”
    Twigs mocked him. “Right. And I bet it was busy all day at
the bank, too. Friday and all.” She leaned into him. “We gave you 12 hours, Mr.
Dearmore. We’re not monsters.
    “I swear to God,” Buck began, “I know how it looks, but I
really was—”
    She cut him off with a head shake. “No, no, we’re done
talking, see? My instructions are to take one of your thumbs now, and another
finger for every additional hour from now until we have your payment.”
    Buck barely held back a scream. He was sure he was going to
throw up. “Oh no. No, God, please. I can’t— ”
    Meatface, who’d been watching, mesmerized, piped up. “No
more ‘Hail Mary’s’ for you, huh, big guy? Hey, Twigs, can I do the honors?”
    Jorge laughed. “Yeah, like man, you ain’t even going to be
able to hold a football without thumbs.” Meatface started to pantomime
someone without thumbs trying to pass a ball. This sent both guys into peals of
laughter.
    Twigs snapped her fingers at them. “Listen up, now. How many
fingers would that be before midnight, boys?”
    “School’s out,” Meatface said, waving off her math question.
    “Geez, you’re dumb as a stick,” Jorge scoffed at him. Then
to Twigs, flirtatious. “Okay, so first we gotta find out what time it is. What
time is it?”
    Twigs laughed and turned back to Buck. “Wait. What am I
thinking? Buck here is the banker, the numbers man. How many fingers would that
be, Buck?”
    Sheer panic had taken over Buck’s mind. He was throwing out
anything now. “Listen. Do you know who I am? This will be huge news. Not
just something buried somewhere, but splashed across the front page.”
    “Do you believe this guy?” Twigs picked up the straight
razor. It glinted against the bare overhead bulb. She walked straight to him,
motioning the boys to join her. “Move him over to the sink. Won’t be so messy.”
    “Why don’t we just take one for every hour we already been
here?” Meatface complained. “That’d be practically one hand.”
    “We’re not cavemen,” Twigs said, then continued like a
history lecturer. “In the old days, they’d take off their whole hands, you
know. But that was a problem because most of them just bled out or died of
shock. There’s an art to this shit. You don’t just go in whacking.”
    Buck felt reality slipping away as their muscled arms lifted
him up and dragged him across the room. His ears were ringing and he couldn’t
get a breath. The physical memory