I clapped an arm around his shoulders and offered a pep talk. “It’s your life,” I said. “Sometimes you’ve got to take the bull by the horns.” I slapped him on the back and pushed him forward. “Go on,” I said, “just do it. Ask her.”
He weaved across the floor and stepped among the spinning lights and found the Girl In The Pink Dress, who was the girl from the roof, who was Bhangra Uncle’s daughter, who was 15, maybe 16, and who was dancing with her brothers. All his drunkenness seemed to disappear once he stood before her, and he looked like a serious young man doing something brave. The exchange lasted no more than a couple of seconds. He spoke, she shook her head no, he walked away, crestfallen.
One of her brothers who’d been dancing with his sister, the youngest, a boy of 6 or 7, had been watching too, and took to his heels. Oh, he knew something! It happened in slow motion from that moment on, for as Lovestruck Kid retreated back toward us, the child was whispering in Bhangra Uncle’s ear and pointing wildly at the defeated suitor.
That great animal roar I’d heard for the first time only days before, when Bhangra Uncle appeared on the street outside the house, now burst over us again. All heads turned toward him. He charged forward, and in one motion, with his whole body coiled with fury, brought his fist to the young man’s face and sent him sprawling across the floor. He turned and found a heavy steel chair and raised it over his shoulders and aimed it at the young man’s head. I’d sat in those chairs earlier and knew one good blow could kill a man, especially a blow with the force Bhangra Uncle possessed.
Lovestruck Kid, his face bloodied, looked up in terror.
Without thinking, I started running toward the pair. Bhangra Uncle was swinging the chair through a high, powerful arc and I came up behind him and grabbed its legs and we started struggling. It gave the kid time to recover and rise unsteadily to his feet. Our eyes met briefly. I’d seen a similar look of terror in Bhangra Uncle’s daughter’s face only a few days previous. In Lovestruck Kid’s eyes, physical agony mixed with something deeper. Moments before, he’d done probably the most courageous thing he’d ever done, asked the girl he thought he loved to dance. Now he was about to die for it. His face said every line of that and more. I watched him turn and begin running, glad I’d given him that one moment, and soon he was sprinting up the stairs leading to the lobby.
His two friends, who had been standing some distance away and were slow to register the scene, took notice, and in the general confusion, shot after him. My struggle with Bhangra Uncle ended when he threw me to the ground. He turned and gave me a look of disgust and took off in pursuit.
Unfortunately, others had already been running.
As soon as Bhangra Uncle let loose his roar, his elder sons or younger cousins or whatever they were, brawny, fierce-looking men in their 20s, took to their feet, raced up and out of the hotel, and found their cars, where they’d stored cricket bats in the trunks, perhaps just for such an occasion. They were standing waiting at the hotel doors as the three men from the Midwest fled through the lobby for their lives.
Any earlier courage I’d displayed was gone. I stood rooted like everyone else, gawkers all, though we could see nothing, only hear it, the crack of bat against body and muffled cries seeping down from the lobby above like a noxious gas. That we couldn’t see anything made it all that much worse. It caused a sick paralysis to work its way through my limbs. A minute passed and California Uncle was the first to take cautiously to the stairs. The sounds of the fight soon died and I followed, feeling like a coward, for I was terrified and I could feel the terror in my legs.
I was glad the violence was over by the time I reached the top of the stairs. The three men, to whatever state they’d been reduced, had slipped away and disappeared into the parking lot, and into the thick, icy cold fog beyond. A trail of blood led out into the night. Here lay a wide empty field. The temperatures were already dropping below freezing. The glass doors were splashed in blood, as was the floor, and the blood-stained jacket of one of the men lay torn from his body on the ground.