“Shit, my shirt is ruined.”
“Yeah, nice shirt.”
“It’s tailored. It’s imported silk.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m fucking bleeding. Can’t you even look at me?”
“Shut up, will you? I have other things to look out for.”
“This is beautiful, fucking beautiful. I should have known not to follow one of your bright ideas.”
“It was your idea too, okay? Now, shut up.”
“Oh, yeah. I know. I was thinking with my pecker. That’s what got me here. I was thinking I might get lucky.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, shit.”
“You came along because you thought you could fuck me?”
“Oh, now you’re surprised. After all that winking and twinkling when you suggested dinner. You were flooring it with your girl power.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted to sleep with you.”
“Yeah, it was just bait.”
“That is so sexist.”
“Fuck you! I’m dying!”
“You’re not dying. I just need to get us out of here so you can get to the hospital.”
“Heh. Good luck with that.”
“Just let me handle this.”
“How many bullets have you got left?”
“Six, if I counted right. How about you?”
“I guess three.”
“We need to find weapons.”
“This is a kitchen. There should be knives lying around. That is if you want to go up against assault rifles with meat cleavers.”
“Shit.”
“Or we could make Molotov cocktails with liquor bottles like we did in Batam.”
“Shut up. These are professionals we’re dealing with.”
“I’d say. That’s why they’re not coming right in. Biding their time. Waiting for us to wear out.”
“I jammed the doors. Front and back are steel. Won’t be easy to open. They’ll probably be coming in from the dining room through that artsy stained glass door.”
“They’re just laughing at us. Like monkeys in a zoo. They think we’re fucking each other or soon will be.”
“Why would they think that?”
“We’re gonna die. What else is there to do? When they hear your fake orgasm, it will be their cue to bust in.”
“Men.”
“I should have finished that steak. Juicy T-bone. Medium rare. It would have been a good last supper.”
“Will you get off it? We’ll get outa here alive.”
“I ordered a good wine, too. Saint Emilion Gran Cru 1984.”
“Now that you mention it, that was gross.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We were having steak and mashed potatoes. Ordering a Gran Cru Burgundy was like mixing caviar with French fries.”
“It’s a Bordeaux.”
“Whatever. I would have been more comfortable if you ordered something less pretentious.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I like Lacryma Christi.”
“Girl piss.”
“What?”
“Real men don’t drink Lacryma Christi.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a prissy wine.”
“No it’s not. It’s a traditional wine mentioned by Voltaire in ‘Candide’ and by Dumas in ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’.”
“And if that’s not prissy enough, it’s got a name like a Japanese boy band.”
“It means ‘Tears of Christ’, and it’s based on the legend that Jesus wept over Lucifer’s fall from grace, and his tears became wine. That’s cool, right?”
“It’s the kind of wine that an aging history professor with a toupee and three piece tweeds would pour for underage students trying to impress them with his pedantic bullshit. ‘Oh, this wine is mentioned in French literature.’”
“It would have gone a whole lot better with steak and potatoes than your five-hundred-dollars-a-bottle Rolls Royce wine.”
“Steak and potatoes is real food. A wine that goes best with chocolate is not a wine for real food.”
“You and your ‘real men’ and ‘real food’, you sound like a real jerk.”
“I got a real bullet in my gut.”
“I hope it stays there.”
“Why did you order your steak well done? You used to order rare.”
“Nothing. Just a change of taste.”
“Was there a reason you wanted to avoid bloody meat?”
“Are you saying that I saw this coming?”
“I don’t order hamburgers before I go out on a hit.”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“I’m trying to go veggie.”
“What?”
“I’m avoiding red meat. In fact I’m avoiding meat altogether.”
“You did know this job involved a steak joint.”
“If I could order fish, I would have.”
“This is unbelievable. No wonder we screwed up.”
“That’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Why are you going veggie?”
“I’m not getting younger. I’m losing my complexion.”
“You look fine to me.”
“I’m not a soldier any more. I need to look out for my…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me you’re looking to get married and raise a family.”
“I have a biological clock too, okay? Women have time limits.”
“We should have sealed the deal a long time ago.”
“Oh, God. Please no.”
“What? You don’t like me?”
“It’s not you. It’s your… ‘man’ thing.”
“What ‘man’ thing?”
“You always have to be the guy on top. You always talk like I’m some sort of commodity. It’s always a ‘score’ for you. You never think about winning a girl over.”
“I bought you a Gran Cru wine.”
“I’m telling you, that’s gross.”
“You’d prefer a prissy wine.”
“Yeah. And maybe you should do some other prissy stuff, like appreciate a woman for once. Make her feel special, just a little bit.”
“Woo you with a sonnet from under the balcony and shit like that?”
“That’s a start.”
“You’re looking at the wrong door.”
“What?”
“They’re not coming in that way. They’re gonna bust down the steel doors, so we’ll escape through the dining room. Then ambush us.”
“Squeeze and crush. Classic Sun Tzu.”
“We need another way out. How about the garbage shoot? It should take us straight to the dumpster.”
“That should be about thirty yards from the car. We just might make it.”
“Can you reach those vodka bottles? I’ll light them up for a diversion. On a count of three, you give’em a big Meg Ryan orgasm.”
“This is going to stink.”
“Yeah, filthy down there. You okay?”
“Sure. Sorry about your shirt.”
Samurai Novelist 