574
FRANK CONROY
I wanted to wait outside until Guy came back. There was a large
brass lock high on the door. I turned what seemed to be the appro–
priate knob but the bolt didn't move. Examining the mechanism
more closely I heard a noise behind me.
Something was rushing down one of the corridors, something
low and fast. No bullfighter ever waited for his foe more apprehen–
sively. To my amazement I found myself giving a short, nervous
laugh, a desperate guffaw in the teeth of my predicament.
Zooming
into the room was a flash of chrome-man, a monstrous human
machine blurred with speed, bearing down on me like some homicidal
hot-rodder. A man in a wheelchair, but what kind of a man?
His
body was tiny, like a child's, his head impossibly huge, the size of a
watermelon. Flailing at the wheels of
his
chair like some berserk row–
boat enthusiast he backed me into a corner and threw his hands into
my face.
"See my pretty racelet?" he said in a high voice. "See my pretty
racelet?"
Flinching, twisting to avoid the touch of his wild hands, I tried
to slip past. He slammed his chair into the wall and trapped me.
"See my pretty racelet?"
"What? What do you want? What?" Reluctantly I looked
him
in the eye. His bland idiot's features seemed small in the gargantuan
hydrocephalic head. All scrunched together in the cavity that was
his
face they stared out .at me like a fish from a goldfish bowl.
"See my pretty racelet?" he said, still holding his arms up. In
a tantrum of infantile frustration he drummed his heels against the
bottom of the chair. "See! See!"
"He wants you to look at his bracelet," Guy said, grabbing the
back of the chair and pulling him away. "This is Freddie. His nick–
name is pinhead."
"Pinhead, pinhead! See!"
"Go ahead," Guy said. "Just look at it."
Around the creature's wrist was a cheap chrome I.D. bracelet.
He held his hand motionless when he realized I was looking at
it.
The
word FREDDIE was engraved in block letters. I touched it with my
index finger. "It's very pretty. Very nice."
"Pretty racelet?" Freddie said, calmer now.
"Yes. Very pretty."
"Pretty racelet?"
