Maniac Dawn -- The Deformed Infant (Mother)

Nicole, it turned out after Jack asked if he could sit at her booth, had been raped multiple times by, she claimed, four men. She said this to Jack as matter-of-factly as a person remarking about the weather forecast or the price of a head of cabbage. (Forty percent chance of rain today; the cabbage at Wegmans is a dollar twenty a head.) Dumbfounded, Jack only stared at her. He fished a bent Camel from the breast pocket of his leather jacket and lit it with the sole match from a book sitting in an ashtray on the table, the restaurant's name and slogan printed on the front (THE SEA SHANTY! COME ASHORE!).

Presently, a waitress approached and asked to take Jack's order. But before she could, Claudia stood up and said, "He's not eating. He just came to pick me up. Go outside and bring the car around, Paul. This one's on me."

And that was fine by Jack. He had no money, anyway.

Apparently neither did Nicole, because fewer than ten seconds after Jack stepped down from the restaurant's unvarnished wooden steps and into the biting New England winter wind, she came bounding out of the restaurant, her purse flailing wildly. "Find the car!" she yelled.

"What car?"

"Any car!"

Like a relay runner waiting to be passed a baton -- striding slowly at first, then into a fast jog -- Jack started in the direction Nicole was running toward, looking back again and again with every breath to see how fast she was catching up. Faster than the restaurant's staff, it appeared. Ironic given his poverty, Jack thanked God for the minimum wage. The chef and management were a good 40 yards behind them, the wait staff and line cooks double that. As Jack and his newfound accomplice pulled farther ahead, he laughed out loud, imagining the busboys ankle high in the Atlantic surf.

As instinctively as migratory birds, their pace slackened as the sound of their pursuers faded. But when Jack heard a car engine in the distance behind them, he grabbed Nicole's wrist and pulled her into the uprising wood. There they sat in the dark and cold for an interminable amount of time.

Then Nicole said, "I don't think a few mussels and a Budweiser are worth all this for them, do you? Let's go."

Jack stood up and wiped the muddy knees of his jeans. He wanted a cigarette.

"I know a place not too far from here, actually. No one's there, and we can hang out until at least tomorrow. I'll let you fuck me if you follow."

"But haven't you been fucked enough tonight?"

"Metaphorically, maybe."