Pandora's Closet

WHAT QUIG FOUND by Chris Pierson

This all happened at a restaurant in Rhode Island, the name of which I don’t care to recall.

Well, actually I do recall it. I just can’t tell you what it is.

I’ll explain.

What happened there caused a bit of what my mother would call a foofaraw, which means publicity, and not the kind a major restaurant chain enjoys. So the first time I tried to get this story published, I mentioned the name, and next thing there were cease-and-desist orders flying, and… well, they’re a multinational corporation worth billions. I’m a database programmer with student loans and a car to pay off. You tell me who’d win in court. So turns out I can’t tell you where the story takes place.

Ah, narrative in the modern era.

But I can tell you the type of restaurant I’m talking about. It’s the sort of joint that always springs up in that special kind of strip-mall hell you find in the suburbs. The kind you find next door to the mini-golf course, where they play bad classic rock and serve fajitas and triple cheeseburgers and other things sure to kill you before you start collecting Social Security.

They’re also the kind where there isn’t a square inch of wall that isn’t covered in some old piece of random junk. Pair of snowshoes, washing board, stuffed wolverine, Alaskan license plate. You know the sort. They always have a cute name, like J.P. Fern-stubble’s Goode Tyme Emporium, or Holy Crap, It’s Still Thursday’s. You’ve probably eaten there, then spent the evening scrounging for antacid.

Anyway, I used to work about half a mile from a place like that. Little startup company, sold baby products online. I’ll spare you the glamorous details. This was back in ’99, before the tech bubble popped, and half of America was made up of little places like that, with way more venture capital than clue. Since Footwell McBucketfish’s Olde-Style Roadhouse was just down the street, my team went there for drinks after work. A lot.

So there we were, five of us. There was me-I’m Jered, by the way-and the rest of my crew. Rick was one of the company founders, a burnout who didn’t get any work done. Gabby was the best user interface programmer I’ve ever met, but she hated her job and spent half her time using the office copier to make dupes of her résumé. Ravi did server work; he moved to Canada last year after some drunk morons who thought he was Iraqi set fire to his lawn.

And then there was Alex Quigley. We called him Quig. He was our project lead, and he was older than us-fiftyish, a bit fat and nerdy (in a tech company, you say? Egad!), on his second career. Good guy to work for. He used to be an actor, when he was my age; he even did a little off-Broadway before he got tired of being poor.

We were regulars at the Muggawugga Gulch Saloon, which meant we had a regular booth, with a waitress named Donna. She brought us oversized margaritas and their special chili-cheese-’n’-bacon fries (“They’re Defibrillicious!”) and kept the families with shrieking babies at least three tables away. We never tipped her less than twenty percent.

“Rough day?” she asked that rainy night, setting down our second round of drinks. “You all look like you just found out Jar Jar Binks was going to be back in the next Star Wars.”

Nerd humor. Usually it got a laugh, but all we could manage were pained grimaces.

“God,” said Ravi. “Don’t depress us even more.”

“Quig got yelled at,” Gabby said, and shrugged. “But what else is new?”

Rick took a long pull off his beer. “Nah. It’s bad this time.”

We all looked at Quig. He and the CEO had had a blowup that afternoon. See, the CEO thought we should all be working sixteen-hour days until we shipped our product. Quig thought that was just going to make us tired and sloppy, which meant delays. It got to shouting, and Quig lost. Now he looked as though someone had stolen his car in order to run over his dog.

“You gonna get fired?” Donna asked.

Quig shook his head and sighed, watching his margarita melt. “That’d be too merciful.”

“They’re setting him up to fail,” I said. “They want someone to blame.”

“I told them from the start: Fast, Cheap, Good-you only get to pick two,” Quig said, and shook his head. “But these guys have MBAs, so they knew better.”

“So now we’re gonna work our asses off on something we know is gonna fail, and Quig’ll take the fall,” Rick said. He raised his drink. “To the New Economy.”

That got a few morbid laughs. We toasted with Rick-everyone but Quig. He just sat still, moping.

“Jeez.” Donna touched his shoulder. “You should just quit. Life’s too short for that crap. I’ll get you some Alamo Massacre Wings. You eat ’em, the pain’ll take your mind off things.”

Quig looked up at her and managed a smile. “Thanks, D. You’re a peach.”

Off she went, dodging a table of half-drunk biker-looking dudes a short way away. There was a lot of shouting, and one of the bikers tried to grab Donna’s ass, but she escaped and vanished toward the kitchen.

“Jackasses,” Gabby muttered, giving the drunks a dirty look.

“Donna’s right,” Ravi told Quig. “You should walk.”

“I can’t do that to you guys,” Quig replied. “They’ll ride you into the ground without me there.”

Rick finished his beer. “It’s happening anyway. It’s not like you’re protecting us from anything.”

“Jesus, Rick,” Gabby said.

“What?” he shot back. “It’s true. Or are we not staying for ‘Productivity Nights’ starting next Monday?”

“All right, enough,” I said. “We talk about work any more, I’m going to jam this fork in my eye. Who’s up for a game of Spot the Tchotchke?”

I’d come up with Spot the Tchotchke one day after realizing the stuff on the walls of Q.T. von Thunder-pants’s Publick Haus wasn’t always the same from one week to the next. Believe it or not, they add and remove things on a regular basis-I don’t know if they rotate it between restaurants, or buy new junk, or what. I suspect magic gnomes are involved, but that’s just a guess.

Anyway, in Spot the Tchotchke, you take turns trying to find stuff that wasn’t there last time you visited. Whoever finds the weirdest thing gets their meal paid for by the rest of the table.

“I’m in,” said Ravi, and pointed across the room. “New traffic sign over there. Armadillo Crossing, I think.”

“That’s an aardvark,” Gabby said, squinting.

“Even better. Beat it.”

“Easy,” she said. “There, behind that flock of teenagers. That’s an old medieval instrument called a serpent.”

I looked. The teens were busy throwing food at each other and generally acting like idiots. Hanging nearby, smeared with ketchup, was a wavy thing that looked like a clarinet that had been in an accident.

“Advantage: Gabby,” I said. “Obscure musical instrument beats road sign.”

“Does not!” Ravi protested.

“It’s in the rulebook.” There was no book, of course, but as the game’s creator, I made the call. “Anyone else?”

“Got you all beat,” said Rick. “Look up.”

I did, and flinched. Poised above me, like I was Damocles or something, was a huge pair of old, rusty blades. I mean, the suckers were big. “What the hell?” I asked.

“Gelding shears,” Rick said. “They used to use ’em on horses.”

There was a moment’s silence. I shuddered.

“… annnnnd I’m vegetarian tonight,” said Ravi.

Everyone accepted that Rick had taken the lead. “I’m not even going to try to top that,” I said. We turned to Quig, who was still poking at his half-thawed margarita. “How about you, boss? Can you beat the Amazing De-stallionizers?”

“Hmmm?” he asked.

“Come on, Quig,” said Gabby, shaking his arm. “We’re trying to cheer you up. Can you see anything stranger than those godawful things?”

Quig sighed, glanced at the shears, then started scanning the room. He usually won the game. He had a good eye for weirdness. I watched him go from wall, to wall, to…

“Mother of God,” he said.

“What?” we asked.

Saying nothing, he got up and went over toward the bar. There was a ghastly old puppet that must have provided nightmare fuel for kids fifty years ago, and I thought he was going for that, but instead he reached to the right and picked up something else. He brought it back to the table.

It was round and wide, a tarnished disc of brass with a deep bowl in the middle and what looked like a bite out of the rim. He held it up.

“I give you the Golden Helmet of Mambrino,” he said.

“The who of the what now?” I asked.

“You never read Cervantes?”

I gave him a look. “Sorry. I’m still working my way through the collected works of Proust. Come on, Quig. That thing’s just an old bowl.”

“Close,” he said, his eyes shining. “Shaving basin. You put your throat in the niche, here, fill it with water, and a barber shaves you.”

“I thought it was a helmet,” Gabby said.

“It is. Don Quixote. He met a barber on the road, and he thought the man’s basin was a famous helmet. He wore it on his head after that. Like so.”

He raised it, ready to put on the bowl. Other tables were staring at him now. So was the restaurant manager, a beefy, humorless guy named Stan who rumbled toward us from across the room. “Hey!” he yelled. “What have I told you guys about taking stuff off the walls?”

People at the other tables chuckled. Quig turned a little red, then lowered the bowl-basin-whatever-and handed it to Stan. “My apologies, good sir,” he said. “It was not my intent to weigh upon the hospitality of your inn.”

Ravi nearly folded up, he was laughing so hard. The others at least tried to contain it. I wiped tears from my eyes as Stan took back the basin and rumbled away.

“I say my thing still beats that,” Rick said.

“Nah,” I replied. “The demonstration put it over the top. You win, Quig.”

Rick gave me a dark look. “I could arrange a demonstration…”

“Easy, now,” Gabby said. “Where’d you find out about the helmet, Quig?”

Quig watched Stan hang the basin back on the wall. “Oh, I played the Don once, in a production of Man of La Mancha. Dinner theater in Connecticut, back in the eighties.”

“Ah,” Ravi said, still laughing. “Glamour.”

“Shut up,” Gabby told him.

Quig wasn’t listening. He’d gone back in time. “I got to wear the helmet every night, and sing ‘The Impossible Dream.’ ” He hesitated, then sighed as he sat down again. “And I gave that up for e-Baby.”

“At least you’ve got me, hon,” said Donna, coming back over. She was older than most waitresses at Chuckles Feeblebuzzard’s Cholesterol Hut, maybe forty, and still good-looking. She flirted with Quig constantly-and not, I got the feeling, just because he tipped well. She set down a plate of wings that gave off eyeball-melting fumes and another round of drinks. “You guys know what you want?”

We told Donna our orders. She gave Quig another wink and went back toward the kitchen. We laid into the wings-all but Ravi, who kept looking up at the shears.

As we were eating, I noticed Quig glancing back at the basin. “You could go back to it, you know,” I said after a while. “Acting, I mean. Give up this crap, sell your condo, try again. God, you could probably put together your own little troupe of disenchanted programmers, tour the country.”

“I’d join,” said Gabby. Rick, sucking meat off a bone, nodded too.

Quig shook his head. “It’s a hard life, J. I can’t go back to cinder-block furniture and insta-noodles for dinner.”

But then he looked at the basin again.

By that point, Donna was on her way with our food. With the drinks and all, the tray must have weighed twenty pounds, but she carried it one-handed, weaving through the place like it was nothing. And the damn thing is, I saw what was about to happen, saw the biker-types snickering, but I froze up and couldn’t say anything until it was too late.

It all went in slow motion, like so:

The biker who nearly grabbed her ass before, a fat guy with a bushy beard that looked like his neck had thrown up, gives it another shot. And this time Donna can’t get away. He gets a handful. She stumbles. The tray rocks, she twists, her ankle rolls, and down she goes-along with about a hundred dollars’ worth of greasy food and frozen drinks. She doesn’t make a sound, but glasses smash and cutlery clatters and plates go crrrang, and there’s about a fifteen-foot spray of fries and ice and Krazy Tequila Lime Dippin’ Sauce splatted across the floor. Somehow, she manages to miss all the customers. The noise is ridiculous-and all the talking and laughing stops, just a lousy Foreigner song playing in the background. Count to three, and no one moves.

Then someone says something. It’s one of the food-throwing teens. “Two points!” he shouts.

The idiot teens laugh and go back to flinging onion rings. But everyone else is paralyzed-even the bikers, who stare at Donna, sprawled on the tiles. Mortified.

I stare, too. Your brain just kinda locks.

But then a chair squeaks, and next thing I know, Quig’s on his feet. And the look on his face-well, there’s anger and then there’s blank, white-lipped rage. He walks to Donna, through broken glass and mango salsa, and offers his hand.

Oh, yeah… I have no idea how he got it down from the wall again, but that brass bowl-thing? It’s on his head.

“Milady,” he says.

“His what?” murmurs Rick. Gabby kicks him under the table.

Donna looks up at Quig. There’s a smear of coleslaw on her cheek. She’s got rice in her hair and tears in her eyes. She takes his hand, and he helps her up. The whole restaurant applauds. I’ve never been so proud of anyone. He should’ve looked like a fool with that thing on his head, but he didn’t. He looked… well, noble.

But the slow motion doesn’t stop there. Quig offers Donna a napkin to clean herself up, then turns to the bikers. If looks could blow things up, there would have been a smoking crater there in the middle of the restaurant. But looks can only… well, look. So he reaches out, grabs a beer mug off the table, and dumps it over Neck-beard’s head.

That’s when things started moving normal speed again. Maybe even a little faster.

The bikers all got up at once, yelling stuff that sent moms diving to cover their kids’ ears. Neck-beard was dripping-with the beer on him, he smelled like a college dorm stairwell-and he took a swing. Quig ducked, and Neck-beard slipped in the goo on the floor and went down. Our table got up next, and we grabbed hold of Quig before he could hit back. I saw his eyes-he was going to. Donna helped us drag him away, while two truckers, three college kids, and a guy who looked like a retired accountant surrounded the bikers, trying to break up the fight.

The bikers looked ready to grab chairs, flip tables, just trash the place-but Stan the manager came barreling out of the back, his face a really spectacular shade of purple. I remember there was this vein throbbing on his right temple. I thought it was going to pop, and boom, down he’d go with an aneurysm, but it didn’t.

“What in the flying hell is going on here?” he roared. “Anyone touches a stick of furniture, and I’ll have the cops here. Any of you have any outstanding warrants?”

The bikers quieted down.

“Asshole dumped beer on my head!” yelled Neck-beard, getting up off the floor. He pointed at Quig.

“And you tripped me!” said Donna.

Stan looked at her, at the mustard-and-ketchup Jackson Pollock all over the floor. His lips moved, and I could see he was counting to ten. When he was on seven, Quig stepped forward.

“Sir,” he said, “it’s true, I did what that man said. But I was avenging the honor of the lady-”

Stan glared at him, his eyes flicking up to the basin as if wondering how it got on Quig’s head. “Shut it,” he snapped, and turned back to the bikers. “All right, you lot-out. If I ever see you back, spilled beer’s the least of your worries.”

The bikers muttered, suddenly sheepish. Stan had this effect on people-they could have crushed him into the ground, but the guy was built like a fire hydrant. He intimidated people.

“Now,” he said, and they skulked out.

There was some scattered applause, but Stan gave the room the stink-eye and it stopped. Next he turned to Quig. “You, too.”

“Him?” Ravi asked.

Gabby pointed at Donna. “He was defending her!” Rick and I joined in, and so did a bunch of other people, with variations on “yeah!” and “that’s right!”

“Stan,” Donna said. “Those jerks are waiting for him in the parking lot. You know that.”

But he just shook his head. Stan could be a bit of a dick, sometimes. “Company policy. Anyone fights or disturbs the other diners, I have to throw them out.”

And there’s the part that the legal department of P.F. Whistlefart’s Grease-a-torium didn’t like me telling: how their corporate policy was to send a fifty-year-old software engineer out to get the snot knocked out of him by six guys who could crush beer kegs against their foreheads. It’s the sort of bad press that could make America want to buy its two-thousand-calorie meals elsewhere.

Gabby began to explain, in precise anatomical detail, what Stan could do with company policy. She was just getting into the part about twisting it sideways when Quig held up a hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t fear those riffraff. If it’s a fight they want, then a fight they shall have. Stand aside.”

And he made for the door.

I watched him go. We all did, a bit too stunned to react. Quig looked different-maybe it was because he was balancing that bowl on his head, but he was standing straight, his programmer’s hunch gone. And he was thin, which was weird. He’d always had a bit of a gut.

Donna broke the silence. She stepped forward, ripped the nametag off her uniform, and threw at Stan. The pin stuck in his tie and it hung there, upside-down, proclaiming him to be

“Prick,” she said, and went after Quig.

We followed him, too. Looking back, I was asking for what happened to me out in the parking lot, but I’d do it again. Quig was my boss, but he was also my friend. I wasn’t going to let him go out there alone.

Anyway, we all gathered around Quig near the coat rack. He was rummaging through the umbrella stand and came up with his-a sturdy old thing, not one of those collapsibles that blow inside-out if you breathe on them wrong.

“Trouble yourselves not for me,” he said, holding up the umbrella. “I can fend for myself, even against such a horde.”

“Uh, Quig?” I asked. “What are you going to do?”

“And why are you talking like that?” Rick added.

I heard a sound, and there was Stan again, coming up behind us. “Not so fast,” he said. “Give that back.”

He reached for the basin, then yelped when Quig hit him with the umbrella. It was a quick blow, and precise. Quig hadn’t forgotten his stage-fight training, I guess. Stan pulled back, clutching his wrist.

“Uncouth rogue!” Quig said. No, not said-proclaimed. “Do not despoil the Helm of Mambrino with your innkeeper’s hands. Now begone!”

Stan looked at him, pop-eyed. He could have had Quig arrested for assault, even for that little smack, but he just stepped back, blinking.

“No, seriously,” Rick said, “why do you sound like someone from a Monty Python movie?”

“Shhh,” said Gabby. She started grabbing more umbrellas and handing them out. “We’re coming with you, Quig. We’re your men at arms.”

“What?” asked Ravi. He stared at the umbrella in his hand.

Quig smiled. “Very well,” he said, and his eyes fell on Donna. “But not you, milady. You must wait until the battle is done-but if you would give me a token to wear as I sally forth…”

She looked like she was going to argue, but she didn’t. There was something irresistible about Quig just then, the same thing that made me not question going out to face six thugs armed only with a bumber-shoot. I didn’t know the word for how he looked at the time, but I learned it later. He looked gallant.

“All right,” Donna said. She looked at herself, frowned, and pulled a button off her uniform. Carefully, she pinned it onto Quig’s shirt. It read:

ASK ME ABOUT OUR DOUBLE-FUDGTASTIC BROWNIE SPLITZ™!

Then, leaning forward, she kissed his cheek.

“All right,” Rick said. “Everyone ready to get their asses kicked?”

“Wait,” said someone behind me.

I turned, and there was the retired accountant. And the truckers. And the college kids. And even one of the idiot teens, a pimply, quiet kid who’d been sitting off to the side.

“How many more umbrellas you have?” the accountant asked.

We armed ourselves. No one tried to stop us. Then out we went. It was still raining in the parking lot. And there, waiting by the mini-golf course, were Neck-beard and company. They were armed, too- three had pipes, a couple had knives, and one big bald dude had a freaking bicycle chain. They grinned when Quig stepped out, the bowl glinting under the street-lights-but they faltered when the rest of us followed him. We had them outnumbered, two to one. Behind us, Donna and half the restaurant watched through the window.

“What the hell?” blurted Neck-beard. “You put together a posse, freak? And what’s that thing on your head?”

Quig looked at him. Slowly, he raised his umbrella. “Yield, varlet,” he said. “Beg forgiveness and quit this field, or taste my steel!”

The bikers laughed, and can you blame them? This was insane. Except it didn’t feel insane, not at the time. It was exciting. I felt every raindrop as it hit me. I raised my umbrella too, and stepped forward. So did Rick, and Ravi, and Gabby. And the rest.

I’m amazed none of the passing cars drove off the road at the sight of us.

The bikers must have felt a little of what I was feeling, because they quit laughing and spread out. The guy with the chain started to whirl it slowly. They looked different than they had inside-bigger, cruder, more savage. Like ogres. It could have been a trick of the light… but you know, I doubt it.

“As you will,” Quig said. He kissed the Double-Fudgtastic button, then raised his head again. I wondered how I’d ever thought the thing he was wearing was a bowl. Couldn’t everyone see it was a helmet?

The bikers charged.

We ran to meet them, our weapons held high.

So here’s the problem: Quig had his army, but he’d overlooked one thing. None of us knew how to fight. Plus we had umbrellas, for the love of God. What I’m saying is, it was sort of a lopsided battle. The truckers managed to break one guy’s teeth, but the rest of us didn’t accomplish much except for a lot of shouting and falling down and yelling in pain. Bicycle Chain took out all three college kids by himself. The accountant got stabbed through the hand. The high school kid ended up with a cut that took thirty-three stitches, I found out later.

After that, things get a bit blurry, because I met up with Neck-beard. He had a pipe. He swung and I tried to parry, except I had no idea what I was doing, and I ended up getting hit full-force on my right elbow.

So I hear a snap, and suddenly the umbrella’s on the ground and my arm’s hanging limp at the shoulder and it feels really weird, like anything it touches is moving around all over the place. And there’s no pain yet, not really, because I’m in shock. I fall to my knees and throw up margaritas and Alamo Massacre Wings all over the biker’s boots. You wouldn’t believe the colors.

Neck-beard stood over me, and he raised the pipe. I couldn’t even get my arm up to protect myself. I just felt bits of bone grinding together where my humerus ought to be. I knew the next thing I was going to feel break was my skull.

Only the pipe never came down. Just then, Quig came out of nowhere, yelling… well, I guess it was a battle-cry. I didn’t catch the words-they sounded Spanish-but it caught Neck-beard’s attention. He took a swing at Quig, but Quig twisted out of the way, then snapped his umbrella around and hit Neck-beard in the face. There was another crack, and Neck-beard dropped his pipe and clutched his nose, which was starting to pour blood. Quig didn’t miss a beat; he spun around, rammed the butt of his umbrella into the back of Neck-beard’s head, and the big ox fell on his face and stayed down.

I just knelt there, grunting and grinding my teeth, while Quig stood above Neck-beard silhouetted against the lights of the mini-golf course. “You all right, J.?” he asked.

“Not… really,” I said, and managed a weak, crazy kind of laugh. I shook my arm, which flopped in a way I still don’t like thinking about. “But I’ll live.”

Quig smiled at me. Then, with another battle-cry, he was gone. A moment later, the pain finally hit, and I don’t remember anything more.

It was a wonder nobody on either side was killed. I was one of the worst hurt-it took the surgeons five hours, a steel plate, and seven screws to put my arm back together, and the elbow still doesn’t straighten all the way-but there were a few other broken bones, a whole lot of concussions, and plenty of cuts, scrapes, and bruises. By the time the cops showed up, it was over. One of the bikers ran away; they found him hiding behind the restaurant’s dumpsters. The rest were unconscious. Gabby and Ravi were still standing; Rick was one of the concussed. And then there was Quig, still wearing that damn bowl on his head, and not a scratch on him.

The media loved it. Quig’s picture ended up on the front of the Providence and Boston papers and even made it into the New York Times: “ Rhode Island ‘Knight’ Wins Parking Lot Brawl.” He got calls to appear on talk shows, but he never did. There were various charges of assault and mischief, but we got off-there were plenty of witnesses who confirmed that anything we did was self-defense. The bikers weren’t as lucky-as Stan figured, most of them had warrants.

Things at work weren’t the same after that. Rick never came back; he cashed in his stock options and moved out west. I hear he’s working in games now. Gabby and Ravi and I stayed a while longer, but we each left the company before too long. After that night in the parking lot, any attraction to baby product websites was pretty much gone. Me, I’m still programming. But I’m writing and taking acting classes too, because hey, why not? Plus aikido. Next time I’m in a fight, I want to be ready.

And Quig…

Ah, Quig.

He fought for us. He went to the CEO Monday morning and told him we wouldn’t be working late to make up for their mismanagement. Said if they didn’t like it, they could fire him. So they fired him, of course. No, he wasn’t wearing the helmet when it happened.

Two weeks later, he showed up in the street outside the office. He was riding a motorcycle-a big, beautiful hog that would have made Neck-beard insane with jealousy. Written on the side was its name: Rocinante. Sitting on the back, behind him, was Donna, and tucked into one of the saddle-bags was the Golden Helmet.

“Where you headed, Quig?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Just driving around the country a while. We’ll probably end up out west. Maybe I can find work in Hollywood, teaching stage fighting.”

He’d changed. He was happy. I never asked him if it was the helmet that did it. That seemed too obvious.

Donna slid her arms around his waist, gave him a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of him.”

And like that, with a noise that rattled the windows, he was gone.

I watched the bike head down the street, then turn left and disappear.

I went home early that day.

Oh, and if you’re looking for The All-American Alimentary Adventure, don’t bother. After all the bad press, the company closed the location. The mini-golf people bought it, and they opened a restaurant of their own.

It’s called Windmills.