The pocketknife's worn bone handle fitted comfortably into his hand.
'If you want to be rid of the purpurfargade ansiktet, first you give it to the pie ... and then you give the pie with the curse-child inside it to someone else. But it has to be soon, or it come back on you double. You understand?'
'Yes,' Billy said.
'Then do it if you will,' Lemke said. His thumbs tightened again. The darkish slit in the pie crust spread open.
Billy hesitated, but only for a second - then his daughter's face rose in his mind. For a moment he saw her with all the clarity of a good photograph, looking back at him over her shoulder, laughing, her pom-poms held in her hands like big silly purple-and-white fruits.
You're wrong about the push, old man, he thought. Heidi for Linda. My wife for my daughter. That's the push.
He pushed the blade of Taduz Lemke's knife into the hole in his hand. The scab broke open easily. Blood spattered into the slit in the pie. He was dimly aware that Lemke was speaking very rapidly in Rom, his black eyes never leaving Billy's white, gaunt face.
Billy turned the knife in the wound, watching as its puffy lips parted and it regained its former circularity. Now the blood came faster. He felt no pain.
'Enkelt! Enough.'
Lemke plucked the knife from his hand. Billy suddenly felt as if he had no strength at all. He collapsed back against the park bench, feeling wretchedly nauseated, wretchedly empty - the way a woman who has just given birth must feel, he imagined. Then he looked down at his hand and saw that the bleeding had already stopped.
No - that's impossible.
He looked at the pie in Lemke's lap and saw something else that was impossible - only this time the impossibility happened before his eyes. The old man's thumbs relaxed, the slit closed again ... and then there simply was no slit. The crust was unbroken except for two small steam vents in the exact center. Where the slit had been was something like a zigzag wrinkle in the crust.
He looked back at his hand and saw no blood, no scab, no open flesh. The wound there had now healed completely, leaving only a short white scar - it also zigzagged, crossing lifeand heartlines like a lightning bolt.
'This is yours, white man from town,' Lemke said, and he put the pie in Billy's lap. His first, almost ungovernable impulse was to dump it off, to get rid. of it the way he would have gotten rid of a large spider someone had dropped in his lap. The pie was loathsomely warm, and it seemed to pulse inside its cheap aluminum plate like something alive.
Lemke stood up and looked down at him. 'You feel better?' he asked.
Billy realized that aside from the way he felt about the thing he was holding in his lap, he did. The weakness had passed. His heart was beating normally.
'A little,' he said cautiously.
Lemke nodded. 'You take weight now. But in a week, maybe two, you start to fall back. Only this time you fall back and there won't be no stopping it. Unless you find someone to eat that.'
'Yes.'
Lemke's eyes didn't waver. 'You sure?'
'Yes, yes!' Billy cried.
'I feel a little sorry for you,' Lemke said. 'Not much, but a little. Once you might have been pokol - strong. Now your shoulders are broken. Nothing is your fault ... there are reasons ... you have friends.' He smiled mirthlessly. 'Why not eat your own pie, white man from town? You die, but you die strong.'
'Get out of here,' Billy said. 'I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Our business is done, that's all I know.'
'Yes. Our business is done.' His glance shifted briefly to the pie, then back to Billy's face. 'Be careful who eats the meal that was meant for you,' he said, and walked away. Halfway down one of the jogging paths, he turned back. It was the last time Billy ever saw his incredibly ancient, incredibly weary face. 'No poosh, white man from town,' Taduz Lemke said. 'Not never.' He turned and walked away.
Billy sat on the park bench and watched him until he was gone.
When Lemke had disappeared into the evening, Billy got up and started back the way he had come. He had walked twenty paces before he realized he had forgotten something. He went back to the bench, his face dazed and serious, eyes opaque, and got his pie. It was still warm and it still pulsed, but these things sickened him less now. He supposed a man could get used to anything, given sufficient incentive.
He started back toward Union Street.
Halfway up the hill to the place where Ginelli had let him off, he saw the blue Nova parked at the curb. And by then he knew the curse really was gone.