Post-Noir: The Return of Light

The man had just grabbed Paula from behind when I tackled him. It was like tackling a building. Paula slipped out of the man's grasp as I pulled him to the deck again. Before I could get any leverage, the man was out of my grasp. He sat up and swung at me. His first punch hit me in the chest and knocked the breath out of me. If he could throw a punch that forceful from a sitting position, I was in deep shit. I tried to lunge at his torso, thinking I would knock him onto his back. I have a fuzzy memory of the guy's right fist approaching my left eye.

I regained consciousness in the Emergency Room. With my right eye, I could see Paula standing just inside the curtain around my bed. She wore a short terrycloth robe. I just knew she was naked underneath. I couldn't see anything with my left eye. When Paula saw I was awake, she said "my hero."

The hospital kept me for a day because I had a concussion. When the swelling went down, vision returned in my left eye. About ten days later, I had surgery to reposition broken bones around my eye socket. My chest had a nasty bruise. It and my head hurt like hell for a while.

Pasco County Detective Glen Knowles visited hours later, after I'd been moved to a room. Glen and I were, sort of, friends. He was investigating the assault on Paula and me. "The guy," Glen said, "is Nicholas Mancuso. He was a college football player up in Ohio and, more recently, a guest of the Ohio Department of Corrections. Paula told me what landed him in prison up there. He's been out a couple of months. Mancuso recognized Paula in one of The Cove's ads he saw in a magazine. He says he came down here just to see her. He won't say what he intended to do when he attacked her."

"He was a lot more than I could manage," I said.

"I've seen the video," Glen replied. "Our off-duty deputy started it before she ran out of the office. You did ok. You kept Mancuso off Paula. You paid a price though."

"How did it end?" I asked.

"A couple of your male guests started toward the fight, to break it up they said," Glen answered. "When Mancuso put you out, they had second thoughts. You're lucky Mancuso was more interested in getting to Paula than punching you. The off-duty deputy came on scene as Mancuso was getting to his feet. She says she ordered him to stay still but he ignored her. She tased him, twice before he went down. Once Mancuso was down, your guests regained their nerve and kneeled on him while the deputy cuffed him. She backed off about a yard and held him at gunpoint until on duty officers arrived and took him to jail."

"Jesus!" I exclaimed.

"Mancuso will get to compare Florida prisons with Ohio's," Glen continued. "The DA's charging him with sexual assault on Paula and attempted murder of you. I'm not sure about attempted murder, but there's no doubt he goes down for assault causing severe injury. He'll be spending a few years somewhere nice, like Raiford."

Paula came into the room as Glen left. She still had the terrycloth robe on. Smiling, she said, "I don't need this now that he's gone." Paula took the robe off. She was naked underneath. She looked perfect.

"Thank God, he didn't hurt you," I said.

"He scared me shitless," she replied. "It was terrible watching you get hurt protecting me. Using me as the model in our ads wasn't such a great idea after all."

"We couldn't have anticipated this," I replied. "I'm just sorry I'm more badly damaged now than when you agreed to marry me."

Paula moved to the edge of my bed. She lifted my arm that didn't have an IV in it and put my hand on her bare ass. She bent down and kissed me on the lips. Straightening, she said, "you don't get out of it that easy. I've never wanted you more." That was when a nurse walked in.