“You terrify me,” she said distinctly.
It was like being harpooned.
“I didn’t mind that article. I told myself it was okay. It was okay. It is. But it frightens me that you can do that kind of thing anytime you want. You could buy half this city. You can take care of me. You can give me everything I ever wanted, everything I need, everything I might ever have dreamed of but might otherwise be unable to have, now. Because of…” She let go with one arm long enough to gesture at her body, the spine with its bright white lesions. “You offer me a way to have everything, to give up fighting. To just… give it up, give in, go gracefully into that good night. And the frightening thing is, I want to go. I want to never have to lift another finger, never have to worry about money again in my life, but then who would I be?”
“You’d be Kick.”
“No. Because who is Kick? I am what I do. And if it’s all done for me, what’s left?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. And it’s tempting to let you do it, anyway. But I can’t, because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore, who I am.”
“You are Kick.”
“I was Kick. Before.”
I put the cup down, stood, and lifted the coffee table up and set it to one side out of the way. She watched me. I knelt at her feet. “You are Kick.” I bent and kissed her bare instep. “I know your skin.” I leaned forward, so that my cheek rested on her feet and each of my palms were flat on her hips. “I know the shape of your muscle, the heft of your bone.” I lifted my head. Her eyes met mine. I came to my knees and leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I know your mouth.” I ran my hand over her hair, down the side of her neck. Her pulse beat hard. “I know your pulse.” I kissed the other corner. Her lips opened. “I know your breath.” A light, almost-not-there kiss, like kissing a butterfly’s wings. “I know your scent. I know you. I always will.”
OUTSIDE CRYSTA LGAZE, I UNLOADED THE LAST OF THE HEAVY PADDING. DORNAN watched and tugged at his hair.
“And you swear you won’t be hitting me?”
“Won’t touch you.”
“It’s just for your ladies?”
“Yes. Now take this to the main-floor bathroom and”—a pale green Beetle convertible swept into the parking lot. Therese—“get changed. Go now, Dornan. Come into the room at exactly six-ten.”
“Ten past, yes, yes, now, you’re sure—”
Therese got out, she was waving something at me. She was clearly agitated.
I picked up the pile of padding, dumped it in Dornan’s arms. “Go.” I turned to Therese.
“I am so glad I can get a word with you,” she said. “I need you to listen to this.” She waved her phone again.
“What is it?”
“A message. From Sandra. Listen.” She hit a key, listened, then another, handed me the phone.
A woman’s voice, a whisper, as though she were hiding in a cupboard. “ ‘Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they do, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord… ’ ” She paused and spat softly, as people do when clearing their mouth of blood. “ ‘Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion and the Lord will discover their secret parts.’ ” Another pause. Musing. “ ‘Discover their secret parts.’ ”
I turned off the phone, handed it back to Therese.
“When did you get the message?”
“Last night.”
“What did you do?”
“I wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t ask for my help, I didn’t know…”
I waited.
“I called nine-one-one.”
“And what did you say?”
“I gave Sandra’s address.”
“She gave it to you?”
Therese nodded, kept nodding as she realized what a coincidence of timing that was. “I gave her address and said they should get an ambulance there.”
“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know. I was up all night thinking and thinking about it. This morning there was nothing on the news. Nothing anywhere.”
There never was, unless someone died.
“Did I do the right thing?”
“It never does any harm to call nine-one-one. They would have sent police as well as an ambulance. If Sandra was hurt, she would have got help. If she was in danger, she would have been protected.”
Another car pulled into the lot, a battered Civic. Tonya: tense, ready.
“You didn’t call Sandra?”
“She didn’t give me her phone number. I don’t even know her last name.”
“I see.” I didn’t. But another car was arriving. Time to go in.
SEVEN MINUTES later, the basement air smelled singed, like an iron skillet heated too long on the stove: partly someone’s overuse of hair spray—odd, the way some people prepared—and partly adrenaline sweat. Sandra was the last to arrive. Her left arm was strapped close in a black sling. When she dropped her purse on the bench and turned, the new bruise along her collarbone was momentarily visible. Her face was expertly made up. No one said anything, but the taste in the air intensified to gunmetal and cordite.
Therese dithered, unsure whether to talk to Sandra, whether she should acknowledge the phone call, admit she had called 911.
I didn’t wait for her to make up her mind.
“In”—I glanced at the clock—“nine minutes, my friend Dornan will come in. He will be wearing body armor and padding. He will attack you impartially, without malice, one by one. We will decide on the order before he arrives. You will hit him with everything you’ve got. You can’t hurt him. Even his joints will be specially braced. He will keep attacking you until he signals that he’s sustained what would be a knockout or structurally disabling blow if he weren’t padded. He will signal this by patting his head with his hand—or slapping the mat with his foot or hand if his head is unreachable. ” If, for example, it’s rolled off into the corner of the room and is being smashed like a piñata. “I’ll repeat all this before we begin.”
Jennifer’s face was glaucous and glistening. Good. That fear would translate nicely to the kind of adrenaline I—they—would need.
“This is the order in which he’ll attack: Tonya, Suze, Sandra, Nina, Pauletta, Jennifer, Therese, Katherine, Kim, Christie. You know everything you need to know about knocking a man down. Dornan is in his early thirties and reasonably fit, average height, and a little below average weight—until you add in the sixty pounds of padding. Sandra, tell me about your injury. Will you be all right for this exercise?”
“It’s just bruises.”
"Were you X-rayed?”
“No. But it’s an injury I’m familiar with. Soft-tissue injury. Muscles, not ligaments. And it’s been documented.”
Documented. Was that a reference to the ambulance? She seemed almost supernaturally calm. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty… She had reached the place some people find before they die. I doubted she could do much to harm anyone in this class with me watching, but she could hurt herself, which would distract everyone. I considered. If it were only bruises, being attacked would be painful but probably wouldn’t pose a danger of serious damage. I’d tell Dornan to grab her around the waist. I nodded, and continued with the task at hand.
“Dornan will attack you as you walk. He will attack you from the side or the front or the back. For the purposes of this scenario, you should assume he wants to drag you somewhere such as his car or yours, that he wants to hurt you. This is not a situation in which to talk. You fight. Questions?”