She throws down the paddle. She crosses the living room
century before by the emperor whose people believed was God that he wasn’t
and grabs the poker from the fireplace and is coming back with it for the man who did whatever he did to her, and I say, “Oh, hey, wait,” and even Monica comes to her senses, “No no no,” she laughs, holding the Persian girl back, “no no no no,” restraining her but still laughing. Meanwhile the bodyguards outside are now banging on the front door, “What’s going on in there,” while Monica and I, we’re trying to hold back the girl with the poker and the other women are still flailing away, beating the naked bodies of the groaning men to a rather glowing pink. The bodyguards are banging on the door and it’s clear they’re going to break it down any second. “I have to get out of here,” I say to Monica, grabbing the poker from the other girl’s hand and I’ve just enough presence of mind to take from my bag the keys to the handcuffs when Monica says, “This way.” Turns out the whole back wall of the house with the floor-to-ceiling windows can be moved like a sliding glass door though not any too easily, and we’re squeezing through the opening into the dark back yard where the pool is when I hear the front door come crashing down behind me. I hear the other women screaming in flight, some of them pushing at me from behind, all of us scattering out into the night and into the hills with Armand’s boys behind us.
I kick off my heels and throw the keys to the handcuffs out somewhere into the dark ’round me, and follow Monica who’s running past the leaf-covered pool to a small wooden gate you would have to know about to find. The gate doesn’t really open the whole way and we have to squeeze through like we squeezed through the sliding wall of the house, and there I am in my corset and stockings splinters catching on the lace, pushing through and feeling glad for once I’m little. Except for the fact I think she’s part cat, I don’t know how Monica gets through. Past the gate are steps down the hill, and at one point I trip and tumble down the steps and pick myself up and keep running down the path with the
God at all, and I was the agent of chaos in a way I’m only truly aware of now
steps zigzagging this way and that, and before zagging I keep bouncing off hedges at each zig. I have no idea where I’m going except it’s definitely down the hill. I’m surely not heading the way the limo came up, or toward the beach cove where I started, and I don’t know when I become aware Monica is gone or that there’s some heavy breathing behind me from one of Armand’s gorillas right on my tail. I keep thinking I’m smaller so I should be able to outrun him but he keeps coming. It’s funny how even when you’re running in blind panic through the dark, a bit like when you’re swimming in a lake, your brain goes on furiously thinking anyway, what can I do and how can I get away from this person, what will make him stop. What will make him just give up. I just keep running down the hill toward what I know has to be — somewhere in front of me — the water, wondering where on the lake I’m going to wind up and how far I can swim. I remember how hard I swam that first night I came to the Chateau X and almost not making it, and I really don’t want to have to go back in the water again.
We reach a small glen that’s all white and lit up under the moon, me and the one still chasing me, and I know the white of my corset makes me very easy to see, a little bouncing white moonbeam. He doesn’t have a gun does he, I think to myself. I think to myself if suddenly the sound of his breathing stops then I’ll fall to the ground and into the grass of the glen because that might mean he’s stopped running long enough to take out his gun and shoot. I glance over my shoulder which is a mistake because it slows me down, and he’s still right there behind me and it’s the man who originally came out to the Chateau grotto in the powerboat and drove me up in the limo.
I’ve gotten all the way ’cross the clearing when his breathing behind me does stop, I don’t hear him anymore, I hear nothing except this loud crack and think oh jeez he is shooting!
here in the birth canal of the lake, suspended in this moment between chaos
And stupidly instead of falling in the grass like I planned I just sort of stop and turn and look, expecting to see him there on the other side of the glen aiming at me — but he’s not there, at least not that I can see at first, then there’s something lying in the grass like a big wounded buffalo or bear and it’s him, and I hear him moan. I have no idea what brought him down but I start to turn and run into the trees to the south when a hand reaches up out of the grass and takes hold of my wrist and pulls me down.
It clasps my mouth and I don’t make a sound. I’m not sure when I know it’s him, whether it’s when I turn and actually see him or if something just tells me. But I swear something in Kale’s eyes, they light up like I’ve never seen in any person — in the night you think they’re fireflies darting above the grass. We’re hunkered down in the grass and his head moves slowly from side to side while the rest of him doesn’t move at all, almost like his head sort of swivels on his neck and then it stops and his ears pick up the sound of something.
I can’t hear anything. “Heart beat,” he says.
I can’t hear anything. I can’t see anything. He still holds my wrist in his hand and I don’t move at all. And then out of the trees on the northern side of the clearing where I’ve just come from are two more of Armand’s boys, stopping long enough to check out their fallen pal and then turn our direction.
I look at my wrist. It’s free, though I never felt him let me go. He’s gone from where he was right next to me in the grass, and I think I hear something move through the night before me but it’s the sound of the wind, I think it’s the sound of the wind. I don’t know what it’s the sound of. But Armand’s other henchmen are heading toward me in the grass when there’s another loud crack like I heard just a few moments ago, and then one goes down like the first one and then another crack and then the other
and God, a point-misser on this matter I must admit, arriving in Tokyo already
one. There are two more cracks and then no movement in the grass at all, the three men just lying there when I finally stick my head up to look ’cross the glen in the moonlight. I look and there are just the three of them lying there motionless in the grass — and then right in front of me there’s the momentary glow of those eyes like fireflies in the grass and Kale, almost like he’s taken form out of nothing, he comes to me as though gliding, not making a sound, not the rustling of grass or anything. With one hand he’s holding one of the oars from his boat, none the worse for wear for having leveled three men as far as I can see, with the other hand he pulls me to follow.