One Kick: A Novel

by Chelsea Cain

  Kick hesitated, then took the juice from his hand, tipped it down her throat, and drained it.

  “Help yourself,” Bishop said wryly.

  Light-headed, Kick tossed the empty jug behind her on the carpet, wiped her mouth, and climbed on Bishop’s lap, straddling him.

  She was startled by how surprised he seemed. The muscles in his chest tensed and he lifted his hands reflexively from the chair. Kick guessed the paramedic and the flight attendant had been more subtle. At that moment Bishop could have stopped her cold with one devastating rejoinder, but he didn’t. He lowered his hands back to the armrests and was motionless. It flustered her. She didn’t know what he wanted. She thought he wanted sex, all the time. She couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with him, worried that he’d look horrified or something. Instead she divided his sum into parts: the angle of his jaw, the smiling scar across his neck, the black hairs on his chest, the sinewy muscles of his scratched arms. Her whole body buzzed with warmth now. She interlaced her fingers at the nape of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. Their tongues met. He tasted like orange juice. She moved her tongue around his mouth, exploring him. He kissed her back but he was cautious, and he still hadn’t actively touched her.

  When Kick had played out how this would go, she wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do; part of her had wanted him to give her a fatherly speech, pat her on the head, and send her back to bed.

  But something had changed, and she felt overcome by an almost desperate physical longing that was making all her other plans seem hazy. Her fingers, behind his neck, brushed against the nylon thread that sutured a wound.

  She rocked forward in his lap. She could feel his abdomen clench, heard him inhale, and then his hands brushed up along her thighs to her lower spine. A pulse of pleasure radiated down her legs as he pulled her toward him, his tongue pushing deeper into her mouth and his hands moving under her shirt. He pulled his mouth away from hers as he lifted her shirt off over her head, and she realized how out of breath she was. She expected him to ask then the usual questions: if she was “sure,” or “ready,” or “okay.”

  She knew what she’d say. But it never came up. He picked her up and carried her to the bed, and after that they didn’t do any more talking.

  33

  KICK FELT FOR HER underpants in the dark with her foot, managed to find them, inched them over to the bed, and pulled them on. The air conditioner was blowing full blast, making her sweat-dampened skin cold. Bishop was asleep on the bed, a motionless silhouette, breathing like a tranquilized goat. Kick found her shorts balled up in the bedsheet and wiggled them on. The digital clock on the bedside table said it was 5:15 a.m. She shifted her weight carefully off the mattress onto the floor. Her tank top was somewhere on the carpet by the desk. She crept across the room, found her shirt on the floor, pulled it on, and unlocked the door.

  Kick was good in the dark. Stealthy. That’s what she was thinking, anyway, when she was suddenly aware of the sensation that she was being watched.

  “Where are you going?” Bishop asked quietly.

  Kick froze, her hand on the doorknob. He sounded perfectly awake. Which probably meant that he’d been awake this whole time.

  She felt foolish, fumbling around in the dark for her clothes, sneaking out like a teenager. “My room,” she said over her shoulder. She wanted out of there. She opened the door and was a half step over the threshold when Bishop turned on the bedside lamp and said, “Wait.”

  If only she had been faster. Kick stopped and stepped back into the room. The strap of her tank top slipped off her shoulder and she pushed it back. Bishop was sitting up on his elbows in bed, not making any effort to cover himself.

  He took in a breath to talk.

  Kick cut him off. She hated this part. “Don’t apologize,” she said miserably. “Everyone apologizes after.” If he’d just let her leave, everything would be fine, but he was about to turn all Boy Scout on her. “Just once,” Kick said, throwing up her hands in disgust, “I would like to be able to have meaningless sex just like everyone else.”

  “I was going to say that I want to hit the road by ten tomorrow,” Bishop said.

  Kick fiddled with a piece of her hair, flustered. “Oh,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll be ready.” She snuck a glance at him through her veil of hair as she stepped outside. He was already lying back down, reaching for the light.

  “Get some sleep,” he called as she closed the door.

  Kick hurried, smiling to herself, across the concrete courtyard toward her room. It was still dusky, but the eastern horizon blazed with red and there were fewer stars in the sky. This was a revelation: sex without psychodrama. Is this how people did it? They just had sex and didn’t have to talk about it with therapists?

  Kick stepped over a flexible vacuum hose that had been unspooled across the deck and slung over the edge of the pool. She paused and took an inventory of her surroundings. Two rooms, both on the second floor, had lights on. The white plastic lounge chairs had been stacked for the night over by the soda machines. Kick was drawn toward the aquamarine light of the pool and stood on the edge, combing the snarls out of her hair with her fingers.

  She was surprised by how refreshing it looked, and she remembered now that feeling of weightlessness that came with being in water. She was hit with a sudden urge to jump in. She almost giggled at the idea. It was crazy. She didn’t like swimming. She didn’t have a suit. The last time she’d been in a pool, she had a massive anxiety attack.

  But the urge was so unexpected and strong, she wondered if she should take advantage of it. She could wear what she had on.

  The pool was tranquil. The pink noodle was gone. The end of the pool vac hose bobbed listlessly underwater in the deep end. She dipped her bald big toe in the water; it was cool and sent shivers up her leg. The ripples of blue water reflected off her pasty bruised shin, so that it looked like it was almost liquid too. Her body was disappearing. Becoming water.

  “Pool’s closed,” a man’s voice said.

  Kick jumped and jerked her foot out of the pool with a little splash. She had thought she was alone. She forced herself to slowly turn around. The courtyard was empty. It was so quiet that she could hear the vending machines humming. But now that she was paying attention, she noticed things that she hadn’t seen before. A pool skimmer abandoned on the deck. The door to the corrugated metal supply shed that was ajar. Something about the pool skimmer made her skin crawl.

  A stocky, middle-aged man stepped out of the shed. Kick thought she was seeing things. She gaped at him, unable to speak. It couldn’t be him—her mother was righ; she was a fucking nut case. But that silhouette, she knew his shape.

  It was Klugman.

  Kick knew without even being able to see his face. The man she was looking at right now—the man cleaning the Desert Rose Motel pool—was Klugman. She knew the slope of his shoulders and the way his arms bowed at the elbows, his tree-trunk thighs. That is what she remembered most: Klugman’s silhouette behind the bright light of the video camera.

  But it couldn’t be Klugman.

  One hundred billion nerve cells were screaming at Kick to run. Her heart was beating so fast that she couldn’t even feel it anymore.

  But fear was a skill. And Kick had practiced it.

  The growing dawn light blushed Klugman’s white pool cleaner’s uniform with pink. His hair was thick and untrimmed. He lifted his chin and smiled at her, and his teeth glimmered. “Nice morning, isn’t it?” he said. He strolled forward and his face came into focus, those smooth cheeks and almost colorless lips.

  He was so short. Maybe five-foot-seven. Kick had remembered him as a giant. Everyone had been bigger back then. But now Klugman and Kick were the same size. Now she could look him in the eye.

  “Pool opens at seven,” he said.

  He didn’t recognize her.

&n
bsp; She was crazy. It wasn’t him. This man didn’t even know her. And yet . . . his shape, she knew it. She knew it was him.

  “I know who you are,” Kick said.

  Klugman cocked his ear at her. “What?”

  “I stayed with you in San Diego. I know what you did to James. I know what you did to me. I remember. I remember all of it.”

  A light went on in his eyes and a slow grin spread across his face. Kick felt acid rise in her throat.

  “Miss America,” he said, wiping his upper lip. “I remember you now.”

  What was he supposed to say? She didn’t know. But she expected him to say something, to apologize, or justify himself, or deny everything—something. She didn’t know how long they stood there. It felt like five lifetimes. Finally, Klugman gave the back of his head a scratch. “Listen,” he said, “it was good seeing you, but the pool won’t clean itself.”

  She watched uncertainly as he set off across the courtyard. That was it? “Don’t you have anything to say to me?” she called.

  Klugman looked over his shoulder. His face was a shadow. “Like what?” he asked.

  Kick’s fear dissolved into rage, which was a lot more satisfying. Fear came with two options: fight or flight. Rage offered more shades of possibility. She could have gone to her room for her Glock, come back, and shot him in a nonessential organ. She could have impaled him with throwing knives, or pepper-sprayed him, or gone and hollered for Bishop, or even called the cops. Kick wanted to use her bare hands.

  She wrapped her thumb around her index and middle fingers, between the first two knuckles, and made a tight fist.

  Klugman had hauled a lidded white plastic bucket out of the shed and was walking it slowly back to the poolside, grunting with every step.

  She could knock him out cold. If she aimed for his throat, he’d see it coming and automatically bring his chin down in line with her fist. She could punch him in the gut so he couldn’t breathe. She could aim for his liver on one side, then his ribs on the other. She could kick him in the groin. But she didn’t just want him to hurt. She wanted him to bleed.

  Klugman set the bucket down and rubbed his lower back. “You want to give me a hand?” he asked her.

  She raised her fist alongside her face, tilted her wrist down slightly to align her first two knuckles with her forearm, and checked that her arms were level with her shoulders. Then she put her chin down and threw a punch.

  Her knuckles made contact above his jawbone and moved inward. She felt the meat of his face and the hard bone underneath as her fist drove his head sideways. She rolled her hips into the punch and followed through. Blood spewed in an arc from Klugman’s nose onto the concrete and he lifted his hands to his face. Kick pulled her fist back, ready to go again, balanced on the balls of her feet. She thought he’d yell and she’d have to punch him again, but he sank to his knees, whimpering.

  Kick stood over him, her whole body vibrating. Every cell in her body cheered. “Remember me now?” she said.

  34

  KICK RAPPED LIGHTLY ON Bishop’s door. “Bishop!” she whispered hoarsely.

  The door opened instantly and Kick gave Klugman a hard push, then followed him into the room. Klugman stumbled forward, clutching a blood-soaked towel to his face. Kick felt immensely proud of herself, like a cat dropping a plump dead bird on a doorstep.

  Bishop had closed the door after them and was now leaning up against it, completely naked, a picture of insouciance. “So this isn’t another booty call?” he asked.

  “It’s him,” Kick said. She waved an arm at Klugman, who was huddled against the wall outside Bishop’s bathroom.

  Bishop gave Klugman a glance as he walked over to the bedside table. “I’m glad you didn’t attack a stranger,” he said to Kick, picking up the TV remote.

  “He cleans the pool here,” Kick said. And she understood then why the sight of the pool skimmer had made her skin crawl.

  “She broke my goddamn nose,” Klugman said, his voice muffled by the towel.

  Bishop pointed the TV remote at Klugman. “You,” he said. “No talking.”

  Klugman lowered his head.

  Bishop directed the remote back at the thirty-year-old TV that faced the bed. He flipped through a few channels and then settled on an infomercial. A woman on the screen was talking about how she’d lost a hundred pounds working out just ten minutes a day on the Total Gym home fitness machine.

  “I don’t want to watch TV,” Kick said.

  Bishop slid a duffel bag out from under his bed. “You sure?” he said. “It’s a great product.” He set the duffel bag on top of the mattress and unzipped it. Kick couldn’t see what was inside, but she had a feeling it wasn’t a Total Gym. It wasn’t clothing, either, because Bishop didn’t get dressed.

  “Did you break his nose?” Bishop asked casually.

  Judging by the swelling, and the copious amount of blood flowing from Klugman’s nostrils, and the pitch of his whining, Kick had no doubt she’d broken his nose. “I think so,” she said.

  “Bad idea,” Bishop said. He was bent over the bag, sorting through it, things just sort of swinging as he moved. It made it difficult for Kick to concentrate.

  “I was subduing him,” Kick said.

  “I know,” Bishop said. He straightened up and faced her, full frontal. “But it makes the next part harder.”

  “The next part?” Kick looked away, exasperated. “You know you’re naked, right?”

  “I sleep naked,” Bishop said. “That way I’m ready to go when the ladies drop by in the middle of the night ‘to talk.’”

  “Well, I would like you to put on some pants,” Kick said.

  “I will,” Bishop said. He smiled to himself as he extracted a pair of handcuffs and a roll of duct tape from the bag. Klugman was already backing against the wall. “In a minute.”

  35

  KICK KNEW SOMETHING ABOUT being scared. James was scared, every night in that basement, when the rats would come out through the toilet pipes. Kick had lived in terror, in the dark, for months before she was allowed into the rest of the house. Her childhood had been defined by fear: fear of Mel; fear of being taken away from him. So she was not particularly concerned when Bishop wrestled Klugman to the ground, handcuffed him to the metal frame at the bottom corner of the bed, taped his mouth, and left him bug-eyed and moaning as Bishop went about casually putting on his pants.

  Kick understood then why the TV had to be so loud.

  The stained orange reading chair smelled like dirty socks. Kick sat in it with her bare legs pulled tightly under her, her eyes on Klugman, who was huddled on the floor against the bed, blood bubbling from his nose as he struggled for breath.

  On the TV, Chuck Norris was making the Total Gym workout look easy.

  “He’s suffocating,” Kick said.

  “Remember when I said that breaking his nose was a bad idea?” Bishop said, buttoning his pants. “That’s what I meant.”

  He got a roll of plastic sheeting out of the duffel bag and rolled it out on the carpet in front of Klugman. Then he grabbed Klugman by the back of the collar and wrenched him forward, on top of the plastic. “We need to talk about James,” Bishop said.

  Klugman twisted his head toward Kick, his eyes rolling in their sockets. She could smell his sweat and blood, the chemical odor of the plastic.

  “Don’t look at her,” Bishop said, taking Klugman firmly by the chin. “Look at me. Do you remember James?”

  Klugman was right to be scared. Bishop was scary. He was scarred and scratched and stitched together. The angles of his face made him look hard. It was like that night he had come for her in her apartment, like he could make himself into a different person when he wanted to.

  “Well?” Bishop said.

  Klugman hesitated and then made a little noise under the duct tape.

  “
No?” Bishop said. He frowned and released Klugman’s chin. “The little boy you kept behind the wall in your basement with all the travel posters and the broken toilet?” He pulled the photograph from his jeans and held it in front of Klugman’s face. “Bring back any memories?”

  Kick was filled with loathing. Klugman hadn’t recognized her at first. But James? He had sold James like he was some used piece of furniture.

  She wanted Bishop to make him pay.

  “Give me the name of the man who bought him,” Bishop said.

  Blood frothed from Klugman’s deformed nose. It gurgled and popped as he tried to breathe. The tendons on his neck were like rails and his face was growing steadily more purple.

  On the TV, Chuck Norris was talking to someone who’d lost thirty pounds working out just ten minutes a day on the Total Gym.

  “Do you have something you want to say?” Bishop asked, ripping off the tape.

  Klugman sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped.

  Bishop dangled the piece of tape in front of Klugman’s face. “How can you expect me to help you with your problems if you don’t help me with mine?” Bishop asked.

  “I never met him,” Klugman said, still panting. Blood ran from his nose like snot, his white shirt already stained with it. “We made arrangements online.”

  “How did you make the transfer?” Bishop asked.

  Klugman didn’t answer.

  “He took James somewhere,” Kick said. “He left the house with James and came back with a new car.”

  Bishop reached for the duffel bag. The muscles in his torso cast shadows as he moved. The tiny black stitches poked out of his back like quills on a porcupine. “Do you think of yourself as lucky?” he asked Klugman.

  Klugman’s eyes were huge.

  “Look at this,” Bishop said, showing Klugman his neck. “You see this scar? My brother was abducted and murdered by a man like you when we were kids.”