Striking Back
Page 26
She headed back to her condo. Big dinner plans. Mommsa and Pants were picking up Hark and driving him over to her place. She had to stop for sushi and Sapporo, and found them all waiting for her when she walked in lugging her shoulder bag and a six-pack. She put them down and hugged Mommsa. Pants stood a few feet away nodding and smiling. Oh hell, Gwyn hugged him too. He was starting to feel like family, strange as it seemed.
Hark reclined on the couch, pasha style, propped-up by big pillows.
She knelt and gave him a kiss.
“I see some beer, but did you pick up dinner, dear?” Mommsa said.
“Don’t worry, it’s down in the car with another six-pack. I couldn’t make it in one trip.”
“I’ll help you,” Pants said.
They rode the elevator down to the garage in an awkward silence, the more so for the familiarity promised by the hug.
“So what should we call you?” she said as they walked over to her car.
“What do you mean?”
“Now that we know your real name, do you want us to call you Enrico? Or Hank?”
“No, you can forget that stuff. I don’t use it anymore. Your Mommsa, she calls me Pants. I kind of like it.”
She paused before reaching in for the beer and sushi. “You wouldn’t ever hurt my mother, would you?”
He shook his head. “I’d sooner kill myself. I’ve done some things in my life I never should have, but that’s over. I got someone I love. I want to live that way now. You hear what I’m saying?”
She handed him the tray. “I do.”
Acknowledgements:
I’m indebted to several spousal abuse counselors who talked to me openly about their work. Paul Woolery, Lucinda Taylor, Brian Johnson, and Renata Augenstein all provided valuable expertise. In the last months of her life, I interviewed Renata numerous times. She was one of the pioneers in the field, and it was a singular honor to have shared that time with her. That said, Striking Back is a work of fiction, and all the characters are products of my imagination.
I’m also grateful for my wonderful core of readers who offered me helpful criticism, suggestions, and insights. They include Lucinda Taylor, Tina Casanares, Paul Woolery, Dale Dauten, Kim Nykanen, Monte Ferraro, Darryl Santoro, and Mark Feldstein. Special thanks, as always, to Ed Stackler who has lent a steady and sensitive editorial eye through half a dozen books.
I also want to express my appreciation to Pat Van Wie, my editor at Bell Bridge Books. Pat did what every wise author wishes of his or her editor: She made the book better.
And a thank you to my agent, Howard Morhaim, for his humor, intelligence, and encouragement.
About Mark Nykanen
Mark Nykanen is a four-time Emmy and Edgar-winning journalist, and acclaimed author of extraordinarily tense literary thrillers that feature protagonists who find themselves pushed to the absolute extremes of behavior and imagination.
His latest thriller, Burn Down the Sky, (Harper Collins Voyager) is a post-apocalyptic climate collapse tale set in a near-future world devastated by environmental catastrophe and a runaway virus that has killed most of the world’s population. It’s the first book in a series set in North America in the latter part of this century.
Visit him at www.marknykanen.com