by Dana Cameron
Chapter 2
WHAT THE HELL?” I STARTED TO TREMBLE.
Brian leaned over me, trying to read, his hand on my shoulder. “Em, chill. It’s just flowers. There’s no signature on the card?”
I shrugged his hand off. “No. I told you, no.”
He looked at me, and I could see in that instant that look in his eyes, not often seen, that indicated he thought I’d checked out. That my opinion was not to be completely trusted because of hormones, or fatigue, or depression, or personal involvement, or whatever. Everyone’s significant other has that look, tinged with annoyance or frustration or dismissal. But it was my own personal vision of hell: not being taken seriously by the one person in the world who should trust me entirely.
And I was too tired to argue it now, so soon after our earlier discussion. As much as I knew I was right, in spite of whatever evidence. I shrugged. “Weird, huh?”
I’d backed off too soon; Brian looked suspicious.
“I’m going to have a look through it anyway, see if there’s anything else that might tell me where it’s from. And I’ll call the desk. Maybe they know what’s going on.”
“Sure, that sounds like a reasonable plan. I’m going to grab the shower; I’m starting to smell pretty ripe.”
I couldn’t tell whether Brian was just dodging the issue—now he was backing off too quickly. “Go ahead.” At least if he was in the shower, I could paw through the flowers to my heart’s content, with no weird looks following me.
I called down to the desk: Yes, they were left there; yes, they’d come from a local vendor, very reputable, with the usual delivery guy. I thanked them, called the florist. They were glad that I liked the flowers, a special order; no, they couldn’t legally tell me who sent them. I pressed; they demurred again, politely, firmly.
After I took a picture of the flowers, I threw them out. Then I showered and we went down to drinks. Brian very carefully didn’t ask anything more about the flowers.
Late that night, I left Brian snoring gently in bed, got dressed, and quietly shut the door behind me, making my way to the beach through the abandoned paths of the silent hotel.
I’d just made it down to the sand when I saw a flash of brilliant light, then heard a huge bang. I felt a brutal punch to my stomach. I was immediately ashamed; I should have been able to block it. But I hadn’t seen it coming, there was no one there, I thought in a panic, so I couldn’t really be blamed for that…
And then I knew the truth. I’d been shot in the belly.
The pain that followed after the impact was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, as though the first blow was just the warm-up. It lasted nearly five seconds, an exquisite eternity of unbearable agony, before I felt myself distanced from it all. Then I was finally able to look down, see what the actual damage was.
It wasn’t bad, not as bad as I thought; maybe I’d be all right. The thing that impressed me most was the quantity and warmth of the blood; it seemed endless. As for seeing things that I was generally happier not seeing, there was no revulsion, just curiosity. It was fascinating, really, actually being able to recognize…me. Kind of strange, knowing there was all this going on inside of me, like imagining another person on the inside of me. Kind of neat. I put my hands up to the ragged hole, tried to stop the flow of blood, but it was no good; the flood I could feel running down my back was even worse.
I was dying.
Sitting on the sand, in the moonlight, little birds chasing the surf, I felt okay. I could see black stains on the sand around where I sat, but at this point, the pain was a distant memory and I was vaguely satisfied that the blood was being absorbed by the sand. A convenience, really, for such a messy end. Couldn’t have done that at home, I thought. Brian was right to get us to take a vacation. If it had to happen anywhere…
Brian! I thought, I had to…no, Brian was back in the room, and I couldn’t get there. Couldn’t even make a noise.
Still, I struggled, tried to get to my feet. But I couldn’t feel them, couldn’t feel my legs under my fingers, and a wave of misery washed over me. I couldn’t get to Brian. Closer to hand, I remembered that I’d seen that flash of light, a long time ago, it seemed, and tried to recall the direction. No luck.
Fighting it seemed silly. Futile. Now I couldn’t even hear the waves on the shore, and I would have liked that. Dying by the ocean—in advanced old age—has always been my plan, but I didn’t realize you didn’t get the whole package in death—sight and sound and smell.
I’d settle for what I had. I relaxed. No sense fighting the inevitable.
Everything felt very distant now, and there was so much going on with me, that there was no room for anything else. Just me and the quiet little patch of beach I was dying on.
I kept fretting that there was something missing, something I didn’t do, but with a minor sort of revelation, I realized that I’d done pretty well for myself in my nearly thirty-five years of life. Even more than I hoped—and then there was Brian. We’d even made love earlier in the evening, so I felt that I’d be leaving things about as well as I could. Not a bad end, not what I’d hoped, of course, but not bad…
There was that one thing. That one last thing that had been eating at me.
And there was a little rush. I felt a lightness overtake me when I realized that it was no longer my responsibility. It was so far out of my hands that I felt, so far away, myself smiling. Relief, the few times I’ve experienced it fully in my life, really is miraculous.
I stopped fighting. I felt myself drifting off. Didn’t need to close my eyes, there was so little I could see now, on the dark beach, even with the moonlight, but I did anyway. I’d pretend I was going to sleep, which was one of my favorite sensations anyway.
Not a bad way to go, not at all.
I felt…something. Distantly. A pulling. Something was dragging me back.
Brian.
“Emma, open your eyes! Emma, wake up, baby.”
I couldn’t see anything. I could barely make out the words, the fear in his voice. I tried to say, Brian, I love you, it’s too late, it’s okay, I’m okay with this, don’t worry. The words wouldn’t come.
Someone once said that the easiest way of parting was death. He was absolutely right.
Brian wouldn’t stop. I found myself feeling…something. I found myself being pulled back enough to recognize…anger. If he knew what I’d have to go through, if I came back, he would never ask me to…
“Em, come on, sugar, it’s only a dream. Wake up, okay?”
More sensations rushing back now. Dampness, but not sand. I felt the weight return to my body, the warmth of sweaty sheets, and cold air-conditioning. The wonderful bliss left me, even as I fought to hang on to it. I had been so close.
“It was just a dream, babe. You awake now?”
I could hear now, and I realized, once I opened my eyes, that I could see. I was in the hotel room, Brian was next to me, rubbing his face sleepily.
“I’m…just leave…give me a minute, would you, sweetie?” I said finally when I realized it was just a dream. I rolled over onto my knees, bunched my hands under my forehead on the pillow while I tried to recall the vanishing shreds of the dream. I was overwhelmed to find myself here. It had been so real. My heart was still pounding unbelievably.
“Come here. It’s okay, it was just a dream,” Brian was saying. “Come over here, cuddle.”
I backed into him, felt his arm around me, and tried to make myself relax. He nuzzled the back of my neck, and was asleep again almost instantly. Crisis identified, problem solved, sleeping the sleep of the just.
I stared at the shadows that played on the walls where the moonlight peeped in through the curtains, feeling the tears run down my cheeks. I swallowed, once, twice, but the tears wouldn’t stop.
It would have been so much easier if it hadn’t been a dream.
The next day, we were in San Diego. Brian’s folks live in Pacific Beach, a couple of blocks off Garnet (they’d carefull
y taught me to pronounce the accent as they did, on the second syllable), in a beautiful house with a garden stuffed with a riot of flowers. Stan was a whisker away from retiring from his building business and Betty kept claiming that she was going to leave the library every year, but she never quite made it. It was always great to see them—you could see why Brian had turned out so well—but after three days, I got bored. The beach was pretty and funky and full of characters, but I was beached out, and even a drive over to the museums of Balboa Park didn’t keep me occupied for more than an afternoon.
Brian, of course, noticed, and said so as I did the breakfast dishes, sunlight spilling across the hardwood floor. “Didn’t Nolan give you homework, or something?”
Nolan taught me and Brian Krav Maga, a particularly vicious form of self-defense to which I’d become addicted. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t he tell you to look up his buddy or something, while we were here?”
“He told us both to keep up with the training. He gave me an address and phone number, that’s all. Hardly an order. So far I’ve seen you do…um, lemme see. Exactly nothing.”
“I went for a walk last night. We’ve been for walks every night this week.”
“Yeah, to get ice cream.” I put a cup on the rack to dry.
Brian grinned. “Well, why don’t you give him a call today? Dad wants to show me a kitchen job he’s working on. Give me some pointers.”
“You think you can cheer me up with homework? Boy, I must be bad off.”
“I know you like your time structured, that’s all.”
“Fine. I’ll give him a call.”
Brian’s father stuck his head into the kitchen and they left. After I finished the dishes, I called. The phone was answered on the first ring, but on the other end another conversation had not ended—“and so you can tell them they’ll get their money when I get mine.”
“Hello?” I said.
“G’day, Temple’s Martial Arts,” the voice said directly into the phone. “Derek Temple himself.”
“My name’s Emma Fielding, and my instructor—”
Mr. Temple broke in before I’d even had a chance to explain myself. “Fielding? Right. See you in an hour.”
“I was wondering—”
But he’d already hung up; I was left with the vestige of an accent I thought was Australian. I didn’t know how to get to the school, I didn’t know what I should bring, and now I was on my own.
I had just enough time to throw all of my gear on, consult a map, and drive like a maniac to the address. I don’t know why I had such a compulsion to be on time, especially after Temple’s brusque rudeness on the phone. I figure it was because he was probably Nolan’s friend and he was doing me a favor. If I wasn’t up to snuff, I’d get my hide tanned next time I saw Nolan at home.
It was hard to find the place, but I eventually located the correct mall; maybe it was because of where I was traveling. So many of southern California roads seemed lined with strip malls. Made me nervous, disoriented, as I was used to navigating off New England town architecture, with greens and churches and town halls to use as landmarks. We had our share of strip malls, but at least at home there was an underlying logic I understood. Besides, around here, the ocean was in the wrong place and that always screwed me up. That and when my mother-in-law, Betty, kept telling me I’d need a coat, because it was getting down below sixty-five degrees at night.
The school was a corner property, with windows along one long side that let in lots of light. The floors were lined with mats, and there were mirrors along the other long wall. I was a few minutes early and a class was still going. Intimidation wasn’t the word for what I felt when I saw the students, all ten of them, dressed entirely in black with black leather hand-wraps. There were eight men, mostly in their twenties, all either with crew cuts or entirely clean-headed. Not one of them was in less than excellent physical shape, and the collective amount of ink I saw on exposed arms and necks would have made any afficionado proud. Considering the number of bases in and around San Diego, I wouldn’t have been surprised if any or all of them were military. Not with the way they moved.
The two women were hardly less intimidating, for all that they were the wispy, willowy blondes that always characterize my California experiences. Both of them were just the same, perfectly proportioned size six or less, with breasts that belied the total lack of body fat and strained both credulity and their fashionably fitted shirts. Except for that, Mr. Temple’s female students were just as hard as his male students.
Holy Cobra Kai.
My chances for making a good impression were dwindling, fast. I hadn’t brought my regular Krav Maga gear and was wearing blue sweats with a red T-shirt with the logo of the Chandler house dig on it. I had hand wraps, and they were black, but they were the long cloth ones you use for boxing, so I looked like a sad castoff next to this streamlined class. And while I’m tall, for a woman, and in pretty good physical shape, I felt like a lumpy, bulky mass next to these chicks.
Strike one.
As unobtrusive as I’d hoped my entrance would be, I could feel the glances follow me from the floor, especially from the slight but powerful-looking man in the front of the class, who frowned slightly and nodded. I gave a brief, general smile of acknowledgment and then focused on getting my left hand wrapped up.
A door opened behind me and a voice like the last trump filled the room. “Mr. Anderson. We have a guest.”
I stood up, whipped around, and saw that the wall behind me had disappeared, largely replaced by a man. My other wrap fell off the bench and rolled across the waiting area floor onto the mats, a black streamer unraveling. I expected giggles, but only saw a smirk or two. All eyes were on the man-wall behind me, and the class snapped to, bowing to what must have been Mr. Temple.
Strike two.
He was the biggest guy I had ever seen, well over six feet tall and damn near six feet wide at the shoulders; I could have sworn that his waist was no bigger than mine, and I don’t know what size his rip-stop athletic pants were, but they should have been a half-size larger because his thigh muscles bulged through them. Shoot, his calf muscles were straining at the fabric. If his students were blond, then he was literally golden-haired, his hair was cut short, but was ridiculously wavy. In fact, an image came to me—unbidden and disastrously accurate—of Dudley Do-Right or a Disney hero: slab of a head, lantern jaw, brilliant teeth in two perfect rows, and, I swear, a spit curl in the middle of his forehead. He was practically a parody of himself.
He was coming toward me.
I’d stared just a second too long.
Strike three, and I hadn’t even made it out onto the floor yet. Hadn’t even shaken his hand.
I was done for.
“Look at that!” he boomed, and I realized that he was the one with the strong Australian accent. “Can’t take her eyes off me! Poor little thing—but no wonder! Ugly cuss she trains with back East makes the ass end of a dingo look good. And he’s a teeny, tiny, little man to boot.”
Now there were open smiles and a few chuckles from the floor. I smiled briefly, but I could feel my jaw tightening. He was talking about Nolan, my instructor and something of a hero to me. While Nolan was certainly…compact of stature, he wasn’t ugly. In fact, I’d come to realize that both he and his face were in remarkably good shape, considering the man made his living by doling out beatings and that he’d probably taken more than a few himself. So who did this big lug think he was talking about?
He stuck out a hand the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. “Name’s Derek Temple. Mr. Temple, to you.” Engulfing my hand with his own, he turned to his students. “The lucky thing is that she’s come to her senses and is going to train properly, now, with me.”
He was still smiling like he was selling toothpaste as he turned back to me, something calm and hard behind his eyes. “Lesson one: don’t tense up like that. Limits your options, darling,” he said near my ear.
He let my han
d go and I barely kept from shaking it out. He hadn’t crushed the bones or anything, just made the point, paying me back for gaping at him before.
Now I felt a grizzly-bear paw land on my shoulder, and staggered a bit under it. “While her instructor is indeed small, ugly, and unable to get women without paying for them, he is my brother, a fellow warrior with some serious skills. Once upon a time, when I was just a pup, scarcely off the teat, some accounted him even better than I. But as you all well know, there is no one fiercer or prettier than I, is there, class?”
“NO, SIR!” came the unified cry from the floor.
“No one with slyer shoots, no one with harder locks, and no one with slicker moves. But out of respect for my comrade’s advanced age and our fraternal bond, we will do our best to teach this poor girl the way it’s done. No one will try to take her out on a date she doesn’t want to go on, no one will mess with her, because we will have given her our skills. She will leave her mark on the silly bastard, and it will be because of us.”
“YES, SIR!”
“Now, we’ve got five minutes left, and Mr. Anderson and I are going to give you one more valuable lesson before you go back out to the cold and uncaring world.”
“THANK YOU, SIR!”
“Mr. Anderson!” Temple strode out onto the floor.
“Sir!” The man who’d been leading the class before snapped to.
“You’re wearing a cup, are you not?” Temple paused to look in the mirror, moved as if to make an adjustment to his hair, and then realized there was no improvement that could be made on perfection.
Anderson smelled a rat, but answered smartly. “Yes, si—”
He didn’t have time to finish the word before Temple spun around, dropped, and aimed a reverse round kick at his groin. Anderson hopped back sharply, blocked the kick, then closed the space between them, light on the balls of his feet and wary.
