Conall noticed my unease and kept prodding to check if I was OK. I lied. But I knew he was seeing straight through me. We passed a newsstand, a Café Nero stand. I recalled the Café Nero I liked going to in Seaford, sitting back on the brown couches there reading a book. I thought back to Dani, of working at Jolly Roger, thought of the seagulls, the salty air...
When we got out to the street the clanking sounds of construction workers cut into my tranquilizing daydream. I looked above me and saw we were under scaffolding. Panicked. It felt like I'd been locked in a coffin and someone was shaking it, ready to throw it into the ocean.
"We're almost there," said Conall in my ear. I was a wreck, feeling like an invalid. But I couldn't help it. The sounds were menacing. The people were all devils to me in that moment.
I was in a full-blown panic-stricken flashback.
Before I knew it we were in a car that smelled a little too much of air freshener and cigarettes combined. The brown leather seats were cold against my hands as I sat on them but when the door closed I eased up a little. Conall shifted over to the middle of the back-seat, put his hand on my knee.
The driver must've been late fifties, unshaven for a few days. Talkative. So frickin talkative that it actually helped calm me down, the constant groan of his voice in the background sounding like a song that puts you to sleep. He spoke of his wife, his kids, his daughter off to college, his son who was about to have a baby and did we have any kids? and wasn't it blooming crazy what Labor was doing and what's that Gordon Brown up to these days, the bastard. So glad they got rid of him all those years ago.
I actually smiled in the end.
Entering the long driveway of Conall's stately home felt like being lifted out of the furthest depths of the Bermuda Triangle. The place was serene. The mock-Tudor style peacefully familiar. When we entered the house and the fresh scent of wood wafted into my nose, I actually felt my shoulders ease down, realizing only then that they'd been hunched and tensed ever since we'd landed.
Conall grabbed our bags and asked me if I'd be OK downstairs while he put them away in the main bedroom. Of course I'd be OK. This was his home. Safe.
While he carried the bags up I walked around the familiar lounge, saw the fireplace we'd sat at night after night sipping wine.
I walked into the bar, remembered seeing him after all those months, remembered him kissing me on the stool. I looked out at the huge garden, the Hollywood swing outside. A wrought-iron table.
I went back to the lounge, sat down on the couch. Exhaled with relief.
I heard Conall's footsteps loudly, as if he were warning me that he was coming so as not to scare me. I've never been one to feel weak and afraid. Having grown up in the culture of weight-lifting, being taught to box by my dad in The Bronx, I'd always considered myself a tough-girl. Maybe even like one of the guys.
But all of that had changed the day those bastards took me.
Trey's self-defense lessons couldn't start soon enough.
"You OK?" asked Conall as he stepped into the room.
I didn't even hear my voice when I answered. Maybe I didn't answer. But I'm sure I at least nodded.
He sat next to me and pulled me toward him. "It'll get better. Don't worry about it."
I said nothing. Only hoped it was true. My mind was already calculating when Kayla would arrive, when Conall would leave the house again, how long I'd be alone at any given stage. I knew Conall wouldn't leave me alone. And I both hated and appreciated that.
I needed to find myself again. I needed to move past what had happened. But it all felt so far out of my control!
"When can I start those lessons with Trey?" I said.
"He's waiting for my call. He'll be ready when you are."
"I'm not ready. Not ready for anything. I feel like a five year old girl. It's freaking ridiculous!"
"Leo, look at me. It's not ridiculous. It's amazing you've held up as much as you have. You're the toughest blooming person I know." He shook me lightly by the shoulders as if to wake me up.
His statement had gotten a wan smile out of me. "I'm not going to be someone you have to take care of, Conall. I have to get on my own two feet."
"I know that. And I also know there will be times when you'll need to take care of me. And believe me, you'll have your work cut out for you!"
I rested my head on his chest, prepared myself mentally for the next hour, the next day. I would face this. I would get back on my own feet and survive this, live a normal life again!
"Brad and Kayla will be here tomorrow, at the cottage. You're safe here, Leo."
"Thank you." I knew I was safe at the house. Logically I knew that. Emotionally, I didn't. I 'knew' the exact opposite.
Dr. Gehrig had suggested the time away, then taking it step by step. Maybe visiting the little village only a few minutes by foot from where Conall lived—with someone. Then walking over to the park, then a little further. He said eventually my mind would "click back into place." He was real old-school, and I liked that about him. I'd seen far too many people get zombied out back home with their anti-depressants and happy pills and other mind-altering drugs whose side effects were suicide even though they were prescribed to handle thoughts of suicide. Yeah, I never understood that one myself.
But I actually did feel better. In truth, I did. The progress was small, minuscule even, but it was there. And now that I'd settled down on the couch and breathed for a second or two I realized that, even though I'd been afraid when we'd arrived at the airport, it hadn't been nearly as bad a panic attack as that first one up in Conall's room all those weeks back. I hadn't screamed or gone into fetal-position tremors, paralyzed and unable to move.
So the trip had helped.
Baby steps.
Little baby steps.
-3-
"Remember this?" said Conall. He was holding a Perrier bottle of water.
I smiled. "How could I forget?"
He walked over and poured me a glass, as if we were drinking real wine.
"No wine for you?" I said, snuggled up on his couch with my feet up on the seat.
"I think you had enough wine for both of us for a month yesterday!"
I tried to laugh but it hurt my head. A brief flash hit me of Alex's smiling face as we'd waved goodbye and gotten into the helicopter for the Sion airport.
"I'm gonna miss her, you know?" I said, "Alex."
"She's a missable person." He stared at his glass.
I wanted to tell him how amazing he was. How I admired his capacity for love despite all he'd been through. I hoped telling him I loved him would be enough to convey that. "I love you, you know that?"
He smiled weakly so that it barely reached his eyes. "I know."
"I don't know how you survived. When she..."
He lifted his eyebrows, sighed. "People are stronger than you think. It's only those that give up trying that start to die slowly."
The words went to my core and rang like a taut harp inside my ears. "I'm going to get better, Conall. I promise."
"Get better? That sounds like there's something wrong with you."
"There is."
"Bullshit. It's only normal. It'll pass. People are stronger than they realize. If that weren't true humans would've been overtaken by apes centuries ago."
A pause.
"Conall, I..." I struggled for the words. "I love you, but... Look, I need to know that I can survive on my own. I mean, we haven't spoken about us living together and that I was working before and saving up and college next year and—"
"Leo, I hear you. No need to explain. But first things first. It would be a sound investment for me to buy a place at Seaford if you wanted to go back there. You can even stay in your dingy little room there if you want to. I understand the need to feel you can make it on your own before settling in with someone. I really do. And I also understand that all of this has moved too fast for you. Then all the crap that got in the way. Hell, if you'd known what I'd bring to the table—"
"Then I would've made the same decision—to be with you!"
He put his hand over mine, smiled. "But it's all been too fast anyway. Me, I'm an old man—"
"You're twenty-four."
"Almost twenty-five. As I said, old."
I cocked an eyebrow.
He became more serious suddenly. "The truth is, I felt like an old man sometimes." He sat back. "I think age is determined by how much you've suffered, and how much you've let that suffering affect you."
Silence twirled in the air. I thought again of the death of his sister, his unloving father...
"And then," he continued, "when I met you, my mind changed about that. I realized that age is determined not only by how much one has suffered, but also by how much one has loved and been loved in return.
"I felt like I was forty when I met you, Leora. I feel eighteen most of the time now." His eyes sparkled.
"Eighteen?"
"Maybe even younger." He grinned.
I didn't feel that way at all. In my mind I felt like I was fast approaching middle-age. I felt like I'd lived half my life. "You're right," I said.
"That I'm really eighteen?"
"Well, that too. But, about the suffering...and age. And a person's perception of it."
"Strange how it works, isn't it? I'm only sorry that with you it went the other way round. I met you and I became younger. You met me and hit middle-age."
I threw a pillow at him! "Asshole! You never tell a girl that!"
He leaned closer, kissed me once on the lips, then the cheek. "I'd love you still if you were approaching retirement, if you were wrinkly and feeble. I'll always love you."
The statement was too sharp, too close to the bone. Feeble. It's how I felt. I fought the tears back and won, but not without several heavy swallows. I promised myself, right there, that I'd make it. I'd get through this. Conall had done it. He'd been through so much worse, and he'd done it.
I could do it too.
But he was physically strong. And I spotted that that was my fear: What if it happened again?
"Call Trey, please," I said.
He did.
And we set up my first training lesson for the next day.
CHAPTER SEVEN
-1-
My attacker approached from behind and wrapped his arms under my ribs, lifted me, hands clenched. I tried to hook my left foot under his knee, failed. He swung me up, both my feet off the ground.
If he'd been a real attacker, he'd have me on my back on the floor now...
Trey dropped me to my feet. I looked down in frustration, scratched my sweaty head.
"Again," he said. "Foot under the leg and behind the knee, no matter what, you must get the foot under my knee or else you're fucked. That prevents him having full control over you." Trey bear-hugged me from behind again, held so tight that I couldn't breathe. I kicked and tried to hook my foot under his knee as he'd said.
"And grab the fingers, Leora. Grab the fingers!"
I did, meanwhile flailing, kicking, trying to hook my foot under his knee!
He swung me up.
Failed. Again!
"Again. No time to feel sorry for yourself."
It took another ten tries for me to get it right, but eventually I did, then it took another forty to get it right every time. Finally, there was no ways he was gonna get me in that frickin bear hug. He or anyone else!
I felt good. Stronger. This was the best damned psychotherapy in the world! I'd been training with Trey for only a week and already the full-blown panic attacks had disappeared. I felt more self-confident, more in control of myself and my environment. I'd skipped the damn baby-step of visiting the village with a friend and was even catching the tube to London for this stuff.
OK, fine, Kayla caught it with me. But it was major progress.
I sniffed under my arm and understood why gyms stunk so bad.
"OK, choke-hold now," said Trey. "Lie down."
I did. Trey, who I still considered to secretly be Shaq's twin-brother in the size department, put himself between my legs, on his knees.
"Remember, hands always up. You can pretend you're afraid or something, but they must always stay up. So, I come down, and you...?"
"Snap my hands up to your shoulders."
"Right, very good. Now you've got me by the shoulders, and I start choking you. Now what?"
"Left hand over your forearm, hook the fingers over the wrist, not grabbing, hooking, so he can't hurt my thumb."
"Not he, Leora, me. You have to believe I'm the bad guy." He tightened his grip on my neck, made it more real.
I snapped my right arm to his wrist, tried to pull his arms down and away with my elbows as he'd showed me.
"OK, so I'm too strong, now what?"
I couldn't speak. Trey wasn't pulling any punches. He was really strangling me! I felt the blood collect in my face. I lifted my pelvis as high as I could, slammed it down, giving my elbows extra strength to push down and away against his arms and finally loosened his grip from around my neck.
I saw him smile at my success (yeah, and I'm supposed to believe he wants to hurt me?)
I didn't even take a breath, the next steps came to me like second-nature. I slid left, put my foot on his hip, then the other, pushed him away! Then I kicked him in the face, hard!
"OK, OK, OK! Stop!" He held his hands up. "Thank the blooming Lord I'm wearing head gear!"
I stood up, exhaled triumphantly.
"Well done, Leora. But we will practice it more. You're lucky you worked out for so many years. Gives you an edge."
I nodded, exhausted. "So when can I actually learn to kick some ass? I mean, that Krav Maga stuff?" All we'd done in the previous week had been self-defense stuff, not the Israeli Army solution to all problems East and West of The Holy City.
Trey undid his hand-wraps, walked to the edge of the ring, leaned back once on the ropes. "I guess we could start now." He grinned. And something told me I was in for one helluva lesson...
Trey started with the basics, the philosophy. "Krav Maga is about threat neutralization, simultaneous defense and offense, and aggression. It's street fighting, Leora. Now I understand you're a boxer?"
I nodded.
"Sadly, as a woman, that won't help you much. If you're a man, sure, boxing—if you're good at it—is great self-defense in the streets. Boxers spend years honing that one punch so that, correctly placed, it will knock a guy out. But a woman needs more than that.
"Krav Maga is deadly, ruthless. Man or woman. It's an anything-goes philosophy, find a stone, a stick, dig your fingers into your attacker's eyes, kick his nuts, then kick them again, break his nose with the heel of your palm."
Trey's eyes went dark, his face stern. His ebony skin was gilded by the setting sun shining in from the gym's high windows.
"The main thing to understand, Leora, is that Krav Maga is about lack of restraint. Do what you can, when you can, defend yourself at all costs. You get that?"
I did.
And then he showed me.
And then I really understood.
-2-
The moves were ruthless, thumbs in the eyes, elbows to the cheekbone, maximum destruction by extending the knee way back and pulling the guy down by the lapels before slamming up into his crotch. The goal was permanent damage. Then doing it again. Simultaneous kicks and punches, blocking, hitting.
The damn thing empowered me. I felt myself wanting to take someone on, wanting to be given a chance to beat the crap out of that guy in that warehouse who'd sucker-kicked me in the ribs. By the end of our two-hour session, my chest burned like wildfire. In the corner of the ring, I dropped cross-legged, unable to stand anymore.
"You did good," said Trey, ruffling my hair like I was some kid as he slid out under the ropes.
In the distance, I heard a slow clap.
I looked up. And there he was, backlit by a solitary lamp. My man.
Conall smiled, looking slick in his trench coat, his ha
ir styled back. "You look sexy in that corner, babe."
I smiled at him, flashing him my black mouth guard. Then I gave him the finger. He walked up to me, kissed me through the ropes. The kiss was heaven after two hours of hell, fresh ice cream on an empty stomach.
I must've tasted like shit, but Conall never let me know it. "Shower?" he said.
"Do I stink that bad?"
He rolled his eyes, pretended to faint.
"Watch out, buster. I can pack quite a punch these days!" I held my fist up, but it felt like I was lifting a ten-ton anchor. "Oh, who am I kidding? I couldn't fight off a kitten right now."
I somehow got myself out the ring and onto the gym floor, fell onto Conall's arms and he held me there, kissing my god-awful sweaty hair while I almost fell asleep on him. I thought of staying there, kissing him some more. Then I decided against it. "No, I better go shower or you'll dump me for polluting the environment or something."
He said nothing. I looked up at him. He was looking away. "Conall?"
He looked down at me. "Oh, sorry, what was that?"
Hmmmm. "You OK?"
He forced a smile. "Sure, sorry, I just had my mind on something. You said you'd shower?"
I paused before answering, trying to gauge him...
I got on my toes and pecked him on the cheek. "Yes. I'm going to shower. I'm not that tired, by the way... Know what I mean?"
He smiled, and this time it was real. "Good to know."
Before I entered the showers—which Trey always made sure were empty when we trained, because they had no separate showers for girls!—I saw Conall walking over to Trey. And they spoke much as he'd spoken with Brad that night at Chillout.
When I got back, Trey was gone. Conall wrapped his arm around my shoulder. "How was it?" he said, his face evincing nothing about his earlier concerns.
"Freaking awesome! This stuff is deadly."
"I know."
And by the way he said it, I knew that he did know. I knew that he knew it intimately. I didn't ask about it.
-3-
We all met up at Red-Light Diner, a coffee-bar-slash-club in the West End of London. Although the name might suggest it, it wasn't a stripper joint. But apparently they did have one seriously hot-looking ladies night every Thursday night. (I never went, but Kayla did once.)
West-End Boys (Naïve Mistakes) Page 6
