The Good Fight 4: Homefront

by Ian Thomas Healy

  I almost left straight from there, but something made me stop, then head downstairs instead. I didn’t see a sign of anyone upstairs, and as I came down the living room stood dark and empty as well, but then I heard a murmur of voices. When I turned the corner and looked into the kitchen, I saw them. Two of my teammates, Lex and Riss, still sat up, shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen island, staring at something on a laptop as they talked.

  I couldn’t help but smile, since they looked so different. Lex always seemed to me to be the girl next door type—cute, with her green eyes and wavy auburn hair, and her cheery outlook. On the other hand, there’s something about her, too, just the way she looks at you sometimes, that made me realize she has some real intelligence behind those cute features. And fit, too, she lifts weights and works out all the fucking time. A tasty puzzle, but still mourning an ex and pretty much straight, so off-limits . . . at least for now.

  As for Riss, well, in my opinion she’s the most gorgeous one out of all of us. She’s a black woman with dark skin and deep brown eyes, slim and lithe, and features that I’d kill for. I wouldn’t be surprised if she said she’d been a model at some point, but she doesn’t do anything to promote that idea—doesn’t wear makeup, keeps her hair cropped close, and I’ve never seen her wear anything other than jeans and t-shirts, but even still, she makes me catch my breath every time I get a look at her. I had to try her, of course! She has this silent way about her, though, and when I asked Riss, she just looked at me for a few seconds, then shook her head once.

  She only said, “Thanks, but no.” So serious, I knew never to ask again, but since I’m not dead yet, I still look.

  “Ladies,” I announced, to make them look up as I took a pose to show off my outfit, “I’m out to the clubs tonight!”

  Lex gave me a big smile and said, “Knock ‘em dead, Serena!” I love that girl sometimes.

  Riss, on the other hand, raised an eyebrow and almost seemed to smile, something that seemed so out of keeping with her usual seriousness that I raised my eyebrows. “We won’t wait up.”

  “I don’t recommend it,” I said with a smile of my own. “Have fun!”

  I stepped out into the entry hall from the kitchen doorway and closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, I stood in the alley beside Spice Road, the club I’d wanted to go to that night, beside a dumpster.

  Now I know you’ve got questions, I can practically see you with a question mark over your head. I don’t have all that many answers for you, though. All I know is that during my teenage years I realized that I could think of someplace I knew well, like my childhood home, or a school classroom that I spent a year in, or my favorite park, and then I could appear there. After a while, I realized that if I took an effort to notice and remember a place well, to be able to see the half-light here near the dumpster in my mind, along with the questionable liquid leaking from the corner where it’s rusted, and the smell of stale beer and piss, that I could call up the place in my mind and just . . . go there.

  So, after peering down the alley in both directions to make sure no one saw my arrival, I smoothed down my skirt with a smile after seeing it remained clear, and walked up out of the alley. Only a few people stood in line at the door to the club at this hour, since it was only quarter to eleven, but I always liked to get there early to scope out the territory to my heart’s content.

  I walked through the middle of the dance floors, swallowing as the sound hit me. With only a few people on the floor, they played the music so loud I could feel it reverberating inside my chest, a new heart competing with the original’s beat. I couldn’t help but laugh after I got through the area, a sound I couldn’t hear, as if I’d escaped an air raid.

  Heading straight for the back bars, I took a bar stool where I got a prime view of the whole room. I shivered as I did, because it must have been tasty man night, from what I could see. I ordered my prowling drink, a tonic water and lime, because nothing spoils a good fuck more than being too drunk to enjoy it, and I turned to continue studying the various groups around the bars.

  Licking my lips as I spotted a man I liked the look of in particular, quite fit with a tattoo snaking up his neck to disappear into his dark curls, I watched him smile and then laugh at something his companion had said. After studying them for another minute or two, I sighed and took a sip of my drink as it arrived, since it had become clear to me that his companion seemed to be his partner, or at least someone he wanted to go home with.

  I scanned the room some more, and someone else caught my eye. A woman sat at a table for four near the corner of the room, and I could see that the other three chairs had jackets over the backs of them, and two had drinks in front of them. She toyed with a drink of her own, her long fingers dancing around the rim of the glass, and I could see her dark eyes flash as she looked back and forth, seeming to be waiting or looking for someone.

  She shook her head then, throwing some of her long blonde hair over her shoulder, and I smiled, since her beautiful hair had been one of the things that had caused me to glance at her in the first place. It looked wavy and soft at this distance, and I could see even sitting how tall she looked, two things I’m completely weak for in women.

  Sadly, I don’t know how long I stared, but I’d started to get up when I realized someone had come to stand at my elbow. I only have my preoccupation with the beautiful blonde to blame that anyone could get that close to me without me noticing, and I muttered a curse at myself for being so careless. My quick once-over showed me a man with a fitness level that looked like he worked in an office. He wore a polo shirt and khaki pants, and as he dipped his head in my direction, I could see that his hair had started thinning on top. Not what I look for in a man, on average, but when I got a look at his face, I backed up against the bar, as far away from him as I could get.

  I know you’ve seen one of these guys before, the ones who have that expression on their face like they’re one word away from having a complete rage meltdown? The men who look like they’re always on the edge of having some sort of anger freak out where they’ll try to kill the nearest person, and they’re trying hard to keep that under wraps? I could smell it on him, and even the expression on his face seemed like a flimsy lid on a pot ready to boil over.

  Before I could say anything, or make a move towards freedom, the guy pushed a drink at me. “This is for you,” he said.

  My eyes narrowed as I looked at it. I saw a squat glass filled with some kind of brown liquid, and I could smell the alcohol in it as he brought it nearer to my face. He must not have asked the bartender what I was drinking, and it explained why someone like him was talking to me—he probably figured he could drug the sass right out of me.

  For some reason, I always channel my inner Southern belle in situations like these. So I said, “Well, I thank you kindly for thinking of my needs, but I’m not drinking this evening. That does look tasty, though, so I recommend you drink it yourself!”

  There, the nicest way I could think of to say, “Go fuck yourself.”

  Of course, those words wouldn’t appease the volcano god, and I could see his face darken even in the dim light of the bar. For a moment, I thought he might try to punch me, so I got ready to go somewhere nearby to watch him fall over the bar instead, but then he did something different. Shoving the drink in my face so that I had to take it or have it slop all over me, he said in almost a shout, “Here, take it!”

  I caught the glass just in time to prevent it from ending up all over my nice clothes, and I know my appeasing smile changed to a frown at least for a moment as I tried to aim the resulting splash away from me. Looking back at Mr. Anger Mismanagement, I matched his smirk with a smile of my own.

  “Aren’t you the persistent one,” I said, and I throttled my anger to make sure it didn’t make it into my sugary tone. “I have to warn you, though, sometimes when you make sudden moves like that, well, it could lead to accidents.”

  And on the word “accidents,” I tipped th
e glass fast enough so that whatever drink had been in it poured all over his shoes. I felt like someone in the distance watching Mount Vesuvius erupt. All of that fury that he’d been poorly hiding came right out, and he got red enough that I wondered if he’d have a heart attack on the spot. He opened his mouth wide to shout, and lifted his hand up to do god-knows-what, but he froze a split second later as he looked at something over my shoulder. I continued watching him, waiting to see if I’d need to move so I ended up behind him at short notice, but his expression changed to something sour and pouty a second later. He shot me another dirty look and muttered something I couldn’t quite hear, but beat feet out of the area.

  Puzzled, I turned to look over my own shoulder, and gave a sunny smile as I saw what I figured he must have. The bartender stood just behind me with a fearsome expression. He must have been at least six feet tall and looked like a bodybuilder, but older than me, maybe in his forties, with a shaved head, a handlebar mustache, and a number of tattoos on his upper right arm.

  “Thank you,” I said, and tried to make my smile even more charming.

  He smiled in return, but he ducked to look at the bar, as if he trying to hide it. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

  That, of course, made my smile even wider, and I gave him a final glance before I headed for the bathroom to check the damage to my outfit, reminding myself that perhaps the criteria I used to find a bed partner might need some updating.

  I’d been worried that the drink I’d poured on my would-be rapist’s shoes would have spattered my outfit, but I felt happy when I looked in the mirror and saw that hadn’t happened. So, I freshened up my lipstick as I kept an eye on all of the women entering and leaving. I saw a few who piqued my interest, but no one as cute as the one I’d spotted earlier.

  A few minutes later I came back out to the bars and began looking around to find where the blonde woman I’d seen earlier had gotten to. I frowned as I realized that business had picked up, because I had a hard time seeing anything through the people arriving from the dance floor, or getting ready to go back out.

  Avoiding the rowdiest groups, I kept half an eye open for anyone else who looked interesting while I searched for the blonde. After a minute or two, I saw her half a room away, but my stomach sank when I noticed she wasn’t alone. As the man with her half-turned, I gasped as I recognized same one who’d been bothering me earlier pushing a drink into the face of the woman I’d had my eye on.

  Of course, at that moment a crowd of a dozen or so people came in from the dance floor and blocked the way between me and them. I couldn’t get past them due to my high heels and the way they all just flowed around me. I also may have gotten distracted by one tall drink of water, and smiled at the way he tried to look down my cleavage, but I got myself back together in a matter of seconds and pushed my way through the crowd.

  When I cleared the people, I couldn’t help but swear as I watched the beautiful blonde take a drink of whatever the toad who’d bothered me earlier had offered her. I realized it may have been a second sip, however, when she sagged forward and almost dropped the squat glass from her hand. The man reached forward to take the glass, depositing it on the table before he slid an arm underneath one of hers.

  My eyes widened, and I swore as I watched him turn to head for the door. Of course, the crowd of people between me and that table had gotten bigger, and I contemplated just appearing at the man’s side and shoving him away from her, but didn’t want to attract attention to myself since the room had filled with so many people, and someone would be staring at me at every second.

  As I passed by the now-abandoned table where the blonde woman had been sitting, I knocked all the remaining drinks over with my arm, both to make sure no one else drank something drugged and to let the woman’s friends know that something out of the ordinary had happened. I continued to weave my way through the crowd, swearing now as I lost ground on the two of them. I bit my lip so as not to yell as the bouncer just let the creep walk away with a woman passing out on his arm. Maybe he’d said she was his girlfriend, I just don’t know, but I guess it’s easy to make up a story like that when the other person can’t speak up and disagree. I could feel my heart pound as I fought to catch up to them, and I almost thought I’d lost them by the time I could bolt out of the club, but I just spotted them at the end of the block to the left.

  Looking behind me to see that I’d left the front of the club far enough behind not to be noticed, I looked ahead and reappeared at the mouth of an alley not far from the end of the block. From that vantage point, I watched him slog down the sidewalk carrying her. I couldn’t help but clench my fists at my sides, seeing him flop her around, since she stood several inches taller than him and he didn’t seem to have much patience with the fact that she’d almost passed out, despite the fact that he’d been the one who caused it.

  I kept up with them, switching to other alleys or the darkened doorways of buildings they passed, and as I began to cool down from the heat of the club, I started to wonder what the hell I should do now. I could confront him on the street, but he might drop her, and then she’d get injured. If the police saw the whole thing, they might get the wrong idea anyway.

  I’d begun to fumble in my bag to get my cell phone to call Lex, since she seemed to be good with coming up with plans, but I closed my bag again as I saw the man try to prop the blonde up against a wall as he opened the door to an apartment building. Swearing under my breath, I ended up just behind them so that I could get a look at the inside hallway, then appeared at the opposite end of the hallway inside and watched him pull her through the door, swearing and kicking it open as it caught on one of her feet as it tried to swing closed.

  Waiting a few seconds so that they could get a head start on me, I went to the foot of the stairway and looked up. The apartments had all been situated on the outside of the building and the inside made a cramped courtyard that centered around the stairs, so I could look up and watch their progress. I followed, a floor behind, as he continued to climb and drag her up the stairs, then I got closer as he stopped climbing on the fourth floor.

  I moved myself to a corner of the corridor the apartment doors all opened onto and watched his progress. Thankfully, he’d turned in the opposite direction and continued pulling her and swearing until he stopped in front of one door in particular. With only a few seconds at my disposal as he fumbled for keys in his pocket, I appeared right behind the two of them, hoping that he’d be distracted enough not to notice.

  To my great pleasure, he didn’t see me at all as he pushed the door open after several long moments, and wrestled her inside. I stared as hard as I could as that happened, trying to memorize the man’s front hallway until it disappeared from sight when the door slammed shut behind them.

  I could feel the breath jittering in my lungs as I stood there behind the now closed door, trying to get my sorry ass together and figure out what to do next. I didn’t feel as if I’d quite memorized the hall beyond, and I tried to swallow down panic as I struggled to picture it. Then, I looked down at myself, remembering that I hadn’t dressed for a fight, which I figured I’d get if I even could think myself beyond the front door.

  Swearing, I memorized my surroundings as fast as I could, then blinked and reappeared back in my room. I tore off the bustier and skirt in seconds, kicked my high heels away and heard one of them hit the wall, and then scrambled to get something else on so that I could go back out. I ended up in a hoodie, comfortable jeans that I never left the house in, and some sneakers I don’t remember why I’d bought, but that I could slip on. In an infrequent stroke of genius, I also grabbed some zip ties that had been sitting on one of my side tables.

  A split second later, I stood back in front of that door. I could feel the sweat trickle down out of my hair as I continued struggling to bring up the image of that hallway, and coming up short.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered, then began to pace. “Think about how much space the door needs to open. I
t opens in, so at least a couple of feet. There shouldn’t be anything there, so I should try to go about a foot into that hallway. About a foot from here.”

  I stood as close as I could get to that door then, glaring at the grey paint on it and willing it to open, and sighing when it didn’t. I knew the risks; I could end up seriously fucked up if I tried to go somewhere and ended up inside the door or something, but I couldn’t just leave the blonde girl to him, not when I knew in my gut what would happen if I did.

  Closing my eyes with a sigh, I pictured it. Ahead of me, just a foot. Just a foot . . . and when I opened my eyes again, I found myself standing in a hallway along with a stack of newspapers that needed recycling and a pair of rain boots. I stood there for a few seconds, trying to stop myself from panting due to the effort it had taken to get there, but my blood ran cold as I heard a noise. Not words, but some sort of grumbling sound.

  I appeared at the end of the hallway and looked left, the sole direction I could see light. It appeared to be a living room with the man I’d been following in it. He didn’t seem to have noticed me, either because of the dark hallway or the fact that he seemed fascinated with running his hands up and down the blonde woman’s bare thighs. He’d thrown her skirt up so that it almost covered her face and I could see that he’d ripped her panties off, because of where they lay on the rug not far away.