“Will you run?”
I dig an elbow into the gravel and push the drunk guy with my other shoulder, unbalance him, roll on top, go for a knockout punch. Blood pours out of his nose, and then there’s a knife: his knife. The blade is curved and moving fast.
I remember mine, lying useless in the trunk. This is a bloodbath of poor calculation. I go for the hand with the knife, throw my weight into getting it down and keeping it down. Because this guy can’t get up. He’s not getting to her. If he stabs me and I die, he takes her—not on my watch. His arm is bent, the blade’s six inches from my face. My left hand versus his right arm, and every molecule of energy in every cell of every muscle in my body is pushing him down, pushing a lead oar through a river of molten lead. I’m not dying in a parking lot, not adding myself to the Manx legacy’s body count.
My endorphins open up, or maybe it’s rage, but I’ve got his hand down, still clutching his knife. I’m going for the game-changing punch when whatever she’s got in her fist sails past me, a slight fast glint, and through his arm.
He howls as she withdraws the spike, and his hand opens. I chop his face where I can break the most things—cartilage, nose, bones, skin—all to the rhythm of a blast of music from the bar.
“What the fuck?”
“Ice pick. Come on.”
44
Cat
I stabbed a drunk guy in a parking lot.
The ice pick slid through his forearm like a skewer spearing shish kebab.
Most of the blood came from his nose.
J was pounding him into the gravel. Smashing his face with pinpoint accuracy. J’s mouth is torn up. Two black eyes forming.
Would you, could you, can you, did you?
Yes to all of the above.
Try leading the life of a fugitive sometime. Those Sunday School questions just keep coming. Would you stab a drunk guy through the heart to save your boyfriend in a bar fight? And he’s not even my boyfriend. And we weren’t even in the bar.
But yes. Obviously. I would. If it had been just me, alone in the dark with a guy with a hunting knife, one of us would be dead.
Probably not me.
That guy’s lucky he jerked to the right when my arm was coming down. Because I wasn’t aiming for his arm. He’s lucky J grabbed my wrist when the ice pick was coming down the second time.
So no regrets beyond the fact that I need to barricade myself in Mrs. P’s house and marathon-watch the Home Shopping Network with her until I figure this out. Until there’s zero possibility that what we did will blow up in our faces.
J says, “How’re you doing?”
I’m crying, and there’s an ice pick in my lap.
I say, “How are you doing?”
J isn’t crying, he’s bleeding. I blot his face with my shirt, but he keeps looking at the road. Like a robot packed with lifelike spurting blood.
He pulls out of the lot as if nothing happened. Windows open, but I don’t hear anyone sounding alarms. Then there’s shouting.
At least there’s no dead guy. Probably.
I think he’s still breathing when we peel out. The J version of peeling out. Perfect driving until he thinks someone is after us. Then it’s NASCAR.
Before that, he was pounding that guy like he’s used to pounding guys. Only he’s not acting that way now.
He pulls off at an exit just east of El Molino, idles behind a gas station that’s closed for the night. Kills the lights.
I say, “Sorry.”
“She apologizes. Jesus weeps.”
“Don’t get sarcastic about Jesus! I’m just saying, I should have gotten back in the car. Duh. All right? And that was self-defense.”
“Do you want to tell that to the police, or should I?”
“You get really sarcastic when you’re upset. Did anybody ever tell you that?”
He takes several deep breaths. “You have to get rid of that ice pick.”
“I’ll clean it off and stick it in the kitchen drawer.”
“Blood doesn’t clean off.”
“I watch CSI, all right? First I’ll dip it in bleach, then I’ll use it to pry open a couple of cans and stick it in the kitchen drawer.” This feels completely unreal. Except it is real. “He wasn’t dead, right?”
J shakes his head.
I say, “Stop looking at me like that! This isn’t my fault or your fault. It’s that guy’s fault. I hope he’s dead.”
J gives me a worse look.
I say, “Give it up. I’m not saying, ‘Hey, cool, dead guy.’ But what do you think he was going to do with that knife? I’m not getting raped by a drunk in a pickup.”
“That was the general idea. That’s what I was stopping! That isn’t what I do for fun.”
“I know. I’m not an idiot. You totally saved me.”
“What are you doing with an ice pick?” He sounds like the vice principal of a reform school. My reform school.
“Ladies’ self-defense. I’m not getting dragged off and praying for my life. I’m poking a hole in his eye.”
“Poke! That was a poke? I had him close to unconscious.”
“Like you’re upset I helped you clobber him?”