What was wrong with this girl? Maureen thought. Did she know nothing about the city, about the world she lived in? There are people in this world, Maureen remembered, to whom awful things haven’t happened yet. And I’m here in the dark, she thought, to keep that true for this dumb girl for one more day.
She pulled the ASP from her back pocket. She gave the man half a moment to acquit himself, to let the girl know he was there, to call out her name. Anything to tell Maureen he wasn’t following this girl home with ill intent. Anything. To not be what Maureen knew in her bones he was. Do that, Maureen thought, show me you’re not what I think you are and I will walk on by. I will let this go. The man said nothing. He did nothing but reach for the gate. He’d been smart enough to let it bang closed before he opened it, knowing some part of the girl’s brain waited to register that sound.
The man slipped up the walk behind the girl, impressively silent, had her within arm’s reach. Maureen darted through the gate behind the man. She didn’t wait for him to reach for the girl.
She fell on him from behind, kicking out the back of one knee, locking his throat in the crook of her elbow. He lurched forward, gasping, knocking into the back of the girl, who went facedown without a sound onto the brick steps leading up the porch.
Maureen hammered the ASP down on the knee she’d kicked. The joint gave out. As they fell, she and the man she’d pursued, her foot slipped off the edge of the walkway, and she rolled her ankle. Electric pain shot through her ankle and up her calf. The pain made her gasp. Not again, she thought. This fucking ankle will never heal. Forget it, she told herself. Use it. Let it hurt. Use the adrenaline, the anger.
They tumbled into a row of ginger plants, falling to the ground among the stalks. The man landed facedown, Maureen on top of him. He clawed at Maureen’s forearm with both hands, trying to pry her arm away from his throat. He yanked at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Her grip wouldn’t give. When she felt him weaken under her, she released his throat, letting him breathe. She didn’t want to strangle him. Grabbing him by the back of the head, she pushed his face into the dirt. He couldn’t be allowed to get a look at her. He flopped under her like a fish. He was a fighter, but not much of one. He was a weak man.
Inside the house, a dog barked, a crazed yippy thing that would wear on the nerves quickly. Maybe panicked enough to get people looking out the window. She’d have to work quickly.
She straddled the small of the man’s back. She cocked her arm and thumped him a hard shot to the rib cage with the ASP. The blow made a sound like she’d slapped a pumpkin. He cried out into the dirt, his breath exploding from him.
“Stop fucking moving,” she said, “and lie there.”
“I can’t—I can’t breathe.”
“Lie still,” Maureen said, “and take it like a man.”
“My fucking ribs. Fuck.” He squirmed and cried out. “I can’t—you broke my fucking knee. Christ, it fucking hurts.”
“Let it,” Maureen said. “Let it hurt.”
She tapped the weighted ball of the ASP against his cheek, traced the underside of his eye as if caressing it with her fingertip. Blood stained his teeth. Dirt dusted his hair. She watched his terrified wild blue eye roll around in its socket, searching for her, for her weapon, for an escape. She knew she sat back far enough that he couldn’t see her face.
“Lie there and let it hurt,” she said, “and no more talking.”
“What the fuck?” Maureen heard the girl say. “Holy shit, my face is bleeding.”
“Go in the house and clean up,” Maureen said, not turning, not looking up or at the girl, hiding her face with the hood of her sweatshirt. “Go in the house and clean yourself up and don’t come back outside. Do not call the police.”
Maureen heard the sniffles as the girl started to cry.
“Everything is fine,” Maureen said, with as much gentleness as she could muster. “Take care of your dog.” She used the voice she’d been taught to use with witnesses at a crime scene, which was exactly what, she realized, this girl had become. Well, better to be the witness, Maureen thought, than the victim. “Go inside.”
The girl did the smartest thing she had done that night. She went inside the house.
Maureen turned her attention back to the panting, bleeding man beneath her.
“Now it’s you and me, handsome. Alone in the dark.”
He had stopped struggling. His pain made it impossible for him to lie motionless. There was no comfortable position for him, wouldn’t be for months, but he was listening. He was trying to obey her.