“I think I sprained it,” I say.
“Just twisted,” she says, no sympathy at all in her. “Come on, walk it off.”
She weaves her arm beneath mine and across my back, my bad ankle between us. I take a delicate step, but it feels like a knitting needle is being driven right through the bone.
“You’re all right,” she says. “Push yourself.”
But I push her away instead. “Would it kill you to be a little nice?” I seethe.
“Nice?” Yael’s eyes are pitiless. “Do you think your attackers will be ‘a little nice’? Do you think they’ll say, ‘Poor baby, let’s give her a rest’?”
I hop to a rusty jungle gym at the edge of the park and grip the metal bars. Through bared teeth, I seethe and struggle to hold back a wave of tears from exhaustion and terror at the hole I’ve dug for myself by coming here.
Yael hovers behind me. I feel her there, standing silently as if she’s about to kick my good leg out from under me and tell me to toughen up. Instead, she places a gentle hand on my shoulder, and it surprises me that she’s even capable of a touch that doesn’t cause pain.
“Come on,” she says.
She laces an arm under mine, and I have to lean into her so I don’t fall. On the street, Yael hails a cab, and we climb into the backseat. In the confined space, all I can smell is the stink of our sweat.
*
I fell asleep around six last night to the sounds of Yael shouting un, deux, trois, un, deux, trois to the clomping dance class below. Now, eleven hours later, my body’s sleep rhythm somewhere between New York and Paris, I sit on the edge of the cot and probe the floor with my toes, testing my ankle for a sprain. But the sharp knitting-needle pain from yesterday is gone, replaced by a dull, warm throb that ticks like a metronome beneath the gel packs Yael bound to my ankle with a bandage. I peel the bandage back and find the swelling is down, way down—Yael was right. Not sprained. Twisted. She’ll gloat, then punish me.
I limp through the dark toward the kitchen, the Paris sky between the blinds inky blue with the first morning light. As I approach, the smell of frying bacon grows stronger, and I wonder if it’s an illusion. But as I step through the door into the kitchen, I see Yael standing over the stove, spatula in hand.
“How’s the ankle?” she says loudly over the hissing and popping of bacon in a frying pan.
“Better. Thanks.” I stare at her for a moment, as if the idea of her doing something so domestic and kind, and for me no less, were a sort of contradiction.
“Sit before you fall,” she says. “You keep kosher?”
As my groggy head struggles to make sense of the question, I limp to the table and fall into one of the chairs. “Kosher?” I repeat. “No. I guess I’m missing the faith gene.”
“Me too. And even if we’re wrong, God’s got enough to condemn me without bringing up what I had for breakfast.” She scrapes at the pan with the spatula. “Bacon and eggs it is, then. A real American breakfast for my real American teenager.”
For a moment, I wonder if this is a trick and watch her suspiciously. Maybe the second lesson of Krav Maga is how to have sizzling bacon grease poured in your lap and take it like a champ.
There’s a long baguette sitting on the table, and I break off a piece. Yesterday’s. It would have to be. But not too stale.
“So, your ankle—just a little twist. You were trying to get out of finishing our run.”
But I don’t take the bait. She’s not going to get to me, I decide, not today. “So—what’s your story? Ever married?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“On the planet I’m from, it’s what people talk about. It’s called getting to know each other.”
Yael probes at the bacon with a fork. “You don’t live on that planet anymore. Anything you tell someone, they use. Anything you love, they go after. If you must talk, say only lies.”
I rub my forehead and close my eyes, willing the kind Yael of a few minutes ago to come back, because it’s far too early for this spy-philosopher shit.
“I was married,” she volunteers suddenly. “Once. For a year.”
“And?”
“A woman in this profession—I have a saying, a woman needs a man like—how did I put it?”
“Like a fish needs a bicycle,” I say.
She shovels some bacon onto the plate and stares at me. “What? That’s idiotic. I was going to say, a woman needs a man like she needs an Hermès scarf. Nice to have, but if you lose it, who cares, it’s a scarf.”
“So, disposable men,” I say. “Lose one, get another.”
“Not just men. Everyone.” She sets a plate down in front of me. Eggs, burnt black and dry as leather. Bacon, floppy and barely cooked. “It’s the nature of this profession. Trust is impossible.”
“That’s—very paranoid,” I say. “I don’t want to believe that.”
“Really? It’s the reason you’re here, after all.” She sits down with her own plate and begins eating. “At some point, you will be betrayed, and at some point, you will betray. That’s a promise.”
“No, this is a promise: I won’t ever betray you.” I set down my fork and look at her, and she looks back. “What you’re doing for me—it means everything.”
“Words like that always sound nice coming out of the mouth,” she says, wiping bacon grease from her chin with her wrist. “I guarantee someone said the same to your father.”
“So if I might betray you, why bother helping me?”
“Because our interests are aligned for the moment. Tomorrow—who knows?” She breaks off a piece of the baguette and stares at me. “Better eat. We have a long day.”
*
Once more, I’m directed to the center of a training mat. You remember ideas best when you’re near your breaking point, she tells me, therefore to my breaking point we go. Yael paces a circle around me. She holds in her hand a yellow training pistol made of solid rubber, the cousin of the knife we used yesterday.
“If you’re already fighting hand to hand, and your attacker pulls a knife, run if you are able,” she says. “But if he has a gun, continue the attack and disarm him. Do you know why?”
“Because the knife is only useful for the length of his arm, but bullets travel.”
“Just so,” Yael says. “Please take this.”
She hands me the gun, then lies down on the mat, faceup.
“Come,” she says. “Kneel over me.”
I do as she instructs, straddling her hips. It feels awkward and too intimate.
“Now point the pistol at my face.”
For a moment, I hesitate. Then Yael moves my hands for me, putting the muzzle of the gun mere inches from her nose.
“It would seem there’s nothing to be done,” Yael says. “I’m on the ground, and my enemy is on top with a pistol aimed at my head. A position of absolute disadvantage, no?”
I smile weakly. “I’m guessing you’ll show me it’s not.”