No room. No room to run, to deliver a graceful, balletic martial arts kick. Her mind revved in a self-defeating circle: she tried to twist her wrist so she could force it free where his grip was weakest, between his curled fingers and thumb, but her wrist was too slim; his huge hand circled it too tightly for Temple to accomplish more than an Indian burn of effort.
"Why?" she wondered.
"Because if someone can find me, it works the other way, honey. I can find him, and I can find out who he knows. Because he's too big to hurt any more, and you aren't. Tell him that. Tell him to keep the frigging hell outta my business."
"I will," she promised, surprised by how truly scary bad words sounded when uttered by the wrong people. Promise 'em anything, but give 'em Arpege.
Temple struggled to escape with all her Mighty Mouse might. Effinger just wrung her arm and twisted it behind her back. She ducked under his custody, conceding the arm and kicking hard at his knee.
A narrow shadow loomed over her . . . Effinger's arm hauling back as he held her too far away to connect with anything but air. Then his open hand connected with the side of her face.
Perception blurred as her glasses flew off her nose, her teeth snapped into her own tongue
... just a pinch between cheek and gum, a sharp, pinched feeling. Her head thumped the van's solid metal wall as a thick tang filled her mouth.
"Tell him." Effinger's face leaned close. He desperately needed a breath mint. "Tell him to leave me alone."
Temple nodded. Now was when the dental assistant would suck the mingled blood and spit from her mouth with the little vacuum hose. Drool was trickling out one sore corner of her mouth, and she without a neat clip-on paper napkin to catch it.
Worst of all, she was sandwiched so tightly between Effinger's shabby, smelly body and the dusty van that she could hardly breathe. She wondered how scared--or scarred--Effinger thought she should be to become a sufficient object lesson to Matt. One slap was not enough, she knew.
Still, she wiggled a little, pretending feeble resistance while trying to think of something effective.
"Hey!" someone not far away yelled.
The woman's challenging tone dismayed Temple. A woman witness wouldn't discourage Effinger. He liked beating them up. He grinned again under the shadow of his rancher's hat and brought a hand to her throat, tightening until the dry, hard pressure made choked blood sing a subliminal high C in her head.
The internal scream erupted into an ear-drilling screech. Temple pictured clapping her hands to her ears in self-defense, but her hands didn't move because she couldn't feel her arms, could hardly feel her feet on the ground. She was tacked up to the side of the van like a grade-school drawing, a flat and distorted stick figure with splayed limbs.
Effinger didn't like the piercing screech either, and slapped one hand back to his own ear, to something behind him.
Temple gathered her waning strength both mental and physical in the moment he brushed at the interruption.
Wasn't fancy, wasn't particularly balletic, but Temple got one knee cocked and aimed it for the classic target.
The shrieking stopped.
Wasn't a bull's-eye hit, wasn't that hard a hit, but she was amazed to feel Effinger ease off as he swung sideways against the van, either cursing or grunting or both at once.
She heard something snap beneath his boots again.
A bower of blurry floral fury came launching over Effinger's shoulder.
He yelped like a dog. Temple kicked at his kneecap and connected this time. The kneecap's connected to the . . . thigh bone (a higher, harder kick) . . . the kneecap's connected to the . . .
shin bone (another kick just above the boot top) . . . the instep's protected by the . . . boot hide, but, hey, she could try Old Faithful, the knee to the groin again, or just try to escape.
Effinger's death grip on her throat had loosened. She made herself relax and slid slowly down along the van side as if passing out. He released her to attack the harrier at his rear.
The moment his attention ebbed, Temple pulled herself up and dragged her oddly clumsy body atop the Storm's sloping hood. She slipped over the smooth aqua nose into the fence, her churning legs and ankles knocking wood and painted metal. She felt like a cartoon character defying gravity, her moving hands and feet skimming over the car's warm heavy-metal surface like a water-bug skating on a swamp.
The shrieking began again, sustained as an off-key high note, maddening. Now she could cover her ears. Great; see no evil, hear no evil.
Silence brought its own tonal terror.
Temple struggled to rise from the thick grass verge, nearsightedly knocking her abused ankles on the concrete tire-stop of the parking slot next to the Storm.
"Temple, baby? Are you all right?"
This was a voice of ordinary pitch, and bearable. "My glasses," she muttered, finally letting the warm mouthwash flood down her chin.
The moving wall of clematis and hibiscus faded, then swam into lurid focus as Electra leaned over her again.
"Oh, dear God! So much blood. Can you walk?"
One of Electra's hands bore a red licorice-twist of metal and plastic, the other was fisted with the notched steel glitter of keys stabbed between every finger in the approved women's self-defense-tip fashion.
"These won't help much," Electra warned.
Temple managed to hold one unbroken lens up to her eye, rather like a monocle. "He's gone?" She talked thickly, as if still under anesthetic.
Still? There was no anesthetic, or couldn't be with this much pain.
"Gone?" she repeated, sounding drunken and disorderly and unconvinced.
"We gotta call the police. Me, I mean. But first I have to get you to a hospital emergency room."
Temple lifted her hands. Hold on, the gesture said.
Electra ebbed away again, but was back with an open roll of paper towels from the spilled groceries. Why hadn't Temple thought of that?
Electra tore fistfuls off the roll and pressed the crushed wads of paper to the front of Temple's clothes, and more tenderly to her face.
"Mouths bleed a lot," Temple mumbled in her new Marlon Brando fashion. The Godsister.
"You think I don't know that? With three grown kids?"
Electra, daubing at the wet places on Temple's face and clothing, sounded angry, like Temple's mother had when she was a kid and had taken a spill on her first bicycle. Why blame the victim?
"Who was that awful man?" Electra was asking between daubs.
"You ever heard of the evil stepmother?"
"Who hasn't?"
"That was the evil stepfather."
"Yours?"
"God, no!"
"Whose then?"
Temple hesitated, trying to sigh and instead drawing a long, low whistle of pain through her teeth, if she still had any.
"I need to see a dentist."
"You need to see someone. Whose stepfather? And why is everybody mugging you?"
"It does feel like everybody. Help me up."
"Gosh. Look at your legs."
Temple tried to do that through her makeshift lorgnette, but could only make out the yellow glimmer of winter-dead grass at her feet.
"What's wrong with them besides not holding me up too good?"
"You're scraped to hell and back. And you'll probably have a lot of bruises. Ice. Ice will help that, and your mouth. I'll get you inside, at least for now."
"Thanks."
Leaning on the upholstered trellis of Electra's out-of-focus muumuu-clad body, Temple limped back onto the parking lot asphalt and toward the building.
"Oh, Electra!" She stopped.
"What, dear? Where does it hurt?"
"Key ring. Under the van."
"We'll get it later."
"No. Might remember, come back for it before us."