I made a tiny, derisive sound, just loud enough to carry to our sensei. Marshall was preening while we were hurting, and the weakest of us would be worn out by the time we started the exercise.
“On my count!” Marshall barked, and we all tensed. Carlton was trembling, and Toni, hooked to Janet, seemed totally unable to pull up off the floor, where her entire body was firmly settled. At least she was providing good ballast for her partner.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, twenty! One, two…” With each count we tightened our abdominals, then relaxed them, our upper bodies rising perhaps six inches off the floor to relax down to two on the off count. Our row bobbed frantically to keep up, abdominals rigid with the effort of keeping our backs off the floor. I glanced to the right, checking my half of the row, since Marshall might ask me to correct their faults. Carlton and Toni were side by side on Becca’s row, which pleased me. Bobo looked to his left just then, and our eyes met. He grinned at me. He thought this was great fun. He had to have found another dojo in Montrose, to be in such good shape. I shook my head in wry amazement, and turned my concentration back to my own work. I closed my eyes and kept up with the count, knowing Becca would never give up and go slack.
“Get your elbows off the floor!” Marshal admonished, and the two new boys at the end of the row gasped and obeyed. I scowled at the ceiling as I heard the thud of a head hitting the floor only seconds later. That was on my side, and it was one of the new boys. After a few halfhearted attempts to make his abdominals obey, he openly gave up, and he and Toni did fish imitations together, mouths open and gasping. Toni had lasted maybe the first set of ten. Obviously, Bobo hadn’t met her in a gym.
Finally, only Bobo, Becca, and I were still going.
“One hundred!” Marshall said, and stopped. We three froze with our backs off the floor. I could hear Becca breathing loudly, and tried not to smile.
“Hold it!” commanded Marshall, and with an effort of will, I stayed up.
“Hold it!” he exhorted us. I began to tremble.
“Relax,” he said, and it was all I could do not to let myself collapse with the same embarrassing thud. I managed to detach my legs from Becca’s and let my shoulders and back ease to the floor without any urgency. I hoped.
Ragged breathing filled the room. I turned to look at Bobo. He was beaming at me from a couple of feet away.
“How ya doing, Lily?” he gasped.
“I could have done thirty more,” I said with no conviction. He giggled weakly.
Marshall didn’t tell us to put on sparring pads tonight. At least partly because of Toni’s presence (even the students we called “the new boys” had been coming a month) he decided to instruct us to practice breaking away. There were about four simple moves that each new class member had to learn. While the other people practiced more sophisticated maneuvers, I was set to teach these moves to Toni. She protested nervously several times that she was just visiting with Bobo-probably she would never come to class again. I just kept on instructing her. No one (least of all the timid Toni) would quite dare to just tell Marshall no. At least, no one I’d ever met.
My estimation of the girl rose as I worked with her. She gave it her best shot, though she was obviously uncomfortable with being in the class at all. I could like that determination-admire it, even.
“God, you’re strong,” she said, trying not to sound angry, as I gripped her wrists and told her to practice the breaking-free method I’d just taught her.
“I’ve been working at this for years.”
“You’re some kind of hero to Bobo,” she said, her eyes fixed on me to see how I’d react.
I had no idea how to respond to that. I wanted to ignore what Toni had said, but she refused to move when I took her wrist, playing my role of attacker. She just waited, her face turned up to mine.
“I’m not a hero in any sense,” I said curtly. “Now, break free from my hold!”
I got out of there fast when class was over. Janet had left even faster after letting me know she had a date, so she wasn’t there to chat with me on my way out, and the weight room was almost empty. I thought I heard Bobo call my name, but I kept marching forward. I’d see him tomorrow afternoon, anyway.
Chapter Seven
I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. There was no point in tearing up my bed tossing and turning any longer. In the darkness I slid into my jeans, black sports bra, an old black Nike T-shirt, and my sneakers. My keys and cell phone were always in the same place on my dresser; I pocketed them and slipped out the front door to begin walking.
There had been too many nights of this pointless activity, I reflected. Too many nights of striding through a silent town-for the past few years this particular silent town of Shakespeare. Before that, other towns in other states: Tennessee, Mississippi. My feet moved silently on the pavement as I covered ground.
I seldom felt the compulsion to walk when Jack stayed with me. If I was restless, I satisfied that restlessness in a more intimate way. Tonight I felt worn ragged, and old.
One of the town’s night patrolmen, Gardner McClanahan, saluted me as he cruised slowly by. He knew better than to stop and talk. Though Claude would never have told me, I’d heard the town police called me the Night Walker, a pun on the title of an old TV show. Every patrol officer knew I’d anonymously called in at least five break-ins and three domestic situations, but we’d silently agreed to pretend they didn’t know their tipster was me. After the previous year, they all knew about my past. I thought it very strange that they apparently respected me for it.
I didn’t raise my hand to acknowledge Gardner, as I would some nights. I kept on moving.
Forty minutes later, I’d circled, doubled, gone to all four points of the compass, and still was only about six blocks from home. On Main, I was passing Joe C’s house, thinking once again about its size and age, when I stopped in my tracks. Had that been a flicker of movement among the bushes in the yard of the Prader house? My hand dropped to the cell phone in my pocket, but there was no point calling the police if I’d been mistaken. I slunk into the yard myself, moving through the overgrown shrubbery as silently as I could.
Yes. Ahead of me, someone was moving. Someone all in black. Someone quiet and quick like me. The closest streetlight was half a block away and the yard was deep and shadowy.
It took me only seconds to realize that whoever this trespasser was, he was moving away from the house, not toward it. I wondered if he’d been trying the doors, hoping to enter and steal. I began making my way as quietly as I could through the jungle of Joe C’s yard.
Then I smelled smoke. I froze in position, my head rotating to track from which direction the thick dark scent was pouring.
It was coming from the house. My skin began to crawl with apprehension. Not even attempting quiet movement, I pressed close enough to peer through the open curtains of Joe C’s living room, the room I’d vacuumed just three days before. Now that I was out of the bushes, the streetlight gave me a little visibility. There were no lights on in the house, but I should have been able to see the outlines of the furniture. Instead, there was a dense movement inside the room. After a second, I realized the room was full of smoke; it was coiling against the windows, waiting to be let out. As I stared into the dark moving cloud, I saw the first dart of the flames.