PART V
One
HE WAS SO BOUND UP in the moment, so intent on the faces at the open door and hyper-aware of Natalia preening and swelling at his side, so busy struggling with the stuffed toy and the candy and the flowers and fumbling toward the semi-coherent murmur of the half-formed phrases on his lips, that he didn't see it coming. Didn't look over his shoulder. Didn't clear his sight lines. Didn't watch his back. “Hi, honey,” he was going to say, “remember me?” And would she come to him? Would her face open up the way it used to when he was the heart and soul and dead glowing center of her universe or was she going to freeze him out? And his mother. His mother with her new haircut and big swaying gauzy blouse that bunched at her hips and gave way to the trailing skirt and the pipestems of her legs. “Hi, Mom,” he was going to say, “this is Natalia. My fiancée. My fiancée, Natalia.” And Natalia would be giving Sukie the fish eye, putting two and two together, working herself up over her own daughter's exile at that overpriced camp at the end of the dirt road that left a tattered blanket of dust clinging to the car every day and yet drawing all her strings tight to make a good impression in front of his mother and still riding high on the current of those three soaring syllables, “fiancée.” There was all that. All that and the heat too.
He'd just shifted the toy from his right arm to his left-it was ridiculous, the biggest thing in the store, a life-size stuffed replica of a sled dog, replete with the blue glass buttons of its eyes-to take hold of Natalia's hand and lead her up the walk, when there was another face there, two faces, hovering suddenly at the margin of his peripheral vision. His and hers. He cut his eyes right and there was a single lost beat in there somewhere before he felt the shock knife through him. It was as if he were fen years old all over again, thrilling to his first slasher flick, no children under sixteen allowed without parent or guardian, the theater gone silent, the maniac loose-and then the scream, stark, universal, collaborative. Rising.
The stuffed dog fell to the ground. He let go of Natalia's hand even as she said, “What, what is it?” and turned to follow his eyes and see them there sprung up out of the concrete walk not twenty feet away like figures out of a dream, a bad dream, terminally bad, the worst, and though he was cool, always cool-Peck Wilson, never ruffled, never at a loss, never weak-he couldn't help himself now.
He didn't stop to think how they'd come to track him here, how they were like parasites, how they wouldn't let go and could never learn no matter how many times he taught them, because this moment was beyond thought or resentment or fear, a moment that broke loose inside of him in a sudden ejaculation of violence. Ten steps, too quick to blink, the heart of the panther his tae kwon do instructor always talked about beating now in place of his own, his hands doing their thing independent of his will, perfect balance, and the fool was actually coming to him, flailing his arms like a fairy. And cursing-“you motherfucker” and the like-as if he had breath to waste. The first blow-the “sonnal mok anchigi,” knifehand strike to the neck-rocked him, and then two quick chops to drop his arms, ride back on the left foot and punch through the windpipe with the right.
Somebody screamed. The heat ran at him, all-encompassing, a sea of heat at flood tide. Another scream. It wasn't Natalia screaming, it wasn't his mother or Sukie either. This was like nothing he'd ever heard, ugly, just ugly. And there was the bitch emitting it, right there watching Bridger Martin jerk on the grass and clutch at his own throat as if he wanted to throttle himself, two quick kicks to the ribs to make it easier on him, and it was just the two of them now. Just him and Dana Halter, in her shorts and T-shirt, her face twisted with the insoluble conundrum of that unholy voice wedded to that hard moment. And then, as if it had all been decided beforehand, he went for her and she dodged away and they were both running.
There was nothing in his mind but to lash out, hurt her, bring her low, crush her, and he almost had her in the first furious rush, a snatch at her trailing arm and the fine articulated bones of her flashing wrist, but she was too quick for him, and the fury of his failure-“the bitch, the bitch, the relentless bitch”-burst behind his eyes in a pulse of irradiated heat so that he was blind to everything but the tan soles of her pumping shoes and the fan of her retreating hair. He burned, burned. Every cord in his body snapped to attention. He was in shape, good shape, but so was she, running for her life, running to beat him, humiliate him, wear him down, and they'd gone the length of the block and she was still ten feet beyond him.
Up ahead, the light was turning red. He saw it and calculated his chance because she would have to pivot to go left or swing right and cross the street with the green and that would slow her a fraction of a second, just long enough-but she surprised him, hurtling straight through the intersection without even turning her head, and the blue pickup, coming hard, had to swerve to avoid her and he was the one who lost a step, dodging round the rear bumper while the driver cursed and the horn blared. What he should have done, if he'd been thinking, was double back and pack Natalia in the car and make scarce before somebody called the cops, but he wasn't thinking. She was fleeing, he was chasing. He was going to run her down by the end of the next block, that was what he was going to do, run her down and have his sixty seconds with her, payback, and then he'd be gone.
He could hear the torn sheet of her breathing, the slap of her feet pounding at the concrete walk. Her shoulders rocked, her hair jogged as if it had come loose from her scalp. And more: he could smell her, the torched ashes of her fear, the sweat caught under her arms and running like juice between her legs. He gained a step, but the heat rose up to put two hands against his chest and push at him even as he tried to close the gap and slam her to the pavement from behind. Faces drifted by behind the windshields of the cars easing down the street, there was somebody on a porch, the thump of the bass line from a hidden boom-box, voices, music, the buzz of a cicada. The blood shrieked in his ears. He wasn't even winded.
At the next corner, the car-a white Chevy van-was moving too fast, gunning on the yellow to make the light, and the woman at the wheel hit her horn, laid into it, but this was a game of chicken now and he never hesitated. He had her, actually had his hand locked in her hair, the van sliding by like a bull brushing the cape, when the other car, the one he hadn't seen, plunged in on the bumper of the van. That put an end to it. Where there had been nothing but air the strangest sudden act of prestidigitation interposed a plane of steel, chrome and safety glass, and they both hit it and went down to the smell of scorched rubber.
Two black dudes. Young, angry-looking, scared. People had run crazy right into the side of their car, and they were smelling the scorched rubber too, slamming out of both doors while the traffic froze and Dana Halter jumped up like a rabbit and he jumped up too, absolutely capable of anything, “anything.” But then the siren whooped and the lights flashed and the patrol car was right there, sliding in to block off the intersection, and there was nowhere to go. For one instant he stared into her eyes, brown eyes, the black irises dilated with her fear and now her hate and now her triumph, and the cops were getting out of the cruiser, a tight-assed woman in schoolteacher glasses and an old guy, looking grim. Peck just stood there, sweating, trying to catch his breath. His left arm stung where he'd slammed it against the car and his pants were torn at the knee. He could have run, and wound up in jail-or shot. But he didn't. He went deep and he focused and the cool descended like a long sheet of windblown rain because he saw the look on the lady cop's face when she saw Dana, the flash of recognition there, and already one of the black dudes was starting in, overexcited, hysterical, his voice rising up and rising up until you could hear nothing else.