I remember telling her that once and she just laughed.
"I don't think so, Jaime," she said. "If you really just wanted to report on life, you wouldn't have worked for The Examiner. I think, secretly, there's a novelist living inside you, just dying to get out. Why else would you be drawn to a job that has you making up such outlandish stories, day after day?"
Who knows what we secretly want— I mean, really, seriously want? I knew that with Annie I had everything I could ask for, so I had no more need for secrets. When I came out, it didn't raise an eyebrow among my coworkers. The only people who changed toward me were my family. Ex-family. Can you get a divorce from your flesh and blood? To all intents and purposes, I certainly have.
But that's okay. I was never close to them anyway. See, that's the real revenge motive that let me take the anima's gift: lost innocence.
Both my parents were alcoholics. I'm surprised I even survived some of the beatings I got as a kid. It was different for Annie. Instead of being beaten, her father started molesting her when she was in the cradle. The nightmare lasted until she was in her teens.
"What's scariest," she told me once, "is that I didn't even know it was wrong, It didn't feel right, but I never knew any different. I thought that was how it was in every family."
What are the statistics? I think it's something like two out of every three women have been sexually assaulted by the time they're in their twenties. Everything from being abused as children to being raped when they're older.
Lost innocence.
Somehow, Annie regained hers, but most people aren't that lucky. I know I never have.
But that's why I think of what I'm doing as something I'm doing for her. So many monsters, and I've barely made a dent in their numbers. I wish there was a way to get rid of them all in one fell swoop. I wish I could deal with them before the damage is done. It kills me that it's all ending for me before I've realty gotten started with my work.
See, by the beginning of July my savings finally run out and I begin to lose the amenities because I can't pay my bills anymore. The phone goes first, then the power. By the time I meet Chris, I've lost my apartment.
So I become a baglady superhero— do they ever deal with that in those comics? I know I'm obsessed, but I don't have anything else to do with my life. It was bad enough when I was on my own, tracking the monsters down by trial and error. I'd deal with one, maybe two in a week— three tops. But now, with Chris's help, I can hit that same number on a good night.
I'm proud of what I'm doing, but it's starting to take its toll. That little piece of myself I was losing every time I dealt with one of the monsters has escalated to where now it feels as though what I'm losing is falling off the way clumps of dirt can be shaken from a piece of sod. The empty patches inside me just keep getting bigger. It's as though my spirit is dissolving, bit by bit. I stare down at the anima residue I leave on their beds and want to pick it up and somehow stick it back onto me. I'm so wasted come morning now that I don't care where I sleep— on a park bench, in an alleyway, in some deserted building.
Chris offers to put me up, but I don't want to get that close to him. I let him buy me meals, though. Left on my own, I forget to eat half the time. When I do remember, I'm usually scrounging something from one of the monsters' kitchens— now there's something that really helps your appetite. God.
The cramps start in September, and I begin to get these sudden spells of weakness so often that even Chris notices the change. I mean, he can't see much of me, all clothed in black and hiding in the shadows most of the time, but what he can see tells him I'm not well.
"Maybe we should ease off a bit," he says.
"I'm fine."
"You look like shit."
I know. I caught a reflection of myself in a window on my way to meet him tonight. All the meat was gone, leaving just corded animal muscles over the bones. The real emptiness is inside.
"I tell you I'm fine," I repeat, trying to convince myself as much as him. "What've you got for me tonight?"
"Nothing."
I don't even realize that the growl's rumbling in my chest until I smell the sudden sting of his fear. I force myself to calm down, but he still backs away from me.
"I'm sorry," I say and I mean it.
He nods slowly, but he keeps his distance.
"Okay," I tell him. "We'll take a break tonight. Just give me one name."
I don't know why I'm pressing him like this. I could do it on my own. Skulk around until I found a monster. I might get lucky, you never know. But I think later that I want his complicity in this. I want someone to know what I'm doing— not to feed my ego. Just to remember me when I'm gone.
"One name," he says.
"That's all."
Chris sighs. He tries to talk me out of it for a little while longer, but finally gives in. One name and address.
"This one's a little weird," he says as he hands it over. "It came in from the guidance counselor at Redding High. Something about it being a sensitive case, but I couldn't find anything in the file to say why."
"That's okay. I can handle it."
Mistake— but I don't blame him.
6
Grant Newman is awake, only I don't realize it. I pull myself in through his window, third story, nice part of town, and creep soundlessly across the hardwood floor to where he's lying. He's alone in his bed. I scouted around earlier and discovered that he and his wife have separate bedrooms. Makes it easier for when he wants to pay little Susan a night visit, I guess.
I slip up onto the bed and he grabs me. It happens so suddenly that I just freeze up in surprise. Then when I try to fight him, I can't find the strength to break free. It's not that the anima's gifts have worn off; it's that I'm worn out. I've left too many pieces of myself behind in too many monsters' lairs. The shock of my sudden helplessness makes me feel dizzy.
"What the hell've we got here?" Newman says as I struggle to break his grip.
My heightened sense of smell makes his bad breath seem worse than it must really be. I know that smell. It's the way my old man used to stink before he took the belt to me.
I try to get my legs up between us so that I can kick him, but he rolls me over and pins me to the bed with his knees.
"Some kind of little ninja fuck," he says. "So what's the deal? Yukio getting tired of paying me off?"
He reaches for my mask until his gaze locks onto my chest.
"Jesus," he says. "Your boss must be really getting hard up if he's running woman assassins now."
I'm gaunt these days, just muscle and bone and the muscles aren't working tonight. But the body suit still shows I'm a woman. For some men, that's excuse enough for anything. Maybe Newman thinks he's in his private place and anything goes. For all I know we are in his private place, and I've just lost control of the situation.
Newman forgets about the mask, and reaches for the zipper of my suit instead.
"I've never fucked a ninja before," he says. "This'll be something to—"
I'm the wolf with its leg in a trap, the bear that's been shot, the puma that's been harassed until it has its back to the wall. Panic whips my head forward and I close my teeth on his hand, biting through fingers, straight to the bone. I'll give him this: He doesn't scream. But the pain makes him loosen his grip.
I whip up a leg from behind him and manage to hook it around his neck. I pull him back, off of me, heaving myself up to help the momentum. He falls backward out of the bed and I'm out of there. I almost lose it in the window frame, but my adrenalin lets me catch my balance before I go tumbling three stories down to the pavement below. By the time Newman gets to the window, I'm two floors above his apartment, spidering my way up the wall and onto the roof.