She finished tying off her braid and looked at him like a woman who was ready for a drink.
“I met your son, you know, while I was posturing over in Friendship, trying to get you to notice me. Marvin, I assume, let you know I was in town…”
The steaks were smoking now. The air smelled charred.
Taured stood up.
In New York, Rainy had taken a self-defense class once a week called Fighter Flow in a former storefront with blacked-out windows. She did a lot of stuff like that back then: photography classes, a wilderness survival class. Once, she’d taken up archery, only to give it up for fencing. But Fighter Flow was different. She’d heard someone talking about it on the train. Snippets of conversation, a woman whose sister had been mugged in her driveway was taking the class to feel safe.
“I don’t know what the instructor did, but it worked, because she’s a different person. He made her—” They’d stepped off the train, their conversation lost to her forever.
When Rainy got back to her studio, she’d looked the place up online. The only things on the website were testimonials and a phone number. When she called, a woman answered.
“How did you hear about us?”
“On the train… I was eavesdropping.”
The woman laughed a little and then asked for her email. “I’m going to send you a questionnaire. Answer it and shoot it back to me tonight if you can. I can see if you’re a good fit and we can go from there.”
Rainy had agreed and hung up. She was intrigued; the woman on the phone had given her no information, but she filled out the questionnaire, anyway, and sent it back. She was making herself a sandwich for dinner a week later when she got the call back; she’d forgotten about Fighter Flow. Licking mustard off her finger, she’d carried her plate to the table, balancing the phone against her shoulder.
“We have two available time slots for you—Mondays at seven a.m. or Saturdays eleven p.m. Your choice, but you’re going to have to give me an answer right now because there are other people who want to fill these slots.”
“Mondays,” she said quickly. And she jotted down the address the woman gave her.
It was taught by a retired marine corp veteran who asked her to call him Tito.
She’d dropped her chin and asked, “Tito like the tequila…？”
And he’d lifted his chin and said, “Yup.”
At six feet even, Tito looked like the guy you should be running from. His scars had scars and three of his teeth had been knocked out in fights and replaced with gold. “Street fighting made me this beautiful,” he told her. “I light up the whole airport when I go through security. I have enough metal in my body to make me the tin man.”
His first rule: “My gym caters to people who need self-defense, not those who merely want it. For that reason, I make things comfortable and private. You refer someone if they need help. Otherwise…？”
“You don’t talk about fight club.”
He nodded. “Good answer.”
“It’s not a matter of how big or strong someone is or whether you’re ‘tough,’ it’s a matter of being trained, being prepared. Knowing your enemy. Got it? I can prepare you, but you have to put the mental work in.”
“Is it possible for a woman to feel safe in a world where men leverage their physical strength?”
“Safer,” Tito told her. “No one’s gonna get you if you can help it, eh? You’re gonna be the last woman that man ever fucks with because there will be nothing left of him when you’re done.”
She didn’t believe him then.
When he stood up from the stool, he didn’t sway, and that’s what she’d wanted to see. Instead, he took a step toward her, lifting the gun. She was cornered between him and the grill, his body a barricade.
“I have a drug dealer. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?” She made a face. “I wasn’t really sure what you used on us back in the cult days, so I had to guess.”
He lunged to grab her, but she dove right under the table and peddled backward on her palms. On the other side of the table, Rainy was on her feet in three seconds. Adrenaline was a good drug. Anger was a better one.
“I smuggled them in under Band-Aids.” A burst of laughter rippled from her throat. “And now here we are.” She rubbed the palms of her hands on her thighs.
He hadn’t lifted the gun yet but she knew he would. Her back was to the walk-in freezer; it pressed against her shoulder blades. Taured considered the table between them. He perched on the edge, on one side of his buttocks, never lowering the gun. Swinging his legs over, he landed on the other side. Rainy was impressed. She’d never stopped moving away from him, small, shuffled steps.