by Carolyn Nash
“Shut up, listen,” I hissed back.
I leaned back and smiled. “Sweetie, I thought I’d never find you.”
“Look over my left shoulder,” I said through my teeth. “Those two men. One big, one short and blond. They’re after you.”
“Jesus. Get out of here.” He tried to push me away but I clung to him tightly.
“No, I told you,” I squealed, my voice getting louder and louder. People were beginning to turn and look. “You’re going the wrong way. We’re meeting him over there.” I pointed grandly at Mr. Kent standing against the rental counter and laughed loudly. Even through the crowd I could see the look of pained resignation on the little man’s face as he watched my antics. “I don’t know what you’d do without me!”
I heard a man’s voice behind me say, “I do.” More people were looking, some with open expressions of disgust. I hooked my arm through Andrew’s and pulled him toward the other side of the hallway. “I have a limo waiting just outside the terminal,” I whispered, then continued loudly, “I mean really, I don’t know what you were thinking, I mean, my gosh!”
He let me guide him through the crowd toward Mr. Kent. The stream of people parted and then turned to stare at me as Andrew and I walked through them.
“Well, you didn’t even notice my hair,” I squealed. “I mean, my gosh, I spent four hours at the salon and do you even notice? No!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two men standing watching our progress. The small man started to move toward us, but the large man put a hand on his shoulder and held him back. He bent and spoke into the smaller man’s ear. They straightened and continued to stare as we moved up to Mr. Kent. I didn’t let up the mindless chatter.
“And my nails. I mean an hour and a half and you don’t even notice. I mean, I don’t even know why I even try.” I flung my arm out for him to admire my nails and almost decked a pompous looking little man in an unlikely plaid sport coat. “Oh, sorry,” I said nonchalantly.
The little man harrumphed, raised his hand surreptitiously to check his toupee, and walked on. My eyes followed him, then went past him. The two men were moving behind us, keeping their distance, but they were following.
“Mr. Kent! Here we are!” I sang.
Kent nodded and I smiled and said quietly, “Mr. Kent, we have a problem. Could you get a police officer…”
Andrew’s hand closed on my forearm. He smiled and leaned down. “No police,” he whispered in my ear as he smiled at Mr. Kent.
Mr. Kent looked at the two of us, his face carefully neutral.
“Melanie,” Andrew whispered, still smiling, “I want you to stay out of this. I’m going to leave and I want you to just stay right here.”
I smiled at Mr. Kent. “Excuse us just a moment, please,” I said then turned aside, still holding onto Andrew’s arm tightly. “The more of us, the better. They won’t do anything if you’re with people.”
“How do you know?” he whispered fiercely. “Look, Ms. Brenner, butt out.”
I closed my eyes, feeling a wave of crippling self-doubt wash through, but I fought it, knowing that I was right. “What are you going to do for transportation? I’ve got a car waiting.” Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse through the crowd of the two men conferring together. The small one nodded and they began to move towards us. “Oh my god, they’re coming,” I whispered, feeling the fear send my stomach on a free-fall downward.
Andrew turned toward Mr. Kent. “Please get her out of here,” he said, still smiling.
Andrew tried to pull his arm from me, but I held on, and Mr. Kent looked from Andrew to me, back over my shoulder in the direction of the two men, and then he seemed to come to a rapid decision. “The limousine is waiting at the north end,” he said with a smile matching Andrew’s. “We’d better hurry. Another ten minutes and it’ll be towed away.”
“I can’t…” Andrew said, shaking his head, pulling back.
“Yes, you can,” I pleaded as Mr. Kent turned toward the front of the terminal, and I pulled at Andrew’s arm. He took a reluctant step forward as the men came closer.
Mr. Kent turned his head back over his shoulder. “I think, Ms. Brenner, that your diversion should be continued. The more attention you bring to us, the less likely those two men are of causing a problem in front of witnesses.”
I swallowed hard, hooked my arm more cozily through Andrew’s and smiled brilliantly. “Well, the flight was just horrendous,” I said loudly, as I tried to remember every obnoxious snob-girl move and phrase from my high school years. “Just abso-tive-ly god-awful.” I pulled away from Andrew, hanging onto his hand, and bumped into a tall, long-haired man with a green military jacket on.
“Whoa, lady,” he said with a smile, and I sniffed and pulled away from him. He stopped smiling and I knew without a doubt that he’d remember the cold bitch in the pink sweater.
Yeah, that way he can identify your body when the police find it back behind the luggage carts.
I shivered and kept talking, every inane, loud-mouthed thing I could think of. I didn’t look at Andrew, feeling too much the fool already. I did see the people around me watching me, the almost uniform looks of disgust directed toward the fool making a spectacle of herself while clinging to the tall man in the sunglasses and ugly t-shirt. And I did see that the two men hung back, not wanting to be included in the exhibition that we’d become.
“Ms. Brenner.”
“Yes, Mr. Kent?”
“There is a large crowd ahead. I suggest that when we reach them, the two of you make your move.” He grinned, the skin of his face wrinkling, his eyes almost disappearing into the folds.
“My god,” I breathed. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little. A misspent youth reading Ian Fleming. Try to lose them. I’ll go get the limousine and meet you at the south end of the concourse. It’s a black, stretch limo. If we time it correctly, even should you not be able to lose them, we should be able to make a clean getaway.” His eyes sparkled.
Andrew nodded at the little man as he took my hand firmly. “Five minutes?”
Mr. Kent nodded and moved smoothly off into the crowd. Andrew and I veered to the right toward a crowd of people standing in front of the American Airlines counter. It looked to be a charter flight--lots of people, lots of bags, all in a partying mood. Rather than go around them, Andrew pushed his way through, a little rougher than necessary, me following in his wake, still clinging to his hand, receiving the worst of the looks. I nervously smiled apologies. Andrew said not a word; rather, he thrust his arm out, using the paper bag he still clutched to push between two women, and as he did, his foot hooked out and kicked over one of their bags.
“Hey!” one of them said.
He just walked on, kicking over another bag.
“Watch it!” the owner of the second bag said as he moved over to pull it back up. As he bent down, I tripped and pushed against him and he knocked over a set of matching Gucci luggage, and as he swore violently, the others in the group closed around him, shooting evil looks our way, as they helped him to rise and pick up the bags, thereby quite effectively cutting off the pursuit of the two men.
“Now,” Andrew said, and we brushed past the last line of people and began to run up the concourse. My ankle twisted painfully as the heels of my pumps slipped on the tile.
“Wait,” I gasped, and kicked off the shoes, grabbed them, then took Andrew’s outstretched hand again and continued to run, faster now in my stocking feet.
I heard another louder protest as the blond man tried to push his way through the now angry crowd, then Andrew pulled me around a corner, down a passage leading to, according to the sign over the opening, Gates 34-43. A few yards down, Andrew slowed, pulling me into a bookstore, then down an aisle toward several tall, circular racks of magazines. We stopped behind them, panting, eyeing the doorway between the copies of Time and Sports Illustrated.
Andrew squeezed my hand and I looked up at him. “Okay?”
>
I smiled nervously. “I think so.”
He squeezed my hand again, but his eyes were already back on the doorway and the concourse beyond. He pulled open the brown bag and pulled out the shirt and sports coat he’d worn on the trip to the LA airport. He took off his cap, grabbed my hair, twisted it up, and jammed the cap on top, backwards. He looked quickly to the left and right, then knelt down and peeled off the t-shirt (I was far too frightened to notice the way the muscles of his arms and chest flexed as he pulled the shirt over his head), then quickly shrugged on the white shirt and sports coat. He raked his hair down over his forehead and dropped his sunglasses into a pocket. He moved me over behind a display of romance novels, and then positioned himself behind the magazine rack. He’d barely reached up to turn the rack when the short blond man skidded to a halt outside. He looked down toward the gates, across the way at an open coffee shop, then into the bookstore. Andrew simply turned the stand slowly as I shrank in on myself, trying to duck casually out of sight, hearing my heart pounding in my ears. The man’s eyes scanned past, not even halting on the vaguely seen, shaggy-haired man in the tweed sport coat behind the magazine stand. He looked across the way, turned in a circle as he looked at the people walking past, then he headed up the concourse toward the gates.
I breathed then, not realizing until the wave of dizziness washed over me that I’d been holding my breath. Andrew tugged at my hand and I realized that he’d started for the front of the store, but now was looking back at me. “You okay?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
He dropped my hand, and took my shoulders. “I want you to stay here,” he said. “Wait about ten minutes, and then go meet Mr. Kent, get in that limo, and drive away from all of this.”
I shook my head and pulled the cap from my head and dropped it down in the brown bag.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to see this through,” I said.
“There’s no need.”
“Yes, there is. You can’t go out there and flag down a taxi. Besides, what are you going to do for money?”
“Oh, Christ, my wallet.”
“Yes, your wallet and I bet you spent what little you had in your pocket on that t-shirt.”
“Well, yeah.” He stood, looking over my head, and I could see him calculating, bringing in all the variables, then he shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do this.”
“You’re not. Look, I’ll trade you this for an A in Molecular Genetics, okay?”
A smile twitched his lips. “For the whole course?” he said. “An A on a mid-term maybe, but not the whole course.”
“Two mid-terms and a quiz.”
“Deal.” He took me by the shoulders. His hands felt hot and strong. He looked me in the eye as if to assess whether I meant what I said, but when his gaze met mine…
…harmonic. When two sounds join together in just the right way, a new sound is formed, a sound impossible for one voice to produce. When his eyes met mine something new was formed. Some energy only two people could produce…
…and he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Now, what say we get out of here, Girl Scout?”
I blinked.
Girl Scout?
I nodded, again unable to speak.
He took my hand again, snagged his bag now holding the t-shirt, and we walked slowly out of the store, trying nonchalantly to look in all directions at once. There was no sign of either the small blond man, or the taller dark-haired one with the paunch. We turned toward the front of the terminal again, heading for the south end. We almost made it, too. But as we neared the doors, I took one last frightened look behind, and not twenty yards back, the large, dark-haired man appeared in a gap in the crowd, moving quickly towards us, reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket as he did so.
“Andrew!” My voice rose in a terrified squeal and Andrew didn’t even turn, merely tightened his grip on my hand and began to run toward the automatic doors. They swung wide as we hit the rubber pad, and we ran through, dodging around two young sailors and their duffle bags. I spotted the limo immediately. Mr. Kent stood at the open door at the driver’s side, beckoning us urgently. Andrew raised a hand and Mr. Kent dropped down into the seat and started the engine. I heard one of the sailors swear at the same time I heard the thump of body hitting body. I stubbed one nylon-clad toe as I jumped around a metal luggage cart, and nearly went down on the concrete sidewalk, but Andrew jerked me upright. I wouldn’t look back, but the skin of my back seemed to be watching for me, a feeling of impending doom crawling over the surface as I waited for the knife/bullet to penetrate there. Mr. Kent had left the right passenger door ajar and Andrew grabbed it, swung it wide, shoved me in and leapt in after me even as Mr. Kent pulled away from the curb and the large hands of the dark-haired man slapped against the tinted glass.
Andrew had landed across my legs and he lifted off them now, twisting around into his seat, looking back at the set face of the large man standing in the street next to the curb, ignoring the cab behind him trying to move into the spot vacated by the limo. I swung my legs down and huddled against the far door.
“Melanie?”
I hugged myself, feeling the trembling start.
“Are you all right?”
I closed my eyes, turning away from him, trying to shut out his voice. His hand touched my arm and I shook it off. “Don’t,” I whispered, near tears.
“Melanie, I’m sorry...”
“It’s okay, just don’t, please,” I said. “I’ll lose it.”
I heard him shift over in the seat. “All right,” he said.
“Would someone mind explaining now just what I’ve got myself into?”
Mr. Kent’s voice came from the front seat. He glanced up in the rear view mirror, looking at me. “I’m...” I swallowed, trying to control the trembling in my voice. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kent. It’s, well, I… It’s a long story.”
“Mr. Kent,” Andrew said. “It’s my trouble, not Ms. Brenner’s. She’s in no way involved.”
I turned toward the window, unable to look at him. It had been too much from the start. He was too handsome, too intelligent, too kind, too charming, too upsetting. He was in trouble, not just ordinary fined-for-rigging-his-own-TV-cable-connection kind of trouble. No. Hired killers. Bombs. Attempted murder. It was all too much for anyone, and for me--god, I was drowning.
He told Mr. Kent something, I think, but I stared out at the cars and the people, at the jammed parking garages, at the exhaust-stained cement wall that we swept past as we traveled in an arc around the airport until we were headed west, and didn’t hear anything more than the rumble of their voices. The sun had set behind the coast range and the sky was a deep orange washing up to black. Streetlights had come on and they flashed rhythmically in the car as we passed under them.
He’s my professor, I’m his student…
Girl Scout, trooper
…nothing more.
The car moved through a pool of light. I could see his denim-clad knee at the limit of my peripheral vision before we moved back into darkness.
He played me for a fool in the limo!
Light again. His hand, the fingers splayed, gripping his knee.
He does that when he’s upset, floated into my mind, and then I violently shoved the thought away. I don’t want to know him!
Light: The hand had shifted slightly. I saw the veins in relief on the back of it and the glint of gold from his watch band below the sleeve of his jacket.
My hand moved, lifting to reach over to stroke the back of his hand, wanting to cover it, protect it, give him reassurance.
No!
I clasped both hands in my lap. My breathing had slowed from the run through the airport, but my heart thudded fast and hard as the old fear, the old pain welled up from just below my heart.
My father’s hand cracks against my right cheek. At least it’s an open hand slap so it stings and rocks my head back, but this time I don’t see black spots. I’m crouched in
the space between the brick fireplace and the TV, my Safe Place, where up until now no monsters have been able to find me.
“See what you made me do?”my father screams in my face. The cloud of onions and alcohol that comes with the scream makes me want to flinch, but I know better. Even the tiniest wince will get me another slap, probably more.
My mother stands behind him. I try not to look in her face because that will hurt worse than the slap.
“If I tell you up is down, you say yes sir!” father yells.
I don’t say anything, partly because my face hurts and I am terrified that this will be one of the times when I’ll miss school for a week because of the “flu,” but mostly because I am a bad girl who refuses to honor her father. My mother tells me to obey him, to always do what he says, but I am a very smart young lady (my teachers have been saying that to me since kindergarten) and I can’t say something that I know is wrong. I can’t.
“Do you understand?” he screams.
I nod.
“Then say it.”
I shake my head.
“Melly,” my mother says, “do what your father says.” The way she says it makes me think of last year in second grade and the way Mary Kennedy would talk to Mr. Barnes so she’d be picked Star of the Week and get to be line leader.
I shake my head and this time I see in my mother’s face that she is glad that I’m saying no because I’ll be the one punished this time and not her. This is new. The look might have been there before, but I’ve never seen it for what it is. I’m eight, and I’m a very smart young lady, but this I don’t want to know. And with this new knowledge, I look at my father’s face, red with rage and alcohol, and I see that he too is glad; he has crossed that line and there is no going back and for him it is a relief.
This is too much knowledge for anyone, even a very smart young lady, and I start to cry.
“Stop that whining,” he demands.
But I can’t.
“You better damn well stop that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Something’s broken inside. I can’t stop the tears. It’s as if Beanie died all over again, struck down by the laundry truck as he ran across the street to greet me, his little tail wagging joyfully behind him. It’s as if my china head doll that my Uncle Richard brought me from Japan got smashed again.