Alex took a deep breath, rose up on her toes, and began her final sprint.
And nearly ran over him.
It was as if he’d risen from the sand, an apparition in white long-sleeved T-shirt and white shorts.
Dodging to her left, Alexandra stumbled, almost went down. The man lurched after her, but she got her balance and took two quick steps back, out of range.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you saw me.”
“Jesus, Jason.”
“My, my, you look particularly luminous this morning.”
He smiled, kept coming toward her, and she kept backing. At the surf line, the old couple had stopped and were staring at this strange encounter.
Jason Patterson was a handsome man. Dark hair swept back, black eyes, which she’d only lately learned to read. He had strong cheekbones and his skin was a degree or two lighter than cinnamon, as if perhaps his great-great-grandfather had been an Iroquois warrior. Limber as willow and mongoose-quick, he had only one defect as a fighter—a slight lack of killer instinct, a brief hesitation before he struck the finishing blow.
He was circling left, heading into her weaker side.
“Jason, please. I’m not up to this today.”
“Another rough night, huh?” He continued to circle.
“Bloody Rapist again,” she said. “I’m worn down. Fatigued.”
“Good,” he said. “Maybe that’ll even things up.”
“No, really. Not today.”
His smile faded. He halted, his body shifting into fudo-dachi, the rooted stance. Four feet away. Surf rolling in behind him. Gulls coasting low. A sandpiper strutted stiffly between them, pecked at the sand. A few miles out on the surface of the blinding water, a crimson sun floated like an abandoned beach ball caught on the outgoing tide, while clouds with the dirty gray translucence of fish scales clustered along the horizon.
A few years younger than Alex, Jason Patterson was six feet tall, around 175 pounds, with a competitive swimmer’s cinched waist and deep chest. He was a Rokudan, a sixth-degree black belt and assistant instructor at the Shotokan Karate Center in Coral Gables. He worked as a stockbroker and lived at trendy Grove Isle. Beyond that, Alex knew nothing of Jason’s personal life.
She knew his body, though, was intimately familiar with his reflexes and the power and quickness of his strikes, the moans he made when he was straining, the tart citrus aroma of his sweat, the tensile strength of his fingers, and the nuances of his customary gestures, like that narrowing of left eye, and the one-inch drop of right shoulder that always announced a roundhouse kick.
For the last six years, Jason Patterson had been Alex’s instructor on the mats of the Shotokan dojo. Since the age of eleven, when she’d bullied her parents into letting her, Alexandra had been studying martial arts. First in a run-down strip shopping center near her home, and later in the air-conditioned upscale tranquillity of the Gables dojo. Nearly every week for the last year, it had been Jason Patterson’s custom to select Alexandra as his opponent when demonstrating new techniques. It always brought a hush to the other mats, the students gathering to watch her quickness and ingenuity matched against his superior strength and vast technique. She was certainly not his equal as a fighter, only a fourth-degree black, a Yodan, so she was flattered that he selected her above the more aggressive and accomplished men in the dojo.
Last July when Alex’s dad moved in, something had to go from her schedule, and with considerable reluctance, she’d decided it would be her two evenings of karate. A week after she stopped going, Jason showed up at the beach one morning wearing his white gi, standing quietly in her path along the hard-packed sand, waiting in the shiko-dachi stance. He said he missed her, that their workouts weren’t the same without her.
And that’s when he’d proposed this arrangement.
Without giving it a moment’s thought, she’d said yes. She liked Jason, and after skipping only a week, she was already feeling logy and stiff.
Their new sessions would be free-form. Unstructured, unpredictable. Anything was legal. To the limit and beyond. No more mat fighting, no more measured and disciplined lessons.
Full contact, all-out fighting until one of them yielded—nine times out of ten, it was Alex. Sometimes the fight was over in a few seconds; some mornings it took fifteen minutes. Two months ago, she’d cracked a bone in his wrist while blocking a punch, and a few weeks back he’d badly bruised two of her ribs. There had been regular welts, abrasions, strained tendons and ligaments. But she was a better fighter now than she’d ever been. More wary, more observant, and once the fight began, she was quicker, meaner, more willing to bring things to a sudden and complete conclusion.
Jason stepped forward, palms raised, shrugging.
She was settled into a relaxed watchfulness. Not tense, not overflexed.
“I mean it, Jason. Today’s not good. I’m bushed.”
“Okay, okay.”
He straightened from the cat stance, shook out his arms like a swimmer loosening up on the starting blocks, half-turned to give the old man a friendly wave, then spun back, lunged, leading with his left foot, a mae-geri, the basic front kick.
Day-one stuff. Ten-year-olds just off the street, getting their first lesson, learned a front kick. So Alex discounted it, waited for the punch or roundhouse flying kick that was coming next. But the mae-geri was real, his left heel cracking into her solar plexus, taking her down.
And before she could roll, he was on her. Saddling her at the waist, hands at her throat, thumbs digging in. The daylight going yellow, then gray. Two seconds from blackness. And she slung her right leg up, hooked her heel against his throat, levered back.
Then it was his sixty-pound superiority against her wider hips and stronger legs. Her better angle of attack.
It was shootfighting now. A karate spin-off. Submission combat. What happened when you were forced to the ground. A whole new array of techniques, flips, sweeps, suplexes, arm bars, chin locks, chokes. They’d only been training for a year in shootfighting. A tough, bruising, eye-gouging year. This was street stuff, innovative, brutal. A lot of squirming, some elementary wrestling holds, whatever worked.
At that moment, she was losing the leverage battle, her heel slipping against the oily sweat of his neck. Jason grunted and tried to twist the last inch he needed to free his neck and finish choking her into unconsciousness.
“Give,” she grunted.
“Me or you?”
“You!” she said. “Surrender.”
“Forget it,” he said. “Don’t make me do it.”
She felt a subtle softening in his grip, that familiar hesitation of the prudent teacher trying not to harm his student, and in that split second she locked her knee and straightened, thrust him up and to the left, and broke his hold, sending him sprawling. She scrambled to her feet, and in the instant he was recovering, she knee-dropped to his throat, easing back at contact, blunting the strike so she didn’t snap his neck. Then gripping a handful of hair in her right hand, she tipped his head back so his Adam’s apple was fully exposed.
“If you so much as flinch, I’ll snap your spindly neck.”
“I’m thinking clean thoughts,” he said.
“Get that smile off your face. I see any teeth, I’ll break them.”
“Tough broad. Good with the patter.”
“Bet your ass I am. I’ve studied with the best.”
“And sexy, too,” he said. “Great calves. Ballerina legs.”
Abruptly, she released him and stepped back.
“Good work,” he said. “Excellent escape and counterstrike.”
She let out a long exhalation and flopped down beside him in the sand. Both of them were breathing hard.
After a full minute, he said, “You didn’t try to block the front kick.”
“It seemed beneath you.”
“You missed the obvious, Alex. You can’t let your sophistication become a weakness. Just because you’re experienced, you can’t forget
first principles. And you’ve got to forget it’s me. No habits, no expectations. That could’ve killed you on the street, Alex. You’ve got to see what’s right in front of you. No more, no less.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, okay.”
They stared up at the sky and watched the blue seep back into it. The water stirred along the shore, churning up the early-morning fragrances of seaweed and tar and the mild lavender of driftwood warming in the sun.
Then he was up on his elbow, peering down at her. He brushed some sand from her forehead, combed a strand of her black hair into place.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
She took a quick breath, blew it out. She stared up at the clear blue.
“I can’t do this anymore, Jason.”
“What?”
Alex swept the hair from her face while Jason propped his head on his hand and looked into her eyes.
“We’ve got to stop this. These workouts, or whatever you call it.”
“What’re you talking about? Just because I let you win now and then, you think you don’t need me anymore? You’re dumping me.”
She shook her head and tore away from his stare.
“You’re expecting something more, and I can’t give it.”
“More? More what?”
“You know what I’m saying, Jason. Don’t make it harder than it is.”
He didn’t like what he saw in her face, and he turned back to gaze at the sea.
“Oh, come on. This is exercise, that’s all. Skill versus skill. Testing each other, pushing the limits.”
“Bullshit. Don’t kid yourself.”
He shook his head, sighed.
“So what’s this about? Stan lay down the law? He want you to give up martial arts, stay home and work on the marital ones?”
“Stan’s never said a word. This is my decision.”
“This is just a workout, Alex. Staying sharp. Primed, focused.”
“It’s becoming more than that. We both know it.”
“Well, yeah, I wish it were. I’m not going to deny that. But I’d say we’ve been doing a damn good job of keeping it sex-free so far. Both of us acting responsible, very adult.”
He turned back to her, fixed his eyes on hers, then abruptly swung his leg over her waist and saddled her again.
“No,” she said. “Get off me, Jason.”
But he brought his face close to hers, held it there, vulnerable to anything she wanted to do.
When she didn’t move, he tilted down and pressed his lips against hers. Alex kept her mouth rigid, fighting it, but gradually the hard knot in her chest relaxed and began to melt away, and after a moment more she yielded, lips loosening, finding the fit. Softening and opening, a whisper of breath passing between them. His tongue moving in, slipping past her lips. A moan from one of them—she wasn’t sure who.
She heard the surf and the raucous laughter of a gull and the insistent shriek of her blood. Then she drew her head away, twisted hard to her right, arched her back and bridged, stepped over his left leg with her right, and pried out of his grasp.
On her feet, breathing hard, she looked down at him. His knees were bent, hands locked behind his head as if he meant to do a few dozen sit-ups.
“Now that,” he said. “That wasn’t exercise. That was kissing. There’s a hell of a difference, Alex. Just so you know.”
At the surf line, the shirtless old man and his wife slapped their hands together slowly.
“Bravo,” the old man called out. “Encore.”
She looked down at Jason Patterson for a long moment, his eyes working on hers, until he seemed to read the depth of her resolve. Then his face changed, going slack, flattening like a time-lapse film of a man falling into profound slumber.
“I’m sorry, Jason. I really am.”
“So how are you going to accomplish this, fixing your marriage?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“I think I’m entitled to an answer. What’re you going to do, go to marriage counseling? Cook him his favorite foods, butter him up?”
“A romantic vacation,” she snapped. “Up in Seaside, a pretty little town in North Florida.”
“Oh, of course,” he said. “A second honeymoon. Yeah, yeah, that should fix it. That should bring old Stan around. Romantic vacations always work.”
“Goddamn it, I have to try, Jason. I have to do something.”
A few hundred yards offshore, a powerboat raced across the morning chop, the happy voices of fishermen echoing ashore.
“Well, I’ll be here,” he said quietly. “Every morning, same time, same place. In case you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” she said, and turned and headed up the beach toward her car.
THREE
What she had in mind was two weeks in the Panhandle. Fly up to Panama City, rent a car, drive over to Seaside, rent one of those purple-and-yellow cottages. Then later on, she and Stan could drive around, maybe try to locate that beach house where she and her parents had stayed almost twenty years ago.
The beach, the sunsets. That’s what they needed, two weeks in the sun. She and Stan lounging on the white sand, watching the dolphins roll, dining on boiled shrimp and good wine. Both of them on the same schedule, midnight strolls, make love all night, sleep through the morning. Take a shot at rekindling things. A final shot, perhaps. That’s how it felt these days, the last embers losing their glow. A puff of breath might just as easily extinguish as revive them. But she wasn’t going to let it slip away without a fight. Her folks lasted nearly thirty years, weathering rougher seas than anything she and Stan had known. She was determined, by God, to do as well as they.
She had all the arguments ready. She’d arranged for her dad to stay with her friend Gabriella Hernandez. Both Stan and Alex had lots of furlough time stored. It was off-season up in the Panhandle, prices down from their summer highs, the first cool October nights, a nice break from the Miami heat. She’d even gotten a brochure from a downtown travel agency with great wide-angle shots of Seaside, Florida, the pretty rainbow houses, the immaculate white sand, dunes and sea oats, the gorgeous wrinkled blue of the Gulf.
Stan was finishing his breakfast when Alex set the skillet in the drain and dried her hands, drew out the brochure from the kitchen shelf.
She spoke his name, but he was lost in the sports page. The Dolphins’ latest blunder.
“Stan,” she said.
He managed a grunt.
“You got a minute to talk about our vacation?”
“Vacation?” He kept on reading.
“You remember. Two weeks off, somewhere exotic. Cuddle late in bed, all that.”
He put his finger on the passage and looked up at her.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Like before you got so goddamn busy.”
She held her smile in place, unfolded the brochure, the words gathering in her throat. She’d plead if she had to. Threaten, nag, whatever it took.
“You win the Publishers’ Sweepstakes or something?” He looked back down at the newsprint. “What makes you think we can afford a vacation?”
“Stan,” she said. “I don’t think we can afford not to take one.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” Stan kept his eyes back on the paper. “And what about the old man? He going along with us? Keep us company?”
“Gabbie’s agreed to take him for a couple of weeks.”
With a bitter grin, he looked up again.
“You’ve got to be kidding. That woman’s a magnet for disaster. You might as well turn the old man loose, let him wander the goddamn interstate. He’d be safer.”
“Gabbie’s fine. She’s in a secure place now. I wouldn’t leave Dad with her if I didn’t think he’d be a hundred percent safe.”
“Forget it, Alex,” he said. “All the money we’ve been throwing away on that old man, we can’t afford a goddamn vacation. What’re you thinking about?”
“Look, St
an …”
In the hallway, the flinty click of her father’s police dress shoes sounded against the tile and Alexandra sighed and turned to watch Lawton Collins march into the kitchen.
He’d shined the black shoes to a high polish and his police tunic was buttoned tightly across his small potbelly. Instead of pants, he was still wearing his pink-and-blue pajama bottoms, shorties that exposed his spindly white legs.
“Christ,” Stan said. “Here we go again.”
Alexandra refolded the brochure and slid it back into its slot on the shelf.
Her father’s mist of white hair was wild, one side mushed flat, the top and other side aswirl with cowlicks. He carried a black suitcase in his right hand, and apparently he’d discovered the drawer where Alexandra had hidden his .38 service revolver. The holstered pistol high on his right hip.
“Dad, what do you think you’re doing?”
He set the suitcase down and drew the pistol and aimed it across the breakfast table at Stan.
“Call for backup,” her father said. “We have an intruder, Alex. And he looks like trouble.”
“Dad, no.”
Stan leaned back in his chair and held very still.
“That goddamn thing better not be loaded.”
“Dad, give me the pistol right now.”
“All right, sonny, don’t move a muscle. Put the fork down and stand up and spread your legs. We’re just going to give you a quick pat-down for weapons.”
“If that gun’s loaded, Alex, the old man is out of here today. Sunny Pines, Century Arms, whichever one is cheaper.”
“There aren’t any bullets in the house, Stan. Just relax and let me handle this.”
“You resisting arrest, sonny? That what we have here? A smart aleck?”
Alex rested a hand on her father’s shoulder and reached out for the pistol, but he shied away and kept his aim on Stan’s chest.
“Dad, please. Put the pistol down.”
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