by Evelyn Glass
She swivels in my embrace and looks up at me. “A few days ago, I was studying,” she says, as though she can’t believe it. “Is your life always this hectic?”
“Hell, no,” I say. “Lately I’ve been taking less and less work, only jobs I want to do, and they’re normally clean, without any complications. I haven’t used these safe houses for years. I haven’t had to run for years. In fact, lately, I’ve been thinking about getting out of the business. But before you there was no point, no one I could spend my life—”
I cut short, realizing how much I’m sharing. I’m suddenly uneasy. I step away. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to unload like that.”
She closes the gap between us, looks up at me with a stern expression. “You never have to apologize to me for telling me how you feel,” she says. “I want to know.”
“It’s strange for me,” I say. “What’s stranger is that I find myself sharing with you without even realizing it. I don’t know—it’s like you’ve . . .”
I stop, running out of words.
“Opened up something inside of you?” she says.
“Yes.” That’s the perfect way of putting it; that’s exactly how I feel. “How did you know?”
“Because, silly man, I feel the same.”
She takes me by the hand and leads to me to the bathroom.
“We need to see to your head. Really, Samson, flying a helicopter with a wounded head . . .”
Chapter Nineteen
Anna
I push my ass out, naked, on my knees on the faux-fur rug, the roaring fire bathing my face with heat. Samson kneels behind me, his hands massaging my ass cheeks. I turn my head and I just see his eyes, staring down intently at my naked body. And then he slides inside of me and we are lost to the world for a time . . .
When it’s over and we are cleaned and changed, we sit on the couch in front of the fire, sharing a glass of wine. The safe house is fully stocked with canned goods and wine, and we indulge ourselves in a meal of canned hotdogs and beans, heated up on the gas kitchen top in the kitchen. “We’re truly living like kings now.” I grin, scooping up the last of my beans.
Samson laughs, and looks at me with an expression loving and horny, an expression like he can’t decide if he wants to pounce on me or hold me close to him. I know how he feels; half the time, I can’t decide, either. Every so often, Samson walks to the windows, pulls back the curtains, and looks out into the night. I don’t know how he can see anything out there. It’s pitch-black, the kind of darkness you rarely experience living in New York, with the glow of neighbors’ apartments and the streetlamps and the myriad other lights which seem to spring from the city as though from nowhere. This darkness is all-consuming. I went to the window earlier and looked up. I gasped when I saw the sky. Free from light pollution, cloudless, the stars were brilliant, a million of them shining down like diamonds glinting in a sea of black.
He returns from the window, nodding to himself. He’s watchful, but he tells me we’re safe and I believe him.
Then his face changes. It’s no longer horny or loving, but preoccupied, as though his mind is somewhere else. I ask him if he wants to go to bed, but he doesn’t respond, just stares into the flickering fireplace, his eyes glazed over.
“Samson,” I say, prodding him in the arm.
“Yeah?” he says, facing me. “Sorry, I was thinking . . .” He rubs at his jaws, sighs, rubs at his jaws again, drops his hands and rubs them together, moves his finger over his knuckles, fidgets.
“What is it?” I say. “Something’s getting at you.”
“I have to tell you something,” he says.
My chest is gripped with an icy hand, compressing my ribcage and my heart. “Tell me,” I say.
And he does.
###
Maybe I should be angry with Samson, but I’m not. I don’t even think about getting angry with him. It’s not his fault, is it, that my father is a scumbag who thinks he can rule my life? It’s not his fault he’s always beaten me down, told me I can’t take care of myself, told me I’m a slut and a whore and thousand other cruel words meant to crush me into the dirt. And though I know my anger is muddled—Eric was going to kill me, after all—it’s not diluted for that.
I pace up and down in front of the fireplace. Samson talks to me but I barely hear his words. They move around me; I push through them and continue pacing. Dad, Dad . . . with his judgmental eyes and his whisky-soaked breath and his slurred insults and his constant put-downs. Dad, I think, clenching my fists. Dad, why? Why did you blame me for her death? It was cancer, I was a child. There was nothing I could’ve done. Why did you take it out on me? Why couldn’t you be strong? Why couldn’t you support me? Why couldn’t you be the man I needed?
My mind is thrown back to the day I told Dad I was engaged to Eric. It was a rainy day and I met Dad in a café, the windows clear glass, the rain pattering against it like a thousand thrown stones. Dad sat opposite me, face stern, and I pretended not to see when he opened his hipflask and poured whisky into his cup of coffee. He drank it down in one gulp, not caring about the heat, just gulping it down more for the whisky than for the coffee. When he let out a long sigh, his breath reeked.
“You’re too young to get married,” he said. “You barely know yourself yet. Why on earth would you get married? Why on earth would you rush into it? Why on earth would you do that to yourself? You’re too young, Anna, too young and too naïve. How well do you even know this Eric character? I have to ask you about him, don’t I, because I certainly have never met him! Did he ask my permission? Did he even try and do this in the proper way? What is it, Anna? Are you pregnant? Because there are ways to deal with that without marriage, you know.”
I realize now that a big part of my determination to marry Eric was Dad’s doubt, Dad’s insults, Dad’s desire for me to kill the idea stone-dead. I didn’t know what he wanted from me, never understood. If I dated, I was a whore. If I wanted to settle down, I was a fool. Perhaps he wanted me to become a nun.
“He’s a good man,” I said, and god help me, I believed it then, truly believed that Eric was a decent human being. “And he loves me. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not even close!” Dad barked, and the few patrons of the café turned at the noise. “What is his job? Does he have a career or is it just a job? Does he know that I’m wealthy? Is that why he wants you?”
Dad was immune to embarrassment. I’d lost count of the number of times he screamed at me in public, in front of other people. At a parents’ evening once, he leapt from the chair and roared at me because I’d gotten a C instead of an A or a B; the teacher had tried to calm him down but he’d just kept on shouting. And it was always me who had to clean up the mess, who had to explain to the teacher that he was just passionate about my education, who had to tell the councilor that no, he’d never hit me. In the café, I turned and smiled apologetically to everybody, and then turned back to Dad.
He was watching me with such fury in his eyes, it took all my self-restraint not to flinch away, to cower in fear. Dad’s gaze was intimidating at the best of times, but now, as anger took hold of him, it was something inhuman, a vicious creature unleashed. I could’ve given up then, cast Eric away and told him that he was right. But he didn’t know, had no way to know because he’d never asked me, that his cruelty was the driving force behind my decision to go on with the marriage. Who did he think he was, telling me who I could and could not marry? Who did he think he was, demanding that I do things his way, and his way alone?
“He wants me because we’re in love,” I said calmly, holding my hands upon the table. “He wants me because we’ve fallen in love and that is all.”
“Shit!” Dad roared, smacking the table with his fist.
Again, the entire café faced us, and though it wasn’t busy I felt like a hundred eyes were burning into me. I slumped lower in my chair, a reflexive response, just as at school a student will slump when the teacher berates them for forge
tting their homework. Dad went on, shouting, but I barely heard the words.
Then, suddenly, the shouting died and he lurched across the table, took hold of my folded hands. “Listen,” he said. His voice was shaky and I could tell he was trying to restrain himself, trying to force some sense of sanity into his voice. Maybe some part of this drunken old boar understood that the more he shouted, the farther away I would run. Maybe, but I didn’t think so. More likely was that he was trying to control me in a more insidious way.
“Listen,” he sighed, and his hand was heavy and damp upon mine. “Why don’t you move back in with me? I know you’re young, you haven’t found your place in the world yet. I know this marriage may seem like a good idea now, but you must know, it’s not. Marriage at your age is never a good idea. Never! Think, Anna. You’re a smart girl, much smarter than you’re behaving right now. There’s no reason for this kind of foolishness. Move back in with me and you can spend some time searching, really searching, for your goal in life. Okay?”
The way he said okay infuriated me. It was as if the deal was done and dusted and the word okay was just a formality, as though he had already persuaded me and he wanted to get the boring business of uttering the words out of the way. He had half-risen in his seat as he spoke, ready to stand up, escort me to the car, cart me back to the home in which Mom had died and he had berated me every chance he got.
I dislodged my hands from his, placed my palms flat, and stood up. Looking down at him, I growled, “I am marrying Eric. I love him and he loves me.” Even then, I wasn’t sure if that was true. Eric was a charming man, bedazzling in his charm, and I liked being around him because he gave me compliments and presents and treated me like no man had ever treated me before, but at times I wondered how well I truly knew him. But that didn’t matter now. Dad had forced my hand. “We’re getting married and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Dad launched to his feet like a rocket. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he screamed, and I was sure the walls of the café trembled, trembled like an earthquake was rending through the city. “I raised you! Me, I raised you and I want what’s best for you and you—you’re too young, dammit!”
“Sir,” a waiter said, a man of about twenty-five, stocky and muscled. “Could you keep your voice down? We have other customers.”
“Do you know who I am?” Dad demanded, facing the waiter. “Do you have any clue who you’re talking to?”
“No,” the waiter said. “But you’re being very loud.”
“Dad,” I hissed. “Leave him alone.”
Dad looked to me and then back to the waiter. “Why don’t you marry him, too, whore?” he scoffed. “It seems you can’t keep your dirty hands from anybody.”
Then he kicked his chair away and marched from the café, slamming the door behind him.
I sat statue-still for a long time, stunned into immobility by the scene, and then, reluctantly and annoyed with myself, I buried my face in my hands and started to cry.
“The worst part is, he was right,” I tell Samson, as I pace, pace, pace.
“He wasn’t right about you,” Samson says. “Maybe about Eric, but he didn’t know, did he? He just guessed to hurt your feelings. That’s how I see it, anyway.”
“Sure,” I sigh. “But when it comes down to the facts, he was right about him. He was controlling my life then and he’s still controlling it now. It’s strange, Samson, because I know if he hadn’t hired you, I’d be dead. And yet I’m so angry still.”
Samson rose to his feet, opened his arms, and embraced me. “You have every right to be angry,” he says. “You have every right to feel any damn way you want to.”
I rest my head on his chest and listen to the powerful beating of his heart, feel the reassuring pressure of his muscles. I cling on to him, cling on to him to feel something solid and real, something permanent.
“Samson,” I say, voice slightly muffled. “Tell me now, please. Just tell me now if you’re going to turn into a man like Eric. If you’ve tricked me like he did, please, just tell me. I can’t take it again. I’ll go insane.”
“I’m not,” Samson says, stroking my hair. “I’m not and I’d die before I hurt you. I’d kill myself before that happened.”
His voice, husky, is sincere. I believe him. With all my body and heart and soul, I believe him.
“Maybe,” I giggle, “I should hire you for Dad. That way he’d never be able to tell me what to do again.”
“That’s not an option,” Samson says softly. “And I don’t think you’d want that if I could do it, anyway.”
I think about it and realize he’s right. “Well, maybe not,” I say. “But . . .”
“As long as I’m with you, Anna, no man will ever tell you what to do ever again.”
He holds me for a long time, and then he says: “I have a plan. I have a plan that will stop all of this, that will make it so we don’t have to run any longer. I have a plan that will make it so we can be together without fear of danger.”
I lean back in his embrace and look up at him. “Tell me,” I say.
And he does. He outlines it from start to finish. The more I listen, the more I come to realize that for it to work I’ll have to trust him completely. It won’t work without trust. He speaks for a few minutes and afterward I nod and return to the couch. He sits behind me and wraps his arms around me and I feel close to him, closer than I’ve felt to any man, especially Eric.
Please, Samson, I think. Just stay good, stay honest, stay real and true. Stay the man you are today.
“Just be brave,” he tells me. “Just be brave and patient. I’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
“You better,” I say. “Because if you don’t, I’m dead.”
“It won’t come to that. It’ll never come to that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if it did, I think I’d die, too. And I have no interest in dying.”
I kiss him on the underside of the chin. “Who knew you were such a romantic, Mr. Hitman?”
Samson chuckles. “Well, I definitely had no damn clue.”
Chapter Twenty
Samson
We stay in the cabin for two nights, not doing much but being together. We make love half a dozen times and spend an entire afternoon in bed together, holding each other. It’s strange, but the more time I spend with Anna, the more comfortable I become with intimacy. It has never been easy for me, men like me, killers, to share this closeness. It reminds me that I’m human and more often than not, that’s the last thing you want to do when your business is taking people’s humanity. But with Anna it doesn’t scare me. I compare it with my time with River and come to the conclusion that I was not even one-tenth as close with her as I am with Anna. Anna and I are becoming something I never thought I’d experience: a couple. Something simple, and yet secure, something which men like me rarely get to live. One night, I wake up while she’s having a bad dream, rolling, kicking, and muttering in her sleep. I wrap my arms around her, spooning her, kissing her neck, and she settles down. With a shock I realize that I care, truly care, care in a way I never expected to. I have to face it: Anna’s changed me.
I know that Dad and even Uncle Richard would judge me. Richard, a smart man, a man who read much and had more empathy than anyone could reasonably expect from a killer nicknamed Black Knight, never got close to women. He used hookers, or else had short flings which always ended in disaster. I’ve been more successful than the two old men in money. And now I’m more successful than either of them was in love. It’s an odd sensation to outgrow an idol you’ve looked up to your whole life, even after he’s dead. (Richard, not Dad; I never looked up that cruel old man and I hated him before my eleventh birthday.)
On the third evening, we’re sitting in the living room. I sit on the couch and Anna lies down, her head resting in my lap. I stroke her head softly, savoring the feel of her hair, the softness of it. We had sex ten minutes ago and both of us are
sweaty, tired and content.
I don’t want to say it, but my plan won’t wait and I know she’s scheduled to dance tomorrow; my plan hinges on her dancing.
“We have to go back to the city by tomorrow,” I say. “River must be desperate by now, really desperate. I bet she’s scouring the city for us. She’ll be watching the arena, without a doubt. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s hired extra eyes and ears, maybe even hitmen to help her along the way. She’ll come after us with everything she has, and we have to stop her.”
“I know,” Anna mutters. “It frightens me.”
“Of course it does,” I say. “And if you don’t want to do it, I can think of something else. But the way I see it, this is the best way to draw her out and get rid of her without killing her. And . . .” I pause, wondering at myself. Is it because she’s a woman? Or is it because it’s my fault she was taken, tortured? Maybe it’s a mixture of the two. “And I can’t kill her,” I go on. “I just can’t. I think about doing it and I sort of seize up. I think if I had her at my mercy again, it would only be the same. Anyway, she won’t let that happen. She’ll be more careful now. She’ll only strike when she’s sure she can get us. So that’s what we have to do: make her sure, when we know she’s not.”