Rei chuckled. “Your mother must have an interesting sense of humor.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn’t know. I never knew her.” I tried my best to conceal the discomfort, but I think my voice had an edge to it. “I think I’ll take your advice and go wash up.” I turned and headed to the bathroom, leaving Rei Acerba Bathory in the aisle looking flummoxed.
The “restroom” was mighty cramped. The design was a not-so-subtle attempt to discourage all but the most desperate deuces—but the vertical coffin did have a sink. Using its paltry flow of water I washed out the wound, rubbing so hard I flinched. My mood had darkened. It was Rei’s question about my mother. No one back home ever asked those kinds of questions. My neighborhood was tight-knit. Everyone already knew everyone else’s business, and my story was a crowd favorite. Mom had run off when I was a toddler, never to be seen or heard from again. I was “that poor boy” to everyone I knew. I wasn’t used to fielding questions about my mother, and the one Rei asked had been a good one. Why had my mother chosen such an unusual name? I had to spell it out loud more times than not; and it always looked funny on the page, like it could never quite get itself sorted out.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Was my mom German like my dad? Did she look like me? How about my personality? Or the way I held a pen? How about my Sight? Did she have it too? I hadn’t a clue what she looked like. My dad had burned all the photos of her long ago—and bringing the topic up was guaranteed to empty the house of liquor. I’d given up asking long ago. The mystery had nagged at me, but I guess she had better things to do.
“Or maybe she’s already dead,” I said to my reflection.
That thought brought a rush of sadness. I’d rather have never known her than discover that truth.
Putting on Rei’s black Band-Aid cheered me up a bit. Where could you buy black Band-Aids, anyway? The thick black bandage looked hilarious on my head. Any semblance of dignity withered-up and died. I touched the black Band-Aid and smiled. For some reason that didn’t bother me much.
+
When I returned to my seat, I found Rei, her black hair cinched back in a ponytail, sitting with one leg crossed over the other flipping through my copy of Ulysses.
I plopped down in the seat next to her.
“Hey, that’s my torture, not yours.”
She looked at me and smirked. “I was unaware you were a masochist. Why not skip this tripe and allow me to strike you in the forehead a few more times? It will be much faster and achieve similar results.”
I laughed. A severe wit to boot. So not fair. “Yea, it’s pretty terrible, but I made a pact: If I survive this book, I can survive anything that college throws at me.”
Rei’s smile vanished. “One should not enter into such pacts idly. If you succeed, you gain nothing your own merits could not attain. If you fail, you doom your prospects in college. It is a fool’s bargain, Dieter. For instance, if the book were to be destroyed…” She stared off into space, and her mood darkened further. “Dieter, what fiend tricked you into this contract?”
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Um, the fiend I know best? It was just a challenge I made for myself. You know, to build confidence? I didn’t make it with anyone.”
“Oh.” Rei’s face relaxed. She nodded sagely. “You are engaged in a ‘motivational exercise.’ The black woman on that popular daytime television show has mentioned them often. People lacking confidence in their own abilities use them as a sort of crutch to get through life, correct?”
“Um, sort of.” I winced. That kinda hurt. “Well, Rei, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you motivate yourself for a tough challenge?”
“I guess…” Rei frowned. Strummed her chin. Frowned again. “This is an interesting question. I am uncertain of the answer, Dieter Resnick. I believe I just make sure I have fed recently.”
I nodded in agreement. “They always say you can’t think on an empty stomach.”
“Oh, you can,” Rei said with a half-smile, “just not about anything other than eating.”
I laughed. I had never really considered that, but Rei was right, wasn’t she?
This Rei Bathory was certainly odd, but she was the fascinating kind of odd. I was used to vapid chicks—girls who cared about money, looks, and status. She hadn’t asked what I did for a living; she’d asked where my name had come from. She knew literature. She knew biology. She was smart and had knowledge all her own. She seemed to come at life from an entirely different perspective, and I thought that was great. Half the reason I wanted to get out of Vegas was to learn about other ways of life and find my own path among them. While I considered myself well read, I had seen very little of the world. I knew well enough to not expect people to just act “normal.” My definition of “normal” was probably really narrow.
I looked back at Rei. Yea, she was gorgeous, but I’d already seen my fair share of attractive women. Heck, I’d worked in the strip club district; I’d already seen my fair share of attractive naked women. (One with rather spectacular DD’s had even taught me how to dance.) Call me jaded if you want, but Rei’s curves weren’t what fascinated me. Rei wasn’t just pretty. She was something else entirely. I think it was the way she held herself. Her mannerisms were unlike anything I’d ever seen in real life. Her posture was perfect. She moved her body in smooth graceful motions. Every bone knew exactly where to be. It reminded me of those films about kings and queens. There was a word for it…refined. Rei was refined. Realizing it, I became nervous. I didn’t know much about high society. I was worried about sounding uncultured, that Rei would think I was inferior or something, but conversation turned out to be easy. Rei asked questions. I answered them.
“So you are traveling to this Elliot College for your freshman year?”
I nodded.
“And previously, did you attend a public institution for your schooling?”
“Yep, elementary through high school in Nevada’s finest school district.”
“Were there many students in your academy?”
“Academy?” What was she…? “Oh! You mean my high school. Yea, lots. My high school had three thousand students.”
“Three thousand? Three thousand people!” she asked, flabbergasted.
“Budget cuts. They had to clump as many of us into a class as possible. Usually it was one teacher per fifty students.” I shrugged. “But all you really need are the books, right? What was your education like, Rei?”
“Well…I was what you would consider to be homeschooled. I had many private tutors and a pedagogue to manage my studies. But, Dieter, I am curious, in such a large school, how did you manage to establish sufficient dominance to gain the note of a prestigious school such as Elliot?”
“Dominance? Rei, I’m a nerd. I only dominate equations. I was at the bottom of the social totem poll.”
Rei glanced at my wound and tilted her head. “You do not strike me as weak.”
“What I meant is that mental aptitude wasn’t valued by Ted Binion’s student body.”
Rei looked at me as though I had claimed up was down. “Then what do the young value?”
“Strength.” I looked down at my shoes. I felt embarrassed even explaining it. “They value strength.”
“And how do they determine strength?” Rei asked, leaning forward.
I shrugged. “It usually gets decided in the first few fights.” No use faking it. She could probably see right through me. In truth, I was nothing more than a thug. It felt better to just get it out there. I didn’t feel comfortable lying to her.
“It always does, doesn’t it?”
I raised an eyebrow.
Rei smiled. “You were a good fighter.”
I put up my hands. “Hold up, Rei, I wasn’t king of school or anything…”
Rei’s eyes narrowed. “What of the first few challengers?”
I bit my lip. Rei didn’t dance around things, did she? Still, it was an honest question, and it deserved an honest answer. “Well, I…I hurt them badly,
Rei.” I wasn’t proud of those fights. Using my Sight had felt like cheating. “That reputation gave me some breathing room. But, Rei, you have to understand, there’s no reasoning with the kids I grew up with. They only understand violence and power.”
Rei turned away from me to look out the window. “Dieter Resnick, that is a fact as old as time itself.”
I swallowed. That was rather heavy…
“Forgive me, but I cannot resist asking: How did you hurt them?”
“What do mean?”
“You did not have a method? I apologize if the question sounds rude, but I come form a very different background. I did not have peers growing up. I’ve never been in a ‘schoolhouse’ fight.” Rei almost looked wistful. It was hard for me to picture what homeschooling was like. It must have been just as difficult for Rei to try to understand my experience.
“Okay. If you want, I’ll try and give it a shot.”
Rei nodded eagerly.
“First you have to understand that fights don’t just suddenly break out. There’s always an underlying motivation. Fights start because a guy decides he has something to prove. Maybe he wants to get into a gang. Maybe he wants his girl’s respect. Maybe he’s just afraid of getting picked on himself. Now, what he understands is violence. As he grew up, he saw it work for other folks; and now that he’s old enough, he’s going to try it too. He picks on someone he perceives as weak, someone he thinks he’ll have a good chance of beating. The best outcome he can hope for is that the person he’s picking on won’t even want to fight. You see, if he can get his opponent to chicken out, then he wins without risking anything. That’s why these fights start out with a war of words.”
“How odd,” Rei opined. “The aggressor merely goads his target? He only attempts to intimidate?”
I frowned. “Of course. All fights involve random chance. Why risk rolling the dice when you can get a free spin at the wheel?” That seemed rather obvious to me. “Now, if you are getting picked on, you have a few options. You can talk shit back—but that will gather a crowd. The witnesses up the ante. It raises the stakes for your opponent. That’s no good. If a fight breaks out, he’s going to fight even harder now because he has more to lose. Only idiots do that. Some people cower and try to gain their opponent’s favor. In the short-term it’s a good strategy, but in the long-term it’s terrible. It just opens you up to more bullying in the future.”
“Did you choose another option?”
“Yea, I used three-strikes.”
Rei cocked her head again. “Pardon?”
I swallowed. She looked even cuter when she was confused.
“With three-strikes, the first time someone makes a comment, you just walk right by. The second time they make a comment, you stop, meet their eyes for a second or two, and then walk right by again.”
“Ah! You speak of dominance posturing. This I understand. You have put them on ‘the notice.’ You are giving them a chance to back down without injury.”
I scratched my head. “Not exactly, Rei. You’re doing it so everyone else can see it.”
“Everyone else? Do you mean the other students? But they are not your opponents. They are just rabble. I do not understand this, Dieter. Explain it better.”
I mussed up my hair. Stars above, I needed a haircut. “You’re thinking too narrowly. I don’t give a damn about the challenger. He’s a short-term problem. There are thousands of students. Hundreds of them are stronger than me. And I’m not only worried about one-on-one fights.”
“The cretins would gang up on one person?” Rei looked confused. “What is the fun in that?”
“Beats me. The point is that by eyeing the challenger, you’re singling him out from the group. Instead of letting his buddies get involved, you’re turning them into spectators. The eye contact is a form of direct challenge. It says, ‘I dare you to try that one more time.’ It also ensures the larger group doesn’t perceive you as weak. You have to avoid that at all costs. The weak always get torn to shreds. It’s better to be the entertainment. Give the crowd a bit of theatrics and—”
“They become an audience rather than a mob. A fascinating observation, Dieter.”
I blushed.
“And the third time?”
“The third time, you do something theatrical. Oh, and theatrical means painful.”
“Like?” Rei had leaned in close enough that I could feel the slow draw of her breath. Her lavender scent reached my nostrils, and all hesitation left my mind. I wanted to tell her everything.
“I had five fights before the challenges stopped coming. In the first, I closed quickly and dropped him with a few knees to the gut. He had no stamina. That stopped the fight. But to my surprise, a second guy came after me within a week. I did something similar in that second fight. But again, within a week, another guy started in on me. And the third guy was stronger. He took the shots to the body and managed to crack my jaw. I got lucky and caught him in the temple.”
“Why did you focus on the body?” Rei asked. “Why not target the joints?”
“Because I wanted to get into college, not start a fight club. Body-blows-don’t-show. You don’t get in as much trouble.”
“Body-blows-don’t-show,” she repeated. “So after this tactics failure became evident, you decided to do something ‘theatrical’?”
“No. I was still being thickheaded. The fourth fight was a bad one. My opponent had a good fifty pounds on me, and this guy knew how to fight. I could be as fast as I wanted, but I couldn’t deal enough damage to faze him.”
“If one’s opponent is large, one need only employ counters to his vitals,” Rei said, matter-of-factly. “Velocity can always defeat mass.”
“You know how to fight?”
Rei shrugged. “Martial arts are part of a balanced education, and my education was quite balanced. Now tell me, did you prevail in this fourth contest?”
“His punches were powerful. I didn’t want to take anything more than a glancing blow. He was dealing enough damage with his jabs.” I felt my jaw reflexively. “First I took his knee out. After I scored the hit to his knee, I worked him laterally. I forced him to plant on the bad knee and caught him in the throat.”
“Excellent! Was that sufficient to kill him?”
“Stars above, Rei! I didn’t hit him that hard. I hit him a few more times, and he yielded.” I scratched my head. “Actually, we got along pretty well after that. Turns out he wasn’t such a bad guy. He just liked a challenge.”
“Your technique was incorrect,” Rei grumbled.
“My technique was desperate. He only gave me a narrow opening, and I was not the strapping lad you are looking at today. I only weighed like 130 pounds.”
“And I weigh even less,” she replied. “You shouldn’t select a tactic you lack mastery in, Dieter.”
“Technique? I never learned any techniques. I wasn’t taught martial arts as part of a ‘balanced education’.”
“Then who taught you to fight?” she asked. “You can’t just know.”
“No one taught me.” Visions of a particular birthday party danced in my head. “I just…”
Rei waved off the question with her hand. Something in her eyes told me she knew what I was trying to say.
“You said you were involved in five fights?”
“Yea.” Was I that easy to read? “After the fourth fight, I realized that all I was doing was making myself look like a bigger challenge. I was attracting fights, not scaring them off.”
“Indeed. That much is obvious. You masqueraded about like appealing quarry. Defeating you was a chance to earn prestige with very few downsides.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Right.” Again. “And to make matters worse, the fifth kid was a bold little prick. He picked a fight right off the bat. It was in the center of the cafeteria at lunchtime. It was a bad place to fight. Too many people. Too many obstacles.” Too many distractions for my Sight. “Anyway, he was quick, wiry, and even faster than I was. I wasn’t us
ed to that. It was like fighting against myself. I was on the defensive from the start. I tripped over a table. He nearly managed to get on top of me—then I hit him in the head with a lunch tray.”
“Metal?”
“Na, plastic.”
“Unfortunate.”
“Na, it was good enough.” I smiled. “I hit him with the edge. It dazed him good. But I was pretty mad by that point. My lunch was on the tray—and there wasn’t anything in the fridge at home—so I grabbed him by the hair and kneed him in the nose.”
Rei covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, there must have been a great deal of blood.”
“Yea, it splattered all over the cafeteria.”
Rei giggled. “A food fight. How charming!”
“Actually, the blood ruined my burrito. Anyway, I kneed him again. And again. And again. When he dropped to the ground, I kicked him in the kidneys. I dumped a few plates of food on him, poured a carton of milk on his head, and made him lick it off the floor. They called it Bloody Lunch Day. I got suspended for a whole week. It’s on my permanent record.” I scratched my head. I was getting a little too excited talking about this stuff.
Rei frowned. “A suspension? What is…ah, yes, like when Zack Morris and the Screech forged their identity papers in order to enter the dance club. But, Dieter, I do not understand this. The boy challenged you to a fight. Why were you the one punished?”
“Fighting isn’t allowed at school,” I said with a shrug.
“But—”
I laughed. “Gosh, where on earth did you grow up exactly?”
Rei frowned and crossed her arms. “Just north of Chicago.”
We talked for a few more minutes. She asked questions about life in Las Vegas. What were casinos like? Did people really just gamble away all their money? It was the stuff that outa-towners asked. I could sense she was enjoying the conversation, but it was becoming kinda awkward for me. I felt like she was sizing me up, checking my limits, seeing what I knew. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there should be a certain amount of tit-for-tat when you talk. That just wasn’t happening. No matter what I tried, she just kept steering the conversation back to me. I didn’t get to learn a thing about her.
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