I stopped only a couple of feet shy of the door, wondering if I should try to roll under as it closed. That seemed a decent way to get out of the garage. Also a decent way to get shot. I stayed where I was. The bright daylight faded to a thin crack and then was gone. The only light in the garage coming from the overhead bulb. Shadows appeared in sharp relief. With the door closed I had fewer options. None of them seemed good.
Luis spat blood, rubbing his ear. Board Shorts and Boots moved closer so that we formed a rough scalene triangle. Myself, Luis, and his two friends, farther away. “You’re from that bookstore,” said Luis. He laughed, as though realizing how ridiculous it sounded. “She sent you?” he added. “To do this to me?”
He took a step toward me. He was angry enough I thought that he might rush me on the spot. That would lead to chaos. Chaos wasn’t necessarily bad, but I hadn’t made up my mind. I didn’t want chaos at this exact second. I wanted to think.
“I sent myself.” I leaned down and grabbed the steel weight bar. Standard dimensions, about forty-five pounds, maybe seven feet long, each end pebbled for grip.
Enraged as he was, Luis didn’t relish the thought of catching that bar in the face. He edged back out of range, stopping six or seven feet directly in front of me. I stole a look at the other two. They had fanned out but were still side by side, about ten feet behind Luis at a forty-five-degree diagonal. Behind them the adjoining door to the house. The only viable exit. I thought of the scalene triangle again, and then for some reason of ninth-grade geometry. The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Solid, logical foundations for the world to operate upon.
I addressed Luis’s friends directly. “This isn’t between us. Walk away and we have no problem.”
Board Shorts laughed and cocked the gun. “We’re not the ones with the problem.” I saw him struggle as he pulled the slide back. Rust, maybe. I could see more rust on the barrel. The gun was a Cobra. Not a company synonymous with quality. Cobra made cheap guns that were purchased by people who didn’t want to spend money on better guns. They were all over the streets. Take a cheap semiautomatic pistol and throw in an owner who didn’t know or care about cleaning it. Maybe a few owners. Guns like this one were passed around a lot. Used guns were like used cars. They could be immaculate, or junk, or anywhere in between. With this gun, possibly a long chain of indifference to care and quality. Meaning a definite chance it could misfire. I filed that thought away.
“Why’d you hit her?” I asked Luis. I wasn’t talking for answers. I wanted a little more time to think.
“She’s crazy. I never touched her.”
The lies were always so easily told, but I was barely listening. I was thinking, adding things up. Possibilities. Three men. The only accessible door blocked by two of the men. A gun. The bare lightbulb dangling almost directly above me. The third man in front of me. No way out unless I ran through the two men between me and the door. In which case Board Shorts would likely empty his gun straight toward me.
“Toss the bar,” Boots advised. “Maybe we’ll be nice.” He sounded cheerful, unconcerned. The way most people would be in his situation. His chin came to a sharp V and he had sideburns that jutted down his face like a frame around a painting. He had picked up an aluminum baseball bat from a corner of the garage and held it casually, like he was popping pitches at Sunday softball.
I made up my mind.
I bent down but didn’t drop the weight bar.
Instead I unbuckled my boots. I pulled them off and placed them next to me. Noticing with some small part of my mind that the left tip was smudged with Luis’s blood. From when I’d kicked him. That seemed a long time ago. I stood there in my socks.
The three of them were looking at me curiously. Like I had cracked up.
Luis grinned through his bloody mouth, rubbing his left ear as though it itched. “You can take the rest off, too,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll help with that.”
I took one more look around the garage. Thinking again of that geometry class, almost twenty years behind me. A name came to me. Ms. Irvine. My teacher. She’d be glad I was still thinking about the course, all these years later. She’d always claimed that geometry was the most applicable branch of mathematics.
“What’s it gonna be?” asked Board Shorts. His voice was impatient. “Lie down or lights out?” With his colorful shorts and pistol he looked like an aging, murderous frat boy. Spilled beer foam and broken bottle glass littered the floor around where he stood. That only added to the image of partygoer gone wrong.
I flexed my toes against the cement. Took a long, even breath. “Let’s go with lights out.”
I took a half step forward and swung the bar up in a sweeping vertical arc.
The three of them watched, surprised. Not bothering to step back. Knowing they were comfortably out of range. Not having time to wonder why instead of swinging the bar toward them I was swinging it upward. Toward the ceiling. As the bar connected with the lightbulb above me, the last thing I saw was the same surprise threaded across three different faces.
I felt glass shower down, heard startled exclamations, as we were plunged into total darkness.
* * *
There were plenty of species that had no problem with night. Thrived in it, even. Lions, wolves, raccoons. Certain monkeys and birds, domestic cats. But not humans. As a species, we’d never grown comfortable in darkness. We were biologically wired to move in day and not night. Not seeing meant you could run into a tree. Or walk off a cliff. People grew cautious. Froze up until their brains could get some information flowing and figure out what to do. So I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear any immediate motion of any kind.
I was already moving.
I took two careful steps forward. Two feet a stride, counting in my head. I couldn’t see Luis, but I hadn’t heard him move. Meaning he would now be between three and four feet directly in front of me. I held the weight bar tight with both hands, crouched, and swung it at ankle level, sweeping around through the shoulders and pivoting my whole body into the swing.
There was a crack like I had hit a fastball. I felt the impact through my arms.
Luis screamed. The scream was useful. It provided me with more information. I shifted my stance and swept the bar back toward the origin of the noise, fast, before the scream even stopped. I felt a second impact jolt through the bar. The scream stopped as suddenly as it had started. I heard the sound of a body collapsing.
Someone who sounded like Boots called out, “Luis? You okay? What happened?”
“Shut the fuck up!” another voice hissed. Board Shorts. A smarter voice.
I was already moving again. The voices made it easier but I didn’t need them. Trying to see was pointless. I was listening. Listening, and counting in my head. One-two. One-two. The same careful two feet per stride. Stepping along the imaginary diagonal line that led to the two remaining men. I placed my feet softly, with great care. I felt like I could almost see the line I had memorized, blazing like a tightrope.
The shortest distance between two points. Basic Euclidian geometry.
My socks made no sound against the cement floor.
No way they could hear me coming for them.
I heard a crunching sound in front of me. The sound of a boot stepping on broken glass. The crunching sound helped. In the darkness it was like hanging a bull’s-eye on a target. I brought the bar back with both hands and then lunged forward, ramming the bar ahead like a spear. Mentally aiming for a point about three feet above the crunching sound. I felt the bar encounter something soft and yielding. Stomach or lungs, maybe, or genitalia.
There was a terrible groan and a clatter that sounded exactly like a dropped aluminum bat hitting cement.
Most people, taking a blow to that area of the body, tended to double over. Involuntary, reflexive. I raised the bar about two feet and rammed it forward a second time. This time there was a kind of gurgle. I had brought
the bar back a third time when the quiet was broken by a series of explosions. Bright flashes of fire tore out as the semiautomatic fired. In the enclosed space the noise was deafening. I leapt backward. Away from the gurgle. Away from the most recent source of noise. In case Board Shorts was doing the same thing I’d been doing and following sound. I closed my eyes to preserve what was left of my night vision and dropped down. The cheap Cobra hadn’t jammed after all.
I counted three shots, each one deafening in the enclosed space. I could hear the actual bullets cracking and bouncing. I stayed down. Could see the muzzle flashes through my closed eyelids. He was firing wildly, as fast as he could pull the trigger. Nowhere near me. I was counting the reports carefully. It was doubtful the full clip had contained more than ten rounds, and definitely not more than twelve. He had pulled the slide back to chamber a round, meaning there hadn’t been an extra in the chamber. People didn’t tend to carry extra clips of ammunition when they were sitting around a garage drinking beer with their friends.
Twelve shots, maximum. Then I could move again.
We never got there.
After the fourth shot there was a scream of pain and then a crash that sounded like someone falling into some kind of metallic objects.
The shooting stopped.
A stream of anguished profanity issued from the direction of the crash.
I stood up and stayed perfectly still for a moment. Mentally adding up how much I had moved from my original position. Adjusting my steps, I walked toward what I hoped was the adjoining door, wincing as I felt a piece of sharp glass dig into my heel. The glass was okay. It told me I was more or less in the right spot. My foot brushed a raised line. The doorjamb. I felt around against the wall until my finger found the garage door button.
I pressed it and the garage door opened. The most normal sight in the world. Familiar to millions of suburbanites all over the country. The bright sunlight unscrolled as the door rose. A sign for most families to pull the car out or go look around to grab the golf clubs or rakes. Any of the normal things that people kept in normal garages.
I looked carefully around. This garage looked different. Decidedly not normal.
Luis lay crumpled on the floor. Except for the blood running from a cut on his head he could have been asleep. Boots was curled into an awkward seahorse shape. His breaths were raspy and uneven and both hands were clasped around his throat. If I’d had to guess, I would have figured something to do with the trachea. More likely bruised than crushed, based on the fact that he was breathing. No long-term damage, but he wouldn’t be moving much for the next few minutes. My gaze continued to Board Shorts, who lay on the floor in the other direction, both hands clutching his leg. He’d fallen into a row of empty paint cans, which had caused the clatter. Wildly firing a semiautomatic pistol in an enclosed area didn’t always pay off. No telling which way a ricochet might go. One of his bullets must have bounced back at him, hot sharp metal sizzling with kinetic energy. There was blood coming from his leg.
I walked over, kicking the gun away out of his reach even though he didn’t look like he wanted to be anywhere near it. I knelt down and took a closer look at his leg. “Your lucky day,” I said. The bullet had gashed the leg but it hadn’t lodged. Not enough blood to mean anything life-threatening. I straightened. “I wouldn’t mention the gun when you’re getting that stitched up. There’s no bullet in you. You can get away with that.”
He nodded, understanding.
“Use your shirt, tie it off.” I nodded at Boots. “If you call an ambulance you’ll have some explaining after they arrive. If I were you, I’d have your buddy bring you in. Luis isn’t going to feel like driving.”
He looked around the garage toward his friends. “Why not?”
I didn’t answer. I was already pulling my boots back on. “And for God’s sake don’t pull a gun next time you’re in a fight. That’s not who you are.” Luis was stirring. I watched his fingers slowly clench and unclench as he groaned. His right ankle was the size of a Valencia onion. I watched his fingers move. His hands flattened and braced, crablike, against the concrete, and he started pushing himself up. He was muttering something that I couldn’t make out. He looked pretty out of it.
I picked up one of the circular forty-five-pound weights that had fallen off the bench press. I had to strain to carry it. I walked over to Luis and lifted the weight with both hands, still needing to squat a little so I could push up with my legs. Not for the first time, I thought with mild astonishment about gender difference when it came to physical strength. How men like Luis could lift six or eight of these weights with no problem. And yet be knocked out cold same as anyone. Somehow that felt fair.
With an effort I raised the weight to shoulder height.
The metal disc was poised directly over the spread fingers of his right hand.
I released my grip.
The weight fell.
There was an awful crunching sound and he let out the worst cry yet. Not a nice way to wake up. His left hand clutched its damaged partner to his body and I saw tears of pain in his eyes. I bent down over him. “Luis,” I said. “Pay attention.” His face was drenched in sweat and patched with blood. Quite possibly concussed and an ankle he wouldn’t walk on for a long time. And the hand. His fingers. I caught a glimpse of them as he cradled them protectively. They didn’t really look like fingers anymore. The hand was a flattened, crooked mess.
I had his attention. “We need to talk about Zoe,” I told him.
He looked at me, face drawn tight with pain. “What about her?”
I spoke slowly and clearly so he’d be sure to understand. “She’ll come by for her things. You’ll receive advance notice. It’s very important that you not be home when that happens. In fact, I’d spend the day in a different city entirely. Take a trip somewhere. You understand?”
He nodded. He understood.
“Then it’s over. For good. You leave her alone.”
He nodded again. Sick with pain. But he seemed to understand.
The epinephrine that had flooded my body began to recede and I was filled with the strange chemical depression that always hit after violence. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I didn’t want to be in the garage anymore. I didn’t want to be around people. I wanted to go find a quiet room and lie down and go to sleep. I walked outside without lingering. Gunshots might mean police whether Luis wanted them or not.
Five minutes later I was back on the freeway. Riding in the rightmost lane, letting the faster traffic flow by on my left. Part of me wondering why people like Luis did the things they did. The way I always wondered. The other part, with what I knew of people, didn’t bother wondering at all. I’d been learning that for most of my life.
After college, it was something I kept learning.
* * *
After graduating, I moved around the Bay a few times, restless, feeling unfulfilled. I ended up back in Berkeley without any idea about what I wanted to do. One afternoon I stopped while walking past a women’s shelter in Oakland, remembering two long years spent with my first foster family. A week later I was in a certification course, and within the month I started working as a first responder. Like the name suggested, meeting women immediately after an incident, wherever they were. Offering comfort, support, creating a safety plan with them. The training emphasized how to help them heal, gain the self-confidence needed to start afresh, but my job meant different things. Maybe helping them find employment, or sign a lease for the first time.
Maybe helping them stay alive.
There was a problem. Many of the women who walked out of the shelter healed tended to return. When they returned, they were not healed anymore. And there was a formulaic truth: the more often they came in, the worse shape they were in. I began to feel that as fast as we could help them find their feet, there were unseen forces out there knocking them back down. Unseen people, actually. Only these people weren’t unseen. They were right there in the open.
It wa
s Clara that did it. A fun-loving Haitian woman with a happy smile and scared eyes. The first time I saw her she had a bruise under her eye. The second time, a chipped tooth. The third time, a broken wrist. It turned out that her husband was ex-military. When he got drunk he seemed to think he was still in combat. And that the hostile forces were principally his wife. After the third time, I convinced her to leave him. Using all of the persuasive arguments and rhetorical techniques I’d learned in training. Making every salient argument about reclaiming her life and finding her inner strength.
She agreed. I was happy. She was happy.
She left him. It took courage. I was proud.
I hadn’t considered something significant. Just because one person made up her mind to leave, the other person could still go and find her. I’d imagined that leaving was the final step. Actually, it was only the first. And the most dangerous. I began to see that the women who dared to leave often fared the worst. As though exercising free will was the greatest possible insult. Maybe it was humiliation, maybe rage. Maybe, with some of the men, just an impersonal tendency to apply violence to any part of their life that didn’t seem to be working. Some would kick a dog, woman, kid, TV set, all with the same matter-of-fact brutality. Others just seemed unfathomably depressed. They could be the most dangerous. I wasn’t a psychologist. I didn’t know why. Maybe a murder didn’t seem so bad if there was a suicide planned five seconds behind it. Maybe just a general nihilism or indifference to life.
I did what I could to learn. As usual I turned to books, reading everything from The Gift of Fear to The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. I read articles and sociological journals and legal cases and nonprofit reports. I learned about Battered Women’s Syndrome and the cycle of violence, an endless looping pattern of anger, violence, apology, calm.
Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel Page 30